Quiet as ein Maus

We arrived in Kitzingen on Christmas day.

Frohe Weihnachten (Merry Christmas)!

We are now in Bavaria. An area of Germany where people are known to either be warm, welcoming, gregarious, and out-spoken (how JP sees them). Or, conversely, loud & overbearing (how Elyce sees them). Either way, our family should fit right in.

As Elyce is mostly concerned about the fact that our family has 2 volume settings: Loud and louder, this town may be a challenge.

Our home for the next month is in the “tiny” town of Kitzingen. This place has a population of approximately 24,000 people. There are schools, public transit (from city to city, but not really inside the city – it’s so small, you can walk from one end of town to the other in under 30 minutes), libraries, groceries, a hospital, wineries, ping pong training facilities, and even indoor swimming pools, but sadly, no bowling alley (it permanently closed a while ago).

We arrived relatively early in the day, got into the house, unpacked, and almost immediately decided we needed to get out and take a walk, so JP mapped us to the Alte (Old) Synagogue. It’s approximately 15 minutes of walking, and you’d think we just asked the youngest two girls to rip out their toenails and climb Mt Vesuvius. Oh, such suffering!

But we walked through a town we didn’t know, and managed to find the synagogue relatively easily. It helps that our host left us a package of tourist maps, and in all of them they have a notice for the Alte Synagogue! So I guess that’s a tourist attraction?

A little bit of research shows that Kitzingen had a decent Jewish population of about 450 people, up until Kristallnacht, when everyone had either left, or were deported. The synagogue itself was burned down, and the only part that remained was the foundation. In the 1990s, the city pooled resources and rebuilt the synagogue, though it is now used as an event space and museum. The design is lovely, but being Christmas, nobody was home to let us in.

There’s a cute little playground and the Main River of Kitzingen right behind the building, so we let the girls play for a while, JP and Elyce sat by the river and talked to random strangers about the Bavarian lifestyle, how everything is closed not just today, but tomorrow as well.

From the river back to the house, we explored a little more, and then decided, since it was Christmas, we needed to eat some Chinese food. Jumping back into our car, we drove to Wurzburg, a city of approximately 130,000 people. It’s a mere 17 minute drive, or 20 minute train ride. However the train station is a 15 minute walk, and the train only runs once an hour.

In Wurzburg we found an authentic Chinese restaurant. The waitress/owner/matron barely spoke German, and Lord Google’s translate feature was better at helping us converse in Mandarin! After a delightful meal, we headed home for a good night’s sleep.

Friday is interesting because, now that we’re in a new town, even though JP gets to work local hours, we need to prepare for Shabbat, get acclimated to our new environs, and make sure we are ready to go offline for the next 25 hours. Elyce made challah that looked more like cake but tasted just like bread (we didn’t have enough of the ingredients and everything was closed.) Being in new places and bringing our own food, and cooking and keeping kosher, we eat a lot of vegan food, and have to prepare for whatever home we’re in. Staples like rice, pasta, vegan chicken schnitzel, and plenty of veggies are what sustains us!

Saturday we celebrated the caboose leaving single digits, and joining the double-digit gang! That’s right, Avital’s now 10, and boy does she act like it! We took a nice long walk today, meandering through the city, crossing the river, finding plenty of churches, and discovering a fun little park with inground trampolines, a few swings, a large metallic disc like thing that spins until you fly off old school playground thingie (Elyce’s words), and some outdoor workout equipment (rings, pull up bars, parallel dip bars, etc). We burned off some steam, then headed back before the sun set. There’s a literal 5 degree (Celcius) drop, which you noticeably despise, as soon as the sun starts setting. After the sabbath ended, we decided we needed to get out and celebrate the caboose on the loose.

Avital wanted Pizza, and so we found the cutest, most German-like (exposed wooden timbers, thick wood and iron door, German patrons) Italian restaurant. You step inside and it’s a world apart from the Germany outside. Sure, it’s Germany on the inside as well, but this felt like an authentic Italian restaurant. Only after we ate did we learn that the owner is from Sardinia, and her son, also works there. Now we have a place to visit on an Island in Italy!

Solid entrance:

Candle lit dinner, music, people chattering, dogs (allegedly they are allowed inside – though we were told this is strictly a Bavarian thing). Soda, beer, water, pizza, pasta, cheese, salads, this place was gut-bustingly good! After dinner and the bill settled up, we were speaking with the owner about our travels. JP switched to Spanish, and the owner and JP spoke for a solid 10 minutes. She offered us shots of Grapa, and we stayed much longer than the girls wanted to (they were starting to drop).