Happy 2013!

I celebrated my first German New Year two years ago in Hannover. I have since then tried to explain what it entails to those that haven't seen how the Europeans bring in the New Year. Complete chaos is an ok description. But nothing does it justice. There are fireworks going off on every single street, not done by the city, but by the local citizens. With fireworks bought the week before from every convenience and grocery store in town. It's not a cheesy short 20 minutes of fireworks, either. Nope, they go on sporadically all day on New Years Eve, picking up after dark and concluding with an hour long finale at midnight. Yes, an hour of what you get excited about for the 5 minute finale on Canada Day or the 4th of July back home.

I know what you're thinking, drunk people lighting off fireworks? That sounds pretty dangerous! Your damn right it's dangerous, we saw at least two times Monday night where groups of walkers had a misfire shot in their direction. I don't disagree that it is dangerous, but it is also a helluva lot of fun. This year, we went to a beer hall right on the Hamburg harbor. And it was my favorite New Years in Germany thus far. Imagine: along with the fireworks, boats are everywhere in the water, lit up, and constantly honking their horns.

Actually, don't imagine it, just watch this video and get a taste of bringing in the New Year German style: (the excitement over the New Year results in a pretty shaky video).

And it's already the 4th of January! I firmly believe that silly quote, "Time flies when you're having fun!" We have been having a lot of fun lately and I feel like if I blink, time will cruise by faster than Kev does on the ice. We had visitors in town for two weeks and it felt more like only a few days. Man, did we keep them busy with Christmas plans, hockey games, New Years celebrating, touring Hamburg, and they even squeezed in a three day trip to Salzburg, Austria. If the holidays weren't enough to celebrate, Doughboy popped the big question in Salzburg so we got to cheers to an engagement as well.


The team has been doing really great lately. They are currently in 4th in the standings and sitting only a few points out of first. We have good news personally with hockey, too. It was made public recently that Kev has re-signed for another year here. Hamburg will continue to be our hockey home and we are incredibly happy about it. For most of you back home, the work day is almost over, so have a good weekend! Tschüss!!

Wrapped-up; First DEL Season

Well, it's over. The hockey season that is. Kev's team lost on Friday to end the first round of playoffs 4 games to 1. You never want to end on a loss, but the team has a lot to be happy about, having a sigificant improvement from last season's 11th place finish. As for Kev, he is happy about how his first season in the DEL went and is excited to work his bum off this summer in preparation for next season. After participating in a 4-day-drink-your-face-off "bender," it won't be too long before he is back to working out hard again! Since I participated in a bit of a bender myselft, I'm excited to start working hard on the summer bod again! Especially since I decided to run the Hamburg marathon next year (my first one!), so I want to have a great training year for that! To wrap up the season, we have the Freezer team party on Saturday, and then it won't be too long till we have to say our goodbyes. This is my first season with Kev and I've definitely formed my own bonds here, so there will be some difficult goodbyes for the both of us!

We intend to stay in Hamburg until the end of the month. That way, I can continue to work a bit longer, and we can have even more time to explore parts of Hamburg we haven't yet gone to. I have a bit more free time as well, since after my last set of lectures ended, I am finished with the German course for the year. We also have plans to drive on over to Amsterdam for a few days to cross out yet another city on our travel bucket-list.

Kev has re-attempted the bourbon and brown sugar salmon recipe and came through with some amazing results. Shannon and I left him and John to fend for themselves in the kitchen last night, and boy were we impressed! Salmon, oven-baked asparagus, and couscous cooked in a yummy chicken broth. Ok, we may have had to give them advice here and there, but they did some serious work! You all must try the salmon at home, so good!

Looks good, doesn't it!?

 

Bourbon and Brown-Sugar Salmon

2 salmon filets
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. Butter
1/4 packed brown sugar
1/4 Bourbon

Directions:
Rinse salmon fillets, pat dry, season with salt and pepper.
*Melt butter over medium heat until it foams. When the foaming has subsided, stir in brown sugar until a sauce is formed. If sauce is too thick, add more butter. Cook salmon fillets in brown sugar/butter sauce for 3-4 minutes, flip the salmon, and pour the bourbon on the salmon. Cook for another 4-6 minutes until salmon is done (time varies based on thickness). Serve and pour remaining sauce over salmon (it carmelized and was so good!).

