Way Behind!

Sorry for being so very behind with the blog posts! The plan was to do a couple of big ones full of Christmas Markets, Amsterdam, and Photos, but due to some technical computer difficulties, that's had to be postponed. Hopefully I'll be back up and running (finally) later today, and will get some things up tonight!

T-3 days until I'm back in the States for Christmas!

'Tis the Season

Advent is finally upon us here in good old Deutschland, though honestly had I not been a real resident (with a super fancy electronically-chipped ID card to boot!) I probably would have thought it had begun several weeks ago. Nevertheless, the lights are up and on in the streets, the advent calendars have flown off the shelves, and as our dear friend Ivor reminded us yesterday when he chided our contemplation of premature santa hat purchasing, today, my friends, is December 1st!

We began getting into the festive spirit last weekend with a wonderful jaunt over to Hechingen and Burg Hohenzollern (site of a previous visit and..perhaps even blog post?) to enjoy the Christmas market at the castle. What is a Burg? you may ask. Aren't German castles 'Schloss's? We posed a similar question to our German friend-turned-honorary-Irishwoman Sera, who wasn't exactly sure of the difference either, so we came up with our own explanation. We decided that some of us had heard at some point along the line that a Burg was more of a defensive structure, where as a Schloss can be a big fancy thing that royals spend two days a year in hunting or eating, or whatever it is those royal folk do. In our infinite wisdom, our verdict was that "Burg Hohenzollern" is a Burg that has been 'geschlosst' inside. That is, 'turned into a castle'. This sounds like a makeshift verbal adjective, but with German, it might just fly in a sentence...

Hohenzollern as it stands now is a rebuilt version something perhaps similar to the castle that was originally on the site ages ago, but regardless of which incarnation you're discussing, it's the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family (think the Habsburgs, but over this way) and thus basically all Prussian Royalty. The current prince ('prince'...you know...of the Prussia that totally still exists) was even there to officially open the "Royal Christmas Market" and lead us all in song. Rather charming. At any rate....

Ivor was kind enough to drive us all to the castle so we could avoid train business, and he, Josh, Sinead, Sera and I piled in for the jaunt over to the 'foot' of the Swabian Alb (I say 'foot' because it's not much of an 'alb', so there you have it, I said it, I'm sorry, but it's true), quite near to where I teach my English course (the castle, on it's large, wooded hill, is visible from town), for our inaugural Christmas Market of the season. Or if you're me, the inaugural Chritmas Market of your life.

Most exciting for me was being in a car where the steering wheel is on the right-hand side. Everyone naturally thought I was ridiculous, but I'm telling you, serious cultural differences!

It was a beautiful, clear, chilly day, and we forked over our 8 Euro (apparently this also pays for parking?) to get into the castle. Our first stop, after admiring the view several times along the winding cobbled ramp that carries you into the outer courtyard, was for Glühwein at one of the umpteen stands serving the extraordinary concoction. To our surprise, the beverage they handed us was white instead of red, but we discovered, to our delight, you can in fact mull white whine. ("It's white! It smells like Glühwein....but it's white! But it tastes like Glühwein!)

This photo is a bit blurry because I was nudged by an American visitor as I was taking it (damn Americans), but I felt I should have at least one photo with people I actually knew from the visit...

The lower and upper courtyard areas were filled with quaintly constructed wooden booths which housed myriad practical and fanciful wares. The first stand we encountered caught my eye; it held a number of hand-painted tin ornaments that were so wonderful I wanted to bring every single one home. Ever furthering my attempt to be prudent and adult, however, I decided to have a look around the entire market before returning to purchase an ornament. (See Mom, aren't you proud?) We came across everything imaginable; ornaments, jewelry, hot water bottle holders, old books and leather bindings, scarves, candles, dozens of sweets, and even handmade teddy bears. We wandered until it grew dark, took in the opening 'ceremony' and sing-along with the prince himself (it took us a few minutes to recognize him from his newly-printed wedding photo on our previous castle tour), and then, as the wind really began to pick up and the sun was no longer there to protect us, we made our way down the lit path to the first base of large hill and our waiting car. With all of the lights, delicious food, and things to purchase, I'm definitely looking forward to more markets here before I head home for Christmas.

The lower courtyard

My embarassingly blurry photo of the upper courtyard. But as an indication of the market itself, it shall have to do. So many people, so much gentle jostling!

One of the inner halls, full of tables on either side for vendors

The tree in the center of the lower courtyard, finally lit when the sun went down

The castle from behind. Sinead and I were lamenting our lack of fancy cameras to capture the stunning views of the structure, lit from the feet of its walls, as we were making our way down the mountainous hill to head home. Absolutely stunning.

A Very American Thanksgiving

Phew, what a weekend! And by weekend, I of course include Thursday, as my Friday class consists of waking up at 7:30 to go sit in a room pretending to translate things of which I have only a limited understanding in Ancient Greek.

For those of you unaware, our plan for Thanksgiving this year was to invite all of our enthusiastic Erasmus friends over to give them as American a Thanksgiving experience as humanly possible. Anya and I joined forces with two other Americans to share in the food preparation workload, which turned out to be a good idea, because we barely accomplished our share!

