A Weiss/Steffens Family Christmas!

This year Noah and I hosted our first family holiday event in Germany (we used to host Thanksgiving in Phoenix, but the last one was over 2 years ago).  We figured there is no point starting small – we invited our family from both sides!  My parents and Noah’s brother/sister-in-law all flew in from Texas, and Noah’s mother flew in from San Francisco.  We had a fun-filled 2 weeks planned for them.  And since we saw so much and did so much, Noah and I decided that the visit deserves 3 individual blogs.  I was tasked with writing the first blog which takes us up to Christmas Day. 

My artsy photograph of our Christmas tree using the bokeh technique

The first to arrive were my folks – landing Thursday the 19^th.  Since they always suffer badly from jet lag, they were off for their naps right after I ate lunch (they were full from their ‘cheese and snot sandwiches’ on the plane – straight quote from Gary).  While they were sleeping, I prepared the Steffens’ family traditional Christmas cookie dough.  Once they returned fresh faced (but still jet lagged), I enlisted their help to roll and cut and decorate the cookies.  This is the first time Gary has had a hand in helping, and his Christmas pick-axe was just lovely.  Too bad he ate it before we had a chance for a photo.  Unfortunately they would have to wait until the next day to see Noah, as he was off at his work’s Christmas party and didn’t come home until after 11pm.  Way too late for 2 oldies who are still on Texas time.

Noah left early the next morning to meet his mother at the airport.  An hour or so after her plane landed, I received a frantic call from Noah saying he must have lost his mother (before the trip even started!) – everyone else from her plane already made their way out of security and he had seen no sign of Margie!  I reminded him that I had the same freak-out a few weeks ago with our last visitors, and it turned out they were delayed from lost luggage.  30 minutes later Noah updated me that it wasn’t lost luggage – just damaged luggage – and his mom was finally out of security.  One new suitcase and a few hours later they were finally on their way to the apartment. 

Since our last two guests (Seth and Marty) were set to arrive later that evening, we took the opportunity to do some grocery shopping.  After determining that the cost of a turkey at Galeria Kaufhof was just ridiculous (~10 EUR per pound!), we all piled into our new Honda Jazz to search for a turkey at the Pasing Arcaden (mall).  This isn’t as crazy as it sounds – there are actually 2 grocery stores attached to the shopping mall.  And of course we managed to park in the underground lot on the complete opposite side of where the Hit grocery store is located.  That’s ok – it provided some good exercise for those world travelers.  After locating a much more reasonably priced frozen turkey and some other essentials, we begin the trek back through the entire mall to the car.  Only Sandy wanted to get some photos of the lovely Christmas décor in the mall.  As I waited behind with her so she could snap a few photos, I see a woman and her dog walk by.  The dog proceeds to take a giant, runny dump just 2 feet from us.  And the poor woman had nothing to clean it up with!  I felt so bad for her – luckily I haven’t had that happen in public with our dogs, but Rita did once barf in a restaurant.  I handed her some red poop bags and a package of tissues, and wished her luck.  Sandy and I ran to catch up with the others (and leave the nasty smell behind).  Side note: I have successfully talked about dog poop in 2 consecutive blogs.  Winning! 

The photo taken right before the dog poo incident

A few hours later Aunt Ellen and Uncle Rüdiger arrived at the apartment with Seth and Marty in tow – but with 1 bag less than they started out with.  One of their bags was left in Austin!  I am not sure why the majority of our visitors in December have all had bag problems (3 issues with 3 different airlines) – must be something to do with the holidays.  Anyways, we kept the evening low key and called it an early night to let everyone get their sleep. 

Saturday morning we were ready to finally venture into the city and check out these Christmas markets Noah and I had been talking about.  We piled into the public transportation and started the downtown market tour with the main attraction– the Christkindlmarkt at Marienplatz. 

Next stop on the market tour – the Weihnachtsmarkt in der Residenz.  This one is one of our favorites – it is naturally smaller as it has to fit within one of the courtyards of the Residence, and they have the much coveted Baumstriezel!  It is a Hungarian pastry (they call it Kürtőskalács – though in English we can just say Chimney Cake) that is essentially a sweet bread dough that is wrapped around a metal cylinder and baked as you watch.  You then can choose a topping that they will roll the hot pastry in – my recommendation is the cinnamon and sugar (Zimt Zucker).  I might have made a mistake in introducing my mother to this as she spent the rest of the time in Munich looking for more of them (she successfully found many in Budapest – I think her tally was 3… one for each night we were there). 

