Christmas in Deutschland

Here are a few pictures from Christmas at our house. Our decorating (and cleaning) was jump-started a week and a half before Christmas when we invited our friend Susanne's parents over for supper, as they were visiting from Denmark. (We stayed with them when we visited Denmark back in August.) We decided to make them Acadian food, both because it was a novelty, and because we thought it would be appealing to northern European meat-and-potatoes sensibilities. And so we proceded to grate a whole lot of potatoes to make râpé. I should mention that Jeremi did the bulk of the work here, and I only took over for the last dozen potatoes or so.

And here's the finished product, being brought to the living room to serve. It was delicious, and provided us with leftovers for the next week. (It really was a lot of potatoes, and a whole roast of pork for the meat inside.)
Here we are, getting seated at the table, after eating too much homemade chicken liver pâté as an appetizer.

For dessert we had poutines à trou, biscuit dough dumplings filled with apples, raisins, and cranberries, with a brown sugar syrup poured on top after baking.
Mmm... Behind you can see our woefully-undecorated Christmas tree - don't worry, the rest of the ornaments were soon to follow.
The next Christmas-related festivity was my group Christmas party at work. For this each of us brought in two gifts which cost less than €2,50, and then we randomly chose two presents to open. I brought in a little Christmas cactus, and this little stocking, which I knit with some scraps of very fine sock wool. I'm sorry the picture is so terrible. (The pen is there to show scale.)


And then the weekend before Christmas, while we were busy decorating and stocking up on way too much food, there was a night with a heavy ice fog. Jeremi took this picture out our kitchen window, into the courtyard behind our building.
That weekend we also had a special breakfast with the last red peppers from the plants on our balcony. These were the last peppers that didn't get a chance to grow so big, but they still tasted lovely. And we were eating home-grown peppers in late December! (We did bring the plants in when the frosts started in late November, but still!)
For Christmas Eve we had the most ridiculously indulgent meal - cheese fondue, using baguette, steamed brocolli, apple, gherkins, cocktail onions, and sausage to dip. What made it more than usually decadent was that about an hour after finishing the first pot (yes, it was just the two of us), we made up another batch, and finished that one too. Don't you just love the holidays? (This picture also shows a bunch of ribbon stars that we later strung on a thread and used as a garland on our tree, along with threaded popcorn and cranberries and dried orange slices.)
Me on Christmas morning, getting ready to open my stocking (which is an actual knee sock).

And Jeremi with his...And the cat, evilly hoarding the pile of presents...
But really, the cat had no need to covet our presents, as she got the biggest gift of all, this giant cat condo. Yes, we're crazy cat people. For the record, when we were at the store and I was looking at the smaller, cheaper one, it was Jeremi who pointed out that we really never buy her anything except for the occasional bag of food and litter, and she really doesn't have a perch where she can climb up to in the apartment, and she might really like it...


Yes, in the picture above, she does still have her back feet on the ground, and she's only standing up so that she can get at her food dish, which we've cruelly located to the cat condo in an attempt to get her used to it. (And that's a catnip-filled mouse in the little box.) She is actually getting quite used to it now, though she's still a bit nervous about the two uppermost levels. We've since relocated the whole thing to a corner next to the window, so it's not taking up the whole room.And then, it was time for Christmas dinner. We opted to make something "German" this year, and so we roasted our first goose. We used the new German cookbook that we received as a gift from Chris and Karen for the stuffing, which consisted of saurkraut, onions, grated potatoes, wine, and caraway seeds. We also added some beifuß, a herb which is traditionally used here with fatty roasts like duck or goose. In English it's called mugwort, and it's not really eaten much, but does have some medicinal properties (like stimulating uterine contractions?!?). Perhaps this is why the word brings up thoughts of witches' cauldrons and Harry Potter.
The meat was quite good, and dark and flavourful like roast beef.


For supper I wanted it to look nice, so we tidied up the living room (okay, it was mostly Jeremi, as I was finishing up in the kitchen), so we could lay out the whole spread: from bottom, spätzle, beets and brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, gravy, goose on a bed of stuffing, and a plate of Christmas cookies (pecan snowballs made with ground hazelnuts instead of pecans, which are hard to find here, jam thumbprints made with crushed walnuts instead of pecans, and cornflake cookies, with a bit of chili.)
And here we had the table nicely set for two, next to the Christmas tree...
...and with heaping plates full of food.

It was just lovely. The next day, Jeremi made his family's version of meat pie, called pâté, with beef, pork, and potatoes, in a buiscuit dough crust. The steam vents on top read J+J with a little heart. (His work, not mine, but the cheesiness is understandable seeing as we got engaged the day before.) Before Christmas we'd also made my family's version of meat pie, a tourtière made with ground pork, mashed potato, onion, sage, thyme, and cloves, cooked with celery. They both came out quite well, but we only got a picture of this one.

