Happy 2012 everyone! Alright, so it's been two weeks of traveling, sight seeing, eating, drinking, hiking, and hanging with my parents. There's a lot to cover- so my plan is to bang this out in three posts, but they probably won't all happen today! My parents flew out early this morning, I went to the airport with them, and when I got back to Baden I saw the sunrise (to give you an idea of how early). The first will cover our first four days in the Leipzig area, then Dresden and our 2-ish days in Prague, and lastly our five days in Austria!
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| Peter (on the balcony) and Christof lighting the candles on the Christmas tree. |
When I got there our other exchange students Basti and Micha were also there with Marie, Christof and my parents. Basti's sister Suzi and Christof's girlfriend Melli (hope I'm spelling that correctly) were there too! It was so great to see everyone again, we spent the evening wandering Leipzig and catching up. We went to this water basin where you can make the water jump if you rub the rails just right, and I actually got it working, last time I visited I couldn't get it at all. We went to a cafe/bar and had some snacks and drinks to warm up a bit after walking around in the cold (but there wasn't snow), and then we decided we'd just go back to the Schulze's house have dinner, more drinks and continue our conversation. I don't know how much of this my parents understood because we were all speaking a lot of German, with a bit of English thrown in, but I had a really good time and I'm going to have to visit Micha and Basti (or they'll have to visit Austria so we can catch up more!
On the 24 we had a pretty late start, since we had gone to bed late, but we did finally get in gear after a delicious German breakfast. It was just my family with Peter and Karin as our guides as we drove to several small towns near Leipzig, where we saw some typical German castles and walked around the castle grounds. It was windy and wet, and in driving from place to place I really started noticing some differences between eastern Germany and my area of Austria. It's clear that there's a lot less money in that area of Germany, you can see it in the houses, the cars and the cultural landmarks. Here in Baden there's a lot of money, so everything is well kept, and they spend a lot of money on making their towns appealing to the eye with parks, trails, plantings, interesting shops and buildings. Of course I also noticed that there is very little trash, cigarette butts or dog crap on the streets of Germany, and those are all big problems here!
I swear we were eating every two hours in Germany, and all the food was good it was hard to decide what to put on my plate, I wanted to try everything! For lunch that day we had a nice hot goose noodle soup (we ate the goose for Christmas the next day), and for the life of me I can't remember what we did that afternoon... but in the late afternoon Christof and Marie came over. The guys lit the candles on the Christmas tree (that's right, real candles), and we exchanged gifts. In Germany and Austria it's traditional to do Christmas gifts on evening of the 24th- not the morning of the 25th. Then we had our dinner of potato salads and sausages with drinks of course. I think by the time dinner was over I'd had two beers (the German .5 liter beers) and two shots of schnapps. Then their neighbor always plays Christmas music with his two sons from their living room (they open the window) and the neighbors all stand outside drinking Glühwein, champagne and singing christmas carols. I think they played more English songs than usual because they knew there were some Americans in the crowd, and we did seem to be the only people singing for those songs (besides Marie of course!). We all had a few more drinks, and then it was time to walk to church for the christmas service. That's right- get tipsy & go to church. I think I like this tradition!
It was another late night- which meant another late start to our day on the 25, but it's vacation, so it doesn't matter! We spent the morning and early afternoon touring two or three man made lakes in the area. Their located where they used to mine brown coal (it's near the surface, so they can just dig it out), and now they're trying to make these areas into resorts. One (or it may have been two- I'm a bit fuzzy on that since we visited 3 spots, but it seems like it was 2 spots on the same lake...) of them isn't full yet, so you can still see mounds of soil and small trees popping up all over in the lake. I think Peter said it would be another 5 years until it is full, but they already have a big sort of "port" area, lots of housing being built, a big museum and restaurant... basically they want it to be a big tourist attraction, but right now it just looks ridiculous. The one we visited that was finished was pretty nice, it had sort of a North-Sea Shore theme, and it's surrounded by parks and bike paths. I'm sure there are a lot of people there in the summer, and I know I'd rather go there than the other lake we saw!
We went back to the house at about 2, and Marie came over with her boyfriend Yves for the big traditional goose dinner. I've never had goose before, and I liked it quite a lot, although there is a lot of fat on there! We also had Kartoffelknödel (potato dumplings) and mashed potatoes, red cabbage and white cabbage, and there was more that I'm not remembering but I'm sure it was good! Then we had cookies and schnapps for dessert- I thought we would sit at the table forever eating cookies, but we did eventually move on to working on a puzzle. Then Christof and Melli came over with more cookies, so that started another round of cookie eating, and at some point we also went for a walk around Mölkau (the suburb of Leipzig where the Schulzes live). I'm pretty sure we ate some more later, but I have no idea what!
The 26th was our last day in Leipzig, and it was also the day of the big family christmas get together and dinner. We had what Peter calls Frühmi (not a real word, so I'm not worried about spelling), and what the rest of us call brunch, with Christof and Melli. Afterwards we (mom, dad, me, Christof and Melli) went to the Panometer museum at Melli's suggestion, and it was great! The exhibit was all about the Amazon river basin, all the plants, animals and insects that live there and how they co-exist and how humans interact with that world. The guy who arranges it all wants to immerse people into whatever the exhibit is, so you're surrounded by images specimens, videos, and information, plus there's a constant soundtrack of noises you would hear if you were actually in the rainforest. It's a lot to look at and take in, so we were there for quite some time! The whole thing ends with a round central room where the walls make up a full 360 degree picture. We stood in there up on the observation platform (it's a tall room too) for what amounted to a whole day. We saw the sun rise, the forest come to life, the sun set and a storm in the distance at night. It was incredible! They have different exhibits throughout the year, they have ancient Rome, ancient Greece, Mount Everest and more I'm sure.
After the Panometer we met Marie at the art museum in Leipzig, Christof left, and we went to see the Max Beckman exhibit. Max Beckman was a German painter, but beyond that I can't really tell you much more. He had some issues with women- cheated on both of his wives, and his style of painting was rather childish. It was interesting to see some German art, but by the time we all made it through the exhibit I was ready to go. We went back to the Schulze's and had coffee, tea, cookies and cake while sitting around talking. Mostly we talked to each other and Marie, Yves, Melli and Christof, while the rest of the extended family talked amongst themselves. Then our end of the table made its escape to the kitchen where we started drinking beer and hungrily awaiting the real food. Dinner was finally served after what seemed like an hour of hanging out in the kitchen, and it was worth the wait! We had fresh baked ham, a goose and sauerkraut dish, red and white cabbage, Semmelknödel (another type of dumpling), two different gravies, cheese, bread and some different vegetable salads. After everyone had their fill with dinner more drinks were passed around, and a lot of the extended family left. This was a problem since Christof and Melli had made 5 pans of tiramisu! They had planned on serving about 25 people, but in the end I think there were 10 of us. Melli ran home to get her parents to help us out, but even there were 2 pans left at the end of the night.
The next morning we left continue our adventures, but we had a lot of fun in Germany, and I was grateful to be able to spend another holiday with the Schulzes!
Tomorrow's installment: A few hours in Dresden, and wandering through Prague again.
Also check my smugmug for all the pictures from vacation.
Your pics are great. Dave - I don't want to hear anymore about your boring, f***g life.... Sandy
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