'Tis the Season: Christmas Markets in Germany 2014

Nuremberg Market

One major adjustment you have to make when you move to Germany is accepting the fact that winter is miserable and feels like it will never end. I usually love winter, but Germany will ruin it for you. The sun comes up around 9 AM and sets about 4 PM. You're entire day of sun light is spent at work, in an office. That is, of course, if the sun even does make it's appearance from behind the thick, deep clouds that are a permanent fixture in the sky from October to April. Every single day, it rains at least a little. Sometimes it mists the entire day or alternates soft, steady rain. Snow is even more rare than sunlight, even though the wet air makes it feel cold enough to snow. If you have seasonal depression or a vitamin D deficiency, Germany is not a place that you would enjoy living.

Luckily, Christmas markets help make the start of winter a little more bearable. I wrote about the markets last year as well. They get talked up a lot by Americans in Germany. I won't lie, they really aren't anything too special. Most of them sell the same things and most of what they sell is crafts or Christmas decorations. The only redeeming factor that makes you want to visit them all is the food and drinks. Gluhwein (mulled wine) is a staple of all of the markets and each one will have different regional varieties. Some are fruit flavored like apfel (apple) or kirsch (cherry). Most are just red or white. You can also get non-alcoholic varieties. Other than the Christmas decor and gluhwein, the markets are pretty similar to any other festival in Germany.

Christmas market in our town.

Long Weekend: Normandy, France

This summer marked the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. We thought it would be pretty cool to be able to see Normandy on the 70th anniversary, but that was not realistic. However, we definitely did want to visit while we lived in Germany, it was just a matter of planning the best possible trip.

Omaha Beach

Local: Iron & Wine

This past weekend, we went to Normandy, France to commemorate Veteran's Day. Before I get too caught up in our trip to Normandy, I wanted to take a moment to mention a great show we attend the day before heading to France.

Church turned into a stage.

I've been a big fan of Iron & Wine since freshman year of high school. When I saw he would be performing a show at a church in our area, I considered buying tickets but was turned off by the price. 60 euros to attend a Thursday night concert in a Gothic church did not sound appealing. By the time I decided to get tickets, they were sold out. At the last minute, I found someone selling a pair of tickets for 40 euros. That was much more in my price range.

We ended up walking most of the way to to show as it wasn't far from where we live. Some men stood outside selling beer and soda to take inside. The whole church was full of German hipsters, which I wasn't even aware existed until that day. There were very few Americans which surprised me.

It was an extremely intimate performance. He mispronounced the name of our city, which was cute. The majority of the show consisted of him asking people to call out songs they wanted to hear and him playing them on the spot. He had a few specifically chosen to play as a duet, but most of it was on the spot. The whole show was pretty impressive, included the choice of venue.

The next day, we packed up to leave for a pretty awesome trip to France!

Weekend Trip: Prague, Czech Republic

This weekend, we decided to take our first true road trip since we've moved to Germany. We've talked about going to Prague for the past year. In order to take a train to Prague, it would take about 9 hours rather than the 5 it takes to drive. After much debate, we decided to have our first road trip since May 2013.

Cruising the Mediterrenean Part 5: Dubrovnik, Croatia

After leaving Greece, we sailed along the Albanian coast before reaching the final destination of our cruise, Dubrovnik, Croatia. When I first booked the cruise, I sort of shrugged off Dubrovnik as being just another location like Bari that we didn't particularly care to visit. After a little bit of research, we quickly changed our minds.

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 4: Athens and Corfu, Greece

I apologize for the long delay since my last post. Work got extremely crazy and all of my downtime has been spent trying to catch up on things around the house. Anyway...
After an amazing time in Santorini, we headed towards Athens, Greece, to explore the capital city.

The Parthenon.

