Winter!

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry to the coconut contest.  The winner was me.  Answer: 10 days before my 19th birthday, Cambodia.  Freshman year, folks!

Winter officially begins on 1 December in Germany.  The sky seemed still dark at 7:45am yesterday as I peaked through my eyelids and smacked OK to silence my phone alarm.  When I finally rolled out of bed half an hour later, it wasn't much lighter.  Outside looked like this until about 4:15pm, when it got dark again.

The view out my window

Weihnachten (the holy nights, i.e. Christmas Eve and Christmas) arrive soon.  Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas Markets) have already arrived, some as early as 24 Nov.  There is no Thanksgiving here to 'split up' the holiday craze.  The holiday craze, however, can be more merry than commercial, depending where you go, what you do, and who you're with.  Of course that's true anywhere you are, but the Weihnachtsmärkte make it easy to feel non-Scroogey without being overwhelmed by jingles, imitation Santa Clauses, and killer shoppers.  You can get that feeling if you search for it in a mall of course.  Aside: There is no black Friday.  Stores do not have extended hours.  They do not open before dawn (grocery stores don't open before 8am).  At Weihnactsmarkt, you can be overwhelmed by people densely packing the aisles between stalls of Glühwein, Bratwurst, Reibekuchen, Feuerzangenbowle, Dampfnudeln, Früchtebrot, candies, dozens of stands selling ornaments and crafts, including knits, carved and colored rocks, creatively blown glass, jewelry of silver, wood, stone and/or shells, silly marionette like dolls that hang from springs, wood carvings, neat wax shapes, dishes and cooking utensils with need wood patterns, teas, spices.  I don't know if Germans balloon like we do during the holiday season, but it probably helps that one usually travels on foot to the Weihnactsmarkt and spends a good amount of time losing as much heat as they are consuming.  

Most towns have their own Weihnachtsmarkt, some major cities have multiple markts, and some cities are renowned for their Weihnachtsmarkt.  We'll have a look at my samplings, but first, let's compile a glossary of the consumables of the previous paragraph:

Glühwein: the reason to go to a Christmas Market.  Hot wine mulled with spices.  Aside from the standard red, comes in many versions, Weisse (white), Kirschewein (Cherry wine), Heidelbeerwein (Blueberry wine), 'Glühwein mit Schuss' (Glühwein with a shot of rum, amaretto, Bailey's, i.e. SPIKED!).  Keeps your toes warm.  If you are used to drinking warm things, like Chinese tea, quickly, Glühwein is a lot of fun for you (me).  As mentioned in 'Taste the Waste', the drinks are served in a Weihnachtsmarkt mug that you leave a Pfand (deposit) for.  If you want to keep it, then they keep your deposit.  If you want your deposit back, bring the much back.  Weihnachtsmarkt mug are too easy to collect.

Bratwurst: brat = fried, wurst = sausage  Every state in Germany has it's own style and flavor, and the variety is reflected at the Christmas markets.  In Nürnberg (Nuremberg) for example, you can order 3-5 Nürnberger Bratwurst in a Brötchen (bread roll, Brot = bread, chen = little).  They're tiny, much like breakfast sausage.  Most Bratwurst served in Germany are served in a Brötchen much shorter and fatter than the Bratwurst.

Reibekuchen: fried potato pancakes, much like latkes (Jewish).  Unlike latkes, where you can typically make out the potato shreds by eye and texture, Reibekuchen is made from a finer grind of potato flour and maybe other flour too.  The batter is scooped out of its bowl and plopped to swim in some oil before being scooped out and served with two Reibekuchen friends and a generous glob of apple sauce.  

Feuerzangenbowle!!!  Take red wine, some fruit and spices, a splash of orange juice if desired, and heat over a low flame.  Mount a cone of sugar over it.  Douse sugar cone in STRONG rum, light!  Keep adding rum to sugar until entire sugar cone has melted while caramelizing into the wine.  Drink.

(I tried really hard to rotate this, any tips?)

Dampfnudeln: A giant ball of dough served with vanilla sauce.  I haven't tried it yet.  I'm usually full after sampling any two items from the list above.

Früchtebrot:  Take a guess...Früchte = fruit, brot = bread.  This stuff was really abundant and REALLY good in Nürnberg.  It's densely packed with whole dried plums, figs, dates, hazelnuts, cinnamon, nutmeg, and presently unidentified other tasty spices (PUOTS ) and topped with some nicely placed almond pieces.  A thin slice eats like a meal.  

