Local: Rheingau Wine Festival

Today marks the last day of one of the biggest festivals in our city. Rheingau is an area of Germany around the Rhine river known for it's Riesling. I'm not a fan of Riesling because I think it's entirely too sweet, but considering we live in an area known for a particularly wine, it felt necessary to go to the fest.

When I try to describe German festivals to friends or relatives back in America, it's almost impossible. In America, a festival is generally more of a craft fair dedicated to selling random overpriced homemade trinkets in a park or maybe based around a parade. Food served at an American festival is mostly deep fried sweets of some kind that cost about 20 cents to make and are sold for closer to $5. In America, everything is catered towards families and festivals are usually overly "kid-friendly" in that they often center around some sort of entertainment for children, are completely alcohol-free and end by 7 pm. I've never heard of anyone between the ages of 12-40 being excited about going to a festival in America. And why would they? American festivals are boring.

In Germany, when a town is having a festival, it's typically positioned right in the downtown of the city and often requires closing down several main streets for days or weeks on end. Vendors will be out most of the day and pretty much all night. German festivals are almost always centered around food and drinking. Whole squares and streets will be filled with tables and surrounded by places to buy fresh made wurst, pasta, pizza and kettle cooked chips. In certain areas, you can sit and be served like a giant outdoor restaurant. There will usually be a stage with a band covering some American music with thick German accents. Children are welcome and free to play in the open grassy areas, but you won't always find much entertainment for them. Some festivals will have areas with fair rides, but not always. People go all out for these events, too. You'll usually see them dressed as if they are attending a wedding or church service while they're maneuvering through the huge crowds of people who turn up for the fest. When you show up in jeans and a t-shirt, everyone knows you're American.

I don't think Americans can wrap their heads around the concept of German festivals for a vast number of reasons. The main one being that this kind of event would probably be in some way illegal in America. People drinking and smoking in public around small children seems outrageous in the States. Closing businesses for what's deemed as a "party" is practically scandalous. One person would complain because it was too loud or not safe enough, and the whole event would be cancelled. Americans aren't taught to control themselves. They don't teach their children how to behave in what is deemed as adult situations. We cause this separation in having a family and enjoying yourself. I remember living near Savannah, Georgia in college and every year when St. Patrick's Day came around, Savannah's streets became flooded with drunk college students partying along the river to the point of throwing up or blacking out. There were areas of the city sectioned off as almost a "family friendly" zone. You could take your kids to one area of the city to have their faces painted and ride a little green train in a circle or you could go down to River Street and drunkenly throw up into a dyed green river (so long as you weren't double-fisting, because that's still illegal). There's no middle ground. Festivals, especially ones dedicated to a particular kind of alcohol, will never work in American culture, so we have to enjoy them in Europe while we can. As I've heard others here say, "Americans would take something wonderful and ruin it."

Aside from the wine fest, we ventured out even a little more by getting sushi. It seems ridiculous that we would consider that venturing out, but ordering food is always a terrifying experience for us. I've picked up on enough words to know when something is beef or pork and I know how to recognize if a dish is made with salmon or tuna rather than shellfish. That seemed reason enough to try ordering sushi! It wasn't a total disaster, but it didn't go very well either. We thought we were going to a place that a friend recommended which was more English friendly, but we were wrong. After lots of pointing and confusion, we got something that we didn't mean to order from a very sweet waitress who was trying her best to please us. So, we ate it and felt like idiots for not being able to communicate better. I've picked up a little bit of German, but I doubt I'll ever feel fully comfortable walking into a restaurant and ordering food.

In other news, being back to work has been great. In February, I'll be starting a program to become a certified lactation consultant. I wish I could be working full time rather than part-time, but anything helps at this point. I'm happy to be able to keep my skills up and continue to learn new things while also living abroad. We are definitely much luckier than most!

We get it.

I couldn't possibly think of a better title for this blog post.

Ever since we found out we'd be going to Germany, we've heard the same advice repeated again and again, "But you'll get to travel everywhere! You'll have plenty of opportunities, you have to ttrraavvell!"

Can I just take a moment to say: We get it. We're living in Europe. Berlin is closer to my current home than my college was to my parent's house. You could be stuck in Atlanta traffic longer than it takes to get to France from here. We have three years and we'll do plenty of traveling, so please stop reminding us that we HAVE to get out and travel the second we get off the plane. We're going to, it's just not as simple for us right now as people seem to believe.

I think people in the United States have a lot of misconceptions about traveling in Europe, particularly if they have never tried to do it as an adult who wasn't, you know, 19 and backpacking. Gas here is close to $10 a gallon on the economy. Train tickets can cost as much as flying across the United States depending on where and when you're trying to travel. How many times a year does the average American afford to fly cross country? Probably not too often. 

My point is, yes, everything is close, but that doesn't exactly mean traveling is cheap, it just means you don't have to go as far, but even the shortest trip is more expensive than the equivalent in America. And that brings us to our next issue- money. In the US, Greg and I were doing very well financially. We were dual income and living almost entirely off of Greg's basic housing allowance, giving us plenty of money to play around with. Since coming to Europe, our income has been reduced to less than a third of what it was 3 months ago. We're living on less than what grocery store clerks make in the EU. We're perfectly able to support ourselves and aren't hurting for money, but it does take some adjusting when your income suddenly reduces substantially. We're having to realistically accept the fact that there are little to no jobs out here for me. It really puts a huge damper on our plans for Greg to get out of the Army in 2016, as we may have very little savings at that point.

Speaking of the Army, did I mention Greg has to get approval for us to leave Germany? I found an awesome deal the other day for a 3 day trip to London and asked Greg if he would be interested in me "surprising" him with it. Turns out, I can't do that because he would have needed to request a pass to leave weeks ago. Bummer. Also, the Army is particularly enjoying making Greg's life miserable the next few months. He is being sent off to several different military bases for weeks on end soon for various training. It's hard to travel when you find out 2 days before that you're husband is going to be gone for the next 3 weeks.

We have ventured out to different festivals in the area and even took a train across the river the other day, but don't expect anything too exciting out of us any time soon. When we get settled and start saving money again, we'll start exploring further out of our comfort zone. Until then, we'll be at the fest drinking dunkles bier and erdbeerwein and walking home. Tschüs!

Dragon boat races on the Rhine last weekend