Happy Thanksgiving

This is an exchange between myself and the only other American girl on the team today. It definitely doesn't seem like Thanksgiving here in our parts! I don't smell the turkey cooking, there is no NFL on our German TV, and I definitely won't be participating in the Black Friday shopping madness (bring it on, cyber Monday!). It does, however, really bother me that some stores are opening as early as 8 p.m. tonight. It was a fun shopping tradition when the stores opened at midnight or later on Friday, but in typical consumer driven American style, we are now allowing the need to find good deals for material things outweigh the importance of a day to spend with our families.

Although it doesn't feel like thanksgiving, I think I should keep the real reason we have Thanksgiving alive and give thanks. A few things I'm thankful for these days:

My family and friends back home: Those that are back in the states and Canada, you know who you are. I think about you often, miss you, am thankful that you're a part of my life, and look forward to seeing you soon! I'm a big fan of the phrase, "It's not goodbye, It's see ya later."

My hockey family and friends: Although this family can change year to year, I am blessed to meet amazing people and with them, celebrate our traditions and share many of life's ups and downs.

My health: Although I am currently battling a congested head, overall I am extremely lucky to have good health and that's something I don't take for granted. 

The Sun: It sounds silly, but living in a city where overcast days seem to be the norm, I am really grateful every time the sun peeks through. I can't think of a better way to start the day than to wake up to the sun shining through the blinds. 

Running: I am thankful for my ability to run and to have running be a part of my life. Even though it frustrates me many times, I am grateful for the times it also allows me to just think and relax.

Technology: While living abroad, things like skype, Facebook, this blog, and smart-phone apps are what keeps me in the loop and in touch with those I miss back home. I love being able to watch my goddaughter grow up by the photos I see on facebook and to be able to constantly message in a group chat with my hometown girlfriends. 

In the midst of eating turkey, drinking wine, and celebrating together, I hope all of you back home are able to take some time to count your blessings and remember what Thanksgiving is really about!

And then get your butts out into the cold and buy lots of stuff. Tschüss!

Breakfast in Germany

I 'm not sure what to call the weather we have been having lately, fall or winter. It looks like fall with leaves covering the ground, but we have had most days in single digits, a couple days around -2 degrees! That is celsius for my fellow Americans! However, I can't complain because the sun has been shining. I am always grateful for rainless days here. Besides, I am grateful to not have been anywhere near hurricane Sandy and my thoughts are with everyone on the East Coast back home! What an unbelievable storm.

Since Kev usually has practice in the mornings and games or practice on the weekends, we rarely ever go out for breakfast. So we took advantage of yesterday's 3 p.m. practice and my day off to enjoy a nice sleep in and a breakfast out. I mean we really took advantage, getting an 11+ hour night of sleep. I won't even say how late we slept in because I can already see my dad rolling his eyes at the 11+ hours of sleep (the guy is lucky to sleep in past 5 a.m.).

So after lazily getting out of bed, we headed on over to a chain restaurant called Schweinske for breakfast brunch. What do you think of when you hear the word breakfast? Pancakes and Belgian waffles? Scrambled eggs or an omelette stuffed with just about everything? Cinnamon Rolls, bacon, sausage, home fries, and hash browns? I'm salivating at the thought of it and may have to make tonight a breakfast for dinner kind of night.

However, one of the adjustments of moving to a new country is accepting new traditions and cultures, food being a large one. What I described above is not quite at all what you would get for breakfast here in Germany.

A traditional German breakfast usually consists of a multiple of different kinds of Brötchen (rolls), many spreads (butter, honey, marmalades, nutella, cream cheese, etc.), and different deli meats and cheeses for your bread. If an egg is served, it is most commonly soft boiled. Sometimes, smoked salmon, or tiny shrimp is also served. They offer the same drinks for breakfast as back home: tee, coffee, fruit juices, etc.

Our breakfast at Schweinske

I have come to really enjoy the traditional German breakfast (especially the smoked salmon over some cream cheese on bread!). Kev, not so much. He makes sure to get his eggs scrambled and would definitely prefer some chocolate chip pancakes! But he has given it a good shot which is a part of immersing oneself in the culture!

Kev has left me today for yet another multiple day road trip. It seems as if he has been away a lot since I have gotten here. Although, I think this will be the last one for the next couple months, there are a lot of home games in November and December. Working, german class, running, and putting the finishing touches on our Halloween costumes are on my agenda for the rest of the week. Our party is on Sunday and I couldn't be more excited!

 Happy Halloween, Tschüss!

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!

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!