I got back from China Saturday morning, after being gone for two weeks. Unfortunately, I was gone for Thanksgiving Day, but we had a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner Saturday night with some fellow Americans, and I even managed to stay awake through the entire meal! Cynthia made an amazing apple pie (I peeled the apples), as well as a pumpkin pie and brussels sprouts. Others brought the rest of the dishes, and the turkey was prepared by the hosts. It was born and raised in Strassbourg, but purchased and consumed in Nurnberg. Unfortunately, no pictures from the evening to share.

Today, we ventured to the Nurnberg Christkindlesmarkt, which started Friday and goes through all the way until Christmas. We walked briefly through on Saturday, and it was incredibly packed with people. The market is mainly in the central market, but spills throughout much of the central part of the city. Sunday was no different. Apparently the Nurnberg Christmas Market is the oldest in Germany. Lots of stands with ornaments, various decorations, cookies, etc. And Nurnberger Gluhwine, which we sampled. Yummy and warm! The whole town feels so Christmas-y!

Cologne und mehr

Hello everyone! We have established a pretty set routine over here in Deutschland. We realized we've been here almost a year already, and we still felt like we haven't seen very much of Europe! Last weekend, we decided to dash up to Cologne for the weekend. The beauty of Nürnberg is that it is in the very center of Europe - leaving many cities within weekend driving distance.


Late fall seems to bring in tons and tons of fog to Bavaria. Every day driving to work I sort of feel like we're in the middle ages. Getting up at 6 on a Saturday seemed to heighten this feeling!




Most of Cologne was destroyed in the war, but the large cathedral still stands. It was rather pretty.


We were really excited because this cafe where we ate breakfast on Saturday sold Rogue beer from Oregon. We decided it wasn't worth it to buy it, rather to wait until we get home in a few weeks. It sure was tempting though ...


Finally, we bought this odd doughboy thing. We couldn't figure out exactly what it was, or why he has a corncob pipe, or why every bakery in town was selling them. Someone at work seemed to think it was tied in with a religious holiday ...

We're getting excited to travel home for the holidays! They are rapidly approaching over here - especially since everyone starts their holidays around the second week of December, and all of Nurnberg is already preparing for Christmas. The market has moved out of the main square into the surrounding streets in order to make room for the famous Christmas market that starts in two weeks. The city was putting up its decorations today. Many stores already are banked by evergreens, and many facades are already covered with lights. Pictures of all that coming very soon!!

Bierfest!

So these pictures are a tad outdated, but worth sharing anyway. These are from the Herzogenaurach bierfest. This is the town where we work, and we get 2 "beer tokens" from work. And yes, one beer is one liter. And they had the biggest schnitzl sandwiches ever.

Hiking in the Fraenkische Schweiz and BBQ with Kubb!

We drove to the Fraenkische Schweiz on Saturday and did some hiking. It was really fun. We drove to a small town called Pottenstein, an hour or so Northeast of Nurnberg, ate lunch at a biergarten (mmm, flammkuchen), and went off hiking. We navigated around, following signs with various symbols on them, passing through farm fields, and forest, and small villages.






Sunday we had a BBQ with some friends in the "grillplatz" along the Pegnitz river near our apartment. We christened the new Kubb set we bought on amazon.de. Everyone loved it! Such the perfect lawn game! You can see Cynthia and I well ahead of our opponents in the picture below...

Tacos

You may know that tacos are one thing that we really miss from home. We finally gathered the ingredients and equipment (um, that's a tortilla press and the right flour) here to make them ourselves, and tried for the first time last night for John's birthday. We were quite impressed with ourselves. Check out the delicious results! And happy birthday to John!

Milan!

As promised, some documentation of our trip to Milan. First things first - we recommend not going to Milan in August. Luckily we were there on a Sunday, and were already expecting everything to be closed. Many, many, many of the shops and restaurants had signs like these:

saying that they were closed for the entire month of August!

Thanks to all the Milanese being on vacation, we got a very good deal on the new-ish NH design hotel in Milan. It was rather overdesigned, with crazy furniture in every corner.

This was the "entryway" to the hotel.

And this was the restaurant (which was mostly closed, except for limited room service and breakfast!)