I was--rather by default--in charge of Mr. Turkey, but I also decided I would make homemade rolls, non-vegetarian stuffing, scalloped potatoes, and our gravy, because really, when am I happy just making one thing? I did some shopping at Kaufland earlier this week to scope out the turkey options, and lo and behold, found whole frozen turkeys under the large "Geflügel" (flying things, essentially) sign in the frozen section (other signs include "Kartoffel", "Fertiggerichte", and "Kuchen und Torten"--potatoes, ready meals, and cakes and tortes...priorities, people!). The largest turkeys they had were 5.8 kg, so I grabbed two of those suckers, considering we were feeding approximately 24 people, and each of those, at around 12lbs, fits the 1lb/person minimum recommended under copious online searches), and stuck them in my fridge to defrost on Monday and Tuesday...they both still did some time in the sink, but it was minimal. Special thanks go out to my parents, who reminded me that if a turkey is, in fact, frozen, they do..er...actually need time to become un-frozen. The things you learn from your parents...

Real preparations began on Wednesday night when I returned from my English course and went to purchase the rest of my supplies. I whipped up some dough for Parker House Rolls, and at about 1:30am left them all ready to go for their second rising on my makeshift cookie sheet. I woke up at 7 to remove the first turkey from the sink so my housemates could actually use it for breakfast prep, and went back to bed for an hour and a half before I had to really start the cooking. I then proceeded to chop, bake, roast, creamify, and otherwise fill our house with delicious smells until 5:30 when our guests started arriving. At that point I'd shepherded two separate turkeys through individual roasting processes and was packing everything into foil to haul it across the hall to Anya's, where we'd set up a large table as a buffet.

Our English-Irish contingent, for which we're still trying to find a shorter name, arrived first, as promised, and Ivor began mixing up his enhanced Glühwein with traditional store-bought mulled wine and his own delicious additions. Josh announced he wanted to see my turkeys, so after a good few minutes of trying to dodge inunedos, I took him over to inspect the birds. They were received with awe and lots of exclaiming, but we realized neither of us felt prepared to carve them in a manner fitting the occasion. Ever capable, Ivor asked for a large knife and two plates and went. to. town. The legs and wings came off, the breasts came off, and before my eyes they were turned into two empty carcasses with beautiful plates of artfully displayed turkey on the table.

The rest of the guests began to arrive and the other Americans set out their contributions (pumpkin bread, peanut butter pie, broccoli casserole, "strawberry fluff", rolls, delicious bready dumplings, and deviled eggs). My wonderful tandem partner and her friend joined us, as well as a couple of my and Anya's housemates (who weren't out of town or busy studying for exams), and then we had what was nearly the entire compliment of kommilitoren/innen (classmates) from our Startkurs language course in September. We had friends joining us from Germany, England, Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Taiwan, China, and Brazil, and it's safe to say that the food was a huge hit. After concern over preparing my mom's scalloped potatoes properly and not being able to find a meat thermometer in Kaufland, I received boatloads of compliments on everything, particularly the turkey, which--if you'll permit me a little bit of gloating--was essentially perfect.

Here are some photos, as promised!

One of my turkeys

My first ever attempt at homemade stuffing: bread, seasonings, homemade "Italian sausage", chicken broth, apple, and sage. Delicious.

Some of the spread, and Ivor taking apart the birds

The other half of our spread, and some very excited revelers (Josh and Rachel)

My tandem partner, Maria, and her friend, Manuela

More excited guests enjoying food

The original photo was supposed to beof me walking around with my glass of wine and the champagne Ivor had handed me. Then it turned into everyone (Ivor) handing me their alcohol...

More happy revelers! (Sinead, Sera, Ivor, Anya)

Beige leftovers the next day with Sinead (and a healthy dose of knitting!)

While I was really sad to have missed Thanksgiving at home, I'm so grateful to have made such wonderful friends in Tübingen who were able (and more than excited) to celebrate with us. We had a really great evening with lots of delicious food, even if we did, for once, promote the stereotype that Americans eat too much! We did explain that it's a very specific part of the tradition, but I was assured that in both Poland and Slovakia (and I'm sure elsewhere, we just didn't the specific conversations), holiday overeating is exceedingly traditional as well :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend with family and friends!

(P.S. T-5 days until Gilder's visit, and T-25 days until my triumphant return Stateside for Christmas and New Year's. I can't wait!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

In middle school, our drugs and alcohol counselor explained the concept of denial to us. You keep going back to the cupboard to look for the cookies, even though they're not there, he told us. Since then, any time I catch myself looking in the cupboard--or elsewhere--for something in particular that I can't find, and I catch myself then going back, I feel just a little bit guilty, and think about that day in Guidance class.

Well, my friends, sometimes it pays off. Sometimes when you spend 30 minutes desperately searching the same place over and over again, you really do find what you're looking for.

I've never been so happy to see a meat thermometer in my life.

Or more willing to pay 8 Euro for it.

Happy Thanksgiving! More updates to come with photos from the feast!

