The Indians win! and travelling to Egypt

Last night Brian and I went to our third Hannover Indians hockey game. I know I've written about it before, but this time they actually won and so I thought I'd tell you more. We went to the game with Kent Todd, also known as Kent Todd Ice Hockey God. He's a Canadian from Alberta who used to play for the Indians and then coached them for a few years. Now he works at the International School but is Mr. Popularity at the games. I guess we were his entourage.

The stadium is all standing room and open on two sides with a big U-shaped roof over the rest. Last night it was packed - the Indians were playing the Bremerhaven Penguins who are apparently very good. The tickets and the signs and everything said Fischtown Penguins, which confused me because I didn't think the Germans would actually name a city Fischtown. They are not that corny. My lovely husband then told me that it's a nickname for Bremerhaven, which is on the sea. I guess that makes sense. The Indians have not been very good at all this season. I don't claim to know much about hockey but I'm learning a little and I really like going to the games. It's loud and crowded, you get to stand close to the action, and there's a smell of sausages in the air. The die-hard fans sing songs and beat drums and everyone high-fives when the Indians score a goal. They came from behind last night to win 5-4 in overtime. You can look at their website if you are interested: http://www.hannover-indians.de/
And for you Minnesotans out there, they did play the Gear Daddies zamboni song before the game started. We were proud.

Today is Christmas Eve and it's raining. That makes it sound kind of depressing, but we are not depressed. We are going to Egypt in two days. What says Christmas time more than camels and pyramids? I guess the 3 wise men rode camels, so maybe it is a good place to go this time of year. Packing for Egypt will take some thought - because it's a conservative Muslim country, modesty is important. Men can wear pretty much what they want, though shorts are not common, but women need to at least cover knees and shoulders in public. We will be in Cairo for 3 days, then we fly to Aswan, spend a night there, and get on a Nile cruise the next day. The cruise will take us to a lot of sights along the Nile and we will have plenty of guided tours of really old stuff. We will spend New Year's Eve on the cruise (there is sure to be a party in the 'on-board discotec') and end in Luxor, where  we spend another day and then return to Cairo and home.

Why Egypt? We are going with our good friends Tom (Dizzy) and Sonja. They had planned to go last year but never did. Then they invited us to go with them before we even moved to Germany. So now we are making it a foursome. It seems like a place that one should go at some point in life. The pyramids at Giza are the only remaining wonder of the ancient world. I think you should get a special stamp in your passport for that.

Yes, there have been protests and some violence in Cairo. From what we have heard, it's contained in the Tahrir square area of the city. We do not plan to head down there in shorts and tank tops, holding picket signs and waving flags. We do plan to stick to the other areas of Cairo that are safer and I am sure will be exciting enough for us without demonstrations.

So I will dig out some long skirts and get the camera charged up this Christmas. We will also continue our Christmas movie marathon, thanks to a Swiss website that is probably illegal but has all kinds of TV and movies in English. You won't hear from me again for a while - we are back Jan 4th. I plan to write the old fashioned way, in a journal, while we are there, so I can report the details to you later.

Frohe Weinachten to you all, have a very merry Christmas! Thanks for making this blog a fun project this year. There will be more to come in 2012.

New look

I changed the color scheme of the blog to mix things up a little.

Frohe Weinachten

It is the eve of Christmas Eve, and so I figured I would write about Christmas.
You should also know that right now one of our neighbors is playing Feliz Navidad really loud and we can hear it through the floor. That's the Christmas spirit!

Several people have asked how the Germans celebrate, so I will tell you what I know.  The word for Christmas is Weinacht, and the big day is Dec. 24th. German schools have about 2 weeks off and most businesses are closed the 24th and 25th, though the bakeries and grocery stores are open in the morning on the 24th. From what I understand, Germans spend the 24th with immediate family, go to church if they do that sort of thing, open gifts, and have a family dinner. On the 25th they celebrate more with extended family, and on the 26th spend more time with friends, neighbors etc. Christmas as Americans know it was largely invented by people in Germany and northern Europe, so they have a lot of the same traditions we do. No, there are no huge light-up plastic Santas, and no robotic reindeer on the front lawn. There are, however, lots of Christmas trees, Advent wreaths, stockings, candles in windows, and even mistletoe.

