Strasbourg, France and Other Forgotten Local Trips

When we first moved to Germany, I thought I would document every single thing we did and every single trip we took. Then, after visiting a lot of places, I've gotten pretty lazy.

We've decided to try to visit a new place at least every other weekend. We hope to continue that trend through summer as it will probably be our last full summer in Europe. So far, we have done a lot of traveling both near and far since May!

Several weekends ago, we took a trip to Strasbourg, France. Strasbourg is the home of the United Nations headquarters and is located in the Alsace region of France which has traded hands multiple times through history between France and Germany. The inhabitants of Alsace now speak both French and German with a very distinctive accent... or so I'm told.

Strasbourg was a beautiful city which is only 2 hours from our house. It's actually how I imagined most German cities would look before we moved here. The buildings seem to mimic the Bavarian architecture with their own extremely intricate markings which made them look much more artistic and, well, French. I actually told Greg that I think the most beautiful building I've ever seen was in Strasbourg. He didn't completely agree with that sentiment, but did comment that the architecture was more unique than in Germany.

We didn't do a whole lot in Strasbourg other than walk around and eat. The food was great and the town was beautiful, which was good enough for a day trip. It's also fun to be able to say that we can drive to France for a day from our house.

I love this picture of Greg.
(Obviously, this is not the day that it rained)

Twice in the past few months, we've driven up to Bozerwolf off-road park a little over an hour from our house to take the Jeep off-roading. Once, we camped out overnight for Jeep Topless day, which was unfortunately far too cold and rainy to actually take the top off of the Jeep. This was our first European camping experience. It is mostly illegal to go backpack camping here in Germany, so we have to plan out a campsite in advance.

Each weekend we've been in town, we've attending at least one festival in our local area. Wine festivals are just beginning in the Rhine-Main region and we are more than happy to attend. Our own local wine festival won't start until next month, so we have several more weekends to enjoy the festivities in our area. Germans definitely love to party outdoors in the summer!

Finally, we've also taken two bigger trips, one to hike in Bavaria at Konigsee, and another to Rome, Italy with a minor detour to the Naples area to visit the ruins of Pompeii. I'm already working on those posts, so bare with me as I slowly catch up on our adventures!

Backlog Blog

I promise that I have not forgotten about this blog. I have lots of day trips to update about but haven't had the time or energy to do it. This weekend we should have plenty of down time which should allow me to do some blogging! Until then, here is a cute picture of Augustus in a hoody.

Ireland: Dublin, Belfast and Giant's Causeway

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. For several months, we mostly hung out around our town and patiently waited for the weather to warm up again. We planted flowers, bought bikes, pulled out our summer clothing and did just about everything we could to encourage spring to arrive. It finally did, and then we went on vacation to visit a still cold and rainy Ireland.

It stopped raining about a minute before this picture

Fasching 2015: The Drunken Debauchery Continues

Last year, I posted a little bit about Fasching. To recap, Fasching is the German equivalent of Carnival or Mardi Gras. It starts the Friday before Ash Wednesday and lasts until the Tuesday before. (Fat Tuesday if you were raised Catholic). Western parts of Germany with heavy Catholic influence throw the biggest Fasching or Fasnacht parties. The word for the celebration depends on where in Germany you live. Some areas will still call it Carnival, particularly if they have heavy French influence.

The idea behind Fasching/Fasnacht/Carnival is that your sins are forgiven prior to the start of the Lent season. So, you have one last weekend to "live it up" before focusing on the Lent season. Since Catholic religion is hardly practiced any more in Germany, the party is less about the religious ideas behind Lent and more of another excuse to throw a nice party.

One of the main components of Fasching is dressing up like a "fool." Whereas Carnival in Venice brings about the image of extravagantly dressed masked party guests, you can pretty much dress however you like for Fasching. The most common costumes are head-to-toe animal outfits complete with hoods. This is probably partially because of the cold, wet weather in February in Germany. I wanted to dress up as a cow, but the store did not have my size costume. Instead, Greg convinced me to dress up as Princess Leia since he was going as Darth Vader.

We live within easy walking distance of our city's downtown area. However, before we could make it to the party, we had to walk through our very American neighborhood dressed like Star Wars characters. Can I just take this moment to comment: Americans do not know how to have fun. Seriously. We know how to ruin otherwise fun things.

None of the other Americans walking to the parade were dressed. We got a lot of crazy looks at first. Once we crossed from our American neighborhood into "real" Germany, all of the Germans were dressed up and partying. We actually got a lot of great comments from them. Small kids would yell "Leia" and wave. The girls at the beer stand scolded Greg for not dressing up as Hans Solo. We made a lot of random German friends for the day. They taught us the "correct" way to take shots from their little bottles of plum flavored vodka and how to sing along to polka music. By 9 pm, we were so exhausted we walked home and fell right to sleep. Our original plan was to attend the parade in the town across the river from us the following day, but we decided to stay home.

There are a few things that I will miss about Germany when we leave, and one of them is the sense of community here that just doesn't exist in the states. The idea of throwing a "town party" in the streets would never happen in America. Bonding with someone over a similar costume is something that would probably only occur at a college bar on Halloween. Germans have a reputation for being unfriendly, which can occasionally be true, but they are wonderfully inviting to all outsiders at social events. If you try your best to belong, they'll try their best to accept you. Most importantly, they know how to have fun while keeping it safe and acceptable for people of all ages.

Long Weekend: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

I apologize for the delay in updating about our most recent trip.