Freezer Conundrum

So we've had this issue in the apartment with our freezer. About two weeks ago, one of my housemates accosted me (okay, maybe that's too strong a word) in the kitchen while I was cooking and proceeded to ramble very, very quickly in Swabian about some problem with our freezer. What I took away: ice. doesn't close. problem. I was naturally a little concused so I asked her to show me what was wrong (after all...it's a freezer...you get a little bit of ice in there). Apparently, if you don't push extra hard, our freezer door doesn't close all the way, air get's in, and we get copious amounts of ice. This is also apparently an issue. My housemate opened the door and tossed it closed, said something even more incomprehensible, and then pushed on it to 'really close it'. Did I see the difference? No. Did I nod like a miraculously enlighted person with a sudden look of comprehension on my face? Of course. We'd have to clean it, she told me, but didn't know how. Fast forward two weeks and 50% of the apartment has again gone home for the weekend (down from the usual 75%, this feels rather crowded). Another housemate came across me in the kitchen making pancakes and explained to me that she had taken her drawer out of the freezer and cleaned it off, but had been unsuccessful at removing the ice. I asked if she thought warm water might do the trick. She said it hadn't. She said she'd also tried to use a knife and failed. I told her I'd look at it after brunch (hello, I waned my pancakes) and that we'd 'figure something out'.

As promised, I finished my food, cleaned everything up, and had a look into our freezer. It's basically two full drawers on top with one half drawer underneath, and dividers like oven racks. The problem is that each divider is made up of TWO oven rack-style metal grids with a little under 1/4" in between. This is great, as you can imagine, when something get's stuck inside it (ie. ice). Oh wait...I have that backwards...it's the world's most inconvenient thing. Her drawer already having been removed, I fished all of our frozen stuff out of the middle drawer, which I share with the latest addition to our apartment, grabbed my measuring cup with a spout, and poured some hot water over the dividers that were caked with slushy, opaque ice. Lo and behold, some of it melted. After what my housemate had said about her lack of success, I wanted to feel like a genius, but seriously, isn't it sort of just the law of the world that hot water melts ice? I proceeded to spend an hour slowly pouring warm water and prying ice away with a knife (I also found this rather successful, so I'm not sure what she was doing). Using the empty drawer to catch water below, I still wound up with water all over the floor, but not as much as I could have. All of the ice isn't completely gone, but it looks a whooooole lot better than it did.

I would be lying if I didn't say that fixing the freezer gave me a whole lot of, "In your face," satisfaction. My friend Josh and I have an ongoing joke about ingenious American solutions. I think it started with some culinary issue....our quiche maybe?..and a solution I came up with to find a way around a problem. Being here with a bunch of international students, we often just blame things/attribute things to nationality, perhaps as a way of reclaiming stereotypes in a hilariously positive way? Unclear, but regardless, we're fans. So I was a little sad that I couldn't share the moment of glory and my 'ingenuity' with anyone (though I'm still not convinced it was that). I mean, really, was it actually that much of a brilliant solution? People who know me probably know that I'm a big fan of 'if there's a will, there's a way'. There has to be some way to get around any problem, so my philosophy tends to be to at least try to just fiddle with a bunch of different ideas until something works. Is this a skill I acquired from my parents? Girl Scouts? My old coach Brian would probably say it's a characteristic exacerbated by being at Wesleyan, a place where independent problem solving is encouraged. Either way, I can't wait to see the looks I get when my housemates see the newly-fixed fridge. Sure, you may think I'm that crazy American who can't understand a damn thing you say in Swabish (how about I try speaking English full-speed with a Texas accent and we'll see how YOU do), who is strange because I don't fill the sink up when I do dishes (sorry if it weirds me out to have food particles floating around in water I'm using to sterilize my dishware and utensils), or who has any other tendencies that just 'aren't German', but you're very welcome for fixing your freezer that you seemed helpless to do anything about.

Even though Josh doesn't read this, I'll say it anyway---there's another 'ingenius American solution' for you ;)

The Great Knitting Project of 2011, and other exciting adventures

I have to admit, I've been done with my epic sweater project for about two weeks, but am just now getting around to writing about it (oops). I've been busy busy busy, but at least I've also been warm warm warm in my new snuggly creation! As promised, here are some photos of my knitting baby:

You can see from the front, when it sits loose, it's looooooong...

When you wrap it up and around like a scarf, it's much cozier

and here's the profile view...I've been double twisting and it's even more comfy that way

This was a LONG project, and my first experience with sort of designing something as I went. Could it be better? I'm a big believer that things could always be improved upon, but am I proud of how it turned out? Absolutely. And super pleased, too!

Since I finished TGKP2011 there have, of course, been lots of other things to do. Fall is really in full swing here, and as a fun bonding-just-before-leaving activity with my former housemate who moved into a private apartment, we baked an apple pie. I'd attempted pies before and ben met largely with success, but this pie was by far the best I'd ever baked. I used King Arthur Flour's guarnateed recipe, and was floored by how well it worked out

See all the lack of filling oozing out of the sides of the slices? Epic success! I'm making this one again this weekend for my other housemates (hopefully)

Then, of course, came Halloween, which I celebrated not once, but twice! The weekend before the actual holiday, we held a birthday-halloween party for our dear friend, Przem, who have recently discovered is rather a bit older than the rest of us (27. Oh the humanity! Just kidding, but still. We felt like babies). I suggested we name it Przem-o-ween, and I'm please to say it stuck! Anya and I baked a fabulous vanilla cake filled with berries and whipped cream, as well as sugar cookies decorated to resemble pumpkins. A huge number of people showed up with various and sundry other delicious things, but there was, sadly, a lack of costumes. The American-Irish contingent put forth a great effort, and when our other friends started arriving, I wound up painting a number of faces. They were skeptical, but oh, did I win them over with my extraordinary (hah) talent.