The Germans sometimes use real candles on their wreaths and Christmas trees. This sounds like a fire trap to me, but makes more sense if I try to think like a German. You see, they believe a lot in rules here and people follow the rules almost all of the time. Consequently, things work pretty well. So the logical rule about trees is, if you light real candles on your tree you need to be in the room and watching so that you'd know if the tree starts to burn. If you decide to leave and your house burns down, well that's your own fault. We've noticed this about other parts of life in Germany too. Like at the hockey game they don't stop selling beer after the 2nd period. In fact they sell it well after the game has ended. You are a grown up and should know when to stop drinking, and if you don't and you make a fool of yourself or fall down, that's your own fault. When I go to the pool, there are no life guards. I guess they figure that if you are going to swim laps, you already know how to swim and shouldn't need someone to watch you. If you need to walk across the train tracks, there's no gate to keep you from doing so. You should, however, look both ways so you don't get hit by a train.


So back to Christmas, Germans traditionally eat goose for Christmas dinner. I thought it would be fun to try cooking one, or part of one, since Brian and I are here for Christmas. At the grocery store yesterday I saw a whole fresh goose, which was about 10 or 12 pounds. It cost 42 euros!! That's like $58. Just to buy the breast or the leg was expensive, even the frozen ones. So I bought a beef roast instead. I will experiment with goose another time. The other foods they have a lot around Christmas time, aside from chocolate (which there is a lot, and it's delicious) of are:

Marzipan - It comes in all shapes and sizes, it's creamy and sort of nutty and people seem to either love it or hate it.
Stollen - which is sort of a dense pound cake with raisins in it and powdered sugar on top.
Lebkuchen - similar to gingerbread but more cake-like and with stronger spices (cardamom maybe?) and is often sold covered in little hearts or cakes covered with chocolate.

There is a shortage of Christmas cookies, which I have personally tried to eliminate. I made about 5 batches that went to a couple of friends and school staff who have been nice to us and the rest went to Brian's eighth graders. I just made another batch yesterday so we'd have more for ourselves. There are also not a lot of candy canes. There's nothing I can do about that.

Of course the Weinachtsmarkt is the big outdoor market that goes through all of Advent. I wrote about that a couple of weeks ago so look back if you missed it. Sadly, the market ended yesterday.

I apologize to any real Germans if I have misrepresented you holiday celebrations. Feel free to correct me. This is just what I have figured out by talking to people and looking around.

What are we doing for Christmas? Well, we leave for our 10 day Egypt trip on Monday the 26th, so that's the big excitement. We have a tree, but with electric lights. I guess we don't trust ourselves with the candles... For Christmas Eve we don't have much planned, other than watching some Christmas movies and eating our roast beef dinner. On Christmas day we will go to church, eat some brunch, pack, and probably watch more Christmas movies. There are some packages that arrived in the mail and allegedly a few more coming in January, so we have a couple of gifts to open too. And we will play Christmas music. Apparently Germans like Feliz Navidad so we will make sure to put that one on the playlist.

Score a point or two for me.

Score a couple of points for me making my way in German society this week. I am not sure if I'm winning  yet, but I got a couple of things done.

I made the bike trip to Ikea yesterday. If I had tried something like that back in the Twin Cities, I would have had to dodge the interstate and Mall of America shoppers. Thinking about it that way made me realize this was not such a big deal. I had bike lanes and sidewalks almost all the way - why wouldn't I go?
I made it in and out in 30 minutes and got enough shower curtain liners to last a year. I also managed to fit a floor lamp in the saddle bag, and did not get sleeted on. It was a successful journey.

Today I went to get a library card. I actually went last week, but learned that I needed not only my passport but also a copy of our apartment lease in order to get a card. So I got the passport and lease together and went in. I found the info desk and told the librarian I'd like to register. I knew this was the word for it (rather than 'to get a card') because there was an exercise in my German textbook where a girl goes to the library to register her sister.