*Recipe itself is from Esquire's Eat Like a Man Cookbook, but I had Kev slightly adapt it in the way it worked for him. He made a point to me that the butter "needs to be at a perfect temperature." I can't help but laugh a little when he says that, but whatever works for him, as long as the fire alarm stays off!

Have a great Hump Day! Tschüss!

Making of Pre-game Show

Early on into my blogging, I posted a video of the introduction to each Freezer home game. Well, on the team's Facebook Page today, I came across a video that shows how they made the pre-game show. Although the narration is all in German, I'm sure you will all get the gist! If anything, you'll see it at a better angle than in my video! Kevin is sending me to tonight's playoff game with the playbook to record some more action. The guys are down 2-1 in the series so be rooting for them today! Tschüss!

Article Translation!

Finished! Termine! Done! Is it a perfect, exact translation? Not a chance! Do I care? Not one bit! For those of you that don't know, Kev had an article in the arena magazine this past month (see here). I had been attempting to translate it to English so our family and friends could understand it. I would probably have given up if I hadn't promised Harry/Pop (Kev's grandpa) that I would finish it for him. By Wednesday night. Well, it's now into Thursday here, but thank goodness for that 6 hour time difference because it is only 6:30 p.m. (or 5:30 if we want to do Wisco time!) on Wednesday back home! I made the deadline. So here it goes and no one is allowed to make fun of me for things that sounds silly, I did my best! :-)

Kevin Schmidt - Hamburgs Next National Player? (Kevin Schmidt came in the Summer from the second division club Hannover Indians and has in a short time been considered by the National Coaches)

It was October 21, when national coach Jacob Koelliker took a seat in the O2 World for the first time and looked for himself at the potential national player of the Hamburg Freezers. By the 3-2 victory against the Hannover Scorpians, a man stood out, who hadn't actually been on his radar. After the game, Koelliker asked the GM Stephane Richer about Kevin Schmidt. Not without reason: the defenseman is one of the rising starts of the current season. Many believe the new addition will make the jump to the national team. Certainly, the statue allows DEB Schmidt to become a national player in the middle of 2012, he must be an active pro for 2 years in the nation before he becomes eligible for "Team Germany."

"There aren't many good German Offensive-defensemen and Kevin is still young. He has a promising future for himself," says Richer. Schmidt himself takes such praise with much goodwill if equal to knowledgeable about the national team topic, almost a little embarrassed. "It would be an honor for me, to be able to represent my country on the ice. And I fully admit this is a goal I pursue," says the German-Canadian, who has a German passport since 2010. His father, Horst, was born in Stuttgart and emigrated at the age of 3 months to Canada. From there, the Schmidt family pursued ice hockey, now the career of their 25-year old son. The defender regularly reports to his parents and especially his brothers, Jamie, Michael, and Matt, who all played hockey, how well it is going for him with the Freezers and how much he likes and can learn from Ex-NHL-players Schubert and Traverse. "My family, of course, is very happy for me. It was a big step in the DEL and I'm very happy that I'm off to a good start here," says Schmidt, grateful that he gets so much ice time and is able to be in the Powerplay. "I want to justify the trust of Benoit Laporte. I work at it every day."

It was already clear to Schmidt at a young age that hockey would take him to Germany, sooner or later. Due to lack of perspective in North America, he moved to Germany in 2010. Actually, it was hoped by the defensman, he wanted to make the direct jump into the best days of German ice hockey. In retrospect, he is glad to have taken a detour in the second division. "It was good to gain experience on the big ice surface. Perhaps the direct jump to the DEL would have been too great. The hockey is just different here than in North America," says Schmidt who achieved 11 goals last season for the Hannover Indians. (I couldn't understand the next sentence but it said something about not yet scoring a goal in the higher league but waiting to do so and is still a hit in the Freezers jersey.) "The guys naturally joke about my stoppages (?)," says "Schmidty," as his colleagues call him. "In which: So I'm not completely without a goal. In the game against the LA Kings, I've finally taken care of a goal!" he makes clear. "That was a very special moment, I will probably report (?) for a long time: Jerome Flaake saw me at the far post, passed, and then it was easy!"