After a lunch of sausages and Baumstriezel, we made our way to the Middle Age Christmas market (Der Mittelaltermarkt auf dem Wittelsbacherplatz) – a first for Noah and I.  As there are so many Christmas markets in town (even one at the airport), we prefer to not see every single one each year.  It can become rather tedious and monotonous if you see too many at once, as they all pretty much have similar things.  The Middle Age market one reminded me of a tiny Renaissance Festival, but with a Christmas flare.  Lots of handmade goods out of leather, bark, glass, etc.  I found some nice glass snowflake ornaments myself. 

After everyone had their fill of shopping for the day (or at least Noah, myself, and the parents did – Seth and Marty would stay on to replenish some items missing in her lost luggage), the group headed up to the top of the Neues Rathaus at Marienplatz (via elevator, thank you very much).  We were treated to a lovely 360 view of the city, and in the distance we could even make out the outline of the Alps. 

Sunday morning was an early one for Seth and Noah – they were gone by 7am to take the first train of the day to hit the slopes in Garmisch.  The rest of us slept for a few hours longer and reached Garmisch Classic (and the brothers) for lunch.  The two snowboarders met us at the bottom of the lifts and we all took the gondola up the mountain (Margie’s first time riding a Gondola in her life!) to eat at the Garmischer-Haus restaurant. 

After taking in the food and the views, we left the boys to finish their runs.  We checked out the town and (of course) their Christmas market. 

We all met up again to take the train back to town for a nice dinner of stew and birthday cake.  Technically, my mother’s birthday was the next day, but I had made a giant 4-tiered monstrosity that would never come close to being finished unless we started it ASAP.  We went ahead and pretended anyways and sang Happy Birthday a day early.  Though don’t tell the German’s!  They find it to be horrible luck if you tell someone happy birthday early… but no one can tell me what exactly happens! 

 

The story behind HORST – Noah and I were looking for cake toppers and found name candles.  Of course they don’t have Sandy, or any name with a Y.  Noah’s idea was to by ‘Astrid’ and ‘Andreas’ to have the letters for Sandra.  Mine was to just buy ‘Horst’ and convince her that was German for Sandy.  After a quick email to my brother for a tie-breaking vote, Horst it was!  And she did believe that Horst meant Sandy… until I started laughing and told her it is just a random man’s name.

Monday brought my mom’s real 60^th birthday.  We celebrated by hitting up Tollwood – yet another Christmas market, but this one is more on the hippy/earthy side.  Plus lots of drinking options beyond regular old Glühwein.  Mom and I found a winter hat and scarf, and Seth and Noah bought coordinating ‘bff brother’ belts, or something like that. 

For dinner we celebrated at our favorite Greek restaurant Poseidon, where we had way too much food and were given a free bottle of Greek wine per couple.  Needless to say we now have 4 bottles of wine at our apartment.  We celebrated again with a small candle in the shape of a birthday cake, and headed home to eat the real stuff. 

By Christmas Eve we were ready to have an easy day.  Since the weather was nice, we took the S-bahn down to Lake Starnberg with the dogs.  We had a nice walk around part of the lake, and Marty was able to find her a nice rock to take back to her dad (it’s their thing apparently). 

Christmas morning started with Noah (I joined a bit later) in the kitchen making our traditional Steffens’ Danish Ebelskivers.  Slowly the others woke up, and we all feasted on the thousands (or at least it felt that way) of little balls of dough dipped in granulated sugar. 

There was no time for Noah and I to sit as we were coordinating the Christmas dinner of Turkey, homemade yeast rolls (that wanted to take over the kitchen, they rose so much), homemade ginger cranberry sauce (that was actually leftover from Thanksgiving….), au gratin potatoes, and green beans.  Thank goodness we had access to our upstairs neighbors’ oven – but even then it was hard to have everything ready at the same time. 

We were able to take one mid-day break to open presents.  I think my favorites were the antlers for the dogs (thanks Ellen and Rüdiger) – they reminded us of the dog from the Grinch.  Sadie just glared at me when I made her wear them, and Rita actually froze.  She lost the ability to move with those on her head!  My precious babies. 

After presents, we all squeezed into our little kitchen for our Christmas feast.  My dad found an amazing dry brine recipe that I would 100% recommend.  It was honestly the best turkey I ever had – even the white meat was super moist and delicious!  So of course, Gary took all the credit for how the bird came out. 

