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!