Similarly, it was easy for the defensive talent to makethe move to the Elbe. With girlfriend, Autumn, the 25-year olds like to explore the city, go shopping, or enjoy a coffee. "Hamburg has a great history, amazing architechture, and is just worth living," says Schmid, who grew up just outside of Toronto and is an avid supporter of the Maple Leafs. So it's not surprising that the high-school-graduate was early on skates. At three years old, he took his first steps on the ice. He practiced on a frozen lake with hs grandfather. As a teenager, Schmidt also tried in the meantime to be a Lacrosse player. "Who knew, I would become as well as professional. But today, I am happy about my career as a professional Hockey player," says Schmidt who makes no secret of hw ambitious he is. He's part of a team that has a chance at the title, he says. "And that, I always dreamed of. That was my goal!"

SO! I'm so glad that's done. It's just too bad that I have to thank Google Translate way more than I had hoped. Sorry about things that sound silly or completely incorrect. It's definitely not the perfect translation, but I hope it is close and even more, I hope you all enjoyed my attempt! Seeing as it is now almost 1 a.m. and I'm exhausted from German, I'm headed to bed. Gute Nacht!!!

Less than a week will be the New Year!

We had a pretty fantastic, jam-packed busy weekend (which is why it is almost noon and Kev is still in bed!). Kevin was away Thursday and Friday for a game against Mannheim (won in a shootout) so I was on my own to play Christmas music and bake and cook for the weekend. Since they bussed to Mannheim, Kev didn't get home until after 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning. He didn't sleep well on the bus and couldn't fall asleep when he got home right away which wasn't great since I then got him up at 9:45 a.m. to go to the Christmas Eve skate organized by one of the other girls.

I was dangling all over Kev before this shot

It wasn't mandatory to go to the skate but we were glad we did because it turned out to be so much fun! I even got out there with a stick in hand and passed the puck around and took some shots on net. Hard to believe that after almost 4 years around Kev, this was my first time messing around with a hockey stick. Actually, it was probably only my second or third time even on the ice since we first started dating! It was so much fun though and there was some food after and a secret santa exchange for the kids. We had to leave the skate early in order to make one last trip to the grocery store before they closed for the weekend. The stores here closed at 1 p.m. Christmas Eve and didn't open again until today, so we really had to plan in advance! Nothing done last minute around here! Kev napped in the afternoon and I got things ready around the apartment for our guests that evening. I cooked a ham for the first time since we were having another couple over for dinner. After dinner 2 more couples came over for drinks, snacking, and to play some silly games. Even though we all miss our family this time of year, it's great to get together with all of the other couples that don't have family visiting as well.

Kev and some teammates

Christmas card worthy!

Christmas day we got up to have a mini-Christmas together before we headed to the Scherenbergs for brunch. It was really nice to spend Christmas with them and we got to experience a very typical German brunch. There was a cheese plate, bread plate, fish plate (cooked but cold), a cold cut plate, along with different spreads and fish salads. I don't eat food like this often so I was excited to try everything and I really enjoyed it! Kev isn't a big seafood (especially cold) fan, but Oliver made him some scrambled eggs and bacon so all was good! Han's really loved the Freezers gear we gave him and we came home with an amazing Hamburg book. We were there up until Kev's practice in the afternoon. When Kev got home later, we had about a 3-4 hour date with Skype which was absolutely amazing. We were able to talk to all of Kev's family and all of mine. We even got to see my dad, brother, Suzzanne, and Sheridan open their presents from us on camera! Pretty cool, what would we do without Skype!? We really missed everyone but were lucky to be around so many great people this time of the year.

Hans gets picture shy but loved his Freezers stuff!

Ida, the next Mrs. Clause

She is so precious!!!

Yesterday was a bank holiday here as well, so the Freezers had a game. We were pretty lucky it was a home game too. The guys won and are alone in 4th place in the DEL now. Kev has 2 more games yet this week, one tomorrow and Friday. I have the rest of today and tomorrow off and it is back to work for me on Thursday. My classes have been on break this week also, which has been a nice vacation so far. Anyway, that's all for here! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day for all you Canadians! Tschüssy!

