Frohe Weihnachten!

Merry Christmas Family and Friends!

We had a wonderful Christmas week with friends.

On Christmas Eve, Mandy and Greg hosted a potluck dinner for about 25 people. All the food was delicious and we had a great time catching up with friends. There were also 6 toddlers and babies which made the evening even more fun!

Christmas day, we had a relaxing morning, waking up late and opening gifts. In the afternoon, we went to Dan and Kristi's for a delicious dinner with several friends. We had a great afternoon catching up with friends and interacting with 3-year old twin girls!

On Saturday evening, we continued to celebrate the Christmas season at Mike and Susan's annual party. Mike prepared an amazing food spread again this year and we had a great time socializing.

As you can tell, we have a wonderful group of friends out here, we don't know what we would do without them. Of course they don't replace our family and friends back home, we miss you all a lot and hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas:

From Christmas 2008

Marché de Noël in Alsace, France

We spent the weekend of 12 December in Alsace, France with Melanie and Adam. Alsace is a region of France right over the French-German border. We originally booked this trip back in the summer because several friends recommended a quaint B&B to us. Since the B&B is booked pretty far in advance, we decided to go in December and tour the Strasbourg and Colmar Christmas markets.

The B&B, the Ambiance Jardin, was even more picturesque than we imagined. The rooms were amazing and there was a common area complete with a fireplace where we were able to read and play games in the evenings! The breakfasts were delicious as well, fresh bread, fruit cobbler, and café au lait. In the back of the B&B there is an amazing garden. Of course nothing was blooming now, but we were able to imagine that it would be beautiful in the spring and summer.

Below are pictures of the B&B:

Bed and Breakfast

We stopped in Strasbourg on Friday afternoon. We have been to Strasbourg before and really like its relaxing atmosphere. The Christmas market had a lot of things that we don't normally see in the German Weihnacht markets. We made the trip complete with panini and crepes!

Here are some pictures from Strasbourg:

Strasbourg Christmas Market

Friday evening, after we checked into the B&B, we found the only restaurant in the tiny town to be closed. Relying on our GPS, we found an Italian Trattoria about 10km (6 miles) away. As we're driving, over country roads we realized, too late to turn around, that we were getting on a ferry and crossing back over into Germany! We drove all the way to France and now were going to have dinner in Germany?!? Of course, the trattoria no longer existed, so we ended up having schnitzel and kase spatzle at a German restaurant for dinner. *sigh* =)

On Saturday, we went to Colmar, Eguisheim, and Kayserberg. They are all picturesque towns. While we found the Colmar market to be mostly meat and wine and the smaller towns to have tiny markets, we really enjoyed the scenery. We would like to go back in a warmer season to walk around more and see more of the area.

Here are some pictures from Colmar:

Colmar Christmas Market

A few from Eguisheim:

Eguisheim Christmas Market

And a couple from Kayserberg:

Kayserberg Christmas Market

Madrid and Toledo, Spain

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Adam, Melanie, and Ashley in Spain this year. We spent the majority of the weekend in Madrid and took a day trip to Toledo.

On Thursday, we went to the main train station and found a beautiful rain forest inside! We had a lot of fun watching hundreds of turtles in one area of it. In the afternoon, we wet on the New Madrid Free Walking Tour. We've done New Europe walking tours in other cities and highly recommend them. This tour, was described as being about 2.5 hours long, but ended up being almost double that! The tour took us around the city, pointed out historic buildings, gave us an overview of Spain's tumultuous history, and took us to a tapas/sandwich restaurant. The restaurant definitely added quite a bit of time to the tour...but it was warm inside so we didn't mind too much!

Here are some pictures from Madrid:

Madrid

On Friday, we took a train to Toledo, which was less than an hour away. Toledo, is an ancient walled city with a large Moorish influence. We had a lot of fun walking around, taking pictures, and eating tapas. After we arrived back in Madrid, we had a traditional Spanish meal for dinner including paella and fish.

Click here for pictures from Toledo:

Toledo

On Saturday, Kurt and Adam spent the morning at Star Wars - The Exhibition while Carrie, Ashley and Melanie went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. There are a lot of pictures of the Star Wars exhibit in the picture album below. Unfortunately, we were not able to take any pictures in the museum, but we did see many pieces by Gris, Dali, and Picasso, including Picasso's Guernica.

The Star Wars Album:

Star Wars Madrid

Although not a traditional Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful time with our friends. We did miss seeing our family and hope everyone had a good day!

Boleslawiec, Poland

The weekend of 18 October, we caravaned with a group of friends to Boleslawiec, Poland. The sole purpose of the trip was to buy handmade pottery! Since it was a longer trip, about 6 hours, we stayed in Dresden, Germany, on Friday night and were on the road between 6 and 6:30 on Saturday morning so that we were sure to be shopping by 8. We got to see a beautiful sunrise as we were entering Poland. Luckily, we had a couple experienced Polish pottery shoppers with us, and we were able to hit between 8 and 1o shops before they closed by mid-afternoon.

