back in Germany

Hello everyone! After a very busy few weeks, including our wedding and a whirlwind tour through half of Canada, we're back in Germany. I promise that we'll blog about it soon, but it'll have to come in installments. We're having trouble with our internet connection at home as well, which isn't helping things much, and we're only in town until Friday afternoon (about 48 hours from now) when we've got to catch a train to Berlin for our flight to Cairo. So no promises about blog progress for now, but do keep checking. We'll do what we can. And yes, the cat is fine. Better than fine, actually. Somehow her fur got significantly softer while we were away. I'm not sure if it's just the summer, or if our apartment-sitters brushed her more, or if they snuck a little olive oil into her diet (they're Italian), but she looks and feels wonderful. We'll get some pictures up soon, don't worry. And now back to chipping away at the mountain of emails in my inbox...

the cutest pillow ever?

Although there's only one in the pictures, there are two sweet little dresses like this one sported by the pillow.



And the back, complete with bow.



I'm counting down the hours now - in 27.5 I'll be on a train to Frankfurt, and in 49.5 I'll be on a plane to Toronto. (I'm not counting it in days and nights, as sleeping isn't really something that I'm doing much of lately.)

an ignorant foreigner in the kitchen

The day after the crazy Swedish party my German teacher (from the courses at the institute) and his wife (who is also a German teacher) had their students over for a party. They live a bit west of town, right across from a nice brew pub (the Papiermuehle, for those who know it), and their backyard backs onto the Leutra, a small tributary of the Saale river. It's a really beautiful spot, and they have a nice little bridge built across the water as well.

Pretty well all the guests were foreigners, and we were asked to bring a dish from our countries. Always a tricky one, coming from Canada, but I opted for Aunt Gail's tourtière recipe, which everyone loves. I figured it would go over well with Germans too, as it's pretty well just pork, potatoes, and a crust, with some inoffensive seasoning. That is, unless you're a stupid foreigner and buy "Mett" instead of ground pork. "Mett" looks just like ground pork, is sold next to ground pork, and pretty well is ground pork, with one important difference - it's salted. And you wouldn't know this if you didn't taste it before cooking it, which of course I don't usually do with raw ground pork. As such, the tourtière was almost inedibly salty, which was really a shame, as it's usually so good.

I looked up Mett on Wikipedia, and found that not only is it common in Germany, but it's eaten raw. I know this isn't any more dangerous than eating raw ground beef, but I grew up always believing that you have to cook pork all the way through (which isn't true as long as whatever is fed to the pigs is free of parasites or cooked first), so the idea is still a bit hard to take.

What's even better though, is that a party dish popular in the 1970s is the "Mettigel" (literally, the seasoned meat hedgehog), wherein you shape the Mett like a hedgehog and make spikes out of raw onions or pretzel sticks. The pictures are too good not to share.

This one even has a raw egg yolk for a hat!

This one uses the aforementioned pretzel sticks, but I don't think they really gave it much effort with regard to shaping or decorating...
And how do you eat it? Spread on bread of course. While I'm sure it's good (in fact, I think we may have eaten it once at a restaurant or festival), I don't think it's going to catch on as standard potluck fare in Canada anytime soon.

Rest assured, I shouldn't be making too many more ignorant-foreigner mistakes in the future, as at the party my classmates and I were presented with our results from the German language test we took back in April. We all passed! But really, we more than passed. I got 99.5%, Fabio got 100%, and Valentina had 96%. I think the lowest mark in our whole course was still in the upper 80s. So now, I officially speak German. Jeremi took the same exam back in February and also did well - my German course was much less intensive, and we really only did the exam for kicks. Still, it's nice to have some official recognition that I sort of speak German...

some more dresses...

So I've been a bit bad about the sewing posts. To be honest, I've been a bit bad about the sewing too. But I did finish the bridesmaids' dresses a couple days ago, at least as finished as they're going to be before I can try them on the actual bridesmaids. (That means that they're not hemmed, one end of the straps is still not secured, and the lining, while attached to the outer dress at the top, has not been fully hand-sewn in place.)

I tried to take a picture of me wearing Marie's dress to give an idea of how they looked, but the pictures didn't come out so well. Either I used a mirror and I got only flash, or a slightly out of focus picture of part of me, like this...


...or I tried to pretend that I had long enough arms to take a pictures of all of me, and it ended up more like this. At least it gives some idea of what the beading looks like.


I have much more understanding now of why so many self-portraits people post on the internet look so crappy. Luckily help came this evening in the form of Calin and Susanne. In addition to helping me tidy my apartment, Susanne also acted as Marlene's body double, and Calin was our photographer. Hopefully these pictures give you some idea of how the dresses look...



Unfortunately, none of us fits into the flower girl dresses, and this was as close as Aeris would come to trying one on.



And yes, I know that I'm pathetic for needing my friends to help me tidy my apartment. This has never been a strength of mine, and I've been really busy of late with sewing and work. And of course Jeremi's not around to help. As Marie explained, "tidying is the first thing to go". I can't express in words how true this is for me. Now I just hope that Marie's dress fits better than the cod costume did.