Christmas, Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Well, Christmas came and went this year and was very quiet for us.  None of our gifts for each other or our packages from our families (with the exception of one-thank you Pam!) made it in time for Christmas morning.  I was sick on Christmas eve and Christmas day so it wasn't too exciting in the Brown house this year.  We did manage to have turkey, stuffing, and green bean casserole, so at least it tasted like Christmas.  I attempted a sweet potato pie that didn't bake too well in our lovely German oven.  We had chocolate covered raisins for desert, which was actually fine with us.  We're hoping that all of our packages will arrive this week and we'll be able to celebrate Christmas by the time New Year's Eve arrives. 

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





Switzerland and France for Thanksgiving!

Well, it has been a while since we got to take a vacation, so over the Thanksgiving break we decided to go to Switzerland and France with some good friends (Shea, Joel, Hannah, and Trent).

                Trent and Hannah on the left and Shea and Joel on the right

                                                                

We set out on Thursday morning to Zürich, Switzerland with the girls in one car and the boys in the other.  Of course it was freezing and snowing but that didn't stop us (the girls anyway) from chatting away and eating all of the yummy car snacks that we packed.  After a few GPS related mishaps we made it to our hotel just outside of the city of  Zürich.  We enjoyed a few glasses of wine in our hotel before making our way to the tram/streetcar stop that was about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.  Let me say that I am in love with any city that has some sort of organized, easy to use, public transportation and Zürich did not disappoint. 

It was extremely easy to navigate the city while our cars stayed in the hotel parking lot. We had a wonderful dinner (for Thanksgiving) at Restaurant Reithalle which used to be a horse stable.  The walls are still lined with the feeding troughs for the horses. I had an amazing gnocchi with pumpkin sauce which I will dream about for years to come.  Rick had a seafood linguine which ended up being a lot of work to pull the mussels out of their shells, but well worth the effort.  We ended our evening at a cozy bar that served us some nice cold Heineken while we watched the snow fall outside (wishing that we didn't have to go back out into it)!

The next day (Friday) we toured around Zürich and visited the Grossmünster Church.  Before we went into the church, we stopped out by the river to take some pictures and it really started to snow.  As we were standing there looking at the river and the beautiful old buildings in the middle of the blizzard, someone (I think it was Hannah) said that she felt like she was in a real life snow globe!  It couldn't have been more true. 

We climbed the church tower and took some pictures.  It was beautiful but very snowy, so I would love to do it again in the spring or summer.

That night, Hannah and Trent headed off to meet her college friend and her husband for dinner.  Rick and I along with Joel and Shea jumped on the train to a city called Winterthur to attend the Taste of Chaos concert.  It was 4 bands-Halestorm, Buckcherry (my favorite!), Papa Roach, and Disturbed.  We had a great time at the concert and we even got to meet Buckcherry and take a picture with the lead singer (Josh Todd)!   

On Saturday we shopped around Zürich at little bit more and then headed off to Strasbourg, France.  We took the snowy drive through the mountains fairly slow and ended up getting to Strasbourg after dark.  We were staying in a hostel that turned out to be not so easy to find, so it took us a lot of driving back and forth from Germany into France and back again before we actually found it.  Luckily we met an American guy at our hostel who was nice enough to show us the bus and tram to take us into the city.  We walked around the Christmas market and then found a wonderful Italian restaurant for dinner.  It was warm and they had plenty of wine, so we were happy!  The only unfortunate event involved Hannah's white coat.  It was redesigned with red wine spots thanks to a lovely French family that was completely oblivious to the fact that their toddler was running loose in the restaurant wreaking havoc. Ugh!

We made it back to the hostel that night and we were split in two rooms-the boys room and the girls room.  It really felt like we were at camp, so Hannah, Shea, and I had a good time giggling like we were teenagers before we fell asleep.  We could hear lots of snoring coming from the boys room across the hall, so we were very happy to have a room all to ourselves!

The next morning we went back into the city of Strasbourg to shop a little more in the Christmas markets and explore the city.  It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful city that we will be visiting again.  It's only about a 3 hour drive for us and I can't wait to see all that the city has to offer when I'm not frozen to the bone!  I am happy however that we did get to see it at Christmas time. I'm fairly sure that Christmas was invented in Europe.  I say this because it's so beautiful with the snow and the Christmas decorations are always so beautiful and tasteful-just like the pages of a story book.

