Way overdue: Christmas, Silvester, General Frivolity

      I've been putting off updating this blog for a while now, basically since the thought of updating all my adoring fans on (gulp) nearly three weeks of my life seems a little daunting, but it's time for me to finally man the fill-in-the-blank up and get going. Farewell, procrastination. Which, by the way, doesn't go away once you're out of college. It just loses the cool name and you're lazy instead.

      So hey all! I meant to post at least a little hello before the Christmas madness hit, but let's face it, I was doing more exciting things (sorry). So before I get too distracted, Frohe Weihnachten! Guten Rutsch! Und ein schönes neues Jahr! 


      So, not that 2012 isn't cool and all (and let's face it, having spent 9 hours longer there than most of you, oh do I know it), but let's sliiiiiiide back into 2011 for the sake of some recapping. To be totally honest, I've no idea where I left off with my last blog (and no, I don't feel like going back and rereading it. Boring!), so my arbitrary starting point for this will-be-way-too-long entry is 2 1/7 weeks in the past to when Nate arrived for Christmas!


Pre-Christmas

      This all feels so far in the past I won't bore you with too much detail. (I mean, I could remember it all if I tried. Tried hard. Is it really worth it?)  Sparing too much gory detail, Nate flew in midday on Monday of the week before Christmas, and we tried our best to take full advantage of our before-Christmas time to do fun stuff! My family took off for their holiday in Ireland, so we had the house to ourselves for nearly the whole week. My family is so cool. The most impressive part is that they agreed to--nay, offered us--this situation before they'd even met either of us! Good thing we're so cool and trustworthy.

Happy, Christmas-y room! Ignore my creepy boyfriend.

     Our pre-Christmas plans basically revolved around a lot of eating, sightseeing, walking, and other typically touristy things. I'll spare you the disgustingly presh details of our anniversary by just saying 'twas lovely! And precious and nauseating and all those things no one else would really appreciate hearing about. But we did have a lovely dinner and got to spend the day tromping around in the snow, as the German weather gnomes kindly obliged by giving us a lovely, white, nearly-Winter Solstice.

    Speaking of snow, there's been some! Not on Christmas, sadly, but there were a couple of good days of it the week before, and a veritable snowstorm (remember, California girl) on New Year's Eve! None of it lasted too long, but there was enough to make Nate shovel the sidewalk. Hehehe.

Not very inviting-looking playground

Walking by woods on a snowy...morning?

     

      

      Before we jumped headfirst into Christmas celebrations, there was some Hanukkah celebrating to be had!  Lacking a real menorah, Nate handily crafted one out of tin foil, and we lit candles for at least four of the appropriate nights, complete with Hanukkah stories and history lessons (for me, obviously). We enhanced said holiday obversation with some homemade latkes as per Nate's mother's recipe! Sadly our eyes greatly exceeded the capacity of our stomachs, but being starving college students at heart, we managed to finish all of them. Cholesterol food baby = ow. 

SO MUCH OIL

These weren't actually burnt. My camera wanted to fool you.

Happy last night of Hanukkah!

     Other fun activities included Indian food consumption, a lot of church visiting, an evening at the opera seeing La Boheme, and even ice skating at Karlsplatz! I think we each fell once. Not bad for being a combined 20 years out of practice or something like that. And last but not least, lots and lots (and lots) of glühwein consumption. We wised up after a couple of nights and bought the premade bottles at the grocery store (with amaretto shots already included) and heated them up with our own additions of cloves, cinnamon sticks, raisins, and clementines. NOM.

Standing over the ice rink! Note my amazing 1 euro earmuffs!!

Blurry shot of the pit at the Bayerische Staatsoper.

 

Christmas 

      Wow. Here I thought I was doing well and I'm not even up to Christmas yet. Oy. Breathe, Laura. Breathe.  Here, look at this happy picture of the Christmas box my mother sent me!

