Christmas Abroad

Merry Christmas Everyone!  Don't know how many people that read this, but to those of you that do, I wish you a very Happy Holiday and safe New Year. 

This is my second Christmas in Germany and I've been reflecting on the differences and similarities between this year and last.  So here are a few things I have come up with.

Similarities:  Just me and David at home; way too quiet; good food (added one new recipe that I found around Thanksgiving); talked to the family on Skype to see how they liked their presents and tell them how much I liked mine; missed being at home like crazy; kept wondering what the family was doing right then; made orange rolls for breakfast (it's tradition).

Differences: I was too lazy to put up my Christmas tree this year; we had a very white Christmas; David and I opened all our presents early so I felt kind of cheated on Christmas morning.

Christmas is my favorite holiday and I know that if I would get into the spirit a bit more it would help me get through the holiday less depressed.  But then, when I start to think about getting into the spirit I remember that my family is back home and I am going to be here for yet another quiet and mundane day. David tries really hard to make it awesome for me, and does a really good job, but it's just not the same.  Because my mom spoiled us as kids I'm used to HUUUUUUGE piles of presents to open then a marathon shower and a session of trying on all our new clothes to see what we would wear to Granny's that day. Then of course going to Granny's and being eveloped by our loud, crazy wonderful family.  When you're used to the decibels of noise on Christmas that I am, having a quiet lazy day just seems wrong. 

Anyway, I hope next year I'll be a little more Ho-Ho-Hoey because we'll only have one more Christmas left over here.   You think my parents would want to fly out here for the holidays next year? ;)

Romeo, Romeo, Wherefor art thou Romeo?

I've been on a pretty decent reading kick recently and my latest victim (so to speak) was Juliet by Anne Fortier.  It's set in modern day with Julie Jacobs discovering after her great aunt's death that she's a decendant of the Juliet on which Shakespeare based his infamous play.  Now, if you're like me, you're kind of thinking, "Ok, it's going to be some sappy love story about how she learns about the 'real' Romeo and Juliet in Italy and then meets her own Romeo." And to an extent, you are correct.  After her aunt's death Julie learns her name is really Giulietta Tolomei, the same as her ancestor credited in being the famous Juliet, and she travels to Siena, Italy to search for treasure and discover her past.

Upon arrival in Siena Julie learns that instead of searching for a family heirloom or treasure that she's picking up where her mother left off in trying to break the curse that was beset on the families of the lovers.  Not surprising, all the families involved in the original story are still around and, while they aren't outright killing each other like their predecessors, there is still traditional and long standing hostility.  The interesting thing is that in the "original" story portrayed in Fortier's rendition  there were three families involved, not just two.  Giulietta was a member of the Tolomei family sent to live with her uncle in Siena after her family was murdered at their estate while she was at a local church for confession.  The Salimbeni family is the other great family in Siena at the time and the head of its household is credited with the murder of Giulietta's family, although he is never formally accused or tried because he has the whole town under his thumb.  Salimbeni decides that he's had enough of his current wife and needs something younger and with more spirit; what better choice than the daughter of the man he just had murdered? But of course, Romeo has already been on the scene and fallen in love with Juliet and they've been married in secret.  Now here's where the third family crops up.  Romeo is neither a Salimbeni nor a Tolomei, he's a Marescotti; a well respected family in Siena for their generosity and peacefulness.  They do not engage in the debauchery and low ball tactics on which the other two families seem to thrive.

As tangled and complicated as most Italian tragedies (and family trees) tend to be, the way Fortier portrayed the original story was quite captivating.  It's like a series I read based on the King Arthur legend written by Jack White that basically stripped away all the mysticism and hype and boiled it down to a historical possibility.  Fortier did the same thing with Romeo and Juliet.  She placed the story in a realistic context that both made sense and kept it's romanticism intact.  It was still as tragic as the story we're all familiar with if not more so because of the inherently dangerous nature of the time period.  It was kind of like the feeling I got when I watched "Titanic" back in high school; you know how the story ends but you still can't help but be pulled in by the story anyway.

