The end.

And so, our great Danish adventure comes to an end. After a last rushed day of trading bikes (we decided not to bring them with us, due to freight time and costs, additional tax costs etc etc), last minute packing and cleaning, we made our way to the hotel at the airport to spend our last night, in preparation for our early morning flight on Sunday.

The restaurant in the hotel had Julefrokost (hooray! we all know how much I love that!) AND æbelskiver, so I got to indulge in my favourite Danish foods one last time. After a restless night due to nervousness (30 hours traveling with small children?! WHAT were we thinking?!) and excitement (we are going HOME!!!), we made our way to the terminal and onto the plane. Where we waited nearly two hours for the plane to be de-iced due to the unexpected snowfall.

Read more…

We went to England for the weekend

We wanted to see Granny and Grandad at least once more before we go back to Australia so we decided to go to England for the weekend. Also, I was really missing ‘normal’ supermarkets so I was very keen to visit a Waitrose  and gaze in awe at the amazing cereal aisle (I *miss* choice in cereal).

We stayed in Cambridge, which was lovely. Hugo was devastated when we got off the plane and realised we weren’t heading to Granny and Grandad’s IMMEDIATELY to play with his electric trains. The flight over was just me and the kids … it was ok, but not great and I’m not too keen to fly on my own with them again any time soon. It *seemed* like a good idea to buy a little lego box for each of them before we got on the plane. Ok … small lego, tiny tray, turbulance - so NOT a good idea. Just in case you’re wondering.

We had a really nice time with Granny and Grandad (and the electric trains) right up until I thought to myself “aww the children are playing so nice and quietly in the next room” and walked in to discover Sophie colouring the carpet in with lipstick ARGH!! We did get it out (thank goodness) but I am reminded yet again that *Quiet Children* is usually a reason to WORRY

On Sunday we filled in a few hours before our plane at Westfields London, and honestly, we could have almost been in Bondi Junction. Westfields is so generic, right down to the Boost Juice bars and hoards of parents pushing bugaboo prams. I reveled in the pre-Christmas unbridled selfish consumerism for a little while (shopping centres like that don’t really exist in Denmark), but it was a bit tiring as well.

River Cams + Bridge = Cambridge.

20 years since the Berlin wall came down.

This weekend we went to Berlin - it was co-incidently the lead up to the 20th anniversary since the Berlin Wall came down (although that’s not why we decided to go - our primary motivation was that there just isn’t that much left to do in Copenhagen that is appropriate for us, that we haven’t already done, that isn’t closed over winter … and since we are so close, we might as well travel while we have the opportunity).

So we woke up reeeeeaaaalllly early on Saturday morning to catch the plane and flew to Germany. Germany is so close to Denmark and believe it or not, my German is (slightly) better than my Danish. (But that’s like saying my Lithuanian is better than my Swahili). Also, I heard a rumour that they have really good cakes there, so to Germany we went.

It was an interesting weekend to visit Berlin. Of course they were in the process of organising the celebrations and commemorations for the anniversary of the wall coming down. It really hit home for me when we were looking at crosses erected to the memory of those who had lost their lives trying to cross the wall - particularly the one in 1989, just months before East Germans were finally allowed to cross freely. It was incredibly hard to explain it all to Hugo who of course had a thousand questions.

In addition to the history, there were the usual kid-friendly activities including the Aquarium and the Science Museum. LOTS of walking for the parents. The Television tower (not, as Sophie imagined, a tower constructed of televisions). And delicious German cake food. Nom nom. What we didn’t do: Legoland. Believe it or not, sometimes there is such a thing as TOO. MUCH. LEGO.

I’ve realised that I will always, always worry about flying with children, no matter how well behaved my children are, no matter how short the flight is - and in the end it just doesn’t matter! Even if people are annoyed by the constant whinging and complaining excited chatter of my children, they’ll probably have forgotten it by the time they get home from the airport anyway (as I have, usually). We’ve realised that on the cheap airlines that seat 3-aisle-3 it’s better to have one parent and both children in a block of 3 than to split the kids up between parents. For some reason they both behave better when they’re sitting together. It’s also easier to share entertainment. And you don’t have to worry about having someone unknown sitting next to you, glaring at the children the whole time (or giving a friendly lecture on “all kids need is a good spanking to keep them in line”).

We enjoyed Berlin, although at some point we’d like to go back and do the Jewish museum properly (this is probably something that would be better without children, or with children who are old enough to understand it). We had really beautiful weather on Saturday (better than Copenhagen!) and we all had a good time.

