Happy slightly delayed Thanksgiving! Just so you know, I did make Thanksgiving happen here in Kiel because it is my favorite holiday ever... and I will make a post about it in the coming weeks!
For now, though, I think we should all get introduced a bit better to where Kiel is located, and why Kiel is located on the Northern coast of Germany, right next to the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is one of the two bodies of water that touch Germany, with the other being the North Sea, which is why the region where I am living is known as the "land between two seas"! This means that there is a very strong fishing culture here and a long history of seafaring! At the same time, this same water strongly governs the climate here, dictating what can grow and when, and how sunny it can (often not) be!
The land here in Schleswig-Holstein is exceptionally flat because of the extension of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet, a huge glacier that extended down all the way from Norway to here!
The extension of the ice sheet down into the area of Kiel carved out a huge channel, which is where the existing major waterway around which the city of Kiel popped up! This ice sheet formed what is known as a Förde ('foer-duh') here in Kiel, which is a reverse fjord!