All I want for Christmas... is the German language to be easier!

Kevin had an article in the monthly arena magazine this past month. After sending some home for family members, I thought I would try to translate it without typing it all into a translation website. Not only for our family to actually be able to read it, but also because I thought it would be good practice for me! Well, I'm more than 2 hours into my process and I only have a bit over 1/3 of it done. As much as my German improves with my class and spending time with Hans, this attempt was quite the awakening that I am still extremely raw and basic. I don't even know more than one tense to speak in! Not to mention that there are so many different ways to use a word and specific ways to have a saying. I'll keep trying for everyone but in the meantime.. here are some photos of the article!

 

I have already been able to attend 2 Christmas parties... in addition to the markets, so we are still feeling festive over here. Over a week ago, we had the team's party with all of the sponsors, team management, players, wives/gfs, and even some fans I think. It was at a beautiful hotel near the Reeperbahn and was such a great time! It started with speeches by the head of the fan club and some of the management (which they translated in English also so we knew what was going on). The speeches were all extremely nice and everyone seems very proud and supportive of the team. They had an amazing spread of food and after the speeches were done, the drinking began! Being a "work" party, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was so much fun and even a little wild!

Kevin's back-up career to hockey: a rockstar

Last night, I went to one of the other girls, houses for a Christmas party/Cookie exchange. Her home was beautifully decorated and there was a great spread of food and wine for us all. We had a gift exchange and all in all a great time together! Her husband, Serge, made an appearance to serve us our champagne.

what a trooper!

Our food and cookie spread at the end of the night

I'm by myself tonight since the boys are playing in Berlin. They are currently in a 3-way tie for 4th place in the league. The standings are pretty close, but hopefully we get a big W tonight! We have a pretty busy rest of the week coming up as well also! Kevin leaves Thursday for his game on Friday against Mannheim. Saturday morning, we have a Christmas Eve skate/potluck with the rest of the players and families. Saturday night we are having another couple over for dinner and drinks. Sunday is Christmas (holy moly, already!!) and we are headed over to the Scherenbergs for brunch before Kev's practice that aftenoon. And the day after Christmas, the guys have a home game. Busy busy! I still have a tiny bit of Christmas shopping left and lots of cooking and baking to do! The Christmas markets close on Friday as well, so I'm obviously dying to get down there at least once more before they close. I don't know what I'm going to do without them when January rolls around! Anyway, have a great week everyone, tschüss!

And since I may not blog again this week,

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

FROHE WEIHNACHTEN!

Hamburg Christmas Markets

There hasn't been a whole lot going on here other than staying pretty busy with work and class for me, hockey for Kev, and some Christmas shopping here and there for the both of us.We have all of our Christmas decorations up in the living room and Kev is already sick of coming home to Christmas music playing (since I found a few online radio stations!!). Since there hasn't been too much excitement here, I figured this was the perfect time to tell you all about the Hamburg Weihnachtsmarkts. Especially since I am so in love and obsessed with them! (Lucky for me, I get to walk through one every time I go to class and usually grab lunch there on my way back afterwards).We had a bit of a girls night just over a week ago and all headed down to the Market in front of the Town Hall for some Gluhwein.

obviously not my camera!

The Christmas markets are opened to celebrate the 4 weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas. They are usually held in a town square and sell food, drinks, and different jewelry and seasonal items. They also usually have some sort of carousel or a Christmas scene in place for children. The two most popular stalls are the Bratwurst stalls and Gluhwein stalls. Gluhwein is a mulled red wine served warm. It is spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, citrus, and sugar. If one is really feeling festive, you can get a shot of brandy or rum into your Gluhwein! And for those that don't like wine or beer, but still want the buzz, there is always the option of hot chocolate with rum, Baileys, Amaretto, or a mint liquor.

