Christmas Vacation: Part 4

When we decided to drive down to see my family for Christmas, we needed to figure out what we were going to bring everyone as gifts.  The most important thing was the girls.  Who ended up getting candy from my trip to Strassbourg.  Then we decided to go by this wine shop around the corner and get bottles of local wine.  Now, I'm not 100% sure what the local wine tastes like, but it's a gift, right? 

So the morning of our drive down to the family, I ran some errands, checked out the store and came back with fresh bread for Andy and me.  We had breakfast and then headed over to the wine store together.  We decided on three bottles for each family and picked the same three for each. Then we got the car and headed down with our bags and gifts and crappy directions from the internet.

The problem with directions on the internet in Germany is that they label everything by the street number.  Which is fine for the major roads that are marked well, but for those little tiny roads that are not marked at all, it is a totally different matter.  Plus, I don't have a printer, so I have to write everything out by hand, which means that Andy has to try to decipher my shorthand, which makes perfect sense to me, but not so much to him.  We headed off found the streets that we needed and at some point just started following the signs that pointed in the direction of towns nearby, because honestly that's how they do most directions here.  There's no northbound or southbound freeway.  It's the Autobahn in the direction of Stuttgart or in the direction of Ulm and you'd better hope you learned where each of those cities was on a map because if you go the wrong direction you're going to have to turn around.

We finally found the back road to Kolbingen - where my one set of relatives live and stopped in for a visit.  I had called them ahead of time to let them know we were going to stop by, and about 10 minutes after we arrived, my cousin Marc showed up with his wife and 1 year old son.  We had coffee, tea, cake, cookies, etc...all home made by Hedi.  We told them that we would come over for lunch the next day and said our goodbyes and Headed down to Mühlheim to make it in time for the children's mass at the Catholic church.  

Sieglinde picked us up, with Lena and Annika and we headed into the old part of town.  Mass was fun.  Well I guess it wasn't really mass because there was no communion, but the kids from the kindergarten did a great job of putting on the story of the birth of jesus.  They were very cute, but at some point Andy realized that when children speak German it sounds to him like what they're saying is totally fake.  Like Udo on the Simpsons.  At the end of the mass, the priest basically told all of the adults that they weren't off the hook and that they were required to go to mass for Christmas.  Whatever....

So we headed home, the girls opened their gifts, we opened our gifts and we had dinner.  I mentioned that we were going to see Hans and Hedi for lunch the next day and it became clear that it was going to be a problem, since Lydia had planned something special for lunch the next day, so I had to call Hans and Hedi and tell them that we weren't going to be able to make it - but that also meant that we weren't going to be able to see Marc, Connie, and Karl, because they were leaving to go visit her family on the 26th.  This was a little upsetting, but there was nothing that could be done about it.  

We proceeded to dinner, which was something relatively traditional.  Rotwurst with sides - at this point I can't remember which sides, but sides.  It was also really tasty and dessert was good too.  Living in a university town and cooking for myself I often find that I try to replicate a lot of the things I eat at home, or that I'll run out and grab something quick and cheap, but it's nice to have a home-cooked meal, and even better when it comes with the cultural context of tradition.  Eventually we headed to bed for the next day's fun.

In the morning Annika came over with Stefan and showed us a newspaper clipping of the Nachtwächter of Mühlheim who was going to be doing a tour of the city that night.  She really wanted to go, so we decided that we would go along with her and her dad.  It was later in the evening, and we still had to eat our special lunch of Venison roast and other tastiness.  I really enjoy venison.  I have never had a bad meal with venison. I know it can be gamy, but I suppose when you live in a small town surrounded by forest and your family has been eating game for generations at some point you learn how to cook it so that it's tasty.  And it was super tasty.  Along with it we had red cabbage, potato salad, and a berry compote.  Super tasty.

This is also the point where we realized that they didn't trust that I was feeding Andy enough.  Every time they asked if he wanted more I wouldn't really ask him, because he would tell me if he wanted more.  I just said, "no" that he doesn't want any more.  This meant that they thought I wasn't translating things for him and just answering for him.  This also meant that at some point they started making fun of me and saying that I wasn't allowing him to eat and that they started trying to communicate with him directly by just offering him food.  It worked out ok....but it was clear that they thought I was somehow controlling him, rather than us having our own way of communicating that doesn't require many words and can me done without most people noticing.