That was about where I stopped understanding the language around getting a library card. The librarian gave me a copy of the rules and talked a lot about them and I nodded a lot. She looked at my lease and my passport with the residency permit page in it. Then she asked (at least two times until I understood) if I had received a document in the mail from the foreigner's office that also had my address on it. I guess the lease with my name on it and the passport with my name and the residency permit issued in Hannover weren't quite official enough. She asked a colleague, who then went and asked someone else, and they decided that they'd accept what I had brought, since they were dated recently or something like that.

They did, however, accept my Metro State student ID card. I brought it just in case, because there is a 20 euro annual fee for a library card, but it's only 10 euros for students. The librarian was a little concerned that there was no expiration date on the ID. I told her that I would be a student for at least two more years and that seemed good enough for her. In Germany people are students for what seems like a decade on average, so it was a safe bet that my ID from 2010 was valid.

Other than making all the librarians in my family proud of me, the point of me joining the library is to get books in English and Spanish, which they have, and then to check out kids' books in German to help me learn. They also have a lot of books for learning German, my favorite being Deutsch for Dummies. I didn't check anything out today though. I'd had enough of the library for one morning, and I had to bike home in the sleet.

Bike cargo

Usually I really like not having a car, though it does make carrying things around town more of a challenge. Brian went to a bachelor party on Saturday for one of his fellow teachers. They started with a soccer game at school and Brian had offered to bring a case of beer for the guys to drink after the game.
In our former lives, Brian would drive there and make a quick stop at the liquor store to buy some beer on the way. In our lives in Hannover, it's another story. I have two bikes. My older bike is the one I take around town to do errands and such and it has two saddle bags on the back. While Brian started walking, I rode to the Getrankmarkt, which is the store where you buy beer and and any other sort of beverages. I then bought a case of beer, which is 20 beers. (Why do Americans like to have things in dozens? Eggs come in boxes of 10 here too). I had to unpack them and load them into the saddle bags, putting towels in between so they didn't clank too much as I rode down the street. I met Brian at school and we wheeled the bike in to unload, making sure the kids playing basketball in the gym didn't see us.

I am thinking about riding my bike to Ikea. I have to go there to buy shower curtain liners, which Ikea must have a monopoly on, because I can't find them anywhere else. The other times I've gone there I take a tram and then have to walk about 15 minutes to the store, so riding my bike seemed easier. Plus I could get my exercise in and save 4 euros by not having to buy a ticket. Now I am debating about just how much stuff I can fit in the saddle bags (you can't go there and only buy shower curtain liners), and wehther it's a good idea to wear a backpack too. I won't be buying any furniture, but I wonder if I could manage to bring home a floor lamp somehow...

Of course, it could be raining and sleeting when I decide to go, since that's happening about every day now. Then I might chicken out, or I might still go and be totally miserable doing it. If only they sold shower curtain liners somewhere else... There are times I really miss Target.

So far the saddlebags have worked well for carrying boxes to the post office and for carrying bottles of soda and wine. I even carried a bike pump in the saddlebag last week, though half of it was sticking out of the top and I thought it might fly out if I made a sudden stop.

Even though carting things around this way seems odd to me, it's pretty normal for Hannover. A few days ago, I saw a couple carrying a Christmas tree by balancing it on a bike and walking the bike home. I've also seen someone walking a bike home from the flea market with some furniture loaded on it. I guess cars aren't the only things with wheels that you can use to cart your stuff around. They just move faster and don't clank as much when you go over a bump.

What things cost

Ex-pats in Germany like to talk about what's cheaper here and what's more expensive. Why do we do this? I am not sure. It's not like we can beat the system somehow and import what we want. And comparing costs doesn't mean we can change them... but in case you too are interested, here is my short list:

What is cheaper in Germany than in the U.S.
Foodwise - basically anything that is good for you is cheaper here
milk, cheese, sour cream, butter
bread
fruits and vegetables
muesli (but not other cereals)
juice
beer, wine (yes they are good for you)
candles
getting places on planes and trains
rent (although it depends on what kind of deal you get)

What is more expensive in Germany than in the U.S.
soda
canned soup
chips
beef
electricity and natural gas
gas
electronics
fabric for sewing
bike tubes
running shoes
small appliances or anything electric
(It is possible that I have not yet found the best places to buy things for cheaper...)