L to R: a zombie (previously a butterfly), Frankenstein's monster (the lighting isn't picking up the green paint too well), a hippie with flowers, the Joker (and birthday boy!), a vampire, and a pirate (my personal favorite...you can't see the right side of his face that had a knot for the bandana, but trust me, it was fantastic)

My actual Halloween was spent with my adoptive family for whom I babysit once a week. And when I say babysit, I mean I hang out and speak English with Charge 1 and Charge 2, then their mom comes home, makes dinner, chats with me and generally mothers me, and we all eat together. And for this I get paid. Glorious. We made a Halloween-themed dinner with blood punch, mini sausages in bacon (fingers?), 'moldy' (pesto) and 'bloody' (meat sauce) pasta, and more of my jack-o-lantern cookies for dessert. I took Charge 2 and a couple of her friends trick-or-treating, which was definitely an interesting experience in Germany. Apparently celebrating Halloween has become something of a thing for the younger generation, but it's mostly kids getting dressed up and trying to trick-or-treat with friends. Most of the doors we knocked on revealed people who said 'oh, hello! oh, it must be Halloween!' and then rummaged around for sweet things to give the girls. This resulted in lots of them being overwhelmingly generous (Here, have a package of cookies. Here, have our drawer of Ritter Sport), but sometimes we just had doors shut in our faces (whoops). A couple of families actually had a bowl of candy waiting, which I found rather impressive. It was also my first experience trick-or-treating in an apartment...still fun, but I think I prefer the traditional Carriage Lane experience.

Charge 2 is on the right...she made her own vampire costume by cutting up the previous year's!

Not to be upstaged by Halloween, Christmas continues here with full force. I discovered these playmobil advent calendars in Kaufland...oh how I wanted one!

I'm continuting to subconsciously prepare for the holidays by craving more and more cozy knit things. This may or may not be resulting from the nagging sinus infection I've now had for about two weeks. I went back to the (world's nicest) doctor today, so here's hoping round number two of even stronger (5 Euro) antibiotics does the trick. I took a photo of the table in the center of the waiting room because I thought it looked particularly nice and homey, haha.

Offering water is definitely a German thing. The bank, the doctor's office....anywhere. There's even what seems to be hot water in a termos with disposable cups constantly outside of our corner pharmacy. I don't understand why, but hey, I'm down.

This past weekend, in an effort to unwind from a rather hectic week, I ventured northwest to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse to visit with my friend Friedie and her family. She has extremely wonderful parents who have taken me under their wing in rather the same way my parents have adopted Friedie, which, especially when I'm all the way over here, is wonderful. Friedie's mom invited Gilder (who is coming next month) and I to go for a visit when we are heading to the Christkindlmarkt in Karlsruhe, and I think she'll even join us for the trip, which will be a lot fun. After some seriously good breakfast and the world's greatest jam/butter business (pumpkin pear...jam? I'm going to call it butter because it has the consistency of apple butter), Friedie, her friend from school Juli, and I hopped in the car and drove over to Strasbourg for the day. I responsibly remembered to bring my passport, and then realized that, hello, this is the EU and nobody cares what you do in terms of border crossing. "Oh well," I reasoned, "better safe than sorry". Strasbourg is a beautiful city with lots of shopping, eating, and strolling to be had. I've got a bunch of photos, but I'll leave you with just a couple since I need to be off to make some dead language flashcards. I mean, really, what else do I do?

Here are Juli and Friedie with our delicious macarons!

Look for a series of posts coming (hopefully) shortly. I'm thinking something a long the lines of "Three Euro Wine Thursdays" are in order!

Summitting Grammar Mountain

Whew, I think a bit of catch-up is in order, isn't it? (Hi Mom, sorry, I know...I'm bad). I've been sitting in my room, working on The Great Knitting Project of 2011 (see a few posts back...that one with the pictures of the sweater...yeah, that one) and staring menacingly at a pile of flashcards that has somehow managed not to menace me back. Until now. Between trying to pick up Latin and working on my Greek, a large mountain of grammar is piling up in front of me, and the only thing keeping my spirits up is that, well, I'm not too shabby with languages and I have the whole semester (techncially...hah) to summit the damn thing.

