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...