Our expenses are really different here. At least until this blog starts bringing in big money, we are living off of one income plus the bit that I earn cover teaching. We don't have a car, car insurance, gas costs, car maintenance costs etc. We don't have a TV or a cable bill, but we do have a projector that hooks up to the laptop. Our rent is less than our mortgage was. We just have pre-pay cell phones because, as we realized when we got here, how many people are really going to call us anyway? We are still working off the first 30 euro credit we got with each phone. We have no microwave (mostly because I don't want to give up counter space) and no dryer for our clothes (no one here has one, that's something I do miss).

Our energy and water bill is funny - we pay a prorated amount every month and then at the end of the year they tally up what you actually used and either send you a refund or bill you for the difference. We take that as a challenge and throw on another sweater.

We can no longer steal wireless internet from the neighbors like we did in St Paul and had to buy our own.But our major new expense is all of the lavish travelling we plan to do. Brian has two weeks off at Christmas, a week in February, two weeks in April, and six weeks in the summer... You can go a lot of places in that amount of time!

The other difference is the way you pay for things here. People use cash a lot or bank cards, but credit cards are not accepted in many stores. Christmas shopping without a credit card is very different experience! There are also no checks. People just do bank transfers. Our rent, energy, and internet bills are debited from our account every month. If you need to pay a bill, you go online and type in the bank code and account number and do a transfer that way. It seemed odd at first to give our account number out but that's what people do here. Some companies even put it on their letterhead.

And look at me, comparing costs again. I guess it's interesting for a little while, even if it doesn't accomplish much.

Zuckerrubensirop

These are Lebkuchen hearts

This yet another posting about groceries. If you are not interested, just skip it. My feelings won't be hurt.

Yesterday I was on a quest to find molasses. Somehow I had decided that it would not be Christmas unless I made gingerbread cookies, and I could not make gingerbread cookies without molasses. I suspected they sell it here since Lebkuchen is pretty common, and it looks a lot like gingerbread. They sell it in big heart shapes at the Christmas Market, with sappy phrases written on the Lebkuchen in frosting (like Americans might do for Valentine's Day). Anyway, I did not know the word for molasses, and the dictionary did not help me. I looked at a big grocery store, and found nothing. I looked at a gourmet grocery store. I even asked there, but because I didn't know the word for what I was looking for I had to try describing it. I asked the lady who worked there about finding a syrup, for baking, that is a brown color. That was the best I could do. She took me to the section with food coloring and said that she was sorry, they didn't carry brown, but I could try mixing a few other colors to make brown. I gave up on that store.

I met up with my friends Renee and Kaska for lunch, two members of our hausfrauen club. Kaska is Polish but has lived in Germany for a long time and had a German friend from out of town with her. I described what I wanted to Kaska, who didn't know the word but asked her German friend and they talked about it for a while in German until he finally came up with the word: Zuckerrubensirop.  So I went to yet another store, this time the one where I usually shop, and looked over and over again at the shelves in the baking section - no luck. I decided to ask the guy who was stocking and said "Do you have..." and showed him the paper. I wasn't sure I could pronounce that word so that he would understand. Luckily he did not laugh at me. He took me to the section where they sell jellies and honey and pulled out a paper carton of Zuckerrubensirop. I had been looking for a clear glass bottle in the baking section, preferably with a picture of a grandma or a bunny or something familiar like that. Instead, this is what it looks like:

So now I can make gingerbread, which means Christmas can happen here in Hannover. But if I decide I need brown food coloring, I'm out of luck.

Our neighborhood restaurants

We have a local favorite restaurant. It is the Indian place directly across the street. It's so close that I think I could throw some Naan like a frisbee from our living room and it might stick to the restaurant window. The first time we tried it the food was good but not great, but we figured out that the owner speaks English. The next time we decided to ask him to make the food spicy - then it was delicious. He works there every day, and knows us by now. He knows that Brian's food is mitte scharf (medium spicy) plus 1, and mine is mitte scharf. Once I asked for the wrong level of spice and he corrected me. Not scharf is how the Germans would eat it, and then there is authentically Indian spicy. We are somewhere in between. I see the owner every once in a while going to the grocery store on the corner to pick up milk and vegetables. One of the first times we ate there it started raining while we were in the restaurant, and he offered to loan us an umbrella. "You'll bring it back," he said.