It's a fun, engaging read that's not too heavy handed or mind bending. At times Fortier can get too verbose and overly effusive with her writing but given the subject matter I kind of think it was almost requisite.  Since I'm not a Shakespeare purist I was able to look at this somewhat objectively, I believe, and see it for the fun and modern twist on the story it was meant to be.  Besides, since Shakespeare really wasn't the first to write about a doomed love affair, why not give the real victims their time in the lime light?

LegoLand is Awesome

Over the Columbus Day 3-day weekend David and I decided to go to LegoLand.  It's about a 3 hour drive from our house, mostly on the Autobahn so it's not too bad.  It would definitely be better to go and stay the night rather than trying to do it all in one day.  We wanted to stay in the LegoLand Hotel at the park but they were booked so we ended up staying at a hotel that was about 2 miles away.  Not as exciting but it was close and fairly cheap so we went with it :)

 

I didn't get any pictures of the parking lot but I should have for one reason: They have it down to a science! I've have never seen a more organized amusement park parking lot in my life.  I don't know about everyone else but I dread parking at big events because it's dog-eat-dog when it comes to finding a spot and then leaving the event.  Here they had people directing traffic, all the lanes are one way and there's only one way to the exit and it's one way as well.  Our first day at the park we left around closing and we were still out of the parking lot in 15 minutes.  I was amazed.  Anyway, I know my telling you about it doesn't do it justice, you may have to have been there, but I'm telling you it was pretty amazing.

Now on to the inside of the park!

When you first walk in there is MiniLand.  It's a series of small set ups built entirely out of Legos modeled after real European cities.  Below is Mini Amsterdam.  It was just amazing! They had Berlin, Frankfurt, Venice, Lucernce and Neuschwanstein Castle. I admit, that when we first decided to go to LegoLand I was a bit wary.  It seemed mostly for kids and that there wouldn't be a lot to entertain childless adults.  I was wrong.  Looking at all these models of cities built entirely out of Lego was amazing!  And the detail they put into these things was just amazing.  The bus down in the bottom corner by the windmill actually moved, they had working lights and other moving parts, it was just mind-blowing.



MiniLand Amsterdam



In the big soccer stadium they even had little nekkid Lego dudes in the shower.  How cute is that??
 

Dave and the Frankfurt Lego skyline

To kind of give you some idea of scale, this is David in front of the Frankfurt skyline.  Of course the skyscrapers are probably about as tall as me so I could walk through the display feeling like Godzilla! Mwah ah ah . . . . oh well.

These were the signs for the bathrooms which I thought were just too cute.  The distressed looks on their faces and the "Pee Pee Dance" poses just made me smile.

Germans are very environmentally aware.  Recycling is required by law throughout the entire country and there are signs everywhere on base reminding us to shut off all the lights when we leave the house.  The hotel we stayed at took it a little farther.  In order to turn the lights on in our room we had to put this card into this card reader.  It completed the electric circuit for the room allowing us to turn the lights on when we were inside.  Since you have to take your key with you when you leave, you have to take it out of the card reader, thus breaking the circuit and preventing you from leaving any lights on when you leave.  I think it's rather ingenious and that more hotels should get into doing something like this.  Plus, like my friend Janessa pointed out, I know my Dad would have loved something like this when we were home. 

Too bad they don't sell something like this for Father's Day . . . they would be the most popular present EVER!

Anyway, so that was the basics of our trip to LegoLand.  David now wants to hit up the ones in Denmark and the UK before we leave and he's got plans to make a week out of Comic-Con and LegoLand California one year.  That outghta be an interesting trip :)

Highlights from Paris - Day 1

A few months ago I spent two days in Paris with my husband and my parents and I had a wonderful time. For about a week before we got there I kept singing to myself, "I'm going to Paris, I'm going to Paris" like some huge weirdo. I was insanely giddy about this prospect up until we actually got off the train in Paris. It was almost like a dream - I couldn't believe that a small town country bumpkin like me could ever get to say I went to Paris. But there we were.

Our first stop was the Notre Dame cathedral. Being that I'm a huge Disney freak I wanted to run into the church yelling, "Santuary!! Sanctuary!!". Thankfully I have more tact and decorum than that and I decided it would be best leaving that stunt alone. We wandered around the inside and I marveled at all the statues, tombs and other monuments they had in the church. As beautiful as this church is, I must say the Cathedral at Cologne has it beat in the amount of awe it inspires. The Cologne Cathedral is just enormous and imposing while Notre Dame, not being tiny cathedral by any means, seemed to give off more of a serene feeling with it's architecture.