My Greek class is particularly intimidating, though somehow also extraordinarily enjoyable, largely because my professor is the closest to what seems to be the elusive professorus americanus (that's masculine nominative singular, my friends, of very fake Latin). You know the type...kind, cares about your education, willing to be available at the drop of an email for any and all manner of assistance. Well, alright, my German professors have been pretty nice but my Greek class feels a lot like the one at home; my professor is extremely sweet (and adorable!) and cares a lot about the learning experience of his students. There are only ten of us, and four aren't native English speakers, so he's very considerate of that fact. After our tutorium/ta session, though, I (and a couple of others) discovered, to my (our) horror that our German compatriots seem to be able to translate fairly accurately and speedily at the drop of a hat. For example, I stare at a sentence that's two lines long and think "I want to say this means something about a man...and there's the word for 'god'....I just wish the hoplites and good goats from Greek 102 would come back", and they say (in German, of course), "Socrates did not believe in those gods in which the people believed, and for this he was dishonored by such and such at such and such a time and hahahahaha look at my mygreekisawesome!!!". And then I die. Every time. I was commiserating with my fellow American, a lovely older woman, who agreed with me that it would be worth sticking the class out since by the end of the semester, we will have learned A WHOLE LOT, which is really, after all, the point. And did I mention I love my professor? (I'm a little mortified that I ran into him, crossing a street, just having stuffed the last bite of apple turnover breakfast into my mouth to be able to go into the bank, but he seemed amused and waved so enthusiastically I can't be too embarassed. Or can I?)

The other upside of the class is that I've made a new friend, Brazilian Fernando #2, who majors in Latin and Greek back in Sao Paolo. We exchanged phone numbers so we could get together and do HW. Is there such a thing as an English-Latin Tandem partner? Can you mix dead and extant languages like that? I'm going to find out.

On the opposite extreme of things is Latin. Sure, I have lots of flashcards to learn, but MAN do I feel good about myself in that lecture. First off, all of the other students grumble when we get assigned homework. And not even that much. I want to stand up, slam my binder down, and go 'For God's sake, aren't you people here to LEARN?! This man teaches in your NATIVE LANGUAGE. Get over it'. I sit there and listen as people find it impossible to pick out the Dative Masculine Plural ending for a verb and match it with the Dative Masculine Plural conjugation ending on the nice big chart. I mean, come on, your is a language of matching cases and endings. Hello? But I digress. My professor for this class is also exceedingly adorable. Klaus Arnim Benkendorff (great name, right?) is quickly becoming my new best friend for several reasons. 1. He speaks slowly, loudly, and repeats everything he wants us to write down three times. This means even if I can't decode what he means, at least I can write down what physically left his mouth and figure it out later. 2. He definitely likes me. I introduced myself after the second class and explained that I'm an international student (which we've been instructed umpteen times to do). We chatted about how I was doing with understanding everything and how Latin and Greek are harder and easier in different ways. Then, that wonderful old man, bless his heart and his fabulous orthopedic moon boots, asked me where I had learned German. In school, in the U.S., I told him. He looked shocked. "Did you attend a German school?" he asked? No, I explained, I'd had a bit of German in high school and then in college. He looked thoroughly impressed. Klaus Arnim, you make my mornings, even if I have to be in your class at 8:15 to achieve such an effect.

It's back to flashcards, I'm afriad, but I'm hoping to finish The Great Knitting Project of 2011 on Thursday, after my insanely busy Wednesday, and I'll definitely be posting the results of all of my work (and the reason I have gotten back into Start Trek: TNG) when it's finally complete.

Bis dann!

Some Food for Thought

It's been quite a week for food here in good old Tüb, both baking and consuming! I kicked things off last Thursday while at my usual babysitting gig; inspired by some brownie-like cookies from a package that my charges' mother had given us the week before, I thought we could try making the real thing. Charge #1 (henceforth refered to as such, I think, since hey, he hasn't consented to having his name on the internet) insisted he didn't like chocolate, and he usually busies himself with video games, but somewhat-younger Charge #2 agreed to be my baker's assistant, and their mother was thrilled at the prospect. We walked down to the small shopping center across from the student village to get a few supplies, and I only managed to see two people I knew there--somewhat of a disappointment. When we returned, their mother was home briefly before what I understood to be some sort of PTO-type meeting, so she chatted with us in Denglish while we baked and she made dinner (one of my favorite aspects about babysitting is the family dinner I get once a week). She even lent some real American measuring cups to the process, which were most welcome. One of the problems I've run into while trying to bake here is converting all of the ingredients. You can do it with various helpful online tools and phone apps, but it's a pain, and things never seem to work out quite correctly. Between converted quantities, slightly different ingredients, and slightly different ovens, things usually work out, but never the way they would at home. Our brownies were no different. They sat in the oven for an hour and were nowhere near done. We eventually turned the oven up higher than the recipe called for and they finally began to firm up. Charge #2 and I spent some quality time with the Cosby Family auf Englisch while we obsessively checked the brownies, and they finally got firm enough to eat (though they definitely weren't up to my usual standards). The kids said they were sure it was a problem with ingredients or too few eggs or something (we had to adjust for some pretty tiny ones), but I still felt the need to defend my skills as a baker. The one truly excellent result was that Charge #1 declared them, "sooooooo lecker" (soooooo delicious). And he doesn't like chocolate. Sure.

(Alas I have no photos, but they look like pale brown brownies. go figure)

Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to try. (Credit goes to Anya for finding this a couple of years ago on allrecipes, I believe)

Granny's Brownies

Submitted by: Carl T. Erickson

"This has been a recipe in our family since before the turn of the century. I am 70, so you can imagine when it started to get down to mysister and me. Now my grand-nephew enjoys them. Keep under lock and key, orthey will disappear in a trice!"