There is also a little Asian restaurant a few blocks away. Unlike the Indian place it is really cheap. Just like the Indian place, it's delicious. It's almost as good as the Cleveland Wok in St Paul. They do not, however, have friendly English speaking table service, nor have they offered any umbrellas. It's called "Good Friendz", yes, with a Z. Of course it would be good with a spelling like that.

The other place we go to eat sometimes is Ido Kebap Salon. I am sure I have written about Doner in the past, but in case you didn't read that one, Doner is the general word for Turkish-mediterranean food, and it's delicious. Often, Doner restaurants are more like fast food, but this Doner place is a little bit classy. You can eat in with table service and they make the bread in a wood fire oven. You can still get a Doner tasche, which is kind of like a gyro, for 3 euros. It's like German fast food but not even greasy. You can get fries if you want them but you can also get fresh veggies and feta cheese and falafels.

I know what you are saying, "What's with all these ethnic restaurants? Where is the wurst and sauerkraut?" They have those things too, but we haven't found a restaurant that's nearby that we really like. The traditional, meat and potatoes kind of food is more typical of Bavaria in the south. 

We will keep looking, but right now I would rather eat naan and curry than schnitzel and wurst.  

Planning a comeback

Germany has been winning lately. I have been playing hard, but those burly German opponents seem to be gaining on me and making me feel a little grumpy. Maybe it's because Christmas is almost here, or because the things that were keeping me busy and focused (working at the school, my Master's class, my Spanish group, German class) are all wrapping up for the holidays. Or maybe it's the 16 hours of darkness. For whatever reason I am caught in what I have diagnosed as one of those dips in the squiggly graph about culture shock.

It's actually a well-documented phenomenon. I found this on the internet so it must be true. Take a look:

This is not normal for me. I am usually an unreasonably positive person. So if I am feeling like I'm not sure what my role is here or that I miss helping people or that I should have a full-time job (I know, that's crazy),  it must be culture shock.

One helpful thing to think about is how far we have come in the last four months. Literally of course, we have come really far, and survived. I was flipping through my notebook at German class last night and saw the page where I wrote "hello, my name is" and conjugated all the forms of "to be". Now I can form actual (simple) sentences and even know a little of the past tense.

Just four months ago, Brian and I were lying on the aerobed with piles of our clothes in little piles on the floor, watching some historical DVD that he had grabbed from school. We didn't have furniture, or a phone, or internet, or anywhere to sit in our apartment. We were fighting with the moving company. We got lost a lot walking around town.

Now I work a little, I have a few friends, we have furniture, we have discovered more types of sausages than I ever thought existed, and best of all we are, and will be, travelling a lot. I even know how to pronounce vowels with the two little dots over them.

And I started this blog, which has motivated me to keep writing because I have a following of about 70 of my closest friends and relatives. I can see how many of you read each day too, so I am keeping tabs on you. If it were just a journal for my own purposes I probably would have given up by now.

I don't know what will happen in the next four months. I know we will do some travelling. I know that we will have a winter that's not painfully cold. Hopefully my German will keep improving.
Maybe I will find another niche or side job, or I will just do a better job of settling into the ones I have already. Maybe I will get better at enjoying setting my own schedule and having chunks of time to myself, without worrying about being productive. I am reminding myself that things are pretty good here and I need to be patient.
So I will keep on going knowing that the squiggly line will point upwards pretty soon. I am still in the game and planning a comeback.

Why I am not joining the tri club.

You may have read my post from a couple of weeks ago about the swim training that I went to when I was trying to decide whether or not to join the Hannover 96 triathlon club. You may not have read it either. Regardless, I decided not to join. This is not because of the voting results. Thanks to the few of you who voted, but I am going to ignore your opinions and not join the club. I realize I could become a better swimmer and I could maybe practice my German, but the overwhelming reason is because I just don't want to.