And with the pâté we had a vegetable that we've never seen in Canada, but is quite common here in the winter - Schwarzwurfel (literally, black root), which apparently is known in English as black salsify, or scorzonera. When cut it released a sticky white sap, which can almost be seen in the photo. We boiled it for about 25 minutes, and then removed the peel, and mashed it as one would parsnip or turnip. It was quite tasty!

Finally

After a wonderful Christmas meal of roasted goose, spätzle, sauerkraut stuffing, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, and beets, Julia asked me if I wanted to marry her. Calloo Callay, Oh Frabjous Day! The magical event will take place on the 19th of July, 2008, in my parents' backyard in St-Ignace, New Brunswick, Canada. I've got until long before then to make a beautiful proposal acknowledgment quilt. No quilt, no wedding, Just a really expensive party. Substandard quilt... iffy. Stay tuned to find out what will happen. Will she make an honest man out of me?

Julia's crazy new year's resolution

I was thinking about what I'd most like to change in the new year, and in addition to the sort of vague and therefore unattainable goals (eg. be more organized, get more done at work, eat better), I decided on one concrete and easily monitored fitness-related goal. I want to run 2008 kilometers in 2008. That's only 5.5 km a day, and I manage to do more than that now and again, but I certainly don't do it every day. That means if I miss a day I have to catch up with 11 km the next day, and that if I get the flu or something, I have a lot of catching up to do. I don't know how attainable it is, but I figure that if I try and make it only halfway, I'll still be running more than I managed to get in this year. And so I'm starting on January 1st, most likely with a hangover.

I thought that if I wrote it on the blog I might be more likely to follow through, you know, the whole public shaming aspect in case of failure. I'm even putting in a little ticker, so you can keep track of my progress. Wish me luck!

Dresden

In Dresden we stayed at a really neat old place, Hotel Kipping. (I didn't take this picture, but rather borrowed it from their website.)
The rooms were great, as was the breakfast (there was even caviar on the deviled eggs), and it was an interesting old building. It used to be a private residence, then a boarding house for young women, and then a business (run by the family who owns the hotel today) where they made baby clothes and cotton diapers. The business was nationalized during DDR times, but was bought back by the family after reunification, and converted to a hotel. They still had the old time clock and punch cards from its days as a factory.

That first night in Dresden Baba decided to take it easy, and we ordered some food from the hotel restaurant up to her room. The rest of us headed into town to find the famous Christmas market, the oldest in Germany. The whole way from the hotel (near the Hauptbahnhof, up Pragerstraße) was lined with booths as well. Mom was impressed with this whole building devoted to selling Thüringer Bratwurst, seeing as we were in Sachsen (Saxon). I don't think she'd really believed us up to that point when we said that we lived in the middle of the region most famous for these sausages, renowned throughout the world.And of course we picked up a few glasses of Glühwein on the way.

And then we were there, at the 573rd installment of the Dresden Christmas market.
Jeremi and I had our first tastes of Glühbier (mulled beer), which was surprisingly good. Jer really wanted to take the glasses home (you pay a deposit on them so you can walk around while drinking, so this is always an option), but they only had a volume of 0.25 litres, and we decided that we'd really never use them for beer.
In addition to its famous stollen (a German Christmas cake, which some of you were lucky enough to get for Christmas this year), the market in Dresden is also known for having the largest pyramid in the world. Not like the ones in Egypt, but these spinning Christmas table decorations that are driven by convection, with candles at the base. This one was 14 m tall, though not actually driven by convection.
There were also lots of wooden Christmas ornaments there, from Erzgebirge, a region with low mountains near the Czech border. Particularly common are these little wooden men with pipes, called Räuchermännchen (little smoking men), which have a little opening at the back where you can insert a little cone of inscense, then light it, and the smoke comes out the hole in his mouth. These are pretty typical in German households this time of year. This one was particulary cute, as he was made to look like a carpenter, making little ornaments, and he really looked like the carpenter who ran the booth. (It wasn't for sale.)
There's one other funny thing at the Christmas market in Dresden, this weird little man made out of prunes on a wire frame, known as the Pflaumentoffel (plum devil), who's dressed like a chimney sweep, complete with ladder.

After the market, we headed out for some food and drink. There was a nice-looking tapas bar that unfortunately didn't have a free table. After we left to find another restaurant, the waiter actually chased us out into the street to tell us that a table had freed up. I'm glad, as the food and wine were great.


A fair bit of wine was drunk, in fact...

The next day we got up, had breakfast, and headed into the city to explore. We went through the Christmas market again, so that Baba could see it, and also so that we could have a group picture done with the santa there. I was hesitant, but I said I'd do it if Baba did, and she got right up on his lap. I have to scan in the copy I have to include it here, but that'll have to wait for the new year.

Here we are with the Frauenkirche (the church of our lady), an emotional landmark of Dresden, in the background. This church, like much of the historic city centre, was destroyed by Allied firebombers in February of 1945. It was only rebuilt and reconsecrated in 2005, in time for the 8ooth anniversary of the city. There is still a lot of construction/reconstruction work going on around Dresden, certainly more than we've seen elsewhere in Germany.
Just off this square is the Verkehrsmuseum (transportation museum), which we were looking for as they have a big model train exhibit every year at Christmas. We walked in to find more information about that, and were lucky to stumble onto yet another Christmas market, this one with a medieval theme.