Cruising the Mediterrenean Part 3: Olympia and Santorini, Greece

We made 4 stops in Greece on our cruise of the eastern Mediterranean. Our first stop, Katakolon, was a short drive from Olympia, the home of the first Olympic games. The second stop, Santorini, was very possibly one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. It also was home to some of the most delicious food. Greg still claims he is going to take flight to Greece some time just to eat lunch and fly back home.

Town of Oia on the Island of Santorini

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 2: Venice, Bari and the Boat

Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge

Because we were supposed to arrive in Venice Friday evening, we were able to check directly into our hotel after arriving on Saturday. When I was planning the trip, I read online to find hotels that allowed easy access to the port. Luckily, the hotel  ended up booking was also directly across the canal from the train station.

Cruising the Mediterranean Part 1: Getting There

Greg and I have been talking about visiting Greece since before we arrived in Germany. Actually, most of the talking was me, with him nodding in agreement. There aren't many things that I feel I absolutely MUST do while in Germany, but visiting the Greek Islands was at the top of my list. When I was reviewing the cost of such a trip, I was a bit turned off by the idea. We don't have a years worth of salary to spend on a trip exploring Greece. Our best alternative was a cruise through the Greek islands to hit up the main destinations. We've never been on a cruise before and I always kind of viewed them as either for the elderly with disposable time and money to spend on a boat or for college kids looking for a cheap spring break trip. Cruises in Europe are a bit different and attract a much wider variety of people, but I'll get to that later.

Our boat tendered off the island of Santorini

Because of our reasoning for the cruise, itinerary was my number one priority. Since we've never been on a cruise, I didn't care much about which company we cruised with or which boat we were on so long as we got to visit a few key places. For me, the most important things to see were Santorini and Athens. I would have also liked to see Mykonos, but there were no ships sailing to all three locations. Also, Mykonos is a little easier to visit on its own according to our German friends, so we may choose to do that in the future if we want to visit Greece again. Another important thing for us was that Greg was adamantly against visiting a few certain countries which were on several itineraries we debated. Ultimately, only one ship met the criteria of what we wanted, the MSC Fantasia.

MSC is an Italian company that started out as a shipping company and now also does cruises. We got mixed reviews about them from people we've met in Germany. Some think they are awesome and a great deal, others feel that they lag behind on the luxuries that most American cruise goers have grown accustomed. Obviously, being our first trip, we wouldn't know the difference between one or the other. Most of the complaints we heard were things that didn't matter to us personally, like lack of activities for kids or serving too much Italian food. It wasn't enough to deter us, and I'm happy for that because we actually really enjoyed our trip and don't have any of the complaints that other expressed.

Our cruise originated in Venice, Italy and had a port of call every day. In order, we visited Bari, Italy, Katakolon (Olympia), Santorini, Athens and Corfu, all in Greece, with a final stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia before heading back to Venice.

My goal is to post about each of our destinations, but getting to Venice was actually an adventure of it's own. Our plan was to fly from Frankfurt to Venice on Friday evening after I got off work so that we would have all of Saturday to explore the city before setting sail on Sunday. Unfortunately, at around 11 pm on Thursday evening, I received an email informing us that our flight was cancelled due to Lufthansa pilots organizing a strike at Frankfurt airport. At around 1 AM Friday morning, we were re-booked on a flight at 8 AM Friday morning. Obviously, we couldn't make this, so we missed that flight. When Greg finally got through to customer service at 10 AM on Friday, our only option was to fly in very late on Saturday. After some debate, we decided to forgo the flight all together and were refunded the money. At this point, our best option was to hop on an 11 hour train ride to Venice.

Sun rise at the Munich hauptbahnhof

First time we've ever traveled by train with cabins.

With the stress over our travel plans and lack of sleep all of Thursday, I ended up being pretty sick on Friday and went home from work early to attempt to relax. We were able to plan out our train trip with the help of the Deutsch Bahn service desk at our local train station. I seriously cannot stress how awesome it is to be able to have someone else plan your whole trip for you and explain all of your route options. Also, it's cheaper to book this way than to use the internet. We save about 80 euros off of the price listed online.

