This special post is meant as a Christmas gift from the Aachen Peters to our parents and grandparents, the people who have made possible and greatly enriched our life here in Aachen: Baba and Saba, Grandma Karen and Grandpa Doug. Your love, wisdom, knowledge, and care easily constitute the greatest gift in our family’s adventures: your continuous support, adventurous spirit, love of learning and languages, and countless insights have modeled for us life abroad, so it is only appropriate that a small report be returned with you in mind. Merry Christmas from the Aachener Peters!
November and December have been full of extraordinary growth and good times. Let’s let the evidence speak for itself:
Maya: Froehe Weihnachten! Hier in Deutschland ist so super. Aber wir alle vermissen euch. Ich bin so freut dass ich nach Schule mit Fahrrad allein fahren kann, und nicht in einem Auto. Es ist ganz nett! Meine Freunden in der Schule heissen Ana Sophie, Maha, Solveyg, Defne, und Rosalila. Und wir spielen Verstecken (Hide & Seek), Versteine (Freeze Tag), oder Ketternfang (Chain Tag) jeden Tag. Wann die Ferien angefangen haben (gestern), haben wir leider erkennen dass Maha in der dritte Klasse gehen muss, wahrend wir bleiben in der vierte Klasse. Ich bin traurig weil sie mochtet nicht gehen in der dritte Klasse. Wir vermissen natürlich unsere Heimat aber es ist bestimmt gut dass wir kinder sind so frei heir. Du kannst frei Spazierengehen. Du kannst frei nach Schule gehen. Ich kann zu Supermarkt gehen wenn ich mochte! Zum Beispiel gehe ich jede Mittwoch mit meiner Freundin Ana Sophie bei Fahrrad zu der Kunstkurs, und dann bleibe ich mit Ana Sophie bis 18:00, und dann komme ich zu Hause mit Fahrrad. Und wir hatten vorgestern zu Sternsingen gegangen. Wir hatten so schön gesungen. Wir alle hoffen dass ihr eine schöne Weihnachten habt! Fröhliche Weihnachten, and to all a good night!
Libbie: I have been hanging out with friends a lot. I go to the Eis Halle every Saturday and go to the Weihnachtsmarkt and stores with my friends after school. I know the city very well now and can wander the city and not get super lost. I have grown accustomed to schools, stores, food, and culture. I have enjoyed making slide shows for English class, because they are fun to make and present (such as a recent presentation about Barack Obama). Even though my siblings prefer to bike, I have been walking everywhere and have never biked yet in Aachen. I went to London on a school field trip in late September and early October and made a good friend there, John, whom I am still in touch with (he just wished me a Merry Christmas, even though he should have wished me a Happy Christmas). I went to Paris with Dad about two weeks ago: it was really fun and I saw the Eiffel Tower at night on a river tour. I also went Heerlen for a two-night youth sleepover with Kate, Jordi, and a bunch of American friends in the Netherlands. We went to a military base for Thanksgiving with other American friends. It has been fun. Happy Christmas, me lads!
Elliot: Good. I bike to and from school every day. Then I stop biking when I get to school, and then I enter school and attend classes sometimes (that rare occasion). Then I bike back and then stop biking when I am at home. I had Christmas once, it was today. In fact, it is today. I bike a lot. I sometimes take electric scooters. Sometimes it is cold, even negative Celsius. I don‘t feel like finding warm clothes, so I don‘t wear them and I bike to and from school in my shorts and t-shirt. I am getting used to things, now that we are six months into Germany. I am looking forward to the next six months. Merry Christmas to all!
Aaron: I am enjoying my life. College is good. I spend most of my time reading, going on walks through the beautiful mountains, or hanging out with my wonderful girlfriend. The reading I have enjoyed the most this semester is Gorgias, although that may simply be because I have written a lengthy essay and thought more deeply about it than other readings. I have enjoyed being in Europe with my family again and seeing everyone. Although I am glad in Germany, I wish was able to spend more time with you guys. Hopefully I will be able to soon! Merry Christmas!
