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!