We ended up leaving the hauptbahnhof around dinner time on Friday and arriving in Munich around 10 pm. Our train was full of disgruntled Germans complaining about the Lufthansa strike. I guess we weren't the only ones who were forced into using the train. We hadn't been to Munich before, so at least we're able to cross that off of our list for Germany. Honestly, it was nothing special. Looked pretty much like any other German city. We pretty much headed straight for the hotel to go to sleep.

At 7:30 AM on Saturday, our train left the Munich hauptbahnhof for Venice, Italy. It was a 6 hour train ride through the last bit of the Alps in Austria and northern Italy. I'm not going to lie, we actually really enjoyed this trip. I think the Lufthansa strike was a blessing in disguise because we got to see so much beautiful scenery that we would have missed otherwise. The mountains were incredibly gorgeous and we met some Californians in our cabin that were traveling Europe for the first time. Meeting Americans who are traveling in Europe after having lived here for a year is always an interesting experience. Taking the train was also much more relaxing for me than flying and helped me to get over the cold I had been acquiring, at least for the time being.

 Mountains in Austria from the train window

The 6 hours actually weren't as miserable as we had expected. I got some decent pictures of Austria and northern Italy. It really sparked our interest in taking a snowboarding trip to Austria this winter. We arrived in Venice around 1 PM refreshed and ready to explore the city.

View from the Venice train station.

My next installment will detail our time in Venice and aboard the ship! Unfortunately, Greg and I both managed to get some sort of upper respiratory infection last week, so we've been pretty sick the past few days. As time allows, I promise to update all about our trip for anyone interested!

Berlin: ICE Trains and Beer Festivals

Fair warning, even though this was a short trip to Berlin, this will probably be a very long and detailed post. On Monday, I found a flier at the gym advertising the Berlin International Beer Festival this weekend. Since we've never been to Berlin, we figured this may be the best time to make a trip over to the east. The next day, we booked train tickets and a hotel. So, this was definitely a more spontaneous trip than we usually take. Aside from my trip via ICE train to Nuremberg to visit Greg when he was at training, this was our first long distance train adventure. There were a lot of bumps in the road along the way, but we made it there and had a pretty awesome time on our mini vacation.

Backpacking in Baumholder Fraunberg

Before I post about Berlin, I have a few other things to cover. Greg and I have been slowly accumulating all of the supplies needed to take a nice long weekend backpacking trip. REI is probably happy to add us to their membership list. Two weekends ago, we decided to try out ort equipment more locally by taking a day trip backpacking through a forest reserve area near Baumholder. On a previous trip, we stumbled onto this place on accident when we parked along the trail head to adjust our GPS. A sign we parked next to held pamphlets explaining the highlights of the trail. I kept the pamphlet just in case we decided to come out that way again.

Day Trip: Worms, Germany

One of the cool things about living in Europe is getting to go do and see some of the less popular or less "touristy" things. I can almost promise that no one has ever said they wanted to go to Germany so that they could visit Worms, but it was only a short drive for us to see. Worms was the (arguable) birthplace of the Lutheran Church and is the location of the oldest remaining Jewish cemetery in Europe. Neither of these things probably attract all that many visitors, but I have to make a very honest confession. I love cemeteries. At one point when I was a kid, I begged my dad to take me to Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. While I can't remember much about the Louvre or Versailles from my trip to Paris in high school, I can still recall exactly what I was wearing when we went to Cimetière du Père Lachaise and how disappointed I was when we couldn't go into the catacombs. I've been to Bonaventure in Savannah multiple times for ghost tours when I lived nearby and was even excited to find out there was a private family cemetery behind my house in Augusta. I know, this whole paragraph comes across extremely creepy. Some people like the beach, other people like cemeteries... right?

