Neighbouring Feldkrich

This weekend was our first real opportunity to venture into Feldkirch as tourists. There aren’t many urban areas around our new home but we were pleased to discover that Feldkirch is a very walkable city center with enough restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries and specialty stores to add some much needed variety to our everyday lives. It also retains much of its middle ages charm with cobbled streets, timber buildings clad in ostensibly painted stucco, multiple churches with bells chiming the hours, a broad market area in the city center that is free of vehicular traffic and the old castle perched on a hilltop overlooking the scene.

We started the day with a tour of the old castle.

While not a world class museum by any stretch the interior of the castle does maintain an interesting collection of religious and secular artefacts dating back to the early middle ages along with what appear to be original frescoes throughout. You can also tell that the castle has been through a number of renovations and upgrades over the centuries by the way rooms and hallways occasionally connect at odd ends and changing levels as you meander through the serpentine museum path. 

Not a Fresco!

The top few floors of the castle are devoted to the armoury museum (included in the tour) with pieces spanning its 800 year history as a defensive bastion against invading French and Germanic forces from the north. In fact, Napoleon once sent Messena and his army into the region to defend against 2nd Coalition forces looking to dislodge the French from Austrian and Italian strongholds.    

After touring the castle we walked the streets of the old town for a bit until hunger and the weather overtook us. Bascilico Pizzaria passed the 4 yo taste test BTW, despite the apparent displeasure of getting her picture taken.

Also not a fresco

By the time we finished up lunch it was time to head back home so the little one could get her nap in but we will certainly be spending more time in Feldkirch over the next 3 years!

Kindergarten in German is Kindergarten

In Dallas, Charlotte had been attending pre-school four days a week at a small facility run by our church. She loved it. She loved her friends. She loved her three teachers. She thrived on the routine and was making great progress on her social skills.

When we came over for our visit back in February, we were excited to find a small international school just across the border in Switzerland which would support a global education, in English. It is also an IB school, so we knew the academics were going to be good too. When we visited, the staff spoke about that the students come from 31 different countries and that there are at least 29 languages spoken by students & staff. We were really excited for Charlotte to be able to grow in that community.

When we visited, it was the school’s ski break (yeah, that’s a thing here, you get a week in February to go skiing and then another week in May for Spring Break). But it allowed us to walk into all the classrooms and take pictures since there were no students on campus. I took a few pictures of the kindergarten classroom and play areas in hopes that Charlotte would also get excited.

You know what she was most excited about? The pirate ship. That’s what she talked about for three months. “I’m going to go to a new school with a pirate ship playground”

In fairness, I would too.

Fast forward to us living here now.

The school is year round, meaning they didn’t finish the ‘21-‘22 until the end of June then started ‘22-‘23 in mid-August about the same time US schools started. The school allowed us to enroll her early to finish out the last 6 weeks of classes so that she could get a little flavor for the routine and also make some friends. We thought that was a great idea to help her get settled in. So off we went to the unofficial first day of Kindergarten.

On her first day, we also happened to hit the monthly bake sale / PTA fundraiser so we ended up buying a brownie to celebrate our first day. Needless to say, she thought this was the best school ever. Also, please note the state of her knees at the end of the day - she had a GREAT day on the playground.

As we got to know the school more, we realized how much they taught through nature and exploring. The main lesson or “unit of inquiry” as they term it for the last six weeks was on mini-beasts (or small bugs as I eventually figured out). The class would often take a hike to explore a field and look at what bugs they could find. One day a farmer let them all pet sheep. Charlotte came home so excited that she’d found all sorts of flies. GRRRREEEAAAAT!

They also are not afraid to get messy. They filled the sand pit with water one day and let the kids play in the mud.

My washing machine will never be the same.

Potentially Charlotte’s favorite day was when they brought in a small pool and told all the kids to bring a swimsuit as part of PE. Bless the teachers who got them back after “swimming” and feeding them ice cream pops.

We’re excited to see where “real” Kindergarten takes her next year.

Keepin' it Clean

Y’all. This is a moment about the mundane.

We have a washing machine. Our landlord even provided us with an instruction book. The book is in German.

Today, when this little red cross warning light came on after I did a load of laundry, I panicked. But I found the book and looked it up to see if I could figure out what was wrong.

I’ve translated this for you.

A free bratwurst to anyone who can figure out the English to real English translation on this one.

Settling In

Let’s talk about Olivia’s daycare.

Olivia is 18 months old and has never been to day care. We’ve been lucky that both our jobs have been largely remote lately and have afforded us some pretty great flexibility so she has stayed home with us for all of her life. We’ve had a few nanny’s here & there when we needed extra support but for the most part, she’s seen big sis go off to pre-school every day and she’s been at home. With me working over here and the world returning to whatever normal is going to look like, we decided that we needed full time care for her. Plus, Olivia is really our hope to learn German first - she’s just starting to use English words and I think she’s probably in the best position to absorb a new language.