 

A few of the girls that have lived in other countries or German cities because of hockey said that they thought Hamburg's main Christmas market was the most beautiful. In and around Hamburg, there are a total of 33 different markets! The one in front of town hall is the largest and most touristy (it tends to be shoulder-to-shoulder every night!). Kev and I have wandered over to a few of the other markets, and even though some are very small, they all have similar stalls (one even had a small ice rink for kids!). Hamburg's main market has about 4 or 5 Gluhwein stands, a few bratwurst stands, and the other food available ranges from crepes, to roasted nuts, to bakers having different cookies and cakes on hand! I even had fried cauliflower and chocolate covered bananas at one market! We haven't had the greatest weather this past week to really enjoy them (we have snow in Hamburg!) but I plan to get down there a few more times before they close on the 23rd!

Perhaps, the neatest thing about the town square's market is that 3 times a day, Santa Clause flys over the market and tells a story. And this is not some fake Santa Clause! A real man hops into his sleigh and trusts a cable to carry them and his 4 reindeer and Cloud lady across the Market. It is a beautiful thing to see at night!

It seems like even when we are not at the Christmas Markets, downtown is still very festive. Germans love Christmas! Which is great because it puts me in the such a festive holiday spirit! We have the team's Christmas party tonight (hopefully we'll also be celebrating a win this afternoon, go Freezers!), the girls are having a Christmas party next week, and we have made plans with the Scherenbergs to have brunch at their place on Christmas day (early since Kev has an afternoon practice). So, lots of holiday spirit around this city and apartment! I hope everyone is having a good holiday season back home! We miss you all! Tschüss!

one of the buildings downtown

Thanks to the Curry's I'm able to blog again!

I was in the middle of a blog post Friday night when our internet cut out and we've been without it since! After a few days without internet, it's easy to see how much we depend on it! Since all of our english TV-watching capabilities depend on the internet, we've been pretty lost and only accessing BBC World News(Gale and I were pretty stir-crazy after about 15 minutes of that). Anyway, bear with this post seeing as half of it was written Friday and the other half tonight (and thank goodness for Shannon and John not only feeding us tacos tonight but letting us steal their internet too!).

 We had an absolutey fantastic American Thanksgiving here. I am pretty lucky because out of everyone celebrating I was the only American. We had 3 Canadians and 4 Germans. Gale and I spent the whole morning cooking a feast of Turkey, mashed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, brown sugared carrots, stuffing, deviled eggs, pumpkin pie, and chocolate chip cookie pie. The Scherenbergs came over and had their first Thanksgiving meal! Bea made an "apfelkuchen" for the occasion, an apple cake. We drank wine, feasted, and even got to see the Packers go 11-0. I think that the Scherenbergs had a great time (Hans enjoyed watching a slide show of Kevin's hockey pictures from Bowling Green) and I really appreciated everyone making my Thanksgiving feel like a celebration like home!

everyone  and our great meal!

all of our desserts, can you tell which is which?

Today (Friday), Horst and |Gale rented a car and went down to Augsburg to watch Kev's game. The team won which moved them into 1st place in the league! They are all staying in the same hotel in Munich which means I was free to eat all the leftover Thanksgiving food with no one here to stop me. Horst and Gale said that the Augsburg fans were crazy throwing lighters and cups onto the ice when they disagreed with the calls (not to mention the police with guns patrolling the freezing open walled rink) What an adventure for them!

Wednesday, we went to Hamburg's Modeleisenbahn Miniatur Wunderland. Kevin and I have been looking forward to going to this for quite some time! The Miniatur Wunderland is the world's largest model railway. It covers 1,150 square meters which took over a half million hours of labor. Most of the constructions were made from scratch. They say that most of their scenes are imaginary, but based on actual locations and they tried to replicate those the best they could. The exhibit has over 800 model trains, 300,000 lights, and 200,000 tiny human figurines. This place was spectacular and they did an amazing job replicatng the areas. We started by walking into Hamburg's area where we first saw Imtech Arena, home of the Hamburg HSV soccer team. The pictures we have don't do the place justice, but hopefully you will all be able to get an idea of how much detailing went into the model railway!

Soccer stadium and its parking lot

quite the spot on replica!

We then moved on to see Hamburg's landing pier for the ports, the Hauptbahnhof (Hamburg's main train station), and Hafencity complete with canals (which is where the Wunderland is located).

an amazing replica of the boat we took when we went to the Lion King Musical

Landing Ports

Hauptbahnhof

Hafencity

A Schmidt Truck!

