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Sorry for the long pause, these holidays and visitations have sure kept me busy and away from screens. My first five days of Christmas have been wonderful and I hope yours have been, too.
I met Joshua at the airport on the evening of the 22nd, brought him home, and then immediately forced him into a full German cultural immersion via several hours walking around the Christmas markets downtown with Sarah. It was sparkly and the hot mulled wine (and gingerbread-rum hot chocolate with whipped cream...) kept us warm. Delightful!
The very next day we left the city to go stay with my dear dear German family in Detmold, about two and a half hours away. It was soooo wonderful to be in a home situation again with a family and sofa and silly dog. We spent a lot of time drinking tea and catching up the first evening. On the morning of the 24th, we explored cute little Detmold and visited the giant statue of Herman the German in the afternoon. We climbed to the top to have a look around from above, as called for by tradition.
Christmas Eve Eve we went to church for what I gathered was a service of lessons and carols. It was fun to try and identify the different old German hymns and to hear them accompanied by a full brass choir. In Germany and much of Europe, Christmas Eve is the BIG day, not the 25th like in the States. Thus after church we had a big meal together and then opened presents around the beautiful tree, which isn't supposed to be lit or seen until that night. This was then followed by watching old family videos of adorable little Jonas and Laura.
It was a very special and comforable evening, though I have to admit that one of my favorite parts was when Josh and I were flipping through channels on the TV in the guest room before going to sleep and found Mr. Bean's Christmas, which we watched with much joy and delight. How ironic and frankly stellar that this favorite Christmas tradition presented itself to us in another country, almost like it didn't want to be forgotten about.
We slept in on the 25th before another big Christmas dinner that afternoon with the grandparents. The menu included goose with Trappi's famous gravy, potatoes, some type of German dumpling, carrot salad, and, of course, red cabbage. A fine cultural experience that I was only able to partially experience as a non-meat eater. We had a quiet evening which was followed by a gloriously large breakfast before we Americans ride-shared back to Hamburg in the early afternoon of the 26th. Another thing about Christmas in Germany is that after Christmas Eve, there are not one, but TWO official days of Christmas that follow. They had kindly invited us to come celebrate with other parts of the family on Xmas #2, but I had to be back for rehearsal the next day.
I was particularly happy to be able to use my German extensively during this time as I haven't been able to use it much since then. Josh doesn't speak German so there was much translating involved. (However, he did pick up a few words.. Hooray!)
Some other fun pictures came from our December 28th adventure to Luebeck and Travemunde with Kassia and her Dad. It was my third trip to the medieval city of Luebeck, but the first in which it didn't rain or give us terrible weather in general. That made the meandering about ever so much better. I'm quite fond of this small city of old churches, Weihnachtsmaerkte, and dinosaur marzipan.
Travemunde is a pretty coastal town on the Baltic Sea that (I believe) is still part of Luebeck. I hadn't been this far north in Germany before and was excited to poke my fingers and toes in a new body of water.
Josh and Kassia, on the other hand, were more excited to poke a dead jellyfish that had washed up on the shore.
We caught a train home as the sun set, much like in the movies, I suppose. The next day, yesterday, Josh and I spend several hours at IKEA. After finally purchasing a cheese grater, I hung out in one of their several cafes reading my Goethe homework as Joshua lived out his wildest IKEA fantasies. (Swedish meatballs were consumed and not by meeee.)
In other news, it's snowed again here in Hamburg, turning the gray into white... much like in LOTR, now that I think of it. : ) In a few minutes we will have reached the last day of the year. When did that happen?
Also, please note the beauty of this lemon-cranberry-pistachio-white chocolate holiday biscotti that Joshua and I baked yesterday. Mmmmm. I just love beautiful deliciousness.
I have only my tutorium left on Monday and then I will be freeeee to celebrate my holidays at ease, ie. with required reading, rehearsal, and many many days of Josh Plourde! My biffle of Mainer biffles (biffle = BFFL = best friend for life = wonderful new word born of terrible IMspeak) comes on Tuesday afternoon. (That's soon!) We're leaving Hamburg on Wednesday to spend the Christmas days in Detmold with my favorite German family, after which we will return to the north for various other fantastic adventures. If you can't be with the family you love this holiday season, be with another family you love!
