I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day

Soo, long time no talk, everyone! We've actually been sort of busy lately, as we're trying to do all of our planning for our last and final journey.  We're sorry we haven't been keeping updates like we said we would, but working 12 hours a week doesn't allow for much free time... But seriously, Saturday, April 21st we begin our approximately 6-week long trek through Europe. We'll try to get another post in before then, and also show a calendar of our plans!

Derek and Collin in front of the Mumm building

January, in a nutshell, was cold and long.  After two weeks of holidays, it was like going back to school at Harding after Christmas break. Except without the friends to look forward to or the new classes.  No, we just had the bright, smiling faces of our students, eager to learn, and the bustling town of Chaumont waiting for our return.  (Yes Sheldon Cooper, that was sarcasm...) Luckily January did bring a few rays of sunshine.

Early on in January, tired of working after a couple weeks, we decided to take a weekend trip with our friend Collin, another English assistant in our same Académie. He's a few hours north of us, right on the border of Belgium, so we met halfway in Reims. We didn't have much time, but we knew the perfect thing to do: a Champagne tour! After all, we are in the "Champagne-Ardenne" region. Technically, a drink is ONLY champagne if it's made in this region. Otherwise, it's just sparkling wine. So, we walked to this company, G.H. Mumm, in the city and were informed all about their champagne for an hour and a half or so.  Needless to say, we've managed to deepen our appreciation for champagne since then.

Samples of their champagne bottles

We got a free glass to sample at the end! Derek and Collin chose "Brut" which is more bitter and Brittany chose "Doux" which is sweeter (just like her)

The second ray of sunshine on our cloudy month of January was Parcours Alpha. It's a sort of phenomenon that started in England and has made it's way to France.  It's a 12 week "program" mostly geared towards people who are curious about religion, and our church in Chaumont decided to start it here.  After much debate about whether we should go, we elected to dedicate our Friday evenings to Alpha.  Each week, we all (there are currently about 20 people) gather at the church for a delicious meal, listen to an exposé about a certain theme, and then have a discussion about that theme. To be honest, the meal and a chance to practice our French were our main motivators.  We were a little hesitant about losing our Friday nights at first. But then we realized we actually had nothing else to do anyway, and our only 2 friends would already be at Alpha, so we really wouldn't be making a sacrifice.  One weekend in February, we had a retreat at an adorable little town about 45 minutes away.

This is where we stayed--it used to be a monastery, and now it's a very modern, fixed-up inside welcome center!

A cute little path we found to walk on

Marie-Lorraine and Thomas. Notice the paths made by sheep in the background.

We stumbled across this llama during one of our walks in the countryside. He wasn't too keen on posing, though.

With only one Friday left, we're certainly glad we chose to do the Alpha Course. Even if we've already encountered the themes in church or at Harding, usually we discuss something that gets us thinking about theology every week.  Not to mention the wonderful people we've met, and the delicious food we've tasted :)

Christmas: The Final Chapter

Well we told you about our travels during Christmas, and that brings us back right here to Chaumont.  We arrived back at the apartment sometime in the afternoon of Christmas Eve day, and we had many preparations before the big day.  We went to the store to buy our supplies for Christmas dinner (and Christmas Eve dinner), came home and showered, whipped together a quick dinner, and (Derek) received John and Jen from the train station around 19:00.  We quickly ate dinner and then headed downtown for a Christmas Eve service at Chaumont's famous Basilica.

We were a few minutes late, so we ended up sitting in the waaayyyyy back and couldn't really see anything that was going on.  It was sometimes a struggle to understand the French through the crackling of the speakers and the southern-like accent of the black priest.  Luckily, there was a brochure to guide us through most of it, and we were gladly able to join in singing with the organ (and trumpet!).  Also, this is a very olllddddddd cathedral, i.e., no heat, so we were freezing the whole time.  The best part, however, was during communion.  Of course we're not Catholic, so we just laid low during that time when the regular Catholics got up.  However, we were treated to a wonderful song in the background: "Winter Wonderland."  It was hilarious!  During the time of receiving the "body and blood of Christ," the organist and trumpet player were jammin' out to "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland."  Maybe in French this is a religious song, but we definitely didn't see a correlation in English.  In the end, we were glad to be able to witness a traditional French Christmas mass.

La Basilique de Chaumont

Not only did we have a Catholic experience, but we also had the opportunity to celebrate all 8 nights of Hanukkah with John and Jen.  They certainly enjoyed themselves, although we did have trouble staying awake until the candles went out on nights when we returned to our hotel around 11 p.m. We would all be in our beds with the lights out after saying the prayer, struggling to keep our eyes open and make sure we didn't burn down the hotel.

Cheers for Hanukkah!