Nürnberger Früchtebrot

So, I would like to present the Christmas Markets I have been to, in ascending order by size, with a splash of commentary.  I hope to post more about my first trip to Bavaria (Erlangen, Regensburg, Nürnberg) later. 

London - Ok, not the smallest, just the least German and most annoyingly expensive.  4 pounds + 1 (mug) per Glühwein!  That's more than 6 Euro!  

Erlangen - Had a Medieval style one, with more rustic decorations and crafts for sale.  First taste of Feuerzangenbowle there with Vahid Sandoghdar's research group (amazing at spectroscopy).  

Regensburg - Had multiple Christmas markets.  I spent one night in this town that didn't get bombed, and therefore all its Medieval stuff never required reconstruction.  One market was more 'conventional', selling mostly Christmas themed products, I ate a Wildschweinebratwurst there (Wild = wild, schweine = pig, bratwurst = bratwurst), another one featured local artists.

Mainz - Have attended once with my research group, twice in another day during our department's Christmas party, one more time for shopping without consuming Glühwein (gasp!), one more time with my TOM buddy and his flatmate (like a language partner, these great people still need to be introduced).  Glühwein typically 2.50 Euro here, plus 1 or 2 for the deposit.  Spiking it will cost you another.

Verena, meine Kollege!

Nürnberg - City reconstructed, still awesome, surrounded by a fortress.  Germany's favorite Christmas markets, and possibly the largest, woven among the bridges, Cathedrals, and hills!  Bought a potato made of marzipan.  I am really challenging my sugar tolerance this season.

Lots of Marzipan products, among other treats.  Marzipan potatoes in the middle there

Dolls assembled from dried fruit

Nürnberger Bratwurst sold here

Special Thanks and Coconut Contest

An overdue thank you to all supporters who have collectively viewed this blog more than 1000 times!  (No, that does not include my own views)  (Don't worry, I can't see who has viewed it and when and from where, and I want don't to.  Blogger simply keeps count of pageviews by day, from which operating systems, and from which country it was accessed by day, week, month, and all time).  I have certainly learned a lot by taking the extra time to record and reflect upon excerpts of life and travels that have interested, informed, amused, and moved me, and I hope you make time to try it too at some point, if you haven't already, publicly or privately.  

Beer/wine/chocolate of choice (up to 5€ worth) to the first person who correctly guesses my age in this 'foto' and in which country it was taken in.  Multiple winners possible, depending on time zone.  Polls open now, will close in one week if no one wins before that.  Immediate family members (Mother, Father, Brother) not eligible.  Thanks for the foto, Mom!

Toronto, Jamaica, London

What?  I don't live in any of those countries, nor are any of them Deutschland or in Deutschland!
What is this blog called ?!?!

Well aware that I haven't finished describing OktoberTrip, I'll give only a bullet point summary.

Bill invited me to a wedding here: 

The estate called Rio Chico, near Ocho Rios, Jamaica
http://www.caribbean-tour.com/Sandals-Rio-Chico-Private-Estate.html
(No, I did not snap this great aerial shot)

So I went to Toronto on the way for good seafood and great (!!) company.

Nina, native Torontonian (?), fellow Cornell Chorus woman, amazing

Awesome mussels steamed with scallions, ginger, and fermented black beans

Then we found each other in Jamaica

Beached around for a few days, then cleaned up for the wedding

Then beached around some more

Logically and less than 24 hrs later, I stopped by London for Glühwein on the way to Frankfurt

By the River Thames

OktoberTrip: Part II - My Stomping Grounds

Mainz, 21 Oct.

Jetlagged Bill patiently awaited for our heroine to roll out of bed at the crack of noon...minus ~ 3 hours.  After freshening up with a breakfast of Houstonian chives, our fabulous duo skipped into the market by the Dom (see "Weekend in the rain: Part II" from 3 Sept.) before skipping into the Gutenberg museum.  What a fun day with the namesakes of both of the universities I reside at during my Ph.D.!