Tato: Merry Christmas, frohe Weihnachten! We are so grateful to have this year in Germany. We hope this post gives a glimpse into the good life. Maya is into art, crafting, and drawing (rendering some beautiful Christmas miniatures out of origami paper, for example); Libbie is making all the friends and broadly preoccupied by social circles more buoyant than home alone; and Elliot continues moving forward, attending school. It is fantastic to have Aaron visiting for the holidays; it is a new family chapter to have a kid back from college! We look forward to Zooming with you guys again soon.
Ima: we really love it here, we have been traveling and enjoying proximity to so many cool places, as the photos below suggest. In the last few days I enjoyed a trip to Brussels with Kelcie and Aaron and a trip to Amsterdam with Kelcie. We are really happy here. Our house is amazing, and the Christmas market has been charming to walk around and very enjoyable. Here is more about our November-December life with photos:
A few local-to-us Holidays:
We have been trying to live life to the fullest with lots of holidays, including a Kendrick concert, Halloween, St. Marten’s, Thanksgiving, a Cure concert, a campus science fair, etc.:
To pick up where the previous post left off, the best photo ever of Kourtney and Elliot in Köln, a genuinely cool city with a colossal cathedral and excellent museums.
Maya, as she usually does, went all out for Halloween, organizing a Halloween party for as many as thirty people in our house from school, church, and the neighborhood, complete with homemade piñata of Frankenstein, countless classic games for the kids, and lots of treats. Elliot hosted games upstairs. It was a hoot!
Maya and Ima made this Frankenstein piñata to great success, as a dozen kids between the age of four and fifteen will attest in our backyard.
A few of Maya‘s trick or treating friends.
Maya contributed a Janus-faced jack-o-lantern to the local Primary activity!
Maya and Rosa, the daughter of Ben‘s colleague, smiling through the macabre costume accessories.
On our way walking with a crowd of people to the local neighborhood celebration of St. Marten‘s Day. Lots of horse poop and neighbors walking to the local field (below).
On that field the reenactment of St. Marten, the Roman soldier whose encounter with a needy man converts him to charitable giving and eventual sainthood. The field was rimmed with maybe five hundred people. A moving public ritual that celebrates charity and public giving!
Three of our absurdist pie contributions to the local Thanksgiving feast with American friends. The French silk pie on the top was maybe 20 centimeters. So easy to find Creme Fraiche here!
Kourtney and Ben with friends, and 20,000 other people over the age of 40, at the Cure concert in Köln. Robert Smith‘s voice remains surprisingly sonorous in its angsty teenage harmonies.
Maya and Ben at the public Science Fair night on campus (RWTH, Aachen). Here Maya is standing in front of the thermal imaging camera that she (and a doctorate-holding helper) did experiments with involving liquid nitrogen, magnets, and tinfoil coverages. Science is so cool—literally, very, very cold in this case!
Maya spinning on a centrifugal chair at Science Fair. She also shot suction-cup darts while spinning. We would have attended the electricity demonstration but the line was thousands of local people long and the science night was growing late!
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Utrecht:
Kourtney and Ben took an overnight work-fun trip to Utrecht, and it was awesome. New chapter of life—traveling sans kiddos together!
Us, looking along various streets (two above is a main thoroughfare, and immediately above is a major academic avenue) of Utrecht
Hotel breakfast is the real deal, and we especially loved the charcuterie board—and the cheese, and the croissants, and the bread!
Utrecht cathedral, looking at the long side from the north.
Utrecht cathedral, abutting the Academy, seen from an inner court.
Inside the cathedral noting that, however enormous it remains, much of the cathedral behind the photographer was destroyed by a tornado or wild storm hundreds of years ago and never rebuilt. This enormous cathedral is a fraction of its original size.