So Christmas Eve wrapped up with a few rounds of Skip-Bo and, of course, reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas."  We didn't have the book with us, but miraculously we discovered a version on YouTube with pictures, read by none other than Perry Como himself!  (If you don't know Perry Como, he was a very famous singer from Brittany's hometown of Canonsburg, PA who sang the original Mr. Lonely.)

Finally, the day we had been anticipating for what seemed like months: Christmas Day! We started the day with a delicious breakfast of French toast.  Below is our attempt at a candid eating shot that really just turned out to be lame due to the angle, 3 out of 4 of us were in pajamas, our boring living room, etc.

And after breakfast came present-time! We weren't very hopeful, but miraculously Santa DID find Chaumont! He left some candy (and fruit) in our stockings and got us Carcassonne--a super awesome game!  We have a feeling John and Jen tipped him off  :) But seriously, thanks to John and Jen for the awesome gift which provides much-needed entertainment.

Next it was time to get to work for dinner. The menu was one very similar to that of Thanksgiving with a few variations: Chicken, rolls, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and salad (we'll get to the dessert later).  We each found something to work on and got busy!  We decided not to eat traditional French-style because we didn't really know how to prepare anything.  If we had, we would have eaten any of the following: foie gras, mussels, escargots, frog legs, and/or more bizarre dishes.  However, traditional French was a must for dessert!

John recommended we try stuffing the skin with a butter and herb mixture and that is exactly what we did!  Well, Derek did most of the dirty work...

Derek and Jen worked hard on pre-buttering the buttery rolls before they were baked

And the finished products!

One of favorite parts was the sweet potatoes. They don't have much of a marshmallow option here in France, and our grocery store only sold pink ones.

Are you drooling yet?!

Time to explain the dessert.  The traditional French dessert is a bûche de Noël or "yule log" as we say, though not very often, in English.  All of the pâtisseries (bakeries, usually with breads and pastries) here display a wide array of bûches de Noël during Christmastime. There are many different flavors, all with unique decorations (mostly edible) on top.  We just got a simple chocolate bûche that was deellliiccciiouuusss!!

The next (or next to next) day, Derek treated us all.  Using the extra dough from the rolls, he made homemade cinnamon rolls (recipe by our new food hero, Pioneer Woman)!

The best part was the sauce-it included maple syrup and coffee which really gave the rolls a unique taste

For the rest of the week we mostly played games 24/7, but we did have the chance to get to visit Chaumont a bit.  The main attractions/only attractions in Chaumont are (1) the viaduct and (2) vieille Chaumont.  The viaduct is basically a bridge that was built in the second half of the 1800s and is still used by trains today.  It's HUGE and actually pretty famous.  Vieille Chaumont is the old part of Chaumont.  The buildings are quite charming and there are remains of a castle that used to be here until it burned down. Here are some pictures:

The viaduct

Right by the bottom of the viaduct, which actually has 3 layers of arches

The front of the basilique, in the vieille ville

A view of the outskirts of Chaumont from where the castle used to be

The actual donjon (dungeon) of the old castle!

See the staircase sticking out from the building?  They are unique to Chaumont (we think) and each one is marked.  There are 27 in the city, and one day we plan to find all of them!

Derek and John playing at the park

This is the one road of our centre ville (downtown)

This is an old place where women used to do the laundry.  It's a very interesting system and it's still here after all this time (not in use anymore though, of course)!

John and Jen left on New Year's Eve day and continued on their way to Paris.  We spent a calm but enjoyable New Year's Eve with Thomas, Marie, and another friend from church, Etienne.  After eating and hanging out for a bit, we went downtown for the countdown as well as a light show that was playing on the façade of town hall.  We heard distant voices counting down somewhere, but we basically made up our own countdown.  As we walked around the city after midnight, one might have thought there were a bunch of people partying and celebrating in the streets.  But really, there was a group of girls banging pots and pans with someone's drunk dad, a couple of boys carrying around a traffic cone, an owner of a Chinese restaurant & friends setting off fireworks, and us.  And the same people just kept walking around and around and around in circles.  We finished the night by playing a few rounds of Cluedo (French Clue) and then called it a night.

So, our Christmas holiday was full of friends, food, and fun--which is possible to find even in Chaumont!  Now it's February (we know, we're so bad at keeping up with this blog!) and we're preparing for our trip to Rome/Paris with Brittany's parents and Derek's mom.  Can't wait, only 3 weeks until departure!

Willkommen in Deutschland!