Speaking of translating - or not - the Nightwächter thing was really fun - cold but fun.  We walked into town, which was fine, but steep and icy.  Remember "Steep and Icy"  that's going to become a theme at some point. I translated the important parts of the tour for Andy and I think he enjoyed it.  Stefan said that he learned some things about the town that he hadn't known about and we headed back to the house - down the steep and icy path this time.  The next day - 2nd Christmas or the 26th of December - we undertook another steep and icy adventure.

Christmas Vacation: Part 3

The first real day with the car we went to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  It's a cute little medieval city with an old defense wall surrounding it.  It's also the biggest tourist trap in the world.  They're on the Romance Road, so there's a built in Tourism angle there, plus they like to bill themselves as something close to "Christmas Town" and to be honest they do have probably the single highest concentration of year round Christmas stores around.  They were also having their Christmas market, so we figured, that it couldn't hurt to go to another Christmas market.  Even if you don't buy anything, they're fun.

It's about 2-3 hours from Tübingen by car, so we got to test out my navigational skills.  With instructions from the internet, and a Germany map from 2002 we set off.  We actually made out pretty well driving, and even found the parking lot that I was looking for.  It was indeed a cute little town, and they had some really cute shops.  In the end we bought some ornaments from the Käthe Wohlfahrt store, a framed picture of the city (something we like to do for every city we go to), Bratwurst, and Glühwein.

We headed back that evening and had dinner at an Irish pub, Saints and Scholars, up next to the building where I spend most of my academic time.  I've been there before, but only for drinks, and not for food.  From their Web site you can see what they have to offer - pretty standard pub food, but not bad.  I had a burger and Andy had the fish and chips.  My burger was a little strange, but tasty - I think they put a sort of eggplant tapanade on it, but I can't be sure.  Andy was quite pleased with his fish and chips.  Usually when we go to ethnic restaurants in Germany things are a little off.  Asian food is slightly strange.  Mexican food is usually with some weak tomato sauce, or sometimes even bbq, but Andy was pleasantly surprised with the quality of his Irish food.  But as my father would say - how can you really screw up boiled beef and cabbage. :)

The next day we drove about 4 hours down to Neuschwanstein, a 19th century castle in Bavaria, upon which the Disney castle is supposedly based.  The drive down wasn't bad, though it was cold and a little rainy most of the way.  From the Neuschwanstein Web cam one can see that there was snow on the castle, so I expected it to be a bit colder down there than in Tübingen.  We got a little lost, but I think that I actually meant to go the way that I did.  Upon arrival, we got our tickets and then made the 30 minute trek up the hill to the castle.  This was my third time at the castle, but somehow I had forgotten about the half hour super steep hill.  I'm not sure how.

Once up there we took some beautiful photos and got our guided tour of the castle.  Three things became clear to Andy during the tour.  #1 - our tour guide was really strange.  I can't really describe him, ask either me or Andy to do an impression of him the next time you see us.  It was hilarious. #2 - Japanese tourists do not believe that the signs telling them not to take pictures are real.  They will take pictures no matter what.

And finally, #3 most American tourists are an embarrassment.  They're like everybody's weird uncle.  The guys who always says: "Man they sure built things to last," or "Hey I wonder what the heating bill is on this place."  Can it jerk!  And while you're at it maybe you could keep your kid from screaming and your other kid from stepping on the backs of my shoes while we're going up this narrow staircase.  After that experience I think Andy understood a little better why, when encountered with groups of American tourists, I usually pretend to be German.  Unless someone seems really lost and like they need help, I don't need to engage.

We drove back, got lost again, and ended up eating dinner at a place called Unkel up in the University quarter.  It's affiliated with Stern which is right around the corner from my place and they have pretty tasty and relatively reasonable Italian food. Pasta, pizza, etc...

The next day we headed down to visit my family for Christmas.