In Lichtenstein there is a state run program centers called “Kita”s. Some are traditional daycares, some are more focused on after school or summer care for school age kids and some are a mixture. Based on the 4 that we’ve visited, all are super clean and have very friendly people working in them. We are also super excited that there is one across the street from my office. When we registered for it, however, we were waitlisted until August :( So we went in search of plan B. We toured a couple other locations and even some outside of the Kita network, but very few of the locations liked the fact that we just wanted care for May - July, the response we kept getting was that it went against the pedagogic system of the schools to only have short term care then switch locations. Aside, several places used the word ‘pedagogic’, which I admittedly had to look up what it meant the first time - it’s the educational philosophy of the daycare system in case you wonder.

Now, I don’t disagree that all of this transition will be hard on Olivia, but at the same time unless a location can open up more slots, I don’t have much of a choice. We need to work at least some before August. So we finally convinced a place to open a slot for two days a week from May 15 - July 15. Again, not ideal, but it’s something. And maybe going to a temporary place for a couple days a week will get her used to the idea of going somewhere for school. The place that accepted us in the complete opposite direction than anything else we regularly frequent. Luckily, it’s a small country, so the “complete opposite direction” takes me an extra 15 minutes of driving. Annoying, but for a temporary situation, not the end of the world.

Continuing with their pedagogic philosophy, you don’t just drop your kid off at daycare on day 1. You have to go through two weeks of “settling in” time. Every day for two weeks, Olivia & I went up to the daycare and for the first three days, I stayed with her, we played, we went on a walk with the rest of the kids, we ate. Then on day 4, I stayed for 15 minutes then I left for 30 (I just went and sat in the car outside) then I came back for 15 minutes. She cried most of the 30 min I was gone. We slowly worked our way up to me being gone for four hours (that time I went to the grocery store – by myself, do you know how amazing that is???). When I returned at the end of the four hours, she was on the patio in one of those Little Tikes ride in cars (you know the red & yellow one with the roof & the door that opens & closes - you’ve all had one). And guess what y’all. She looked up at me and goes ‘mama’ then turned her car and scooted away back towards the other kids. I’ve never been so happy to be rejected.

We are, as of today, officially “settled in” to this daycare. So she’ll go two days a week for the next two months then we get to do settling in all over again at the new facility. My petition to skip it since we’d just done it at the other location was denied…pedagogic nature and all…

All ready for our first official day of daycare!

"I like it here. There's snacks." ~Olivia

Don't teach a 4 year old to yodle...and other things I learned today

The mourning dew clung fresh to the galvanized railing of the patio and the air was crisp with a spring chill as the anticipation that comes with a child's first encounter with the mountains reached peak excitement. Since we told Charlotte that we would be moving to Central Europe we’ve tried to promote the excitement of living someplace different and getting to explore areas we’ve never been before. And as she loves going on walks, hiking in the mountains felt like a really good way to get her interested in her new surroundings. Truthfully, all it took was talking about alpine meadows and fields of pretty flowers and she was in.

So on a cool and bright Sunday morning, Charlotte and I loaded up our backpacks with snacks and water bottles and went up the mountain.

So we made our way up to Steg, a small village on the road to Malbun which we were told has a lake and some nice easy trails to walk through beautiful Alpine scenery. Upon arriving we took some pictures of the little village and then crossed over a stream of snow runoff that was roaring down the mountain! It was surprisingly loud given it’s relatively small size and Charlotte and I spent a good 15 to 20 minutes just watching and talking about the little stream and how it would travel down to larger streams in Liechtenstein before joining with the Rhein that ultimately flows into the Ocean.

We then made our way up to the lake and the dam. One of Charlotte’s favorite places to visit in Dallas is the dam at White Rock Lake so this was a good entry point to our first mountain hike.

From the dam you can look across the lake and see a very picturesque alpine field complete with yellow flowers to match our favorite sundress.

Now fully caught up in the excitement of finally seeing what she and I have been talking about for several months Charlotte was off down the path running, skipping, singing and dancing her way through the Alps. I’ve literally never seen her so excited and frankly that’s saying a LOT for our highly emotive oldest child!

Once I finally caught up with her we stopped for lunch and visited with the local swan population who have taken up residence in the lake.

Like pretty much every other kid I’ve been around, one of Charlotte’s other favorite things is to jump into puddles. Just upstream from the lake is a very shallow area that is flanked by picnic tables, fire pits where several other families were enjoying the day and braving the cold waters. As soon as Charlotte saw other families walking through the stream there was absolutely no convincing her that it was too cold to walk through so baring our feet, and maybe clenching our teeth against the bitter cold a little as well, we waded into the icy water. Charlotte would have stayed in that stream the rest of the day but after 10 minutes I could no longer feel my toes and decided it was probably best if we finished our walk and came back again in the summer for more fun in the stream.

And though she would never admit wanting to get out of the water she also didn’t fight my suggestion of putting our shoes back on so we could walk back to the car and have our mini fruit pie dessert as a reward for our first successful mountain adventure!