Day Trip: Idar-Oberstein & Gemstone Mines

Last Saturday was a beautiful day to go Jeep-ing, so Greg planned for us to take a trip out to Idar-Oberstein. Greg frequently makes trips to another military base further west of us that requires him to drive through several small towns. That's how he discovered Idar-Oberstein, the capital of gemstone mining in Germany. It also happens to have the only gemstone mines in Europe open to the public. When we were dating, it became somewhat of a tradition of ours to collect gemstones from different places we visited, so it was fitting that we visit the Steinkaulenberg gemstone mine while living in Germany.

Did I mention there is a church built directly into the side of the mountain?

Day Trip: Triberg & the Black Forest

It's been a pretty busy week in our home! One of Greg's friends from growing up and his wife came to visit for the week while they were touring Germany. Last weekend was a "4 day", so it gave us all time to hang out before I went back to work. Greg took the week off to show his friends around for a few extra days.

Most of the day trips we took were to places Greg and I had already visited before. The only exception was Saturday, when we took the Jeep down to Triberg in the heart of the Black Forest.

Tulip Season in Holland: Amsterdam, Zaanse Schans, Voldendam and the Keukenhof gardens

Next on the blogging agenda is our trip to Holland for tulip season! Spring time is the peak of tourism for the Netherlands because of their world famous tulip fields and gardens. If you've scrolled through the travel boards of Pinterest, you've probably stumbled across at least one beautiful picture of a big wooden windmill surrounded by colorful fields striped with tulips as far as the eye can see. Of course, we had to be one of the millions worldwide who venture to Holland from mid-March to mid-May to check out the Keukenhof tulip gardens. We had a lot of fun, but I will say that it was a good reminder that when you're traveling, sometimes you have to accept that expectations do not equal reality.

Day Trip: Cochem and Reichsburg, Germany

In the past few weeks, it finally getting sunny and warm outside! This glimpse of spring time sadly did not last long before it started raining every single day. Of course, in a month it will be burning hot and neither our house nor work have air conditioning, so we have to enjoy the weather before it turns miserable again. Several weekends ago, we drove to Cochem with some friends of ours to get out of the house and explore somewhere new.

Bad Blogger

It's true, I've been pretty horrible at updating recently. Within the next week, I hope to finish 3 posts that I'm drafting about our recent adventures. I swear I didn't completely give up blogging, but we've just been extremely busy!

As a sneak peak of what is to come, here is a picture of a giant pig made out of flowers.

Does it creep you out? If not, it probably should. That thing is terrifying.

Day Trip: Idstein Spring Festival

For the past two weeks, it's been unusually sunny, warm and beautiful here. This weekend, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. On Saturday, we got caught in the middle of a hail storm, something I have never witnessed outside of Colorado. When I say "hail storm", I don't mean the typical strong thunderstorm with accompanying hail that was more common in the southeast, I mean that it went from being sunny and calm to 30 mph wind gusts with pea sized hail stones (no rain) within 5 minutes. We just so happened to be leaving the store with a car load of groceries when it started. I always assumed the reasoning for the hail storms in Colorado was due to the high altitude and inability for the hail to melt into rain before hitting the ground, but that wouldn't explain why it suddenly hailed here. Welcome to springtime in Germany, I guess. It was obviously the best weekend possible to take a trip to a Spring festival a few towns away.

Local: Fasching (or Fasnacht Day) 2014

I remember when I was very young living in Pennsylvania and "celebrating" Fasnacht Day. For my non-German-American readers, Fasnacht Day is better known as Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Carnival or, more simply put, the day before Lent begins. A fasnacht is like the German equivalent of a King's Cake, for lack of better comparison. It's a huge, fatty doughnut possibly made out of potatos. As a kid, I don't remember doing anything for Fasnacht Day other than acknowledging it. I'm not sure if I've ever actually had a fasnacht, but I would probably take a whoppie pie from an Amish bakery before a fasnacht anyway.