To sum it all up, Zürich was incredibly amazing and also incredibly expensive. We won't be able to visit there very often, but I'm glad that we were able to experience it.  Strasbourg was a beautiful treasure of a city and we will be going back there for a visit as soon as Spring comes along!  We had such a wonderful time enjoying new places with good friends.  In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I will say that I am so very thankful for my family, friends, and the amazing opportunities that I've been given in this life...

Technology

The other night as we were sitting at home on the couch (in Germany, of course) watching some TV, my phone chimed telling me that I had a text message.  It was my brother Doug sending me a picture of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  A few minutes later another message came through and it was a picture from Doug of the Eiffel Tower. 

  We visited there a few years ago and it was one of my favorite vacations since we've been in Europe, so I was happy that my brother was getting to experience the wonder that is Paris.  We exchanged some messages about how beautiful the city is and how lucky he was to be settling into his dinner and drinks in the City of Light. 

The following weekend, as Rick and I sat with some friends in one of our favorite Irish pubs in Nürnberg, my phone chimed again.  This time it was Doug sending a picture from the Sting concert in Madrid, Spain.  I immediately expressed my envy (via text) and we had a fun exchange of messages involving some of the silly things that my brothers did with the lyrics of a few Sting/Police songs while we were growing up.  Even from a young age, I remember bonding with my brothers over music, so I had to text my brother Butch to let him know that he should be jealous of where Doug was at that moment.  Butch was traveling somewhere in the States and we exchanged some funny messages at the exact same time I was also texting with Doug in Madrid. I did all of this while sitting in a cozy pub in Germany on a random October Saturday night. Crazy, isn't it?

This past Saturday, as I sat in the same Irish pub in Nürnberg (yes, we spend a lot of time there-don't judge) my phone chimed again.  This time it was a picture from Butch.  It was my cousin Karen and her dog sitting by the lake in her small town in Texas. I responded with a picture of Rick and I holding up our pints of Guinness and we chatted via text about him coming to visit.  I told him to give my love to our cousin and her husband and enjoy relaxing by the lake.

I say all of this because if you sit back and think about it for just a minute, technology is amazing.  We use it so often that it is just second nature.  We don't even blink an eye when we get a picture from across the world on something so small that it fits into our pockets.  It keeps us connected with our family and friends in a split second even though we are all worlds away from each other. 

I do realize that things were just fine before we had all of this technology at our disposal.  I remember when I was a senior in college, I went to visit Doug and his wife Susan while they were living in Tokyo, Japan.  This was before I even had an e-mail address, let alone a 'smart phone', so those were not among our communication options.  I still have the actual letter that Susan wrote and mailed to me before my visit outlining everything I needed to know before and after I arrived in Japan.  I doubt that I would  have kept an e-mail after all of these years, and it's always so much fun to reminisce when I come across that letter.

However, since I do live halfway across the world from my family and most of my friends, I am very thankful for the technology that we have at our fingertips.  I can't imagine being so far away and not being able to communicate in the manner that I've become accustomed.  So thank you iPhone, e-mail, Facebook, Skype, and Blogspot for keeping us in touch with all of the people that mean the most to us.  I will continue to use all of you wonderful inventions until something new and improved comes along!

October Recap

It's already the first of November. Where has this year gone?

October was a pretty eventful month for us, so I decided to write a little recap:

We went to Oktoberfest for the third year in a row!

           2008                                                2009             

                  2010 

 

We celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary (wow)!  It sure doesn't feel like it's been 7 years. Rick would say that he's sure it's been at least 7 1/2 (he thinks he's funny)! 

One of my top five favorite bands, Kings of Leon, released a new album which makes me very happy!

I went to see the movie 'Eat Pray Love' with my girlfriends.  I read the book a few years ago and I really enjoyed it and the movie did it justice.  I always worry about that when I see a movie after I've read the book.

We celebrated our friend's birthday (and the fact that he's home from Iraq) with a fun night at the Irish pub in Nurnberg.

We got the WONDERFUL news that Rick will be working near home for the first time in a whole year!!  We also got the news that someone would like to rent our house in the States which feels like a huge weight has been lifted from our shoulders.