Homemade chex "TV" mix, Funfetti and Ghiradelli mixes, ginger chews, Burt's Bees. There were socks and scarf too at one point. I absconded with them pre-photo.

      Our Christmas plans have been, since about last April, to head up North to Leipzig for Christmas to spend the big celebration with our good friend, Johann Sebastian Bach. Nate and I spent most of the evening of the 23rd packing up as much food (that being a lot of turkey sandwiches, apples, bananas, trail mix, oatmeal, and cold pasta. My mom should be proud) as we could get our hands on in anticipation of our 8 o'clock ride up to Leipzig with a fellow I'd contacted via the internet (not as sketchy as it sounds, I promise). Until, that is, I received a response email from our ride at about 10 PM, saying he'd been calling me all day and due to car trouble, wouldn't be making the trip on the morrow.  A frantic internet search discovered a train ticket that, thank goodness, is a magical multi-person anywhere-in-Germany-for-40-euros, so we swiftly purchased a train ticket and headed off to finish preparing for our trip. 

     The next morning we headed off to the main train station to catch our first train at about 10:45. Our total trip took three trains and about 6.5 hours, but we survived (barely)! We arrived safely in Leipzig and made it to our hostel by around 5 PM. 

Rough estimate of train route to Leipzig

      I hadn't really thought about the fact that this would be my first trip to the former DDR (East Germany). While it wasn't a phenomenal difference, it was definitely interesting. The wall fell in 1989, which seems to me like a long time ago (based probably only on the fact I don't remember it), but that was a mere 22 years ago. Really not that long. The building style is different, the attitude is slightly different. The apartment/suite we stayed in was a lot more reminiscent of Nate's apartment in Sofia than anything I'd seen in Munich. Granted, Munich is really in a class of its own as far as quality of German cities (#4 in worldwide quality of living survey!), but I think there were differences aside from that, too. 

      Back to the real world. Our hostel ended up being an apartment more than anything else: couches, kitchen, bathroom, stove. Very impressive, if a little sketchy. We had plans to head immediately to the first service at the Thomaskirche (Bach's former church!), but I foiled plans by erupting into tears at the prospect of not being home on Christmas/Eve, so we pushed our plans back by a few hours so my endlessly patient boyfriend could attempt to make me feel better. Without going into too much detail, though I'd figured it would be sad to not be home for Christmas, I in no way anticipated how sad it would be. I was something of a wreck. Fortunately I have a wonderful boyfriend who baked brownies and apples and even watched Love Actually with me and let me play him Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand Christmas songs.

      We finally headed out to catch the first service at 10 PM. Add a midnight chant service, a Christmas morning service, a Christmas evening service, and a second Christmas service to that mix, and we had a pretty ridiculously churchy weekend. Best services were the two morning ones, which each featured a cantata from Bach's Weihnachtsoratorio, with the world famous Thomanerchor boys' choir and the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra. I had to convince Nate not to lie on Bach's grave (on the altar) and kiss it. Just kidding. 

The Big Guy

Bach's stained glass self, between the windows of Jesus and Martin Luther. Heros of the Lutheran Church FTW.

Is that really appropriate? 

  

      The rest of our time in Leipzig was largely uneventful. We survived a 52 hour trip with only one restaurant meal (Christmas dinner, at my insistence. Which was Indian food, in case you were curious.), subsiding the rest of the time on coffee, oatmeal, and cold pasta. Leipzig as a city isn't that nice, but the main old city center is quite pretty, with lots of cool churches and squares and historical buildings. We stopped in for a time at the Zeitgeschichte Forum, a free museum dedicated to the history of the city (and Germany as a whole) after WWII. I was utterly fascinated by stories of the Berlin Wall and East Germany when I was a kid (weird, I know), so I dragged us in and we spent a warm couple of hours in there. At around 3 we headed to the train station and met our ride home, and four hours later or so, we were safely back in Munich.

Mendelssohn! And his women?

Goethe!