Dessert came in the form of an apple pie we baked the day before (thankfully, as I have no idea how we would have found time on Christmas day).  It was off to bed early for us all though, as we had to get up the next day for our next segment/blog: Budapest!

Carving Some Fresh Powder

With all the effort around moving last year, we missed the ski season in the Alps.  So this season, I made it a top priority to hit the slopes as soon as possible. 

The Friday before Christmas break I took a day off and went snowboarding with a colleague.  We set off for a small resort just on the edge of Austria called Seefeld.  There we were - while many others labored away at the office the day before Christmas break - amongst the fresh alpine air home to some of the world’s greatest winter athletes.  This was really the perfect skiing condition- fresh snow and empty slopes.  In fact it was so empty that I would expect the resort probably lost money this day.  I started the day slow, adjusting to the new board, and I was feeling like a real professional out there- perhaps because nobody was around to see my falls.  Eventually my ego got the best of me though, because after a few hours I began attempting jumps (if you can call it that) and maneuvers that were outside my ability and taking some pretty rough falls.  In the end, a half day was enough, considering there were no lines for the lift.

 Having conquered one alpine mountain, I was anxious to take Julie out to the slopes so she could test out some skiing herself.  The other weekend we were invited by one of Julie’s colleagues to join him on a trip to Garmisch (home of the 1936 winter Olympics).  We purchased the Garmisch Ski Express ticket, which includes a round trip train ride plus an all-day ski lift ticket for just 42 EUR- a very reasonable deal I might say.   

We set off early Sunday morning and 2 hours later we were at the base lift and rental shop.  Eager to hit the slopes we rushed renting my board and Julie’s skis, and after boarding the first gondola Julie realized she left her poles back in the lobby.  I guess it goes without saying she is still VERY NEW to skiing.  But no worries, us guys took a quick run back down the mountain to get warmed up and retrieve the poles, and we were all reunited in no time. 

After wearing Julie out on the baby slopes, I spent the rest of the day trying to keep up with Zsolt on the rest of the mountain (who grew up in Canada and is a very good snowboarder).  At one point we ended up on the steepest part of the mountain, which in my opinion deserves a color beyond black, where I managed to slowly slide/roll/tumble my way down to the bottom (while Zsolt rode down pretty much flawlessly).   Later I learned this trail is known as “Kandahar” which is the downhill speed course used for the Olympics in 1936 and other world cup competitions.  At least the views were beautiful up here, and thanks to Zsolt’s new Intel phone, we have some pictures.

One of the surprises of Garmisch was the vast number of English speakers we heard.  It really felt like we were at a ski resort in Colorado and there happened to be just a few German tourists….a very strange feeling.  In fact during our lunch break, I think we heard more English than German!

After some lunch on the mountain and a long break to recover from my Olympic tumble, I joined Julie on some smaller slopes which were serviced by T-bar lifts.  These are the lifts (less common in America) where a T-bar suspended from a running cable drags you up the mountain while the skis/snowboard remains in contact with the ground.  I think this kind of lift is unpleasant for all, but especially worse for snowboarders who must straddle it between the legs and ride up with one foot unclipped from the bindings.  As I was riding it for the first time I encountered a very steep hill when the lift was stopped, which left my straddling this T-bar, dangling from one leg as my back leg was unclipped from the binding, for what felt like 30 minutes at on a 45 degree uphill slope.  Needless to say, I’m not the biggest fan of T-bar lifts after this.

As we were leaving we stopped in a lodge near the base to kill some time before our return train.  We were shocked to see all these random American brands/products and one section was stocked just like a Walgreens or CVS from the States.  Ecstatic that I found David Sunflower Seeds, I rushed in line to purchase them, noticing that the prices were even marked in $USD!   And that is when the cashier politely explained that this was an American military operation, and only those with valid military I.D. could make purchases (or enter the building, but somehow we escaped that notice). It finally made sense why we heard so many Americans on the slopes: we were in the vicinity of a large US military service.  Sadly, I was not able to purchase my sunflower seeds, but I’m just glad the troops aren’t deprived of them (thanks for your service!).

That was our first (hopefully not last) time skiing in Germany!  We both paid the price the next day, and Julie’s grapefruit size bruise on her leg gave us weeks to remember just how much fun we had.