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup butter

2 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup chopped walnuts (Catie: I don't use these per old habit since my mom has a nut allergy)

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and eggs until light and fluffy. Stir in the unsweetened chocolate and vanilla until well blended. Mix in the flour, and then the walnuts. Spread batter evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting into bars.

(3 level tablespoons of cocoa plus 1 tablespoon shortening equals 1 ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate.)

My second baking adventure of the week was an attempt to replicate my mom's apple cake with German ingredients. Sure it sounds easy, but like I said, there's always something a liiiittle off. I suppose this technically can't be called 'my mom's' since we appropriated it from an Amish cookbook, but my mom's always made it and I've never found it elsewhere, so I'm sticking with the moniker.

The recipe for relative German baking success here is pretty simple. First you go to Kaufland and guesstimate five cups worth of apples. Then you peel them with the world's dinkiest apple peeler that you dug out of the back of your kitchen drawer because you forgot your housemates don't actually have real kitchen utensils.

See dinky peeler. Then you have to actually guesstimate what 5 cups of apples looks like chopped.

Mix everything else (see recipe below) together sans mixer. Not hard, but slightly messier.

(Oh aren't I spoiled)

Add apples. Delish.

(Why yes, that is approximately 50% apples, you are correct)

After 45 minutes or so in the oven, you have moist, appley perfection. I never bake for the full time, I check things at 30 minutes or so after one very lucky cake-baking experience in which my whole masterpiece was saved when I checked it halfway into it's 'cooking time' and realized it was done. Obnoxious thoroughness pays, my friends.

(My blogger interface has decided it wants the rest of the post's text to be centered, even though I've undone the formatting. Please enjoy blogger's artistic license...)

This didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it to, but it was still pretty close to mom's cake, and definitely close enough to help with my serious longing for fall at home. Here's the recipe!

Amish Apple Cake

1 cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1.5 cups flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp. salt

5 cups raw diced apples

1/2 cup nuts, chopped (I do not add these but recipe calls for them)

topping: 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 cup sugar

1. Blend first 4 ingredients together in mixing bowl. Add the next 5 ingredients and stir well.

2. Fold in the apples and nuts.

3. Mix together cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over batter.

4. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Notice the lack of butter, milk/cream, or obscene amount of sugar in these. Anya, Sinead, and I reasoned this made them, 'practically health food!' so whip up a batch for guilt free munching any time. In my family, they never last more than 24 hours or so because every time we walk into the kitchen, we cut off a tiny bite. I mean how can you resist! I expect this would be delicious with a streusel topping as well, so if anyone feels like an experiment, let me know how it goes!

And finally, I leave you with some other yummy photos.

My Milchkaffee came with foam--this I can get behind.

Bergkaese Omelette--yes that's 'mountain cheese'...unclear why.

Possibly the prettiest Nutella crepe I have ever seen

General Consensus: Tastes Like Christmas!

"Catie, you could be studying Greek right now," you say? Yes, I could be. But I will be shortly, so hush. Instead I've been inspired by my current dessert and the festive explosion involved in consuming it. What is this mystery dessert you ask? Well, it's a little, innocuous-looking cookie that my friend Josh introduced me to last week when I offered to help him put up a rolling blind he'd bought at Ikea. Self-described as, "rubbish with these sorts of things," he'd gotten himself into a home-improvement situation that was a little more complicated than either of us had thought, and long story quite short, we wound up standing in his tiny room with his Verbindung (sort of like a frat...but so much more) friend Bertholt (who happens to be a paleoanthropologist) while Josh helped hold up the blind and I held the power strip aloft so Bertholt could reach the ceiling with the drill. Yup. I'm super useful. But good with tools, I swear! Just not determining the stubstance of strange walls. Anyway. Moving on. Upon finishing (such hard work), Josh offered us some of these cookies in a nice little holiday-red package. I took one bite and Christmas exploded in my mouth. It was amazing. Interestingly enough, Bertholt had the same reaction...I wish I could say it had been auf Deutsch, because that would have made for an even better story, but now I simply can't remember. We had these cookies again on Thursday when I stopped by Sinead's with some friends post-babysitting. Group consensus doesn't lie, folks, these goodies are Christmas in a cookie.

(thank you www.germanfoodgrocery.com)

They are, thankfully, available at Kaufland, along with the rest of the goodies that are part of the Christmas explosion that has taken place there in the last week. I guess it doesn't help that without Halloween and Thanksgiving, the next major holiday is Christmas and the weather has just gone from an unusally high week of 70's weather smack down to a solid 52. With all of the money I (...my parents) am saving on groceries (helloooo latest steal: potato salad, two large bottles of bio fizzy lemonade, two varieties of cheese, almonds, a squash, a huge bag of brussel sprouts, cookies, granola bars, and two kinder bueno for 12 Euro minus my 3 Euro Pfand return that I got for all of my plastic bottles) I'm going to knit myself 20 sweaters. Or buy all of the other cozy things appearing in stores. I did find it funny that everyone was in their winter coats today, however. Sure it was gray and a bit breezy but I wore a raincoat...