However I am sensing a teensy little chink in all this future fun, being that this morning I woke up with a seriously unhappy throat and a head full of sick. Upon this realization, I canceled all my plans and have spent all day in my warm and comfy bed sleeping, drinking tea and soup, doing homeworky things, and playing lots of mahjong titans on my computer (it's a problem) while watching the snow come down outside. My favorite afternoon activity was lying in a total of one extremely comfortable position while listening to the entierty of Amahl and the Night Visitors. It's my family's Christmas Eve tradition to watch this wonderful opera every year together and I wanted to make sure I could still have my moment to enjoy it amidst all this year's changes. I closed my eyes while listening and watched the whole filmed version on the backs of my eyelids. Thus despite feeling yucky, it was a most wonderful afternoon. Somewhat homesick, but wonderful.
I'm not really sure where the sick came from (beside living in a dorm full of dirty college students), but I think the several hours I've recently spent in the unusually frozen weather probably had something to do with it. Friday in particular was both very cold and very beautiful. I spent the better part of the afternoon with Martha drinking cappuccino in a delightful French cafe and then walked around the gorgeous snowy Christmas markets around city hall for a while as night fell and all the sparkly lights got even sparklier. I'd just brought my baby camera because of the cold and snow, but went around taking as many pictures as possible, as per usual.
All the seagulls were half-frozen, confused, and probably quite ticked off at the subfreezing temperatures and had all curled up on the water and in the snow trying to stay warm.
Like I said, it was a beeeauuutiful night, but it was so cold that I got dizzy and lost all feeling in my hands and feet after a short while and had to retreat into the great indoors, despite all my layers. It was worth it for all the cheer.
That would be false. We've seen snow three or four different times now. It's nothing spectacular, but it is there and white and fluffy and makes the world soft and quiet and smell like clean freshness. It makes me feel calm and frolickful all at once. I kindof love it.
Lastnight was the Christmas party for we theater kids. Not too many people came because it was a Thursday or for whatever other reason, but it was wonderful all the same. Basically it entailed my director and I and a few others sitting around drinking Glühwein, eating my chocolate almond cookies, and talking about New Mexico, as she is from the ABQ area. After several hours of this, I walked to the bus stop and back home in the freshly fallen snow and felt completely happy just being. It wasn't too cold and the city felt so still and peaceful (also due to it being past midnight, but shh) that I smiled all the way home. Once back in my room, I opened up one of my windows balcony-style and sat on my windowsill for a while just looking out at everything. 'Twas just one of those moments.
Hey, look, Margaret finally posted about Prague! Czech it out!
This trip started far too early on the first Saturday morning in December. My train left at 6:30am and I was generally able to sleep until we got to Berlin, when a family of four joined me in my mostly-private compartment. They were loud. Very loud. Particularly the 12-year-old punk boy whose voice hadn't dropped yet. As I was eating my apple bread for breakfast, he told his Mom I was doing drugs. "Nicht heute." Punk.
Anyway! They got off in Dresden, afterwhich the scenery got pretty impressive. Huge cliffs bordering a river, speckled with cute little German and Czech towns.
I got into Praha in the early afternoon and was reunited with my dear Hana at the train station, a fine moment indeed. She took me to her adorable flat to drop off my things and feed me tea before we went wandering around the Old Town Square and other parts of the city. There was a big tree and little children that were running around dressed up as angels and devils.
The crowds at the Christmas markets were unbelievable (well, pretty believable for a Saturday night), so we escaped to a cafe where we drank perfect hot ginger with lemon and honey. Note to self: delicious. Once warmed, we went to pick up Hilary at the airport, which was also a wonderful moment until we found out that she was terribly ill with some short-term wretched stomach thing. We quickly changed our evening plans and had a night in, talking, tea-ing, and eating scrambled eggs.
(Note of clarification for those of you not in my Smith circle: Hana and Hilary and I have been housemates for both years at Smith. Hil was my wonderful roomie for our first year and Hana was my wonderful roomie for the second. I LOVE THEM.)
The next morning, Hil was still feeling ill, so we had a lazy morning and then Hana and I went adventuring. These adventures generally involved me falling slowly in love with the city for several different reasons. The first was the ancient castle looming above everything.
The second reason was for its randomly fantastic street signs.
And the third and most prominant reason for my attraction was for its delighfully decorative cobblestone sidewalks.
We eventually ended up around the Charles bridge area.
It was here that I discovered Prague's love of bizarre public art.
Very bizarre public art.
Then we went up up up to the castle!
The view of the red red city from the top was gorgeous.
Unfortunately Hana had more trouble than I at indulging in its beauty. Good thing she's a creative thinker.
Then I took lots of pictures of her, as she said she needed a new facebook profile picture. Heh.