Supercool statue in front of the museum representing Germany in the 20th century. The left leg/right arm represent the years under Hitler (army boot on the foot, arm outstretched in a Heil Hitler) while the gaunt, barefoot right leg and red-banded left arm represent the years under Communism.

Don't ask. I have no idea. 

Mendelssohn's house! And Nate, pretending to be cool.

Augustusplatz, with the Paulinerkirche on the left and the Gewandhaus and Operahaus on either side of the plaza.

Gewandhaus window.

Cool Leipzig monument by night

Post-Christmas and New Year's!

      Thankfully we made it back to Munich in time to set out the big Santa presents for the kids to come back to (in background of first picture, waaaaaay above). Kilian got a pirate treasure island Playmobil set and Cliona got a Playmobil dollhouse. Most exciting. My family very sweetly got Nate and I tickets to a concert of the München Camerata, a string orchestra that played lots of beautiful Vivaldi and lots of other more obscure Baroque music, so we missed their return home, but saw them the next day. They took off again to spend New Year's in Alsace, so we once again had the place to ourselves! Though there was indeed a wonderful amount of relaxing (and watching How I Met Your Mother, if the truth be told), we pulled it together and headed over to Salzburg for the day on December 30th. 

      Though it was pretty darn cold and snowy most of the day, we managed to see a lot of cool sites, including accidentally sneaking into a museum exhibit in the Residenz palace (and thus saving 6 euros apiece. It seriously was an accident. We just went in the wrong way when trying to get out of the cold). A hike up to the fortress and along the hills proved incredibly beautiful, with amazing views of the snowy Alps surrounding us. We headed down later, numb-footedly, and briefly visited the Schloss Mirabell and gardens, then headed back to have a bite of food before catching our 9PM train back to Munich.

      New Year's Eve day dawned snowy and cold. It snowed wildly almost the entire morning, but then sadly dwindled to rain by about 5 PM. In our attempt to save money, we made a huge dinner and drank a lot of wine, then headed out to find some festivities at about 9 PM. Wandering around through various public displays found us in the Marienplatz come midnight, where masses of drunken people (most of whom seemed to be Italian, oddly enough) stood shooting off fireworks in all directions and tossing bottles every which way. In the pouring rain. It was a little cold but quite amusing, and we even lucked into a drink of champagne from some jolly fellows standing near us. We continued ringing in the New Year by conversing in a lot of random languages with people in the subway station, and eventually meeting up with a couple of people from a town about 3 hours away, who convinced us to accompany them to a club they'd heard about. While our walk there told about 45 minutes longer than it should have, it was good fun, and I got to practice my German most of the way there as well! Club adventure proved fairly short-lived, and by about 4:15 AM or so we found ourselves back on the U-Bahn, heading for home.

      I won't go into detail about what happened after that, but if you're my Facebook friend, you already know.

Only surviving picture of us on New Year's Eve. Who's the guy? No idea. A girl offered to take a photo of the two of us, and Nate, friendly fellow that he is, insisted the girl's boyfriend be in the picture too. 

      Anyway, Happy New Year, officially! I'll interject to mention that the German way of wishing someone a happy new year is to wish them a Guten Rutsch: literally, a good slide, that being from this year to the next! Cool? Methinks! We celebrated by sleeping in until like 2, heading weakly out to photograph some churches and cool buildings Nate had wanted to see for a while (apply to him for the pictures. Ahem. Ahem.), then spending a relaxing evening in watching too much TV and eating homemade lentils and rice. 

      The next day was, sadly, time to return Nate to the airport, so I headed dejectedly home alone, but rather more happily, my family had returned while we were at the airport, so I was greeted with soup and chocolate. Much better. 

      And here I am! Anne and Michael have the week off, so I have fairly little to do other than merely collect the kids from kindergarten, and unfortunately pretty much everyone I know is still home for Christmas, so this will be probably a rather quiet week. Which I could use, frankly. I will attempt to be better at updating my blog in the new year! 