After roughly 2 days in Strasbourg, we headed east.  Our destination: Karlsruhe, Germany.  "Why this random city we knew nothing about?" you may ask.  It's because we have a friend who went to Harding with us (Jenifer) and she is an assistant in Nice, France.  And she has a friend (Simone, who was living in Nice at the time) who is from Karlsruhe.  Simone told Jenifer that if we were interested in visiting Germany (which we were), we could stay at her house for a couple of nights.  We had decided to travel and spend Christmas with Jenifer and and our other friend John (who also went to Harding and is an assistant in France this year), and we all concluded that going to Karlsruhe would be a good time.  So Derek and I took the TGV (aka fast train) and arrived in Germany in less than an hour, hoping to meet up with John and Jen.  Unfortunately they decided to take the money-saving route (aka hitch-hiking), which didn't turn out so hot and resulted in a little rendez-vous with the police.  Needless to say, Derek and I had a few extra hours in the Karlsruhe train station.  Don't worry about John and Jen though, everything worked out okay :)

This was our first truly tourist experience.  Granted, we're nowhere near fluent in French, but we can get around.  But Germany?  That's a whole different ball game.  Our first task: order a coffee.  Man, how easy this would have been in French.  Luckily the menu was written mostly in English, but the middle-aged woman at the register certainly wasn't speaking English.  Apprehensive, we approached the counter.  The woman glanced at us, beckoned to her young co-worker, and the girl took our order in English.  Phew, what a relief!  But also, embarrassing and pretty humbling.  We sat down in some comfy chairs.   Our second task: learn some German.  We were in Germany, for crying out loud!  What were we thinking, not learning German before we got there?! We attempted to learn things like: thank you, excuse me (much more difficult than "pardon", we really couldn't figure this one out), where is the toilet?, and others.  Finally, our friends arrived.  And boy was it good to see Harding folk again.

We then met Simone and she took us to the castle of Karlsruhe.  Unfortunately, it was raining and so we didn't take the camera with us :(  Picture Versailles, but yellow, and not quite as extravagant and set up as a museum inside.  All in all, it was a fairly impressive building.  That night we went to the Karlsruhe Christmas market for dinner.  This one was much more quaint than the ones in Strasbourg. Simple, yet very Christmas-y, and delicious food!  Here, we had our first bratwurst. Mmmmmm.

A from-inside-the-car sample of the Black Forest.

Now, let us not forget to mention the best part of our Germany experience: Simone and her family.  They had an adorable and awesome house in the mountains of the Black Forest (location of Grimm's fairy tales...so cool) and were sooooooo hospitable.  They fed us food from their garden and gave us an unending supply of delicious homemade/homegrown apple juice. The only obstacle was that her parents didn't really speak English.  But of course, any obstacle can be overcome, right?  So Simone's mom (knowing we didn't speak German) would talk to us in German, ask us questions, and laugh.  John took German in high school and so he was the only one who could really attempt communication...the rest of us just kind of smiled and acted like we could understand what she was saying. It was beautiful.  It was almost like we were all having a conversation!  Simone's step-dad did speak some English, so we tried our best to talk with him when we could.  But mostly Simone just ended up translating everything for everyone.

Let us also not forget the second best part of Germany: the language.  Written or spoken, German just cracked us all up.  It's like you take English words, squish them together to be one word, and add a bunch of consonants.  It's awesome.  And the spoken language!  That doesn't even sound real.  We had a good time listening to and trying to decipher it while we were there.  Allow for just one example.  The word for table manners (according to wordreference.com) is Tischmanieren (oh, and all nouns are capitalized).  See the word "manner" in there, sort of?  So if tisch is the word for "table", you just take the two words, smush them together, and get table manners.  Simple as that.  How can that not equal a good time?

The next day we headed for Stuttgart, about an hour or so from Karlsruhe, and were actually surprised to be welcomed by a very impressive city.  Simone had some errands to run, so the four of us just wandered around, checked out an old castle, and ate.  Here's a little of what we saw:

These are apparently popular in Germany during Christmastime.  We don't know the exact story, but it's something like: there are candles somewhere that produce smoke and make the fan at the top turn.  Pretty cool, huh?

One section of Christmas markets.  Stuttgart's downtown had several sections of markets.

This is by the castle we visited.  How lucky is it that we found a lamppost shaped like a menorah, when we just so happened to start celebrating Hanukkah that very same week?! And yes, we brought the menorah and candles in our backpacks and faithfully celebrated all 8 nights.

This was part of a model city with train tracks which supported--get this--an actual little train.  At first we thought it was just for kids, but then saw some of the parents on it too!  Unfortunately, when we checked the prices it was about 13 euros per adult.

 Last but not least, on our way home, Simone took us to a chocolate factory!  This was the brand "Ritter Sport" and they have a little museum, a factory, and a shop where they sell chocolate.  It was amazing!  We didn't have much time, but we definitely enjoyed the time we did have.

Just a few examples of their wide range of chocolate flavors and fillings.

This is just a replica, but a short instructional video told us that the cocoa bean comes from these babies!  I mean, these things are BIG!  like the size of a coconut!  We were in shock.