A wonderful host Frank, Ben, and Kourtney from inside the halls of the Utrecht academy.
A closeup of the top half of an automated musical instrument with four player violins (one for each string) in the amazing Museum Speelklok (or automated musical instruments).
The best seafood, including pickled herring and fried kibbling from a local street market. SO good.
The bike parking lot underneath the Utrecht central train station is huge: imagine this room, times dozens and dozens per floor….
…Times floors of parking levels… estimating roughly 8,000 well-ordered bikes! Unlike German bike culture, the Dutch love their cheap, functional, traffic-prioritized bikes.
Photo of the passing Dutch countryside from the train on the way home.
A trip to Königswinter:
Maya, Kourtney, and Ben head out on a day trip to the fabled height of Romanticism on the Rhine known as Konigswinter, somewhat south of Köln and east of Bonn.
Maya at a local brunch place, followed by city exploring and the trek up to Drachenfels
From a top Königswinter at the sunset overlooking the Rhine.
How does one not see peek Romanticism in this picturesque Drachenfels castle ruins? According to folk lore legend (in the spirit of the Odyssey), this is the site where a Siegfried slew a dragon amid the thirty rolling hillside peaks of the Rhine. Heinriche Heine and Lord Byron both did at some poetic length. Having visited at sunset, we understands why!
More haunted Drachenfels ruins
On the way down walking from Drachenfels hilltop to nearby hilltop with Schloss Drachenburg (below). There are over thirty fabled hilltops in the area. See the reinforced cliffs above.
A picture of Schloss Drachenburg from the peak of Drachenfels. The city of Konigswinter is barely visible in the left background. We trained up and hiked down the significant hills.
In front of Schloss Drachenburg…
Perhaps our favorite photo overlooking the Rhine and Bonn from Drachenfels. The Rhine is, in addition to so much else, also at one point the limit of Napoleon‘s empire.
Definitely our favorite photo overlooking the Rhine from Drachenfels, with Maya hard at work in her sketchbook at sunset.
Bonn:
Ben took a brief work trip to Bonn.
An arrestingly pretty house on the way to the modern German history museum.
A coordination point along the Rhine river walk, overlooking in the far distant horizon (just left of the buildings on the right) the distant hilltops near Drachenfels.
Near the entrance to a Bonn Christmas market
Berlin:
Ben had a brief work trip to Berlin as well.
The doners are just better here, as in better here than everywhere (even Istanbul). Also the baklava!
After a conference, with friends and colleagues visiting the Jewish cemetery in a former Jewish neighborhood in Berlin. The area was ruined during the Third Reich, and the cemetery never rebuilt.
Unclear whether left or restored, the only gravestone in the cemetery is of Moses Mendelssohn, Berlin-based German-Jewish Enlightenment philosopher (d. 1786).
Ben and friend Ido walking in front of the nearby Jewish synagogue in Berlin (nicely aligned along a road stretching from TV station to the German post office).
Paris:
Libbie and Ben took a fun-work trip to Paris, an easy, direct, surprisingly short train ride from Aachen.
We left when the sun was rising and arrived at the train station in mid morning.
Walking the streets of Paris, enjoying the plethora of sites, smells, and sounds.
In front of the extraordinary and arguably world’s most visited museum, the Louvre
Bubbles in front of the Louvre
Exploring the first Arrondissement
And the second and the eighth!
On a walking tour of the Seine river, in front of the amazing Musée d‘Orsay
Libbie chose lunch and scored at an excellent Italian place just south of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, still being rebuilt after fire
Obligatory Eiffel Tower photos, with Ben sporting his ultra-fashionable, five-euro Paris hat.
River tour of the city at twilight, when Paris becomes the city of lights
Post river trip obligatory photo, amid sparkly Eiffel Tower (Libbie‘s Snapchat and Be Reel did not disappoint on this day)
Paris train station for the easy return to Aachen:
Now back to everyday life in Aachen:
