Catchin' UP: Christmas and Christmas Travel

Wow-- it's te last third of January already! If the rest of 2009 goes by so quickly, then we're in trouble.

Our first German Christmas was nice. We shoved all the boxes against the walls and carved out a little cubby in the living room to do Christmas morning (which actually turned into Christmas-Morning week as C was content to open one gift at a time and play with it for a while before opening another. I don't think he opened his last gift until after our trip. Christmas dinner was a simple one, and although we missed our extended family, with whom we usually celebrate, the Mcs were all together -- and that's something to be thankful for considering how many of the last few Christmases D's spent in another time zone.

We ignored all the unpacking for Christmas day, spent Boxing day in Ikea, and ingnored the unpacking some more the day after as we loaded up the orange box and headed south to Nurnberg and Rothenburg.

Nurnberg was really good fun. The things we did were by and large rather kid-friendly (the toy museum, the train museum, the zoo) and could have been in any city, but we got to see a good chunk of Nurnberg as we walked between attractions. Our second morning we toured the castle and climbed to the top of the Castle's Turret. *Mental Note* -- Climb no more twisty, narrow, steep stairways unless DADDY's the one wearing the baby.

Day three found us in Rothenburg, which according to Rick Steves is the best preserved example of a medieval walled city. The wall is completely in tact and you can't drive in the city. It was cold cold cold cold cold that day and there were still lots of tourists out, so I can't imagine the throng in the summer season. It's kind of tourist-trappy as there's store after store of clocks, nutcrackers, ornaments etc. Some, actually made in Germany, yet many others made in China to look like they were made in Germany. This one is by far the most famous.

Seems like every city/event has some kind of food that it's associated with, and yep we try them all -- in Berlin it's the Currywurst, in Nurnberg it's finger bratwurst, in Bavaria in general it's apple strudel and vanilla sauce, at the Christmas markets its warm waffles and gluwein, and in Rothenburg it's the Schneeball (German for snowball). Trust me, if you ever go to Rothenburg...... Skip the Schneeball.

It's not near as good as it looks. It's really pie crust shaped into a ball and dusted with powdered sugar. Go for a strudel or a kuchen or a piece of cheesecake or a good beer, but skip the shneeball, even C was less than impressed and only ate a few bites, which is a shame because we spent the whole morning bribing him into compliance with the promise of the schneeball to come. [We thought it was fried dough, donut style]

After Rothenburg it was off to the largest exchange in Europe so that D could buy a TV (yeah an all day affair, should have seen him trying to fit it in the box with the stroller, the pack-n-play, the suitcases and all the rest of the gear)

Then, we headed home. However, the roads had iced over and before the sakt trucks got to them, someone on our stretch off the autobahn had an accident. All traffic had to exit, except off course for the traffic that had already passed the last exit. (Exits on the Autobahn, btw, are pretty far apart, so we had to creep quite a ways before we could actually clear the traffic jam. So yes, the drive home which should have taken 2.5 hours took 7 and we welcomed 2009 en route.

The kids, however, hung in there gamely (except of course for C's potty emergency in the traffic jam when he refused to go on the side of the road like all the other menfolk) and handled the travel/touring far better than I had anticipated. Which is good, yes, as we hope to be doing alot more of it in the months to come.

I think we're settled enough that the blog is back, so keep checking back to see what we get into.

taking one for the team....

This post is just to say that all you folks who've told us you're coming over sometime while we're here,both to see us and to see all the sights that are nearby..... we're expecting you.

We've got a guest room in the basement ready, but not without casualty. While we maneuvered the queen size boxspring into the basement with lots of muscle and the help of gravity (after removing the hand rails and sacrificing some paint in the stairwell), we're not getting it out without a chain saw. It would be a real shame to go through the motions of setting up a guestroom and yet not have any actual guests to put in it.

We'll leave a light on for you!

(Now I'm off to check on D who's in our room putting togethter our bed, which we were smart enough to leave boxed from the store so it could ship unassembled; there's NO way a kingwould've made it up the stairs. But if it can be put together now, it can be taken apart again when its time to pull up stakes.)

looks like we'll all have a place to sleep tonight :)

An Acquired Taste?

Ate lunch recently at the local subway. (Subway and Mcdonalds are the only two places I've found with fountain sodas or coffee in to-go cups). The menu is pretty much the same as in the states. However, the chip choices were interesting.

ever tried a prawn-flavored potato chip? Did you ever imagine such a chip existed? D ate the whole bag, so he must have liked them. Me, not so much.

Tonight is our last night in our guesthouse, which means this will likely be my last post until our internet gets up and running (two weeks if we're lucky, a month if we're not.)

Merry Christmas one and all. We're still undescided where we're headed for the holiday, so be sure to check back after the new year to see where we ended up!

Aachen and the Autobahn; Cereal and Sausages

We made it Aachen this past Saturday-- a really old German city (yeah think Charlemagne's time, so really yreally old). But this time of year it's claim to fame is that it hosts the largest Christmas market that's kind of close to us and has a fabulous toy store.


The weather Saturday was cold and drizzly, but if we waited for a sunny day to go anywhere we'd never get out.

The toy store is three levels and has a slide that the kids can slide on to get from the main floor to the basement. Saturday, St. Nikolaus was out giving presents to the kids. (St Nikolaus was also outside every store we walked pass giving out chocolate, so much so that when C was ready for more candy he'd say to me, "Where's Nikolaus")

The Market itself was super crowded, but it was still good fun to meander.

I started B on some cereal this week and as you can see from the picture he's already progressed from cereal to sausages.



To get to Aachen we took our first spin on the Autobahn. I didn't drive, but I did pass my driver's test last week and took the car out for the first time on Sunday. ("the car" would be the 1997 BMW Dan bought this week for our second car-- our orange box is still in transit.) Local lore has it that when you come to GK, you leave with either a baby or a BMW. BMW: check!

Christmas Markets here and there

We went to the Geilenkirchen christmas market this weekend and had a good time walking a bit of the city (it was the first time we had really walked around GK proper.) After being here for nearly two weeks scored our first currywurst for lunch.

we tried to go to another local market today, but by the time we got there, both kids had fallen asleep in the car, it was raining and we would have had to park rather far away and slog through the rain-- didn't seem like it was worth waking them up for it.

we have decided that b/c we will either have no stuff or very discombobulated stuff for Christmas that we'll spend Christmas week in Nurnberg at the mother of all Christmas markets, seems like a good year to do it

Both GK and Heinsberg have children's play equipment on random street corners (see above). C likes to go exploring now 'cause he never knows what he's going to find!