There was a beautiful park on the side of the cathedral that borders the Seine River. People were sitting on the benches and enjoying the warm weather. It was an absolutely gorgeous day in Paris. We left Germany in the rain and came to warm and sunshine - ahhhhh. We at lunch across the river from Notre Dame at this cozy little restaurant with outdoor dining. Turns out most every cafe, patiserrie and restaurant offer sidewalk seating in Paris. It was great.

Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower. Not to sound ignorant or anything but that thing is huuuuuuuuuuuge! Pictures NEVER do architecture justice in my opinion so it was just kind of crazy to be standing underneath the Eiffel Tower and looking all the way up. The area underneath the tower is enormous. It seemed like you could almost fit 2 football fields underneath it and still have plenty of room. But I'm horrible at my spatial relations sometimes so I could be way off about that, but the point is there is alot of room there. We all got tickets to the very top of the tower and started heading up. They take you in an elevator up to the 2nd floor (if you're feeling frisky you can climb the stairs) and then you have to transfer to second elevator to get to the top. I made it to the top but as soon as I got up there I went right back down . . . I couldn't handle it. The older I get the more afraid of heights I am and I swore I could feel the top of the tower moving. If you've ever been in the Space Needle you know the feeling. But now I can say that I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Woohoo!

We utilized city transportation to get around everywhere which was nice because we were right next to a subway station. I am an overplanner when it comes to stuff like this - I hate not knowing how to get somewhere so when I planned the trip I made sure our hotel was down the street from the train station where we came in which also had metro lines. The Paris transit coordinators had a website that you can plug in where you are leaving from and where you are going to and it will direct you to the nearest station, tell you which train you need to be on and which direction it's going (they only post the end destination on the train reader boards) and any connections you need to mak. It was great. I also downloaded the same app for my iPhone in case we deviated off schedule or course. Yeah, I'm prepared like that.

Anyway, we caught a metro train during rush hour and after that my Mom had said she'd had enough fun. It was crowded and hot and her claustrophobia was getting the better of her. So we got off the train and walked to a restaurant that was just outside our hotel. We sat there and had drinks and people watched before we decided to go ahead and have dinner there. It was a cozy little restaurant with Gnome Decor all over the place. I loved it. Poor Dave kept trying to get a Chocolate Mojito and never did get one, the waiter never quite understood what he wanted. 

After we all retired to our rooms for a bit because it had been a long day. We'd been up at 5 to catch our train and had been wandering the streets of Paris since we'd arrived. There was talk of going back to see the Eiffel Tower at night but none of us really wanted to put the effort into going back. After an hour or so David and I went and got Dad and we took a walk around the block to get some fresh air. Dad was really interested in doing an open air bus tour he'd seen all around the city and we found they had a stop close to our hotel so we decided that was our plan of action for the next day. With the game plan set it was off to bed!

Just So We're Clear . . .

A Milano is not a cookie . . . it is a divinity unto itself.  Its name shall not be sullied with that of the plebeian pecan sandie or the bourgeois biscuit.  No, my dear fellow, a Milano is so much more than a mere cookie I daren't even speak the words "Chocolate Chip" in its presence.  The pale comparison that a regular cookie provides only enhances the Milano's status of  keep-your-hands-off-my-cookie-or-I'll-stab-you.


That is all.




ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY MILANO!

I Am Pretty Damn Lucky

We have a long weekend coming up next month thanks to Columbus Day and David and I are trying to decide where we want to go.  Now that I'm working we have to kind of work in our trips when we can because I am not as readily availabe as I once was.  That is the only downside to work.  We want to go to all these places and we have to work it around my stupid schedule and the amount of leave I can take.

Me on the 2nd level of the Eiffel Tour

In going over my options, though, I have come to realize that I am one lucky girl.  I can say that I've been to Paris, that I've been to where they make the world's best champagne and that I have been in a village that's made me feel like I was 500 years in the past.  Our options for the long weekend are numerous and plentiful.  It's just a matter of figuring out how long we either want to drive or ride the train.  With trains we can go farther faster, which means we can leave the country.  (We don't have our International Drivers Lincens so we can only drive in Germany.  I've heard horror stories about driving outside of here, especially in France.) 