A few months ago, we were over at our friend's house flipping through a catalog about happenings in our area when I saw an advertisement for a Fasching cruise. I immediately asked if Fasching was the same as Fasnacht Day, and no one seemed to know what I was even talking about. Turns out, Fasching is basically the German Carnival and Faschnut Day is, of course, still the Tuesday before Lent right in the middle of the Fasching celebration.

Fasching is basically a giant, week long party here in Germany. Most of it involves dressing up in costumes (like Halloween), parades, heavy drinking and breaking glass all over the streets. Occasionally, you'll also see young men trying to persuade women to kiss them, but mostly it's just drunken craziness in costumes. Yet somehow, it's also relatively family friendly.

London Trip for Valentine's Day 2014

This past weekend, Greg and I visited London! No, it wasn't technically "for" Valentine's Day, per say, but this year Valentine's Day fell on the Friday before President's Day, meaning that it happened to be the first day of a 4 day weekend. Since we won't get much time to travel very far in the next few months, we decided to jump on this opportunity to take a trip we've been discussing since we landed in Germany: a trip to the UK!

I could probably write a post for each day we spent there, because we crammed so much stuff into 3 days. Instead, I'll try to limited it to the basics.

Good Things Come

I apologize for my lack of blogging recently! We have been rather busy,  but not with anything particularly interesting. However, we have a lot of fun and exciting changes coming our way soon, which we are thrilled to share with everyone!

New Years & New Age

New Years Eve is my favorite. I have no idea why. Personally, I've always been a bigger fan of holidays that allow you to spend time with friends rather than family, but I also have not lived near my family for holidays in a long time. New Years Eve is a much more enjoyable holiday to spend away from your family than say, Thanksgiving.

This New Years, however, was an extremely depressing reminder of how lonely we are in Germany. After 7 months, we still haven't made any friends that are in a similar position in their lives as ourselves. It's pretty hard to throw a New Years party when no one can attend because it wouldn't start until after their children's bedtime. We couldn't go out of town because of Greg's extra duty, so I ended up working New Years Eve and falling asleep shortly after coming home. Greg woke me up before midnight to see if I wanted to watch fireworks outside. There weren't any planned, organized fireworks here, just a bunch of people setting them off in their backyard. We drove around for a few minutes to see them. It was a strange feeling that our entertainment for the night was watching other people set off fireworks in their backyards. By the time we got back home, the whole city was covered in a cloud of dust and smoke from the fireworks. Augustus was terrified by what sounded like a firefight happening outside. Aside from that, it was a pretty average day for us.

My birthday also corresponds closely with New Years, so I am officially one year older! We didn't do much for my birthday, but I didn't care to either. I baked my usual Black Magic cake which was ruined by our POS military issued oven, but that's a totally different and uninteresting story. We went to Chipotle in Frankfurt, which sounds kind of sad considering that's basically a fast food restaurant, but we both love Chipotle and it's as close as we can get to eating something "American" here in Germany. I probably enjoyed that fast food more than anything else I've ever eaten on the economy.



I don't really do resolutions, but I am very excited that 2013 is over as it has not been a great year for us. We're ready to start 2014 with a little more optimism and I do have a few goals I'd like to complete. Mostly, I want to save more for retirement and finish paying off my car. I know, nothing big or exciting over here. Hopefully, we'll do some more traveling, but I wouldn't consider that a goal. We've been talking a lot lately about planning a trip to London in the first half of this year and I'd still really love to persuade Greg into a cruise this summer, but he's still not interested! Who doesn't want to spend a week on the Mediterranean drinking and eating?! My crazy husband, obviously. Hope everyone else had an awesome start to 2014!

2 Year Anniversary: Trier, Germany

Sunday was our 2 year wedding anniversary! I must say, the second year was much more stressful and trying than our first year. Actually, despite Greg being deployed for most of it, our first year of marriage was a cakewalk compared to this past year. Hopefully year three will be a little more quiet!