April Update

The month of April has been rushing past with quite a lot of things happening, but little time to write about it - A good reason to give you all a brief update and a few more photos of our little sunshine.


The weather has been very moody. One day it is back down to almost snowy temperatures and the next it is a sunny 18 degrees. One day it is pouring down with rain and the next it is beautiful and clear.


Kerstin is now half-way through the first semester of her Technical Communication course. She is enjoying it a lot, but found the last couple of weeks rather stressful. In order to finish her assignment she had to work until 2am one night. Of course Yana wasn't very understanding and still demanded her 3am feed and Kerstin's full attention at 7:30am.


In mid-April, we had the appartment full of kiwis. Our friends Mark, Sylvia, Jo and Steve stayed with us (one couple on our couch and one in our campervan). It was great to see them again and spend a long weekend together, visiting beer gardens and eating yummy food. On the Saturday night we all went to our friends' Claudia and Jonno's wedding, where we met up with more kiwi friends - Julian and Jana.


Yana loved having so many people around to play with. She has developed immensely over the last few weeks: Her crawling speed is increasing by the day, she is now not only pulling herself up onto her knees, but also onto her feet and she has got two little teeth in her lower jaw.


Last weekend we went to a lake in the North of Munich and had a picnic with our friends Michael and Carmen. Yana was able to crawl around in the grass, which she enjoyed immensely. The weather was great and it made us look forward to summer...

Trip to Italy

Originally our plan was to drive to Dresden and Saxony for Easter and the week after. Unfortunately though, Yana got sick the day before the Easter weekend, with a cough, fever and, as it turned out, her first tooth breaking through. Hence, we spent Easter at home feeling bored and trapped inside.

On Easter Monday Yana felt a lot better, so we decided to escape cold and miserable Germany and head over to the other side of the alps - to Italy.

The trip started off with a big portion of bad luck. After already taking longer than we had thought to get through the alps, the heater in our campervan broke. This required us to spend a night in a hotel in the dolomites, waste a beautiful sunny day shopping for an electrical heater and take even longer to get to Venice.

We finally made it to Venice on Lindsay's birthday. We loved the city, but our experience was slightly tainted by the rain and the exhaustion of having to lift Yana's pram over the hundreds of bridges. We were not aware of the fact that ALL bridges in Venice contain steps. We got a good workout though and managed to see all the touristy areas, as well as some nice quiet spots.

After leaving Venice behind, the weather got better and so did the trip itself.

Near Verona, we turned off the motorway to follow the directions to a free campervan spot and discovered a cute town called Soave. We spent a whole day there, walking through the narrow streets, along the city wall and up to the castle. It was the first time that Yana got to crawl around in the gras and play with daisys.


The last day was spent at Lake Garda, where we went for a walk along the lake and Yana played with the stones on the beach. It was 18 degrees and felt like spring had truely arrived.

On the way back home we stopped off in the campervan-friendly city of Trento, where we had a drink outside one of the street cafes and did a little sightseeing tour.