A Christmas Eve Adventure / Ein Heiligabendabenteuer

Nikolas is incredibly excited for Christmas, although along with his excitement is a running stream of questions about Santa and sleighs and reindeer and chimneys and the Christkind (it is the Christ child who delivers presents in Austria on Christmas Eve). He's been working on his Christmas list for months, but there is really only a loose connection between his list and what he expects tomorrow. After dinner tonight he asked, "What will Santa bring me?" I turned the question back to him and asked what he thought Santa would bring. He thought about it carefully. "Maybe an auto (car)," he said. He won't be disappointed. He'll be getting a car, or two.
To contain his excitement this afternoon, we went on an adventure, catching the local double decker bus at the bottom of the road and riding to the end of the line in the town of Helmsley, about a 35 minute ride. We got prime seating - the front seats on the upper deck - and Nikolas loved the journey which included hundreds of sheep, lots of tree branches, three white cars (he was keeping count), some horses, and one river. I found it a little scary having such a good view of this big and tall bus driving down very skinny streets, sometimes forcing cars coming the other way to drive on the sidewalks so traffic could keep flowing (this was done at a very slow speed, but nonetheless I could not drive a double decker in Yorkshire if my life depended on it.)

At the end of the line, we wandered the high street which was bustling with last minute holiday shoppers, in stores that, surprisingly, were still open. On the way there, all the villages we drove through were completely shut down already. We checked out the church which dates back to 1169, and found the ruined castle at the edge of town. After investigating the entire candy aisle at a tiny grocery store, and picking up almost every kind of chocolate delight or gummy goop, Nikolas settled on a lolly pop to energize him for the trip home.