In other exciting news, my first day of English teaching is this Wednesday! I was informed today that I can pick up a book to use for the class, but it's not the kind of situation where my students will all have them. This basically means I have to put together a 90 minute class myself...for beginning English students. Just a tad daunting. The pay is great if you're not actually a professional teacher, though, and the experience will be great for grad school/professing, so I'm looking forward to it. On the plus side, I only have ten students at the company that is sponsoring classes for it's employees, so that takes a little bit of the pressure off.

I've also been working on my grad school applications, as well as trying to sort my courses out here. I paid a visit to the classical archaeology faculty today (in the castle, no big deal) and suddenly want to take everything they offer. Unfortunately I don't really have time for this, but after my Greek portraiture graduate seminar there are a couple of lectures that I could just go and sit in on. If you don't need a schein (a document that certifies you have credits for something) you can just show up and listen to lectures whenever you like, and both seem really appealing. One is given by the same professor from my seminar and is on the site of Olympia, and the other is given by the Erasmus liason for the department and is called Rome in the East. Something tells me as long as it's not dumping snow (unlikely) I'll be spending some of my extra time hanging out in the castle trying to understand German lectures. The Latin class is a little questionable right now, given that about a hundred people signed up for each of 9 sections and I'm somewhere down the list. When you sign up for a course, you can give a priority level of 1 (high) through 4 for the course, so I get the impression that a number of people must have put in for multiple course times to ensure that they got one...maybe? It seems impossible that 900 people want to take beginning Latin when many had it already in school. We'll find out. But seeing as it's necessary for me to take this class, it'll happen. Playing the international student card rarely fails.

Our DaF courses are also taken care of...we waited for an hour today while a supposedly bureaucracy-prone country botched a serious bureaucratic process and tried to get over 60 of us signed up for classes, but I'm firmly set in a course called Collage of German Post-War History with a number of people from my Startkurs class. I should have Thursdays and Fridays completely free if all goes well with Latin, so my schedule is shaping up rather nicely.

Now I'm off to actually work on my Greek. I've tried making sense of this language, but have realized it's a very inefficient use of my time....oh well!

Regensburg, Oktoberfest, and an Umpteenth Visit to Heidelberg

When we first started talking about actually arriving in Germany, Anya and I knew we needed to go to Oktoberfest. The trouble, of course, is that as soon as you start researching such a trip you discover you should have made reservations in a beer tent 6 months ago (or more...not an exaggeration). We decided we would just arrive super early and try to stay the night before with friends in Regensburg. We left on Saturday morning at a reasonably reasonable hour for Regensburg and had quite the journey there on the train. A number of young German teenagers were on their way to the Volksfest in Stuttgart (their version of Oktoberfest) and had already been drinking (at 9am) before the train ride. After having been packed onto the train with them for a good hour, we switched trains in Stuttgart for Nürnburg and had one of the most embarassing train rides of our lives (I'm pretty sure I can speak for both of us, here). On the platform, someone American asked me whether the train was going to Munich, and I of course responded politely that yes, in fact, it was. He asked where I was from, and when I said New Hampshire he thought I said Nürnburg and was thoroughly confused. I cleared things up for him, but by then we had clearly 'gotten to knwo each other' and it was too late. We spent the entire train trip sitting in front of he and his extremely drunk and nonsensical friend whom he had met earlier that morning. They both said some pretty ridiculous things to us (though our first 'friend' was the only one I could actually understand in plain English), and I kept wanting to just switch into German and pretend to be from Luxembourg so that the other people on the train would be clear on the fact that we had nothing to do with one another. This experience was pretty hilarious, but I was also glad to be getting off in Regensburg.

Once we arrived, we met up with Frauke, Anya's friend from her semester abroad, and Birgit, my au-pair from about ten years ago, who I hadn't seen since my post-Trier trip to Munich in 2009. Birgit met us at the train station and we found Frauke and had coffee and lunch in a small cafe in the altstadt. Then I had a wonderful tour through the city, courtesy of two residents and Anya, all of whom know it quite well. We finished with a climb up a large tower for a beautiful view of the city.

Regensburg from the Turm

Birgit and I on the island in the river, looking across to the Altstadt

We woke up bright (dark, really) and early on Sunday, and Birgit very kindly took us to the train station in Beratzhausen (near her house just outside of Regensburg) at 6:45 to catch our train to Munich. This trip was much more enjoyable (and shorter). We got to ride in a compartment train, which I realized embodies the entire romantic notion of travel by locomotive that I had tucked away somewhere in the back of my brain. On our second train we rode through a beautiful valley in a crowded car with the windows cracked open, and I was instantly reminded of our train trip from Cusco to Aguas Calientes when I visisted Machu Picchu. Something about the sound of the train through the window and the breeze coming into the car brings with it a feeling of adventure.

We arrived and made our way to the U-Bahn to the Wiesn, which looked something like this:

We had arrived right one time, as the tents open at 10am sharp, and we were lucky enough to find a whole table to ourselves in the Hippodrome that wasn't reserved until 5:30! We were soon joined by other, and made some new German friends who shared shots of schnapps that they had snuck in asked us all about where we were from. The band started soon after (though not before chugging an entire Mass of beer onstage together), and we had a lovely few hours eating spaetzle, drinking beer (including a Mass of birthday beer for my Aunt Jane!), and singing along and prosting 'zu Gemütlichkeit' with the rest of the tent.