     Best wishes to all of you for a happy and successful 2012!

And here, the closest thing I have to a picture of kids. 

Nate Comes to Visit! aka A Trip to Oktoberfest

I apologize, first and foremost, for my perfidy in not updating in over a week now. Best intentions aside, things....got in the way. Such is life. But here I am, back with more German tales! 

Most recent piece of news is that my boyfriend, Nate (who most of you know is currently living in Sofia, Bulgaria studying on a Fulbright scholarship), came over to visit for the weekend (that being Saturday through Tuesday). This being the first time we'd seen each other in just shy of two months, it was truly a fantastic weekend with lots of sightseeing and fatty food and tourist-y-ness and really just a lot of fun. We did, of course, drink plenty of (read: too much) beer, including a trip to Oktoberfest (that deserves its own paragraph), have a lot of good food, and made the most out of his three-day trip. A few highlights include:

Watching the surfers in the Eisbach of the Isar River in the English Gardens

Visiting the Chinesischer Turm biergarten in the English Gardens. (Though we got our beers elsewhere to avoid the incredible lines and jacked-up prices.)

Actually getting beers at one of my favorite cafes Augustiner am Dom, right next to the enormous Frauenkirche. 

A comment in regards to that last photo: German pretzels (Brezen) are some of the most delicious things known to man, and taste even better when dipped in senf (mustard), preferably spicy honey-mustard. Also, this cafe is wonderful for keeping prices down. Though the beer's €4 for half a liter, the side dishes are quite generous and cheap!

Also, German restaurants are super sneaky and trick you into eating their bread. Not at like a nice restaurant, per se, but relaxed outdoor cafes like this one put a basket of rolls and pretzels on the table, chuckle snidely as they watch unassuming Americans used to gratis bread chow mindlessly away, and then when it's time for the check, charge them per piece of bread consumed. It's not cool. Fortunately I was forewarned as to this concept, so our pretzel consumption was with the knowledge we'd be forced to pay. 

Paid a visit to the beautiful Frauenkirche in downtown Munich

More Frauenkirche

And of course, a traditionally tourist-y picture in front of the Rathaus (City Hall) in Marienplatz. (Sorry Nate, disgusting to put this up, I know.)

Oktoberfest

I contemplated making this its own entry, but that just seemed like too much work and I don't have that many stories, so bear with me on the length of this blog and take it as my apology for not writing for a week! If you'd rather hear some more mundane stories, skip down a few paragraphs.

Nate and I headed out to Oktoberfest on Sunday night, not really knowing what to expect. The trains have been full of people in Tracht (dirndls and lederhosen) since the fest began, but actually seeing the festival itself was something else. The subway takes you right to Theresienwiese, the huge meadow where the festival takes place. We arrived at about 8 PM, so it wasn't terribly packed, but there were definitely a LOT of people, mostly wearing aforementioned traditional clothing. It really is a lot like a huge state fair; there are rides everywhere, from bumper cars to swings to terrible swinging rolling dizzying rides that seem like a terrible idea at a festival dedicated to beer. There are haunted houses, magic shows, and food EVERYWHERE, from pretzels to rolls to grilled corn to huge hunks of meat. The highlights of the fest are the tents. These are where the magic really happens. 

For beer to be served at the fest, it has to be brewed within the Munich city limits, so there are only a few types of beer that can be found, and each tent only serves one kind. (These include Augustiner, Spaten, Paulaner, Hofbräu, Löwenbrau.) There are fourteen of the big tents at the fest, and each can hold about 5,000 people. To throw some Wikipedia statistics at you, just for the heck of it, last year at Oktoberfest there were 6.4 million visitors who consumed 7.1 million liters of beer, 522,000 chickens, 104 oxen, and leave behind about 1,000 tons of trash. Delicious. You can also only get a liter of beer (called a Maß), so no being a wimp! This liter costs about nine euro at any tent you'll go to. 