Hugo and Sophie sleeping through the significant viewing of the Brandenburg Gate (ironically, though understandably, access through the gate was blocked off this weekend).

have kids, will travel

We’ve spent quite a lot of time this year in planes, in cars, trains, on bikes just getting around and going places. Late last year, before we left Australia, I couldn’t even get my head around the idea of living away for a year because I was totally focused on getting through the first, awful 24 hours on the plane. As it happens, that flight wasn’t so bad all things considered (’all things’ being that Sophie had approximately 5 hours of sleep in the 36 hour period before we landed at LHR, including the hour long nap she’d had at home before we got on the plane). We learnt a few tricks - mostly involving lollies, biscuits and inflight entertainment about keeping the kids happy on the plane.

Since then we’ve taken a lot of short flights of up to 3 hours and a couple of longer flights around six hours, most with varying success at not being *THOSE* people with *THAT* child - with one vivid exception on the flight from Spain to England. Sophie had recently turned two, which meant she had to have her own seat (and sit in it for take off and landing) for the first time, which meant between us we needed four seats on a plane that was configured with 3seats on either side of the aisle. It made sense to split up 2 and 2 across an aisle and hope that the flight wasn’t so full that we didn’t have people in the third seat. As it happened, I did get someone else in my row, owing to the proximity of some old bloke who apparently sang in Spandau Ballet or something, and the girl who sat near me said she didn’t mind sitting next to a child (she was just desperate to get the old bloke’s autograph). Ha ha. I bet she was less happy by the time we landed. Sophie was VERY unhappy about having to sit in her own seat for take off and landing and screamed for a good 30 minutes (it felt more like hours) from the time the seatbelt sign flicked on until we had taxied into the terminal. It was probably my second-worst-case flying scenario (the first involves copious amounts of bodily fluids in addition to the previous situation - thankfully, we’ve never experienced that) and in spite of the trauma at the time, it wasn’t really that big a deal in the end. Also thankfully, we haven’t had a repeat of that level of distress on a plane again either.

Funnily enough, since all the traveling we did over summer, the children often play the ‘aeroplane’ game, where they pack a little bag of colouring in and assorted toys, then sit in seats next to each other and play, and eat snacks from a tray. They spend hours playing it, good practice for our flight home in a few months.

There are a lot of websites that list helpful tips for traveling with children, and I’ve always been one to run with the herd, so here are mine:

* Try to pack as light as possible. Even with taxis or airport-to-hotel transfers, it is still a pain in the neck to lug baggage, pushchairs, children and husbands around the place. To that end, if you use a travel cot beg, borrow or steal an ultra-light, folds-up-tiny one. We use a Phil&Teds T2 and it’s well worth the outlay for the convenience of not having a huge amount of extra luggage.

* Don’t take a thousand and one different activities in your hand luggage to entertain children on flights. I know lots of people say to pack little wrapped gifts to make the flight fun and blah blah blah but honestly, it was really just a hassle to rummage through a packed-to-the-gills backpack to find a pencil or a DVD. In the end, a few crayons and a pad of paper, plus a DVD on a laptop covered most of our flights easily. Anything more just ended up getting in the way, not getting used, falling on the floor … However, one exception to the pack lightly rule - take (at least) a spare tshirt for EVERYONE. Me, Sophie, vomit, JFK airport before boarding a long haul flight - that’s all I have to say about that.

* If in doubt, take a pushchair. Especially if you’ll be doing a lot of walking. On most flights we’ve been allowed to take our small umbrella strollers right to the gate, and often right onto the plane. And they always come in handy to hang bags on the handles and shove extraneous purchases in the basket when you’re out and about.

*Jet-lag … On the plane we take sleep whenever we can get it. Trying to control when the children sleep is pointless and doesn’t really seem to work so we just let them sleep as much as possible during the actual flight. Most of our long haul flights have had us arriving at our destination early in the morning. Once we arrive we aim to limit day time sleeps to no more than a couple of hours and to be awake by early afternoon, get outside as much as possible the first couple of days, try to get to bed as close to the usual time and so far this has worked quite well for us. We make the kids stay in bed until a reasonable time in the morning, and resettle them back to sleep for any overnight wake-ups rather than letting them get up and play, eat or whatever.

We’re now only 3 and a half months away from heading back home, and I’ve discovered that the best way to approach traveling with children is to just relax and take each day as it comes. Routines have to be adjusted and compromises made but it’s really just for a short time and things DO get back to normal. It’s worth it!