My Experience Travelling with Kids

We have now been living in Germany for 18 months, and we have done quite a lot of travelling with our kids.  When my husband was offered a job here, the main reason we accepted was that we were ready for a big family adventure.  We wanted to push out of our comfort zone, and show our kids that a great big world exists and is just waiting to be explored.  I want my kids to learn about culture and humanity not only through books and Dora the Explorer.  And you know what?  My kids are so happy living here, and every time we travel, they have a blast!

Germany has tons of hiking trails!

My daughter is 5 years old, and my son is 8.  In the last 18 months we have visited Italy three times (Rome, Venice, Lake Como, and Tuscany), and gone to Innsbruck, Krakow, Salzburg, Berlin, Munich, Paris, and Strasbourg, just to name a few.  Every single one of these places was child-friendly, and we have never had a problem finding a balance between kid activities (playgrounds), and adult activities (museums).  Is is great all the time?  No!  They have meltdowns, I have meltdowns, and then we take a break and move on.  The only one who never has a meltdown in my husband.

Meltdown on the ferry in Lake Como

All smiles ten minutes later!

So, I was REALLY irritated when I was reading through an article on Yahoo! Travel called We Heard You! Yahoo Readers on the Worst Trips for Kids, and this was printed about taking your kids to Europe...

Please don't take your children to Europe. European people teach their children manners and how to behave in public. Americans are too stupid to teach their kids respect for others and the property of others. —Alan

I am so furious with this comment because it is complete nonsense that American kids are any worse behaved than kids from other countries.  I have seen absolutely no difference in the behavior of kids in any of the countries we have visited, and I have seen tons of German kids running around in restaurants.  Kids are kids, regardless of location.  I should also mention that I have also seen plenty of adults misbehaving in restaurants and other public places.

Ryan loved eating escargot in France!

I actually find that European cities and restaurants are more family friendly than in the USA.  European cities seem to be designed with families in mind, and there are play spots everywhere, as well as small parks and pedestrian only zones.  In the warm months all the restaurants put the tables outside, and it is family dining heaven!

Enjoying an AMAZING meal in Tuscany!

My kids have been into plenty of museums, and my son has asked me to take him to the Picasso Museum when we visit Barcelona in April.  Are they always angels in museums? Absolutely not, but I know how long their attention span is, and we plan accordingly.  

Imaginations fly when visiting castle ruins!

The purpose of family travel is spending quality time as a family, not to see every monument and museum in a city within 48 hours.  I don't even care if my kids remember all of these trips, because I will remember.  We have definitely found adventure through living in Europe, and I also see my kids growing and thriving through the travel experiences we share as a family.  I would encourage all parents to not think twice about taking their kids to Europe, or anywhere else for that matter.  

Ski School

View from the top at Jungholz, in Austria

Last winter the kids were extremely excited at the beginning of winter, and extremely disappointed when we hardly got any snow.  Needless to say, my husband and I were elated that we didn't have to do much shoveling.  Well, this year, we seem to be having a 'typical' winter here in Bavaria, with lots of snow, shoveling, snowman building, snow forts, etc, etc.

First lesson at Riedberger Horn, in Germany

In an effort to make the best of snow, we are hitting the slopes!  The city that we came from in North Carolina was more than six hours from the closest mountain, and anything resembling a ski slope, but here we can get to a ski slope in about an hour.    Last year we tried a couple of times to take the kids skiing, but I can't say that it was very successful.

Enjoying a beer while we waited for the kids
to finish  their lesson

Ski clubs are very popular around here, and a colleague of my husband is a member of a club that offers ski lesson for kids at the beginning of each ski season.  We signed the kids up for the series of three lessons, which ran on Saturdays in January.

Meredith and her instructor using the T-lift

The kids (and us) were really nervous about the experience.  Of course, the instructors and other children would be speaking German, and the kids didn't think that sounded like much fun.  In my over-worrisome mind, I would be dropping my kids of with German-speaking strangers,  who would be hurdling my sweet darlings down the mountain and probably breaking their legs in the process.

Lucky for us, this of course, is not what happened!!  The instructors translated to English when needed, and my son realized that after 18 months of daily lessons in German, he could understand a lot of the instructions anyway.

After the first day, Ryan gave enthusiastic thumbs up, and Meredith gave an exhausted smile.  By the end of the last lesson, three weeks later, the kids were all smiles as the swished down the easy slopes and hopped right back on the chair lift.

Me!

The best part for my husband and I, of course, was a chance to ski by ourselves for the first time in six years.  We both grew up in northern states and had skied growing up, but I must admit that my skills are really rusty and I whined worse than the kids about sore leg muscles!

It was fantastic to actually see the sun!

We plan to do a bunch more day trips before the season is out.  The snow has been great, and way better than anywhere I have been on the east coast of the USA.  As with all of our family adventures, the times when we are the most nervous to try something new is when we have the most fun.