Truth be told, I had trouble finding my Christmas spirit this year. Normally I have no problem being the happiest, Christmasiest (I made up that word!?!) person around so this is new to me. The holidays were made for me - I love to entertain at our house and of course I love to go to parties, so I'm used to having a warm, fuzzy feeling in my soul during this time of year.
Germany is always beautifully decorated and brimming with Weihnacht (Christmas) cheer, we have plenty of good friends to celebrate with, we have a million things to be thankful for, and my husband is home which warms my heart in every way. So, for all intents and purposes, all of the ingredients of a good Christmas were there. It just seems as if something or someone was missing this year. My normal warm, fuzzy feeling was hiding somewhere and I wasn't able to find it. If you see it, please return it to me as soon as possible because it feels terrible not having it!
I do realize that lack of Christmas spirit isn't exactly the worst thing that could happen to a person in life, so I'll move on ;-) My outlook has already improved and I'm looking forward to a wonderful New Year's Eve celebration. We will be spending it in Nürnberg this year. We have hotel rooms booked, reservations for dinner at a highly recommended steakhouse (of course I'll be eating something that either flies or swims), and reservations at our favorite Irish pub with some good friends. I am so much more excited about our plans this year than I was last year. Our plans fell through at the 11th hour last year and that set off a chain of events that culminated with me flaming up like a Roman candle after being hit by a stray bottle rocket just after midnight. NOT this year, I promise you!!
On to the second part of this post...SNOW! I recently found out the meaning of snow. It apparently stands for S**t No One Wants. Ha! I knew it! We have more snow this year than we've had the whole time we've been in Germany. There's more than a foot on the ground and it just keeps coming. In the past years, it seems like the cities/towns cleaned the roads quickly any time it snowed and there really wasn't any problem. This year, however (I've heard rumors of budget cuts in the towns) they just aren't clearing the roads very often. It's been quite a lot of fun sliding all over in the car (that's sarcasm in case you were wondering).
Yesterday I made it home from work only to discover that the little bit of snow the city did plow was now piled up at the entrance to our street. My car with the supposed 'all season' tires decided that was too much snow and proceeded to get stuck. I called Rick at the same time two of our neighbors came out of their house to help. I told them in my best Deutsch that my husband was coming down the street to help. This apparently gave them the impression that I am a fluent German speaker and the older of the two men proceeded to yell directions in German while they tried to push my car. I made a futile attempt to explain that I could only speak a little German and he needed to speak slowly so I could understand. As this was taking place, I looked up to see Rick running down our street in his slippers (that are decidedly not meant for running through snow) and Jersey galloping along next to him to my rescue. The German man was still yelling his indecipherable instructions at the top of his lungs, so in my brain, the only logical thing I could do was get out of the car and tell Rick "you're driving"! Jersey and I then stood in the neighbor's driveway while his wife told me in German that they saw me having trouble through their living room window and that's why they were so quick to help. (As a side note, I understood everything she said because she wasn't frantically shouting it at the top of her lungs. See how that works?) As the men were pushing the car, Rick tried backing up across the main road to get a running start at the snow pile. Well, that didn't work, so now he was stuck cross-ways blocking both sides of the main road. That of course made traffic on both sides of the road come to a stand-still. Enter random motorist who had to stop in the middle of the road to avoid hitting our stuck car. He joins the push (begrudgingly of course) and Rick jumps out of the car and commands me to get back into the driver's seat. Jersey and I comply and Rick joins in the push. That's when the Little Maxima That Could decided to finally cooperate and start off down the road to our house. Needless to say, I wanted no part of driving the Maxima to work this morning, so Rick took it. I was happy as a lark (apparently larks are extremely happy) in our old 1991 BMW with the barely working heat and defrost this morning because it's 'all season' tires actually work.
If there is more of this in store for us this winter, we might be in some trouble So far, the only plan I have is to look online for a nice, gently used dog sled team that needs a good home for the winter. Do you think I'll be able to find one on eBay?
I will leave you with some photos of the beautiful, yet highly frustrating white stuff.
Happy New Year everyone!
Jersey might need some longer legs!
The Maxima buried in snow across from our front door
Our house
I don't think I would sit in the snow, but she doesn't seem to mind
Day dreaming about chasing snow bunnies...
The walking path behind our house
I almost lost my feet in the snow!
Standing at our front door looking to the right down our street
Our house is on the left
Looking down our street toward the main road
Oh my gosh - you were cracking me up with your car story!!! So glad you got unstuck even if it took half the town to do so. :) Miss you!
ReplyDeleteThanks Angela! I'm just happy that I can laugh about it now since it was a little stressful while it was happening ;-)
ReplyDeleteMiss you too!