Here's a little more info - I don't want to go to swim at 9pm on Tuesdays and Fridays, or not be able to take a bike ride with Brian on a Sunday morning because I have to ride with the team on Sunday afternoon, or feel like I have to go to a specific workout on a specific day and time.

I started doing triathlons because I enjoy it. Now that I am not working full-time, I enjoy doing my workouts during the day, taking my time with them, and being home when Brian is home (unless I have German class of course). In the spring I will be able to do longer workouts on weekdays and more fun things on the weekends. Why would I pass that opportunity up and pay money to do it? Yes, I realize that I will be giving up the chance to be coached through the team. So maybe I won't be quite as fast training on my own. But I might be happier doing it.

Die Post

Most mornings around 8:45 someone rings our buzzer. At first this scared me, partly because I was surprised to hear the buzzer and partly because I didn't know who could be ringing it or what they would say when I picked up the phone. But every time I pick it up and say "hallo", a voice at the other end says, "danke, die Post." It's the mailman. In American apartment buildings, the mailboxes are usually in an entryway before you get to a locked door, but here the outside door is locked and someone has to buzz in the mailman. I think he has figured out that I am here most mornings and rings my bell first, and if I don't answer he just rings all the others until someone buzzes him in.

Deutsche Post is the same company as DHL. The mail carriers wear yellow and black and ride around on yellow bikes with big saddle bags to hold all the mail. The people who bring the packages are separate and drive a truck. When they ring they say "hallo, paket post". If you're not home they usually leave your package with a neighbor. This was actually a good way to meet some of the neighbors, especially the first couple of months we were here when I ordered a lot of stuff from Amazon. And it was a good way to measure my progress in speaking German. When I got the little ticket that said who had signed for the package, at first I would ring the neighbor's doorbell and stand there smiling, holding out the ticket and hoping they'd figure out what I needed. Now I stand there smiling, holding out the ticket, and I say "Hallo, haben sie meinen paket, bitte?"
It's all about baby steps.

The last few times we've gotten a delivery I missed it and had to go to the post office. The post office is also a bank, which I find fascinating. I like how they combine your waiting-in-line-for-someone-at-the-counter experiences into one place. in order to pick up the package. In order to pick up the package you have to show the ticket and your passport. I tried using a drivers license once and the postal employee lady was not happy with me. She gave me the box anyway, though. Yesterday I mailed off a box to the US for the first time. I knew I'd have to fill out a customs form, and that I'd have to know how to write down the contents of the box in German, but I  was not prepared for the question about would I rather send it by economy mail or air mail and what the prices were for each and how long they would take to arrive. That was a little too advanced for me. Luckily this postal employee guy was much more patient than the woman who didn't like my drivers license. He repeated the question for me, slowly, and I went with air mail.

Every time I go there I remember the post office on Arlington Ave in St Paul where we had to go back home. There were always a lot of immigrants in line - Hmong, African, and Latino. When these customers had trouble communicating, the postal employees there liked to use the same words over and over again (even though the customer didn't understand those words the first time) and speak louder and more impatiently with each repetition. I am glad they don't work at the Hannover post office, because I am one of those immigrants now.

Rainy winter? A note on weather.

It's raining. It's been raining since about Friday. And it's windy. And not so cold. This is very confusing to my hard-wired sense of what season it is. The weather feels like mid-March and there are Christmas trees everywhere. Sometimes I almost miss the snow, especially because now I wouldn't have to drive in it!

One of the many things that I decided to bring and now wonder why are my cross-country skis. When it does snow, what will I do, take a bus out somewhere to ski? That would be interesting. Of course, if it just keeps raining that won't be an issue.

We don't have snow, but what we do have is dark. Daylight is from about 7:30 or 8 until 4:30. When do the days start to get longer? The 21st I think. But sunny evenings in June might make it all worthwhile.

