Schönau am Königssee
Hallo readers,
This week I am in the Bavarian Alps. We are here because my dad was just looking on google maps and zoomed in and saw a beautiful chapel. We drove here from Malterdingen and went through the German Riviera and here we are at the Bavarian Alps. But I want to talk to you about our big boat trip.
We took a battery powered boat on Lake Königssee, all transport on the lake is battery powered because the environment is so clean that no diesel or petrol boats are allowed. Königsee is a five miles long (eight km) fjord-like lake and in English would be called Kings Lake. On the boat ride we listened to the tour guide who played the trumpet to the alps as they echoed back. On the edge of Königssee Lake we saw St Bartholomä, the beautiful chapel that my dad saw on google maps. The building behind the chapel was the summer palace of the Bavarian Kings.
St Bartholomä was beautiful and has some really fine architecture and decorative sculptures and statues. It was a small chapel but was absolutely gorgeous and I hope to be able to go back some day.
At the bottom of the mountains around the lake there are meadows where the cows come for summer, the cows are transported on a large flat boat called a barge to these summer pastures.
The Austrian border is a couple kilometres to the East of the lake and we will go to Austria tomorrow to visit Salzburg.
I will write next from another country, the Czech Republic.
Auf Wiedersehen
Claire
Malterdingen
We've arrived in Germany from London by going through the Chunnel, a train that goes under the English Channel to France. From France we drove to Malterdingen in Germany. The drive took all day, through amazing countryside of fields of poppies and flowers.
In Germany my Dad wants to research our family history. Our family emmigrated from Nordweil, Germany to Australia in 1856. We don't know for certain why they left, but at that time, there was poverty, high unemployment and food shortages in Germany. We went to Nordweil which is in the region of the Black Forest. Dad and I went to the Nordweil church office where we were able to look for historical family records. We looked through many books which were 100s of years old. The pages were very fragile and one book was sticky taped together. The writing was very hard to read, but Dad managed to understand some of it. We found different families and some that we were looking for. We even found the birth record of Fridolin, who was my great great great great grandfather who was born in 1828. A picture of his record is on the Malterdingen page of the website Europe 2013. After we finished looking at the books, we went for a walk through the historical part of town. We saw the oldest building in Nordweil which was built in 1577. The lady who lives there showed us the ancient wine cellar, the water well and the original carved stone entrance. The well was 20m deep and she let me drop a stone in to check the depth. Earlier on we went to the open air museum where we saw many historical things such as examples of farm houses and household goods from the 1600 - 1800s. I also made a wooden cuckoo whistle and stand which I burnt my name onto. Today and tomorrow we go to a medieval festival which should be great.
Auf wiedersehen from Malterdingen
Claire
Write a comment
craigandmiriam (Friday, 05 July 2013 03:58)
Hi Chloe and Eden,
Thanks for your message. I love getting messages from my friends at home. Could you please send messages through my link on the contacts page as then I get you email address so I can reply to you. Don't leave your email address on the blog page as then everyone can see it and it's not private.
Thanks Lots of hugs
Claire
year 5 (Wednesday, 10 July 2013 23:46)
Hi Claire,
year 5 miss you so much and we heard that you are having a great time in Germany. we have been doing a lot of work and we are in the progress of finishing a brochure and a times table song. we love soooooo much!!
Lots of love from year 5 and Mr C :)
Ella r (Thursday, 11 July 2013 02:38)
Hi Claire I hope you are having a great time
I miss you soooooooooooo much and you are very lucky to go on holidays for six months
love from Ella r
Grandma Carol, PoppyAlf, (Sunday, 14 July 2013 23:30)
Hello Claire , All your travels sound very exciting, wish we were there too. Keep up the writing to let us know what is happening, We are in Croydon up in the Gulf, lovely weather, have eaten Barramundi, seen crocs, plenty of birds life like Brolgas , Jibaru,wedge tale eagles, wild pigs. Take care, lots of love.