We did not let all the closed things deter us. Nor the heat - it was over 90 the entire time, and humid! We managed to find some small, windy, shady streets to explore:


And then we happened upon a very old galleria type outdoor covered mall thing, which reminds me of the copies we have in the states. This one, even though it was old and charming and ornate, still somehow seemed kind of cheesy!


The galleria opened up onto a huge square where the Duomo was


It was one of those cathedrals where you can climb to the top and walk on the roof, giving spectacular views of the city and up-close views of the roof architecture.

I think my favorite part of the city was seeing this tiny, unassuming church. It was in the Canal district, where there were countless cafes, restaurants, and bars, and with them, tons of people getting ready to go out for the night. The outside of this church was as you see it here - plain brick, heavy, dark. We walked by the first time, and there was a service going on inside - and you could see that it was incredibly elaborate and beautiful on the inside. It was a nice little jewel to discover in such a busy neighborhood!

Italy, part 1

This weekend we met up with our favorite Norweigens in Italy. After a quick drive from Nürnberg to Munich, flight on to Milan, and drive out to Rapallo, we made it to the Italian Riviera! We had perfect weather ... here are some photos:


The harbor in Portofino (we were so close ... I think if i had photographed a bit to the right, the multimillion dollar yacht would have been in the picture!)


We spent most of Friday on the beach. You paid to "rent" a chair and a towel.


The harbor in Rapallo. We took a boat from here down to the Cinque Terre.


The most remote town of the Cinque Terre.


The most remote town of the Cinque Terre.


Beginning the walk to one of the towns.

It was unbelievably hot the entire time, which would have bothered me, had it not been for the number of swimming opportunities.

Swimming opportunity 1


Swimming opportunity 2

Pictures from Milan to follow!

China

It's been a few weeks since I've been back now, but I thought I'd post some pictures from my trip to China. In addition to spending the work weeks in Dongguan and Fuzhou, we were able to make it to both Shanghai and Beijing on the weekends. In Shanghai we walked around the city and did a tour to one of the water cities on one of the old canals an hour away, and in Beijing we were able to see the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, some of the Olympic venues (although not from too close-up and they were still all blocked off to the public), and the Great Wall, in addition to the serious pollution...

Set on Flickr

Since I've been back, we had our friend Josh from Norway and Katie from Seattle visit, and we took them to the Herzogenaurach Beerfest (the town where adidas is headquartered). Next weekend we are headed down to Italy, to Milan and down to the Italian Riviera south of Genoa, towards CInque Terre. Looking forward to the sun and the food!

NYC + VT

This post is long overdue ... its a little report on our trip to New York and Vermont several weeks back!

We spent several days in New York, and had a fantastic time. I had never walked over the Brooklyn Bridge before - and it was really very neat. We ate pizza on the way over there, and that was delicious. That was a very New York day. After getting lots of shopping done, we drove up to Vermont, trying really hard to obey the non-autobahn level speed limits.



John went fishing on the White River with all the guys. I think the ladies were busy eating antipasti and amazing food at pane salute with the bride at that point.



The wedding locale and the bridal party in front of the barn. It was sort of rainy, but I think the umbrellas made the photos look really cool! It was such a good event, and we all had tons of fun.



Even though we had to head home to Germany a few days afterwards, we still made time for a trip to Quechee Gorge. I had definitely missed the scenery of Vermont! We headed home, and arrived safely only to discover our car, which had been parked legally on the street, was missing. Crime, in general, is extremely low around here, so we were almost convinced it hadn't been stolen. After enlisting some help from German speakers, we find out that our car had been towed due to some road work in the area. We drag our tired, jet lagged selves over to the towing place, which looks more like a junk yard with smashed up cars and metal parts all over the place. Sure enough, our little car was parked by the "still in tact" cars. Manage to find someone who spoke enough English to communicate, and he says "come inside" ... now call us silly, but the picture below was not exactly what we were expecting to see.



Yes, this was "the office". And yes, that is a medieval toilet chair thing in the back complete with a candle. Yes, there were candelabras and armor. Now imagine a large parrot squawking every 10 seconds, coming from the next room. Now imagine the air filled with cigarette or cigar smoke. You can now see how proud of ourselves we were when we got our car back in one piece, fairly quickly, without having to pay anything! These are the experiences we'll remember down the road when we're back in the states and going to pick up a towed car is a boring, dreary affair where you have to pay a lot ...