2nd Advent weekend

We got in the Christmas spirit this weekend.. Or more appropriate for Germany, we got in the Advent spirit.
On Friday night we went to the Hannover Christmas market. Most towns in Germany have one. Hannover's is in the old part of the city, and it spreads out through different streets from the old Market square down to the river. There are hundreds of wooden stalls selling sausages and candied almonds and crafts and gluhwein. Gluhwein is a hot red spiced wine that comes in a mug. For an extra 50 cents you can buy it with a shot... of what I am not sure, maybe vodka. There are Christmas lights everywhere and live music and carousels for the kids.  There is a medieval section where they sell mead and swords and Renaissance style dresses.

It was really crowded at the market on Friday night, but we met with with Andy, Anne and Noah, and took Noah to the puppet show and the carousel. Then some other teacher friends showed up and we hung out in the Finnish section. Brian had a reindeer sandwich, which is sliced thin on a bun with cranberry sauce. It freaked me out a little that he was eating one of Santa's crew, but I decided that the meat came from   Comet or one of the lesser known of Santa's reindeer. Rudolph is too famous to eat. We also ate little fish, whole, deep fried. They are so crispy you don't really notice that the head is on them, but I still only ate two. I had flashbacks to a bad experience with herring last summer in Hamburg. Also in the Finnish section, they smoke salmon nailed to wooden boards next to an open fire, and you can sit under a huge teepee-like thing with picnic tables covered in pelts from reindeer or some sort of furry animal. They serve Glugi there, which is like Gluhwein but it tastes better. We had several of those and ended up at a kitschy Australian restaurant later on, because we were with real Australians who wanted to check it out. Sort of like us going to the kitschy American burger place...

On Friday I bought a wreath at the flower store on our street. It was like 75% off because Advent had already started a week ago, and who would want to buy a wreath now? This American would, especially for 75% off. The flower shop owner, who may be the cheeriest person in Germany after winning a close competition with my German teacher, wished me a happy 2nd Advent Sunday. On Saturday we bought a Christmas tree, at the grocery store, of course. It is a little apartment sized tree. Since I'd never bought a tree at the grocery store, I went to the checkout counter and successfully said, "I would like a Christmas tree." The cashier had to call someone to meet us out on the sidewalk (where the trees were piled up) and help. He said something that we think meant they have a machine that cuts off the bottom of the trunk, but it wasn't working or wasn't available for some reason that day. So Brian carried the tree down the street, and I carried the tree stand, which we had bought at the drug store (where else?). We don't have a saw or anything to cut the trunk with ourselves, so Brian sort of chipped at it with a screwdriver that he pounded in with a hammer to take chunks out of the wood. So far it seems to be drinking in a little water and hopefully won't die soon. Some people buy artificial trees, but not us.

Brian eating a big pickle at the market

This is where they smoke the salmon

Sunday it was back to the Christmas market, in the afternoon this time, without Glugi, in order to do some shopping.  It's not finished yet. I need to keep looking for non-breakable things that are small enough to ship. Apparently Hannover's market is not the best, or the most authentic, or something. For that we are supposed to go to Nurenburg or some smaller towns in the south. Brian and I have never been to one before, so we really don't know any better. As Brian said the other day, "it's way cooler than the mall."

Good things

Here's a quick list of some good things that happened this week:

Brian figured out how to watch Dexter on some pirated Swiss TV website. We have 2 season to catch up on!

I made my first batch of cookies in Germany. There are no chocolate chips, so I made them with M&Ms. They turned out well even though I have only one cookie sheet that is small enough to fit in the oven. They are good - I'm eating one now.

I started and finished my last paper for my online HR class. It was about work-life balance. It seemed appropriate, because both Brian and I are a little more balanced here. Maybe I am tipping a little toward the life side.

I got another little job reviewing a website translation for my friend Karissa's organization by Monday.

I successfully ordered a block of parmesan cheese at the deli counter.

We are planning to cap off the week with a visit to the Hannover Christmas market, and try some gluhwein. Though if it is raining tonight, we might stay home for a Dexter marathon instead.

I entered the family Amaryllis race with a head start, by buying this guy at the grocery store:

So even though I thought today about our creaky floors and our backyard and the fun people we know in St Paul, things are pretty good here too.