Category: Family Journal

Nadia found the Christmas Nutcracker she was looking for as we visited even more of Vienna’s famous Christmas Markets yesterday. In her opinion, the best market was found in front of the “Rathouse” or Town Hall. It had the biggest variety of products. I still can’t get over how much the Viennese love Christmas. They have decorations everywhere, including hanging Santa Claus lights in the many trees around the city, Christmas songs playing on the radio, markets all over the city. I thought Americans went overboard Christmas!

I was impressed with the opulence of the Hapsburg dynasty. The number of huge palaces around the city is amazing. Both Budapest and Vienna have some great architecture.

Today is our last full day in the city. We hope to visit a couple of the museums today to wrap up our visit.

We are spending a few days in Vienna this week. Last night we ended up at the Schonbrunn Palace and one of the famous Chirstmas Markets. The place was packed with holiday shoppers, but we were disappointed with the quality of items for sale. The mulled wine did not taste good and the kids were cold and bored. Overall, not a good experience and overrated.

Earlier in the day in contrast, the Vienna Zoo was great. They do a good job of educating about the natural history of the animals and there was a wide variety of species. I feel zoos are “animal prisons” but in thinking of habitat loss and humankind’s negative impact on most species, at least they are safe inside a cold, central European city.

The kids enjoyed the adventure of using the city’s train system. We moved around the city yesterday quite well with maps in hand. It has been a while that we used public transport, and ethically, I am for it. Practically however, with kids, it is a bit of a hassle. We were in fear of losing one of the four kids in getting on and off busy trains. After four mulled wines though, the fear left us and we all enjoyed the day together.

Ale, Sebey, and Diego are visiting us over the holidays and it was super to see them again. They are faced with climatic challenges, going from tropical heat to temperatures around O C.

This week we attended school Christmas shows which are an annual part of the holidays. Owen and Oliver performed in the new gymnasium of their school.Oliver is pictured below performing a Serbian Folkloric dance that was part of the Kinder and Grade 1 Performance.

Both boys even had a singing part! They nailed their lines, especially Oliver “arrrrbol de Navidad” line. Owen’s dance routine was a take on ballet and Devon and he pretended to be gymnastic performers and the chorus were the judges holding up cards with 9.2, etc.Owen is shown below with his friend Lelani, singing a duet.

Ocean had her school performance debut with a stunning array of Christmas songs, including a Spanish number. She is shown below putting her heart and soul into her singing.

I know they are my children and I may be biased, but they do have talent!!

We celebrated Owen’s ninth birthday yesterday with a party at the Jungle. The Jungle is a birthday party venue. We celebrated with a classmate, Bor M.,who also had a birthday on December 13th. The kids had a great time using the Jungle’s playground and disco. The wii dance game and karoake machine were in full force.

Nadia and I had a good time chatting with friends and playing with the kids. It is so nice to have someone else do the party so the parents can relax and socialize. Bor’s mother Jasmina was very nice.

We can’t believe it has been nine years since Owen’s birth. He is halfway to 18! It was great to watch him interact with his friends. He is growing up too fast.

Ocean, originally uploaded by bill kralovec.

The third Kralovec child is now getting school photos done. She has really changed the past few months going from a baby to a little girl right before our eyes. Below is Ocean’s class.She goes three times a week to the International Nursery School of Belgrade which is just down the road from our school.

Ocean is pointing out the perfect Kralovec family Christmas tree at the Zuče Tree Farm. We traveled out to the plantation located near Avala Mountain, about 10 miles outside of Belgrade. The weather is unseasonably warm, with temperatures in the teens (50-60 F) and it felt more like spring than winter.

There were many trees to choose from and we picked a North American Blue Spruce. We took the option of having the tree dug up and potted so we can re-plant it after Christmas. It is a nice way of doing things and our Christmas Tree from a couple of years ago is growing in the garden of our old apartment. I hope to plant this tree somewhere in Dedinje.

After getting the tree, we drove once again to Timisoara, Romania for some Christmas shopping. We had fun with Brian, Anna, and their children, Miles and Posey.

It was sad to see the “plastic bag forest” below. As we were driving out of the Serbian border town of Vršac, near the city landfill, it this area of bags caught by bushes. Serbia has a long way to go with air, water, and land pollution, as do many Eastern Europe nations. I’m not sure why this plastic bag area is like this, and it puts a bad image to a rather lovely little town.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner last night at our home. We worked on Thursday so we postponed our family dinner until Saturday. I worked at the Strategic Planning Workshop all day, but Nadia and team Kralovec (Vera helping with the cooking and Ivana with the kids) prepared a delicious feast. The turkey was perfect and was accompanied by Nadia’s Bolivian salad, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs (my favorite), pumpkin pie, banafi pie, etc, etc., etc. We also drank some homemade Vishinata (sour cherry “moonshine”) and some excellent Romanian white wine.

We invited our friends Claudiu, Vesna, Dani, and Crina to celebrate with us. The kids had a good time and it was great to spend time with family and friends.