We ended the month by having a BBQ and lots of laughs with some good friends.

Speaking of laughs, Jersey gives us plenty of them, so I wanted to share some videos with you.

She LOVES our landlord's German clothes dryer.  When it's running she rubs herself all over it and we've seen it about a hundred times and it's always funny. We call it 'dog nip' which is the equivalent to cat nip in our book!

                                                              
She also loves to play with Rick and she yells at him every night until he plays with her.  It looks like this.  Make sure you have your sound on!

Let's hope that November is as much fun as October has been!

Reflections

As I sat in my office at work today, looking out at a cold blustery day, I couldn't believe that it's the beginning of our fifth winter in Germany.  Here's the view from my office window:

This led me to think about what a crazy four (+) years it's been...
Since we've been here, we have been through so many things that I never could have imagined before we came.  Here's a sampling of some of the crazier things:

1.  Surviving with only one car for more than a year.  Try doing that for more than one week in the States!
2.  Walking three+ miles through the middle of town carrying a toilet seat and riding my bike in the freezing rain to four different grocery stores just to find celery! (See #1)
3.  Having my hair catch on fire/my scalp and hand burnt by a stray bottle rocket.  For some reason New Year's Eve in the town square feels more like you are somewhere on the Gaza Strip instead of a small farm town in Germany.
4.  Smelling enough smelly people to last a lifetime and realizing that there is no such thing as 'personal space' when you are in line at a German grocery store.
5.  Driving 15 miles in a blinding snow storm at 2:00 am.  Keep in mind that I might have been born in Pennsylvania, but I learned to drive in Florida! Now I know why there are poles with reflectors lining both sides of the road.
6.  Seeing, all in one day, in Amsterdam: The Anne Frank House (which was such a moving experience), windows full of legal prostitutes, and countless "coffee shops" where you can legally buy pot in any way, shape, or form that you would like.  Talk about a city of contrasts!

The crazy things then led me to think about some of the absolutely wonderful things that we've been able to experience since living here:

1.  Seeing the snow capped Bavarian Alps and discovering that Rick and I both could live our whole lives without ever going on another gondola ride up a mountain.
2.  Taking Jersey on the train, into bars and restaurants, and walking her anywhere we would like to go without a leash.
3.  Standing in front of the Eiffel Tower with my husband's arm around me and never wanting to leave.
4.  Riding on the top of an open air tour bus down the Champs-Élysées in Paris singing the Champs-Élysées song that we learned in high school French class.  (Props to Mrs. Hoctor for that one).
5.  Climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa with Rick and laughing the whole way because it really does lean!
6.  Experiencing Oktoberfest 3 times (and counting).
7.  Driving as fast as you can or want on the Autobahn.
8.  Not getting even one call from a telemarketer in the last four years.
9.  Meeting such an eclectic mix of people and making life-long friendships that we never would have been exposed to in the States.
10.  Traveling all over Europe and discovering that I have a favorite city in just about every country.
11.  Experiencing all that the life and culture of Europe has to offer.  It has opened my eyes in such a way that I am very humbled and grateful that we've been given this opportunity of a lifetime.

I'm just happy that my list of good things is longer than the list of crazy things!

I'm giving this a try!

So, I've decided to create a blog.  I've avoided it for quite some time now and I'm not sure why.  If you know me, then you know it's not as if I don't have anything to say.  In a way I'm kicking myself that I haven't started this much sooner.  I've lived abroad for four years now so that has given me an endless supply of interesting things to write about.

I've decided to call my blog Sláinte.  It's pronounced 'slawn-cha' and it's Gaelic for cheers.  It's used as a drinking toast in Ireland and it literally translates to the word health.  In the years that I've lived in Germany I've come to discover many words for cheers (prost, salute, cin cin, jamas) but Sláinte somehow stands out to me.  I think it might have something to do with my love for all things Irish (including the beer), but I'm not exactly sure about that! 

We'll see what this blog brings.  I'm thinking that it will be an random mix of things that happen in everyday life while living abroad and the crazy thoughts that run through my mind at (what seems like) a mile a minute.  Maybe I can capture all of that and I'm hoping that it will at the very least be an entertaining read.

Enjoy!
~S