Grandad &Grandma (Friday, 19 July 2013 07:22)
It's so interesting to hear and see the counry side that you are travelling through. Thank you for sharing with us.
Grandma ha sjust finished Salene's quilt for her 18th birthday ,it is beautiful. It is on a hearts theme.
All our love.
hannah elkin (Sunday, 21 July 2013 02:54)
That was a nice update. see you in under 6 months
year 5 (Thursday, 01 August 2013 17:24)
Hello Claire,
we hope you are enjoying you holiday. we all miss you we cant wait for you to come back even though you are having a great time :)
Love year 5
Alice (Saturday, 03 August 2013 14:35)
Hello Claire,
I have just watched you Power Point Presentation which was very interesting. Thank you! I am really looking forward to your next blog to see what your thoughts on Sweden were, or what you are up to now. What was it like driving over the Hardangervidda? Bergen looks fabolous on the pictures Mum and Dad has put out on their website. Am thinking of you all when eating my Nutella treat on my morning tea sandwich=)! Love, Alice.
year5 (Thursday, 08 August 2013 22:52)
To Claire
I hope you are having a fun time spending time with your family seeing the world. YOU ARE SO LUCKY! Otherwise, we are spending a lot of time with story writing and other things. Our athletics carnival is coming up very soon, so we are all very excited. scroll down
Still all missing you very, very much,
Love Year 5 and Mr C xoxo
Year 5 (Thursday, 22 August 2013 21:00)
Hi Claire
We hope you are having an adventurous time in Europe, our class is also writing an adventure story, so reading about your adventures is making us feel a little jealous.
We only have two more weeks to finish the story and we are all doing really well. We hope you can get to read them some time.
Today was the book week dress up parade, there were so many great costumes, we think more than last year.
We miss you a lot and hope you are having a great time.
Lots of love from Year Five :)
year 5 (Thursday, 05 September 2013 23:52)
Hi Claire
We hope you are having a great time and we are very glad you found your moose. Yesterday was our last day to finish our adventure stories and they are sounding really good. Today we had a class excursion to the Brisbane Writers Festival. We had a great time and met three fantastic writers. Some of us are also going to zone athletics next week and we are really excited.
We are missing you heaps
Lots of love from Year 5 :)
Year 5 (Thursday, 17 October 2013 20:44)
Hi Claire
We have FINALLY finished our adventure stories and times table songs....yipppeeee! We've only got 7 weeks of school left now and it won't be long until we see you again.
At the moment we are doing a project on crossing the Blue Mountains by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson.
Malik broke his leg (AGAIN!) and now sports a very pretty red cast on his leg. We also have a student teacher called Mrs Jenkins, she also has a broken foot and a sprained ankle, she has to use a special scooter to get around. Perhaps Mr Crawford is a bone breaking jinx :)
Today is Crazy Sock Day, Alicia and Ella are twins with matching socks and before the second break the whole school will get together and participate in their mission stalls. Year five are doing a chocolate bar coin toss, which is where there are big blocks of chocolate and money gets thrown on the rack, if it lands on the chocolate you get to win it.
Millie is so excited because she is going to the One Direction concert tomorrow night. I'm sure we'll hear all about it on Monday all day long.
We are missing you lots and lots and hope you're having heaps of fun and making lots of good memories.
Not long until we see you again
Love from Year 5 :)
Year 5 (Sunday, 27 October 2013 20:58)
Hi Claire,
We only have 6 weeks of school left now till the end of the year! We can't wait to see you in grade 6. We finished our projects on the Crossing of the Blue Mountains and we put them all up in the MPC.
We have to do one minute of skipping every Wednesday at the moment for "Jump Rope for Heart". Most of us think it's BORING but we know it's for a good cause.
There is a Halloween Disco this Friday and most of us are looking forward to dressing up in scary costumes but some of the boys aren't interested and think it's just for the younger kids.
We still have buddy time once a week. The buddies are all getting very tall and your buddy Sinead is missing you and looking forward to seeing you next year. We are all writing a book for our buddies and will give it to them as a Christmas present.