We didn't take many pictures there because we were in a rush, but it was very cool.  And, the chocolate was delicious and cheap...some of it was even free.  "How was it free?" you may ask.  Well, in the museum they had a glass case with a little model road and a Ritter Sport truck.  The truck starts out in a garage, carries a little piece of candy around the track, deposits it in a slot, and you get to take it!  All with the press of one button.  We all got a huge kick out if it.  Derek and John got a little too much kick out of it and spent a good 10 minutes collecting several free candies (that part was a little embarrassing for the girls).

We headed back to Simone's and spent a wonderful evening and morning laughing and eating and talking.  We ate some sauerkraut, had some homemade bread, sang some Christmas carols around the piano, and continued on our way to Strasbourg, take 2.

Now, obviously this post is getting kind of lengthy, but Strasbourg part 2 just doesn't really merit an entire new post, so we'll go ahead and tag it on here.  The thing about Strasbourg is that we knew absolutely nothing, culturally speaking, about what to do there, and it's not very big (compared to say, Paris).  We were just blindly going to see the Christmas markets.  So we spent the better part of 4 days walking around the same places, looking, and eating.  Luckily for us, the sights and food were all amazing.  Here are some more pictures of our time with John and Jen:

Behind us is the part of Strasbourg known as "Le Petit France," characterized by the houses with the wood rafter-type things you can see here.

We did get to meet up with a friend from our church in Chaumont, meet an older woman staying in our hotel who was from California and super cool, attend a pretty boring and not very impressive organ concert, see part of a dress rehearsal for a Christmas play at the cathedral, and pretend we were judges at an outdoor patinoire (ice skating rink) for a good hour.  All in all, not too shabby.  On December 24th, 2011, we took the long and expensive trip back to Chaumont.

A Small Taste of Strasbourg

Everyone knows by now that we are in this tiny town, Chaumont, where there is nothing. There is no University, the closest bakery is 15 minutes away (and we thought this was France), and we haven't seen the sun for months. So what did we do for Christmas? Good question! We got the heck outta this place.

But when we woke up to catch our train for Strasbourg, France, the good Lord decided to show us what we would be missing in Chaumont:

Taken from our kitchen window just before leaving.

So we put on our packs and hiked through the beautiful snow to the train station. It was about 10 in the morning and we had two train changes before we would arrive in Strasbourg at about 14h. It was Sunday, so we had that afternoon and Monday to stroll around the city before heading further east.

There is not a whole lot to say about what we did, because we didn't do much of anything. We mostly just walked around the town and enjoyed the Christmas markets. If you don't know what the Christmas markets are, that is okay; we'll let you know. At the market, there are tons of little cabins set up and each cabin sells something different. Some sell Christmas ornaments, some sell artisan crafts, some sell food, some sell hot drinks! So we spent the majority of our time at different places, all of which look more or less like this:

Though we were sad not to be able to return to the ol' USA for Christmas, we definitely picked the BEST place to visit during the Christmas season.  Strasbourg is even called "The Christmas Capital of the World," so obviously it's the place to be. We literally spent all of our time enjoying the Christmas decorations of the city and enjoying the food.  We ate things like crêpes, gaufres (waffles) loaded with nutella and whipped cream, baguettes with melted cheese, onions, and bacon on them, and drank things like the famous vin chaud (hot wine) and hot chocolate.  Unfortunately, we forgot to take pictures of all the food...I guess we were too busy enjoying it.  Here are a few pictures of the beautiful decorations that we certainly did not forget to take:

This is where we ate for lunch one day

It's difficult to tell because this picture isn't very clear, but these people seriously go ALL out for Christmas.  I mean, every store, restaurant, whatever, has garland and holly and lights and Santas, the works.  It's intense.

As a side note (or maybe it's the whole point...): You all know that we love food, right? Well then, you must be made aware that the Alsace region (in which Strasbourg is located) has many specialties, mostly German-influenced.  Strasbourg went back and forth between Germany and France, so it's sort of a mix between the two.  You'll find German street signs, menu translations, etc. there.  Anyway, that being said, they serve a lot of sausage, sauerkraut, and best of all, tarte flambée/flammekeuche.  What is tarte flambée, you ask? Only the best food ever created, not to mention simple.  It's a very thin crust, like 1/10th of a pizza, crême fraîche (not so common in the states, but sort of a mix between sour cream and heavy whipping cream), and then any of the following toppings: onions, lardons (non-crispy bacon bits), mushrooms, and various cheeses.  You can find them in most restaurants for about 8-9 euros, so we ate our fair share of those.  Well Derek did, anyway.  This picture is just from the internet (how could we have forgotten to take a picture?!), but it does the tarte justice.  The pink things are the lardons.

 

Well, that's a bit about our Christmas vacation, but stay tuned for 2 more segments.  Also, we haven't forgotten about Paris, it's just on standby until we finish Christmas and then we'll try to squeeze the rest in before our next big trip!