Here's an old wooden carousel, which was hand-powered.
Here was a booth with lots of wooden jewellery, and Jeremi and I are picking out a wooden pendant for my cousin (as per mom's request).
And it wouldn't be a market without the requisite whole-pig-on-a-spit. (The medieval part of it is provided by the guy in old-timey clothes and leather apron doing the cooking.)
All in all, the market was beautiful, and in a lovely little location. I also had the best cup of tea, flavoured with dates and rosewater. Unfortunately the woman who sold it to me was really into the medieval thing, and insisted on speaking archaic German. (I understand it's all about getting into a role, but when you're speaking to a foreigner who obviously is having trouble understanding you, you don't have to keep referring to euros as "Thalers".)

Jeremi got to try his hand at archery...
...but was found wanting.
There was a great booth there with lots of hand-crafted wool products, including adorable felted puppets. We picked up a couple for some special young men in our lives, and they kept us company for the rest of the day. (I think Jeremi looks jealous in this picture.)The outer wall of one of the buildings enclosing the courtyard where the market was held had the most incredible mural of painted tiles, depicting various rulers over the centuries.
Here you might be able to make out the individual tiles, which were produced by Meissen, the company which shares the name of a nearby town, where the first European porcelain was produced.
From there it was only a short walk over to the Semperoper, Dresden's famous opera house. It was also destroyed in 1945, and reopened in 1985.


Next to the opera house is the Zwinger, a large compound of museums, which was originally built as art galleries, a library, and a palace for ceremonial occasions. It too was mostly destroyed and rebuilt.Here, outside the Meissen porcelain museum, is a carillon made of porcelain bells.

One amusing sight for us was this restaurant: "Ontario Restaurant", which claimed to serve Canadian food. Upon checking out the menu I found some of the usual suspects (maple syrup desserts, salmon, fiddleheads), and a whole lot of game. Caribou, moose, venison, elk, bison, they were all there. (I don't recall seeing bear, but I wouldn't be surprised.) We didn't try it out, but the menu didn't look bad. I just worry for the German tourists who arrive in Canada hoping to try caribou at all the local restaurants.
That afternoon we went back to the hotel for a short rest, and to get dressed up for the surprise of our trip - tickets to the opera! Jeremi and I had thought it would be fun for them to see an opera at a European opera house while they were visiting, and we checked out the schedules in Vienna, Prague, and Dresden ahead of time. The schedule in Dresden seemed to work best for us, and coincided with the last night of the trip. And thus, we went to see a classic German story told in French, La damnation de Faust (The Damnation of Faust, or Fausts Verdammnis).

Here we are having an early supper beforehand. I was just starting to get a cold this day, and I was freezing through the entire meal. (Unfortunately I passed the virus on to Baba before she headed home, which is the last thing she needed.)


The opera was a great night out, made even more special by the fact that some of the chorus and an entire children's choir sang the last scene from the uppermost tier, i.e. from directly behind our chairs. Mom still doesn't believe that we knew this ahead of time, and that's why we were seated in the last row in the highest tier.

The next morning we wanted to visit the model train exhibit before leaving town, but we didn't have much time before check-out (at noon), so we had to hurry a bit. Baba stayed in the room while the rest of us walked back downtown briskly, made it in time to spend over an hour at the museum, and then came back to pick up Baba and the luggage. The trip was definitely worth it, as you can see from my dad's face:


Then, as there was no rush to get back to Jena, we decided to stop by one more place. I remembered reading about Pfunds Molkerei, some sort of ornate dairy, in our German guidebook, which we'd forgotten at home (again!). Mom and dad had two guidebooks with them, but they didn't mention the place. However we'd seen it on the sides of tour buses as well, so Jeremi asked a guy for directions. He gave excellent directions, and we were able to find it on the way out of town without too much difficulty.

It really is a beautiful building, with the interior covered with painted tiles. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but I found this one on the internet:

And if you follow this link and then click on the left, you can even have a click-and-drag 360 degree tour of the place (don't neglect the ceiling!). In addition to cheese and souvenirs, they also sold cold glasses of milk and buttermilk for a euro apiece, and you could serve yourself from things that looked like samovars.

Between where we parked and the dairy, there was a little cafe that advertised chili-ginger-hot chocolate. I was intrigued enough that we stopped in for a bit of refreshment before heading back to Jena, and it was well worth it.
And thus ends our vacation with mom and dad and baba. They were in Jena for another day before leaving, which we spent at the Christmas market buying Christmas gifts to send home. Then after a big vegetarian middle eastern meal, we all slept for a few hours before getting up around 4:00 to bring them to the train station in Weimar. (This saved them transferring trains with all their bags, and we were going to drive them to the station in Jena anyhow.)

And so we said goodbye to our latest guests. I'm so glad that they were able to visit, and that we were able to take some time off to explore with them. Thank-you guys so much for coming!