Exercise

One can imagine that, working where we work, there are a lot of people who exercise. A lot. In my group, the popular activities are (#1) Running at lunch. I have not been able to get myself to participate in this one. Number 2 activity is biking to work. This doesn't sound like a big deal if you think about biking from one neighborhood to another in the same city. However, our commute is 26 kilometers, which usually takes us about 25-30 minutes with traffic. There are people who regularly bike to and from work several times a week. Last week, my coworker and I decided we should try biking in since we weren't too busy at work, John was still in China, and it'd be good for us. Since last week it was very very hot, we carpooled home one day, and met at 7 am the next morning to bike to work. It took us just under an hour and a half. Since her car was still at work, we didn't have to bike home when it was 90 degrees out!

If you click on the below link, you can see the route we took. Work is definitely in the middle of the country, so most of the way was next to the river Pegnitz, or a canal. After that, it was through farmland and small villages until we got to work!

Map of the route to work

Shiny Cat in Sauce?

When we were at the pet store a few weeks back, getting things for Hugo, we ran across this. I'm pretty sure that it is not actually what it sounds like it is...

Bierfest season has officially begun!

Busy!

Wow, have we been busy! It's been a crazy couple of months, with C starting work, having my mom come visit (and bring lovely Hugo!), visiting friends in Denmark, having my mom come back through, along with Andrew (brother) and his girlfriend, Lorna (who we finally got to meet!). And then we are off to the States in a week and a half for Em+Dave's wedding, after spending a few days in NYC...

Here's a picture of us in Munich, after flying back from Copenhagen to Munich, and before having dinner with Sara at Augustiner Am Platz and driving back home to Nurnberg...

Alps

This weekend we headed to Kaltenbach, Austria for some late-season snowboarding. After the relatively quick 2 1/2 hour drive into the mountains, we were a little worried to see absolutely no snow! In the valley it was warm and sort of rainy. In the morning we got on the gondola and headed up the mountain. At the top of the gondola, there was plenty of snow. We were glad to have made it to the mountains at least once before the spring settles in over here!

The photo should link to all the photos we took over the weekend.

Es ist nicht Frühling!!

Apparently spring in Bavaria does not start in late March like in other places ... It has been snowing consistently since the weekend. Last night we watched as several inches fell in the course of a single Scrabble game. Thank goodness we finally got the winter tires!


At least it looks like it will warm up after today, according to weather.com anyway!

It's official!

Now our engagement is really official, and we have a very very nice diamond ring to prove it - hand delivered by Dear Sister from Portland last week. The above picture is this happy couple, center square, Lille, France.

happy (snowy) öster

Le trip.

This past weekend we made it all the way to Lille, France to attend the marriage of my cousin. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the city & seeing the family. We happened upon a very authentic Breton crèpe restaurant - below is John's crèpe aux epinards, jambon, et fromage, et avec un oeuf bien sûr! More reports from the weekend to follow!

Adventures in Cooking

One of the things we miss most about Portland so far is the food. No longer is MuuMuu's at our doorstep, and we can't walk to 5 different microbrews. Nurnberg is not exactly "up and coming" when it comes to world class chefs and eateries!! So, we've been encouraged to try some new things in our own kitchen!

First we tried Mexican, because we were missing our weekly trip to Por Que No. We had a rather grand failure when trying to make tortillas from scratch:



Fortunately we had rice as a backup and made ourselves a very very nice meal of carnitas with many fixings, despite the lack of homemade tortillas, jalepenos, and queso fresco!!



This past weekend we were missing our many take out meals from Swagat and used it as an opportunity to take a stab at chicken tikka masala. We did not attempt naan, seeing as how we lack crucial equipment. We took a gamble and bought "naan" from the grocery store here ... next time we will pass, since it tastes like pita bread that had been sitting around for a year or so. Accented by some yummy veggie pancakes, our chicken tikka masala was surprisingly good!



We're looking forward to seeing a large percentage of my family in France this weekend! We'll report back next week ...