After seeing Hamburg we went across the room to see America! In the America section, we saw Key West, Miami, Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, and part of Yosemite National Park. Every 10 or so minutes, they entire exhibit would turn from day until night and seeing the Las Vegas strip at night was pretty neat.

Las Vegas

Vegas strip at night

They even had drive-in movies!!

We moved into the next room to see Scandanavia where we saw the Northeast Sea where model boats would actually come in and dock and the it even had a 4 centimeter tidal range for high and low tide. We saw Harz which had a festival going on complete with a Large Ferris Wheel with approximately 30,000 lights. We moved from there to Knuffingen where we saw a train bridge connecting to Austria. In Austria, we were able to see an amazing ski hill with lifts which looked so real when they turned off the lights for night time.

Harz festival

Skiing in Austria!

We then moved onto the final room of the exhibit which had Switzerland and the Hamburg Airport. Switzerland is the most elaborate of all the areas and reached from the 3rd to fourth floor of the building. The Hamburg airport is the most recent and Horst and Kevin's favorite part of the exhibit. It was, in our eyes, identical to the actual airport and they even had planes taking off and landing!

Switzerland

Airport parking garage

literally identical to Hamburgs airport entrance!

Also within the exhibit, is the control system for the employees to make sure there are no kinks with all of the different movement of boats, trains, airplanes, lights, etc. The control room itself was insane with seats for up to 7 different people. The Minitur Wunderland even has plans for up until 2020 for 4 more layout sections: France, Italy, Africa, and India.

Wunderland control area

Sorry for having such a long post about the Miniatur Wunderland, but we wanted you to see how cool it was! After we went to the Wunderland we all went to the Christmas Market to have a hot chocolate with Baileys before dinner.

The boys won their game yesterday to stay in 1st place in the league. Horst and Gale left today and we miss them already! We hope they had as great of a time during their trip as we did with them!!! Our internet guy is supposed to be here soon to take care of our problem, so these blogs will be back running regularly again soon! Have a beautiful week, tschüss!

...Laterne, Sonne, Mond und Sterne...



Hans and his friend Hanna



Tuesday night Kevin and I joined Hans and his dad to parade the streets for their "Lantern tradition." Kids trick-or-treating for Halloween in Germany has just taken off within the past 5 to 10 years and is still not very popular here. Instead, around Halloween, people celebrate the life of a 4th century bishop on St. Martin's day. The tradition is usually held on the eve of St. Martin's day (Nov. 11th), however, the Scherenberg's church held they're "festival of lanterns" on Tuesday. The tradition is that kids go through the street with lit up lanterns or candles singing songs about St. Martin. In some areas of Germany, the kids go door to door to carol and receive candy for their songs.



As for us, the night started out with a short church service and after the children and their parents along with the church band took to the streets parading with their lit up lanterns. Some lanterns are homemade and some store bought. The Scherenberg's bought me a lantern to carry and Hans had helped make 2 at home, one for his dad and one for him. He had been looking forward to this for about a month, constantly singing the lantern song leading up to Tuesday night. Below is the song Hans sang all the time, and the only song I was actually able to learn!



Kev and I with our lanterns



Laterne, Laterne
Laterne, Laterne
Sonne, Mond und Sterne
Brenne auf, mein Licht,
Brenne auf, mein Licht
Aber nur meine liebe Laterne nicht.

Here’s the English translation...

Lantern, Lantern

Lantern, Lantern,
Sun, moon and stars,
Burn, my light,
Burn, my light,
But not only the light of my dear lantern

After the children finished walking, they came back to the church where they were selling hot dogs and drinks. It's quite a sight to have 100-150 kids walking through the streets with their lanterns. It's nice to be apart of these different traditions.

Hans and I have been getting along now more than ever. Last night, he even asked me to stay by him in bed while his parents were out to the theater. Some days he wants nothing to do with me and others he is asking me not to go home at all and stay with them all day/night. I am done with work for the weekend, and tonight Kev and I are going to go downtown for a real North American night... burgers and an english movie! We are taking full advantage of Kevin having a Friday night off with no games! Have a great day! Tschüss!