On Sunday, Chloe got a guinea pig called Jenna. Hannah finally got her ears pierced too. How is Sarah enjoying having her ears pierced?
Millie LOVED the ONE DIRECTION concert and Mrs Coleman (from last year) had a photo taken with Harry Styles.
We love reading about all your adventures from the countries you have visited and will write again soon.
Love from Year 5:)
chloe (Monday, 04 November 2013 04:16)
hello Claire,
The family hopes you are enjoying your time away. In class we have been doing imaths every morning. Some of the preps have chicken pox, Ella also has the chicken pox in our the class. We cant wait for you to come back. On the weekend my family and I went water skiing at Lake Moogerah Dam. I had so much fun on the tube. We spend all day Saturday and Sunday on it. On Saturday night we had marshmallows on the fire. My cousin and I melted plastic cups into little shapes.
Year 5 can't wait to write back to you soon.
love from your year 5 class mate Chloe :):):)
year 5 (Tuesday, 03 December 2013 21:37)
Hey claire,
We just had our Christmas concert on friday and our class did 12 days of Christmas in O.L.D style. it went really well and we got the biggest applause for the night.
Everyone in our class made a book for our buddies and most of us have finished but theres a couple that haven't. Some of us did them on the computer and some drew them, but they all turned out really well. We are going to give them to our buddies tomorrow.
We aren't doing much at school because it is the last week. We are missing you heaps and hope to see you soon!
WE HOPE YOU HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
love from the year 5 class
hannah (Tuesday, 24 December 2013 18:45)
hi Claire
I am really looking forward to seeing you and hope you have a lovely Christmas. I have just had a sleepover with Chloe, we had so much fun with Jenna and with Jenna's three babies.
ps. when would be a good time to have a play date on these holidays?:)
Josh and Georgia (Sunday, 05 January 2014 02:36)
Dear Claire,
Wonderful pics. Looking forward to seeing you again.
Josh
Dear Sarah,
I hope you are having a wonderful holiday and I miss you. I want you to be back here and I'll be very happy!! From Georgia
Hannah (Friday, 03 June 2016 18:36)
Hope u have a great time in Alaska! I will be checking the blog so much! So post heaps!!
Claire (Friday, 03 June 2016 19:06)
Thanks heaps, I can't wait
Phoebe (Tuesday, 07 June 2016 02:37)
Hey Claire,
Can't wait for you to get back. Hope ur having a great time. How is it so far. I'll be watching the blog to see your updates.
Claire (Tuesday, 07 June 2016 09:13)
Hey Pheobe, I'm great! We flew in to Houston yesterday, which was great! I should be updating sometime in the next week, depending on how much wifi we will have at that time. I miss you all so much and hope your not having to much fun without me
Claire
xoxo
Phoebe (Friday, 10 June 2016 21:03)
Hey Claire, hope your having fun. What are you now. Bernadette is going to have a musical theatre group for private students and she asked me to contact you to see if you would like to do it. It starts next term in the second week so you won't miss much. How long are you spending in Alaska or are you still in San Fran. Update soon
Phoebe
XOXO
Hannah (Tuesday, 28 June 2016 06:33)
Miss u heaps! Post on ur blog when you can but I understand wifi is limited. Hope your family is having a fantastic time. Loved the recent pics on the blog especially the one of you wearing the massive snow jacket
Beth (Friday, 01 July 2016 01:25)
Hey Clarrot, hope ur not too sick of your siblings yet and having fun, we all miss you here but hope ur having a great time
Sophie (Thursday, 07 July 2016 02:29)
Hey Claire how is Alaska hope you are having fun. Take lots of pictures and I can't wait to see you next term.
Hannah your queen! (Friday, 22 July 2016 01:13)
WHOOO TOUR HOME
Hannah your queen again (Friday, 22 July 2016 01:14)
I MEANT YOU'RE LOL MISSED U SO MUCH❤️