Day 39 (July 17th): Solingen

Woke up and went to our usual corner bakery for breakfast and brought the kids back their food. Today was road trip day so I got the kids dressed and motivated so we could have a full day of adventure. We drove to Solingen, which is about 30 minutes from Dusseldorf. I wanted to go there because the city has a history of making knives and swords, as well as a medieval castle that I thought the kids would enjoy. The Nav system in the car couldn’t find the castle so I plugged in a different location in Solingen. It took us to the historic district and we walked around and found a metal works museum (see bottom picture). The kids didn’t want to walk around the museum but we were able to get a map and directions around town. There was a little zoo 15 minutes north of where we were so we walked through a pleasant park and found the zoo. Our first stop was at the concession stand and got ice cream. The zoo was small relative to other typical zoos but it was nice all the same. You could feed the horses (see top picture on left), goats, deer and alpaca while they also had some monkeys, kangaroos, birds, rabbits and pigs. The kids loved it. They bought some feeding bags for the animals and one of the horses grabbed the whole bag out of Zach’s hand, so we bought him another bag. There was also a very interesting bird with a cool plume that we took some pictures of (see picture on right). We were there over 2 hours and then headed back to the historic area. The kids were hungry so we got a snack at a bakery in town and then walked over to the car. Our next destination was the Boker knife factory. Boker is one of the oldest knife produces in Germany. On the way to Boker, I noticed a large yellow bear on the side of a building that looked familiar with the words Haribo. It didn’t take long before I realized that this was a candy factory. I parked the car and told the kids “I might have found a cool place”. As we approached the front of the building they too realized that this was a candy store and their faces lit up. They were like kids in a candy store (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Haribo is known mainly for gummi bears and other sugar candies of this nature. We walked inside and all you can smell was candy. From what I could tell they had every type of candy they make. The kids grabbed a shopping basket and went to town. I had to limit them or else they would have bought cases of candy. The kids could have spent the whole day there but we needed to move on to our next venue. We found the Boker factory and went into the retail store since they only give tours once a month. The kids, especially Zach, were very interested in the many different types of knives, i.e. ones with forks, salt and peppershakers and other strange blades. Zach loved looking at the throwing knives. Zach wanted a knife but he is obviously too young. I did however buy a nice Boker pocketknife and plan to give it to him when he gets older (maybe for his Bar Mitzvah). I asked if they had any antique swords (for my collection) but the owner explained to me that sword making had stopped a long time ago and all they had were knives. I also asked if there were any other knife manufacturers around and they said, Puma, Wustoff and Henckel. Henckel was close by and he gave me the address there. We drove a few minutes and arrived at the Henckel factory. They too have tours but only once a month. I ended up getting Al a nice Henckel tweezer. It was getting late and we needed to head home.
Tonight the apartment complex was sponsoring a party down in the lobby. I went down with the kids around 6:30 PM and they had wine, cheese, bread and a couple of other appetizers. YH, Al, and Rajani showed up about 30 minutes later and we all hung out together. We played some games and YH introduced us to a new one called connect five that the kids liked. The party lasted a few hours and then we headed over to the Rewe (supermarket) to get some water and desserts. We came back to the apartment and I took Zach upstairs to feed him while Hannah stayed downstairs with Al. Soon afterwards Al and Hannah came up and the kids showered. We relaxed together watching Gilmore Girls and everybody went to bed after 12:00 AM.