A bit overwhelming at first...so many patterns, styles, and qualities of pottery to choose from, but we quickly started making purchases. While some people come home from Poland with entire new dish sets, we went with two goals...several serving dishes for ourselves and the majority of our Christmas shopping done. We are proud to say we accomplished both of our goals! (Probably the first year ever that about 95% of our shopping was complete before December!)

We stopped for lunch at a really cute restaurant and had traditional Polish food for lunch...including pierogis, which were amazing! Although we didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing, Kurt and Melanie explored the main square in Boleslawiec, on our way out of town on Sunday. They said it was really pretty and took some nice pictures.

Click below to see our album from the weekend:

Oktoberfest in Munich

We were home for about 48 hours, just enough time to repack our bags before heading to Munich on 29 September for Oktoberfest there. We had a great drive down without too much traffic and made our way to our hotel just before dinner time. Kurt found an amazing deal on a hotel right across the street from the fair grounds, so we were able to drop our bags off and head over to the fest and grab steak sandwiches and fries for dinner! We wandered around the fest for a few hours, popping into the majority of the tents to snap pictures before they closed their doors for the night (because there was no more room available).

The next morning, we dressed in our German finest--Kurt in his new shirt from the Volksfest and me in a borrowed dirndl(Thanks, Kate!) and went to meet a large group of friends at the Hacker tent. We, and roughly 15 friends, had amazing seats in the balcony of the tent. It wasn't very crowded up there, so we were able to move around and talk easily while still enjoying the music and party atmosphere! (Thanks Jonathan for organizing!) After our 4 hours were up, Kurt and I headed back to our hotel so that I could get changed--it was too cold for me to be wearing a dress!--and ended up napping for a few hours. That evening, we met up with Melanie and Adam for a late dinner and walk around the fest grounds.

On Wednesday, we met up with the group at the Hippodrom for our second round of reserved seats. This time, we were down on the floor just to the right of the stage. Since we were there first thing, we got to see the band some in and chug a Maß before they started playing...pretty impressive! We had a good time hanging out with friends and singing along with the band. In the early afternoon, Kurt and I walked around the fest grounds for a bit to pick up some souvenirs and eat some more food. In the evening, we met up with our friends again, and made our way to Marienplatz in search of dinner. After a few failed restaurant attempts, we had a fabulous Indian dinner followed up by drinks at the Augustiner.

We had a great time at Oktoberfest, and of course are looking forward to next year!!

Click below to see pictures from the trip:

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest in Stuttgart

We look forward to the end of September probably about as much as we look forward to Christmas because in Germany, the end of September means Oktoberfest! This year, we went to two Oktoberfests. On 26 September, we met up with friends in Stuttgart for the Cannstatter Volksfest, which is the second largest beer festival in the world after Oktoberfest in Munich. The Volksfest is a lot like Munich's Oktoberfest with rides and food, however, it's not nearly as crazy or jam-packed with people. It seems much more family oriented. We arrived on opening day, although we didn't get to see them tap the keg. But it was was bright sunny jacket weather - perfect! We walked around the grounds for a bit, stopped in all the tents to get pictures, and sampled some traditional fest food before meeting up with the rest of the group in the tent where we spent the evening.

Once inside, everyone ordered their Maß (liters) of beer, half-chickens, and started singing along with the band that was playing. It's always fun to see Germans get excited and sing German folk songs and always fun to join in when they play American songs like John Denver's Country Roads and Bruce Channel's Hey! Baby (this song has been covered A LOT).

Not too far into the night, I remarked (facetiously) how I would love to have one of the giant balloons that a vendor was walking around selling. Kurt decided to take my comment literally, and bought me a HUGE teddybear holding a heart balloon that said "I love you this much!" on it!! For the rest of the night, I had it tied to my wrist. (It was an adventure going to rest room with it!) He also full-filled my longstanding wish to have a nightcap. While purchasing a cowboy hat for himself, he found a nightcap for me. He was very proud of himself! And I am very excited to have a nightcap...I get really cold when I'm trying to fall asleep!

After the tent, we made our way to a "Little Bavaria" portion of the fest. All the stands within the area were made of wood and served authentic food. There was also a clothing vendor and Kurt was able to get a traditional German shirt.

We had a great day with friends, enjoyed meeting friends of friends, and were very happy with all our presents!

Click on the album below to see pictures from the day.

Cannstatter Volksfest

Catching up

We hope everyone had a great summer. We had a lot going on, and true to our nature, fell behind in blogging. Below are posts highlighting our summer; make sure to check the pictures too - we've added a lot recently. (Pictures for Vienna and Switzerland will be posted this week!)

It's hard to believe that we hit our half-way point on 15 August. Time has flown by and while we're still enjoying ourselves here, we're also looking forward to coming home. To keep ourselves occupied (though maybe not out of trouble ;) ), we're looking forward to several trips this fall including Oktoberfest, an Eastern Mediterranean cruise, Madrid, and the Alsace region of France.