Quaint little house in Rothenburg ob der Tauber

I've been grousing a little because I want to go to London, Dublin, Ireland, Denmark, Spain and on and on and on.  David insists that we are going to Rome at some point before we leave because he wants to show me around.  There are a bazillion places I want to go but I'll never have the chance while I'm over here.  There isn't enough time and I didn't think I would be this sad about it.  And it's silly, really, considering we still have two years left here but I want to come back saying, "Yes. I did all those things and I've seen all those places."  I don't want to regret not seeing the Colloseum or Piccadilly Circus but if I don't make it there this go around, I am still young, David retires early and we can spend our time travelling. 



Don't you just expect the pictures to move like the do in Harry Potter? :-)



We won't travel through time, we'll just spend our later years traversing the globe. (Ugh) It's sad how much being married to David has made my mind drift off into nerdish areas where previously it wouldn't have gone.  Oh well.  One more reason to make him spend his retirment check on hauling my ass around Europe again.  I like it!

Are We Spoiled?

Late last week I experienced something I don't want to ever experience again . . . 4 days without any hot water. The heat in our home isn't run off electricity.  Like many homes in Europe ours is still heated by oil.  Stinky, expensive home heating oil.  This oil also runs the water heater.  Wednesday of last week David comes up to me and says, "I think something is wrong with the temperature control in my shower.  I couldn't really get any hot water, it was only warm-ish." I was a bit concerned but not really because we have 2 showers and if need be he could use mine until we figured out what was going on with his.  Then I go to take my shower and I can only get slightly warm-ish water. 

 Uh-oh. 

So we check all the other faucets and no hot water out of any of them. 

Crap. 

We couldn't do anything about it right then because we both had to get ready for work and leave the house so we decided to call for oil on Thursday morning.  So I got up the next morning and immediately called Franz, our local heating oil guy.  He said he couldn't come out until MONDAY.  Not acceptable.  I asked him if he could come out any sooner.  He asked, "Are you out?" What I should have said was, "Yes we are.  Is there anyway you could come out this afternoon?" Instead, I didn't want to appear to be a stupid American who isn't used to buying heating oil so I said, "No, but almost." He graciously agreed to come out on Saturday morning. Franz probably saw that we were out when he got here anyway because he went and checked the level on the tank and noticed that we had shut off the heating unit so the pump wouldn't burn out.  Oh well, at least he didn't say anything about the oil level or the pump being switched off.  The ironic thing is that I was going to call him that week for oil anyway so that we'd have enough for the winter.  We were kind of putting it off because it's very expensive and we wanted to wait until I started getting my paychecks so we could afford the oil.  I guess we just didn't call soon enough.

Even though Franz came out early Saturday morning I didn't get my hot shower until the next day. I had to wait 2 hours after he left before I could even turn the pump on again and then let it run a good hour and half before the motor would kick on and start heating things up.  I had to go to the annual PMEL pig roast that afternoon so I didn't have time to stay and wait for hot water.  So I took another quickie, yet invigorating, cold shower and left to go up to the campsite.  First thing I did when I got home, though, was test all the faucets and get excited that we had hot water again.  I had thought about taking a shower that night just so I could have one with hot water but I decided not to be wasteful because I really didn't need it, I wasn't smelly or feeling scuzzy.

So in answer to my initial question, yes I do think we're spoiled.  We come to rely on all of these modern conveniences for the running of our daily lives and if something as simple as hot water isn't working, we flip out.  Because goodness knows you can't do laundry, wash dishes or clean your house without hot water.  And the sad part is I would have been (somewhat and begrudgingly) willing to put a huge pot of water over a fire to boil. But the problem is that since we have all these modern machines and other conveniences there's no place to build a fire to do such a thing.  I'm sure my neighbors would have objected profusely if I had started a fire in the backyard.   I guess it just makes me grateful that I'm living in a time of modern technology where I can have hot water in an instant instead of waiting 4 hours or more for it to get warm so I can do all my chores for the day.  I sincerely respect the people who, up until the last 100 years or so, had to deal with that kind of work every day.  I am also so very glad I am not one of them. :)

I love hot showers.