Adorable. After white chocolate pistachio hot chocolate and lemon pie at a cafe, we went back to check on Hilary and drag her out to dinner with us. (She was feeling better.) We met up with another awesome Smithie for dinner and she introduced us to the best hot chocolate that has ever existed ever in the history of all things chocolatey and delicious. It was like liquid chocolate. Warm and smooth without being gritty or too sweet. Perfection in a cup.
Then we wandered around more, followed by another cafe with hot cranberry juice and a Harry Potter crossword puzzle that someone had created in the cafe's guestbook. Apparently that's what one does in Prague - sit in cafe's and do cafe-y things.
We also rode the longest escalator ever. In Hana's words, it's so long that halfway up you forget you're on an escalator at all. It's true.
Something that struck me pretty immediatly about being in the Czech Republic was that suddenly I was in a place where I didn't understand the language. Ever since my junior-year-of-high-school travels, I've only been in English, French, or German speaking countries where I can generally understand things. Czech was totally new and crazy and a language I know nothing about. Thankfully Hana rocks and had picked up enough Czech in her few months there that enabled her to get us around, feed us, answer basic questions, all the important things in life. I was impressed. (Be proud, Bob! Yer kid speaks Czech!)
On Monday morning we packed up our things and wandered more before catching our (Hil came back to Hamburg with me for the rest of the week!) mid-afternoon train. This invoved eating Trdelnik, hot rings of dough coated in cinnamon and sugar. Mmmmm.
It also invoved huge patties of fried cheese in a pub, a necessary (one time) czech gastronomical experience that is not to be missed or miffed at.
In conclusion, Prague = wonderful. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did, as I thought it was just going to be another old touristy city like Berlin or Paris. Of course, it is an old and touristy city, but it's got something else that really attracted me. I was the sidewalks. I'm convinced.
But even better than the patterned sidewalks was spending time with a couple of my favorite people in the world, and spending time with them in such a crazy place in the world just made it that much better.
...And the train ride home was beautiful, at least for the last couple hours of daylight.
Sorry for the long pause, these holidays and visitations have sure kept me busy and away from screens. My first five days of Christmas have been wonderful and I hope yours have been, too.
The very next day we left the city to go stay with my dear dear German family in Detmold, about two and a half hours away. It was soooo wonderful to be in a home situation again with a family and sofa and silly dog. We spent a lot of time drinking tea and catching up the first evening. On the morning of the 24th, we explored cute little Detmold and visited the giant statue of Herman the German in the afternoon. We climbed to the top to have a look around from above, as called for by tradition.
Christmas Eve Eve we went to church for what I gathered was a service of lessons and carols. It was fun to try and identify the different old German hymns and to hear them accompanied by a full brass choir. In Germany and much of Europe, Christmas Eve is the BIG day, not the 25th like in the States. Thus after church we had a big meal together and then opened presents around the beautiful tree, which isn't supposed to be lit or seen until that night. This was then followed by watching old family videos of adorable little Jonas and Laura.
It was a very special and comforable evening, though I have to admit that one of my favorite parts was when Josh and I were flipping through channels on the TV in the guest room before going to sleep and found Mr. Bean's Christmas, which we watched with much joy and delight. How ironic and frankly stellar that this favorite Christmas tradition presented itself to us in another country, almost like it didn't want to be forgotten about.
We slept in on the 25th before another big Christmas dinner that afternoon with the grandparents. The menu included goose with Trappi's famous gravy, potatoes, some type of German dumpling, carrot salad, and, of course, red cabbage. A fine cultural experience that I was only able to partially experience as a non-meat eater. We had a quiet evening which was followed by a gloriously large breakfast before we Americans ride-shared back to Hamburg in the early afternoon of the 26th. Another thing about Christmas in Germany is that after Christmas Eve, there are not one, but TWO official days of Christmas that follow. They had kindly invited us to come celebrate with other parts of the family on Xmas #2, but I had to be back for rehearsal the next day.
Travemunde is a pretty coastal town on the Baltic Sea that (I believe) is still part of Luebeck. I hadn't been this far north in Germany before and was excited to poke my fingers and toes in a new body of water.
Josh and Kassia, on the other hand, were more excited to poke a dead jellyfish that had washed up on the shore.
We caught a train home as the sun set, much like in the movies, I suppose. The next day, yesterday, Josh and I spend several hours at IKEA. After finally purchasing a cheese grater, I hung out in one of their several cafes reading my Goethe homework as Joshua lived out his wildest IKEA fantasies. (Swedish meatballs were consumed and not by meeee.)