Our Festzelt

Inside the tent, before most of the crowd has arrived

Happy Birthday Jane!

After several hours in the tent we decided it was time for a breather and went out to enjoy the rides (and man, are there a lot of them). Instead of buying tickets the way you might in the U.S., we had to pay for each individually. Some of them can be a little prohibitively expensive for broke students, so we just did a couple before we made some new German friends. Having to forego a drunken invitation to live rent-free for a year in our new friend Albin's big apartment in Munich, we returned--exhausted--to Tübingen that evening around 1:30.

The following week, we joined some friends from the Startkurs in Heidelberg. In Germany, the rail system has something called Laendertickets; for around 27 Euro you can get up to 5 people on a ticket and use it all over one Bundesland for an entire day on regional (read: slow) trains. Using the B-W ticket, 10 of us went to Heidelberg for the day. I had been several times before but was really wanting to spend some time with people from our class, so I decided tagging along would be worthwhile. We arrived after three hours on regional trains (it's probably less than an hour by car on the autobahn) and found a tram that took us to the altstadt (Laendertickets are also good on all public transportation--talk about encouraging tourism!). We rode the funicular up the mountiain to the stop above the castle and enjoyed a spectacular view and a few minutes of lying around before finding the foot road/path back down to the castle.

After a rather precarious journey down on foot, we stop for a nice veiw of the castle

The only side of the castle I hadn't actually ever seen

After visiting the castle and seeing the world's largest keg that still resides within it, we separated into two smaller groups and went for a nice walk down to a large, statuesque gate, across the river, along the other side, and then back over one of the main bridges. We finished our day, pooped and thirsty, in a little cafe. Somehow this is becoming a trend...

Catching Up

My mother reminds me that I have been remiss in posting here. What can I say? I've been busy making fun friends and enjoying all of the free time I didn't have last year (well, for the last four years, but last year in particular). So, a (breif) recounting of the highlights of the previous weeks is in order!

We spend our days from 9-3 in our Sprachkurs, which generally consists of learning more advanced and specific grammar (so we can actually not sound like foreigners when we speak), useful new vocab, discussing cultural differences between our various home countries and Germany, and generally poking fun at the idea of the intolerance of various cultures by making outrageous and clearly humorous generalizations about one another and then laughing hysterically. Zum Beispiel: Sinead is mean because she is from Ireland. She hates Americans. Funnier in context I promise. Anyway, two weeks ago a French/German/Italian Provincial market came to town, and it transformed the central squares of the Altstadt into something even more wonderful than usual. They had everything form handmade crafts to vegetables, and Anya and I purchased some artichokes for a delicious dinner.

The central square in the Altstadt

One of a number of large flower and plant sellers

Last week, we all went to the Bebenhausen monastery to poke around and have a little history lesson about the area. We took the bus to the student village at the top of the very large hill and then walked for about 30 minutes along the road and on a path through the woods to the monastery. The night before, two of our fellow students met some journeyman handworkers in our usual bar, and in exchange for a comfy place to sleep, one agreed to come along on our excursion and talk to us about what he's doing. Essentially, if you're studying handwork/handcrafts in Germany, you have the option of going on a long wanderung to complete your training. They spend at least 3 years and 1 day traveling all over and must stay at least 50 (60?) km away from their hometown at all times. They wear traditiona handwerker clothing, so they really stick out, but we've been told that in Germany and surrounding countries they're often clearly recognized. They find work in different places, cannot pay for lodging (often it is offered or they can sleep in a barn or outside if the weather is nice), and can only travel by more traditional means (boat, foot, perhaps tram, etc). We really enjoyed meeting our handwerker friend, and most of us had no idea that such a tradition was still alive in parts of Europe. The more you know...

The central courtyard at Bebenhausen

This past Friday we had another excursion to the Bodensee, Germany's largest lake. We stopped first at a small Rococo church to take in the grand and excessive decoration. My friend Vojta asked me what I thought of it, and I said that while I could appreciate how beautiful some of it is, I could never spend a lot of time in such a place. I asked what he thought, and he explained matter of factly that in the Czech Republic, they have lots of rococo churches, and they're much more lavishly decorated than this one, so he was a bit underwhelmed. If you're a fan of the style, there's a travel destination for you!

Bodensee

We then moved on to the Pfahlbaumuseum, an open air archaeological museum with reconstructions of small villages built in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages on the shores of Bodensee. They sit up on stilted platforms over the ocean, and the recreations that have been built there are incredible. They also all come from local areas...

One half of the recreated structures

We enjoyed lunch and walking (read: ice cream) time in a small town nearby called Meerburg, and then took the ferry across the lake to Konstanz to wander, shop (where it's much cheaper than in Tübingen), and have a delicious Turkish dinner before returning late (and exhausted) to our homes. We also made a brief sojourn to Switzerland, where Sinead and I had never been...

Excitement over being at the Swiss-German border

Switzerland and Bodensee from Meerburg

And for your highly intellectual enjoyment, the top of my take-away pizza box that may or may not intentionally depict George Clooney as a pajama-cap-clad pizza chef in front of a beautiful Italian landscape...