true adventures

This week has been full of all sorts of new adventures. First off I celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday with the family... well Sabine and the kids because Reimund was away for a couple of days. I made stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumkin pie. We had a couple of rotissery chicken in lou of turkey, enjoyed the jellied cranberry my mom sent over, and I settled for packaged gravy. Everything came out so good!!! The all seemed to like it too. I think the stuffing was the big winner wtih everyone. Infact, they said it was even better the next night when they had the left overs with Reimund. That was the first adventure, making all this from scratch trying to substitute as much german product as possible, haha.

The next big adventure was taking the car for a day trip! I think you are all aware of my struggles with ths stick shift, but I managed to take it to a town that was an hour away yesterday. I drove on the Autobahn there, and ended up going through the middle to downtown Stuttgart on the way back, because I followed the wrong signs. Anyhow, it was amazing and SO liberating. I definitely might take Sabine up on her offer to drive her car more on the weekends. It was oh so fun!

happy (birthday) travels

Last weekend was quite simply amazing. I went to Madrid, Spain to celebrate my birthday with Lindsay. I decided after she came to Oktoberfest that we needed to reunite sometime soon, and figured my birthday was the perfect occasion to splurge on a plane ticket. Not only did I get to see Lindsay and meet her friends, but the friends we made at Oktoberfest came for this weekend reunion as well, trekking all the way from London and the US. It was bound to be a great weekend.

I arrived on Friday night at about 10:30pm and Lindsay met me at the airport. We then made our way into the city and arrived at about 11:30ish… now for me this is a late start to the night, but to the Spaniards this is a normal night out. We met up with Matt and Pat and three of Lindsay’s friends before heading out to a couple of clubs. It was so much fun! It was great to meet all the new people and reunite with the old ones.

Saturday was not ideal weather, but Lindsay, Matt, Pat and I managed to get around and see a few of the major sites. Lindsay was an excellent tour guide and it was so great to be in a big city like that with someone who knows their way around. After seeing some of the sites, Lindsay and I headed to her house, so I could see what her Spanish suburban life is like. It is totally different from mine! Well all of her life is totally different. But it was really great to see where she lives and I was able to meet Gloria, her host mom, and Marc and Adrianna, the kids. That night we had an amazing traditional Spanish tapas dinner, and went to a super fun club in the city. I got to meet even some more people and, go figure, practice my German in Spain because there are a ton of German au pairs there, haha.

Sunday was a nice lazy day, not really even starting until the afternoon, but it was beautiful outside so we had to take advantage. We went to the big park in the city and walked around. There were a ton of people, families, musicians, food stands… everyone was just out enjoying the day. We had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before I had to head back to Germany…. It was a whirlwind tour of the city, but it was so worth it. Madrid is so different from Stuttgart and Germany in general. It’s very picturesque, and very much what I think of as European, so it was great to see it. I think more than even that was being able to see how Lindsay’s experience is there. I got to meet the people I had heard about and the experiences I had tried to picture. It is totally different than what I have going on here, not that one is better than the other, but just different….

don´t celebrate it before

My birthday this year was on a Wednesday. I have my German class on Tuesday and Thursday. I figured the class would be a great excuse to make an American cake with frosting etc. I opted to make the cake with the kids on Monday and bring it into class on Tuesday. Of course, I thought it would make a little more sense to bring it on Thursday, but Monday we had the time, I didn´t want to spend my birthday making my own cake, and there are more people on class on Tuesdays. Anyhow, we made the cake and Reimund came home and was said "Hey, what´s this?" I told him and he said it would have made more sense to bring the cake on Thursday. I explained why Tuesday was better, and while he accepted it, it still didn´t seem like a sufficient reason. I chalked that one up to Reimund liking things the way he likes them, but then I got the same reaction from my German teacher. I came walking up with the cake on Tuesday morning, and she said "Oh, I thought you were going to bring it on Thursday, after the actual day" Are you kidding me? I make cake for the whole class and they aren´t happy with the day I brought it? This was too much. But apparently Germans DO NOT celebrate the birthday in any way shape or form before the actual day. My teacher specifically told me she wouldn´t say happy birthday until Thursday after it actually happened. Really I wasn´t looking for anything other than to make an American cake... oh well, learned my lesson, from here on out you really don´t talk about or do anything for it before hand. whew!

pictures

I needed to change the way I am sharing pictures with everyone, because the whole Facebook thing is not working anymore. I am going to try Shutterfly for a while, but it takes a long time to load the photos, so there may not be as many. Just go to: emindeutschland.shutterfly.com and that one site will be updated whenever I add photos. So far I have only been able to add the picts from Prague and Vienna... Budapest might happen in a little while.

On a side note: It is full force fall turning into winter now. There´s constantly a chill in the air, and the leaves are beautiful golds and browns. We haven´t gotten any snow yet, but other parts of southern Germany have, so I guess it´s only a matter of time. This little California girl is holding out with my sweaters/fleeces/kneelength parka (many of which are made possible by the old job, haha) Everything else is going well. It took about a week to get back into the swing of things after the holidays, but I´m back on track and looking forward to what´s ahead. I made butternut squash soup over the weekend for all of us, it was soooo good, and the next adventure is Thanksgiving, yay!!!