One of the best pictures of the Dom I've seen - by Bill

The Gutenberg Museum is another one that will cost you only 3€ to get in but will keep you occupied for as much of the day you have left until the museum closes.  On the ground level, we watched a printing demonstration, and observed versions presses and typewriters marking the last few centuries.  The progress of printing technology continued onto the 1st floor.  Imagine needing a machine the size of your bed (yes, your bed in Houston, not my meter wide one here) requiring seemingly Herculean strength (relative to my linguini arms at least) to print each page.  Dozens of well preserved documents were on display on this floor, many of them embellished by hand.  The next level featured newspapers, some biographical material on Gutenberg from where you could tunnel into the room of Gutenberg Bibles, printed but embellished by hand.  What would happen if you flipped through those pages?  Good thing they're encased!

On the same floor, you can traverse a 'skywalk' to a wing of East Asian printing history.  Remember how complicated the European printing press seemed?  Now imagine carving out the individual printing blocks for all the words in a language where the words are not assembled by alphabet.  Here, you found collections thousands of Chinese blocks, well organized by the number of strokes in each character (much like modern Chinese dictionaries), as well as Korean and Japanese collections.  Another floor up, and you could learn about printing in Egypt, another wing featured newspapers.  We probably skipped another floor beyond that and probably saw half of the museum in depth during our stay of almost 3 hours.  I present a few photos taken before I was redflagged for photos.

Lithography stone, for the first kind of lithography! 

Tiny books!

Tiny printing presses to print tiny books

We strolled into Altstadt for zwiebeln kuchen (onion cake) and Federweiser (new wine), the combination for this time of year in this part of the country.  Federweiser is fresh, young wine - sweet, meant to be drunk upon being produced, and is only available for about 2 months every year.

Zwiebel Kuchen and Federweiser, in an awesome wine shop with neat wood furniture

After lunch, we wandered into the neighoborhood, through a tunnel, up a hill, pretended to be lost, then I said "look down".  Römisches Theater!  Photo credits to Bill, from inside the fence.

Another theme of this trip was renovations - half of the landmarks we saw were surrounded by fences or partially obscured by scaffolding.  Our hero hoisted our blogger onto the rail, to get her just high enough to reach over the fence for some pictures.  Her camera jumped to escape!  Bill to the rescue!  Of course he got those great shots of the theater while he was in there.

Römisches Theater is near Zitadel (see "Moonrise from my apartment"), and apparently there's some territory to explore behind it.

Hmmm...where does this trail go?

Dead ends into a football 'field'

Pet the fuzzy wall

Another famous Mainz landmark is St. Stephan's Cathedral.  The outside is understated, could be any modest Cathedral in the part of Germany.  Go inside, the Chagall windows create a perfect airy and aquatic atmosphere that calms the mind, opening the paths to quiet and peaceful meditation.  Our jet-lagged hero almost took a power nap here.

Our physicist could not visit his favorite physical chemist without seeing her lab, Irene's 'baby', the white light laser.  For the full student experience, we squeezed into the bus from Hauptbahnhoff up to Uni, popped in, made some impressions, confirmed dinner plans with Irene, Robert, Andrew, and Janak, and finished mapping the week's journey.

Not from this trip, but a good representative photo

Time to go to Eisgrub!  Eisgrub is Mainz's premier brewery, with the freshest and most flavorful beers I've had in Germany.  Go with a group, you can buy towers with a tap at the bottom that hold either 3 liters or 5 liters.  The 5 liter towers were already occupied, the 6 of us settled for 3, it was better that way, we could try a different beer every time we refreshed it.

Schweineshaxe - a whole roasted ham hock, or pork knuckle - a Bayernisch (Bavarian) specialty.  Bavaria to Germany is like Texas to the USA.  Most stereotypes associated with the country come from that particular large and southern most state.  The rest of the country thinks that state could be a separate country, and the residents of that state think so too.  They eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of beer.  The rest of the country indulges in their festive traditions in a mildly patronizing way.

Robert finished his haxe in about 15 min.  I went through ~3/4 in about 3 times the amount of time.  Bill was jet-lagged and so was his stomach.  Irene is vegetarian.

Schweineshaxe - with some sauerkraut and mustard, and a tomatoes slice and a cucumber slice,- comes with bread, but don't fill yourself with those things if you want room for the haxe, said Robert, who finished his in ~15 min

Hey Einstein, your knife blade is facing the wrong way

Allow me to demonstrate

I have you now

The Archer

The Climber