We had basically no foreknowledge of this going in, so it was all really confusing. Having been given the heads-up that none of the tents were full and which were supposedly the best, we headed first to the Hippodrome, which is by far the most popular. With no seats to be found and drunken people screaming everywhere, as well as a loud band playing traditional music and waiters and waitresses who'd smash into you with their platters and steins if you stopped moving, we left, bewildered, in search of something we understood. We walked around the Fischer Kroni tent, realizing upon entrance that the name comes from the fact that the only food they serve there is fish, and boy does it smell like it. We finally made it to the Armbrustschützenzelt, one of the huge Paulaner tents, and found a seat outdoors in the smoking section.  We got our hands on a beer apiece and sat awkwardly for awhile amidst hordes of--pardon my obscenity--utterly shitfaced people. We managed to befriend some Australians for a bit, then headed off in search of something else. At the Augustiner tent we got a liter between us, chatted with a German couple sitting with us, then were told the tent was closing and to get out. (The fest closes at 10 PM; seems ridiculous, but it also opens at 9 AM....) Our new friends told us they know of a tent that stayed open later, and we managed to get into the Käfer beer garden, apparently one of the most exclusive places at the fest. The place was utterly packed with people, but we found a table and drank...enough beer, certainly. A couple photos:

Inside the Augustiner tent

Nate with our German buddy at the Käfer tent

Augustiner tent. We're actually standing on a table post some song everyone stood up for. No idea what.

Finally left the fest at about 12:30. By the time we realized we were lost and took a cab to the train station, it was past the time when the subways run, so we took another cab to another train station to catch the bus. Unfortunately for us we missed the night bus by literally one minute, and those only come once an hour, so we shivered in the cold until 2:57, when we finally got a bus back to my house and stumbled home. Quite a night.

End Oktoberfest//

We also spent some time with the kids. Anne gave me as much time off as she could, so yesterday all we had to do was pick Kilian up from his playgroup, take him to tennis, then entertain Cliona for about an hour. Despite way too much walking, the day was beautiful and it was a peaceful afternoon. Kilian started out being very suspicious of the idea of Nate (he doesn't understand what a boyfriend is and generally thinks I'm being very selfish to only have one; he has lots, why don't I?), but warmed to him instantly and had a lot of fun talking about Porsches and Audis with him.

Nate headed back to Bulgaria at 5 PM this afternoon (and is in the air as I write, I hope), so naturally the rest of the day was a bit mopey. After quite some excitement with getting him headed off (to make a long story short, after he barely made it on the train to the airport we realized I was carrying one of his backpacks...a train station rendezvous and two missed shuttles later, he was finally on his way. Having not talked to him yet, I'm going to feel like a total idiot if he did end up missing his flight, so fingers crossed!) I'm awful at goodbyes in the best of situations, and though we've been doing a lot of goodbye-ing lately, it really never gets any easier for me. I'm eating a chocolate bar right now though, and that's helping.

Picked the kids up from school and talked them into going to the grocery store so we could make a fruit salad for dinner. Unfortunately for me, Cliona's (probably) getting her last molars in, so she screamed pretty much non-stop from the time I picked her up until the time she went to bed. She ate maybe a bite of her dinner and threw most of her fruit on the floor, howling the entire time. I was so not in the mood today. Fortunately her father came home, packed her sobbing self off to bed an hour early, and I could relax, which consists of watching Simsala Grimm with Kilian sitting on my lap (an animated kids fairy-tale show) and then sneaking off to my basement room to contemplate the rest of my week. 

Other stuff has been pretty low-key. Managed to set up my checking account Monday morning (with a rather hungover banking representative who typed everything wrong and said "Oops-a-la! Ugh...Montag" when she noticed). Plan for tomorrow is to get signed up for a language course, hopefully starting next week! 

I'll leave you with a photo of the kids from the park last week. They are incredible goofs, basically.