Germany Trip: Trier

I wanted to finish my posts about my trip to Germany by the end of January but, obviously, that did not happen! There have been so many other fun things to blog about that I have been neglecting the Germany trip posts. My new goal is to just finish them when I get to it :-)

Going to Trier was the first day trip we took while in Germany. Trier is Germany's oldest city and has the neatest Roman ruins! We started by going to Porta Nigra, the city gate. I really don't know much else about it besides that, but it was definitely quite old!

We then walked past the "House of the Three Magi". I haven't figured out how they knew that was where the three magi stayed, since no one knows who they were, so I'm going to guess it is just a legend. The entry door to the house was on the second floor and there would have been a wooden staircase going up to it. If the town were in danger the staircase would be knocked down so no one could enter the house.

We hit up the Christmas Market, of course, then went on to the St. Peter's Dom, which happens to be the oldest Christian church in Germany! This cathedral is also the home to the Holy Robe of Christ. We were not able to see it, but we could look inside the room where it is kept and see the box that it is kept in! :-)

As we went on, we then saw the Basilica and what we called the Pink Palace, but apparently it's actually called the Elector's Palace. The two buildings are connected and were quite a site! There wasn't a lot of foot traffic around it, so Dad ended up setting up his tripod and getting a picture of the 4 of us :-)

Across a huge garden and beyond the city wall, was the Imperial Baths. They are all in ruins now, but a little shop/museum was set up as the entrance into the baths and we could watch a little movie on what it would have looked like. It was still neat to be able to walk through the ruins and the tunnels and experience the vastness of it. I also tried to delete some old pictures while we were there. Between my lack of knowledge about my camera and trying to hurry to get as many pictures as possible, I accidentally deleted every picture I had taken so far while there. Talk about a sinking feeling in my tummy! I've relied on pics from my Dad for these posts :-)

After the Imperial baths, we took a nice walk to find the Amphitheater. We could see where the people used to sit to watch the events, which was the grassy areas. We were also able to go below ground, under the amphitheater. It was all very neat. You could almost imagine the crowds back in Roman times filing in to see the gladiators fight.

We walked back toward the city to see if we could find where the Thermal baths were. I think we must have walked past them and went around, then came back and finally realized that there was a building built around them. No wonder they didn't stick out! All the stone was white in these baths. There were also strange pieces that didn't seem to fit in and it turned out that a building had been built on top using the baths as a foundation at one point. (The building around it now, was more for protection and it created a kind of museum as well.) So the pieces that didn't fit in were not actually from the original baths.

That's about it for Trier. (We were quite busy while we were there!) Check out the slide show!

To learn more about Trier, Germany visit Rick Steves Germany and Austria 2008 book preview.

Germany Trip: Cologne

I don't really have an order to my posts about Germany. It's just kinda what I feel like writing about at the time and it happens to be Cologne, or Koln, right now :-) Mom and Dad took us to Cologne on Sunday. We weren't sure what we would be able to do, since many places are closed on Sundays there, but we actually did quite well!

When we first got to Cologne and parked, we went by the Dom, which is a huge Cathedral. It was magnificent! They had services going on at the time, though, so we walked over and checked out the Christmas Market first, then went back to see the Dom. The inside was as magnificent as the outside! There were paintings, sculpted pillars, huge stained glass windows, beautiful tile work-it was a lot to take in at once! The Dom also had several crypts, including the crypt that contained the remains of the Three Magi. Most of the crypts were quite plain and you could walk right up to them, but the one with the Three Magi really stood out. It was in a glass box and surrounded by an elaborate fence, so you couldn't get anywhere near it, and the crypt itself was made of gold.

Seeing the crypt of the Three magi was one of the main things my parents wanted us to experience while in the Dom, the other was climbing the spiral stairs of the bell tower. Before my sister and I even went up, my parents took our backpacks. They had done it before, knew how rough it was going to be, and they weren't doing it again. Even though my mom had described it to me before, I wasn't prepared for what it was really like. Katie and I started climbing the 509 narrow spiral steps fairly well staying to the wide part of the steps. It wasn't until I realized that people came back down the same way that we were going up that it started to get scary. We ended up having to move to the inside of the steps, climbing with nothing to hold onto and only the ball of our foot on a step as we turned sideways for people to pass. I started dreading hearing footsteps from above and the more I climbed in circles, desperately trying to catch my breath, I began to get light headed and nauseous. I kept thinking that we must almost be to the top and Katie asked if I had been counting steps. We did finally make it. Maybe it was the lightheadedness, or something about being that out of shape, or the grins people gave us when they saw our relief at the top, but we just laughed! I'm glad we did it, though. The view was beautiful, even through the dreariness and raindrops, plus we can say "We did it!"

After making the great decent back down the bell tower of the Dom, we took off, through the rain, to find the Lego store, but being Sunday, it was closed. Luckily, we were going to Munich and they had a Lego store there. So we found the car and headed to the Chocolate Museum. Even with the help of 2 different navigation systems, we could not find the Chocolate Museum. The navigation systems kept taking us to what we thought was the wrong spot, but it turns out they were taking us to an underground parking area that we needed to go to in order to go to the museum. We did find it after a nice long walk, though. There was a Medieval Christmas Market in front of the museum that we went through first, then headed into the Chocolate Museum's shop. We decided against going through the museum due to time and the fact that we wouldn't be able to understand any of it anyway being that it was all in German. I did a lot of my shopping for family and friends there. Who doesn't love chocolate, right?

That was my experience in Cologne and it was definitely a memorable one! Check out the slide show to see some pics!

Germany Trip: This one's for Rich!

Before meeting Rich, I would have never thought twice about anything fire related. Now I pay attention to everything fire related, even in Germany! Since I wouldn't have taken pictures of any of this otherwise, this one's for Rich! :-)

We came across this fire truck as we were leaving Trier, Germany's oldest city. It was really neat to be able to see a German fire truck up close (and the firefighters!)

Me next to the fire truck.

The back of the fire truck.

The fire house in my parents' town, Neiderjoshbach.

A closer look at the sign on the fire house.

A fire hydrant outside the fire house in Neiderjoshbach.

I think this is the tower the fire whistle is in in a town near my parents', Eppstein. It is connected to the fire station, but I wasn't close enough to get a picture of that.

Those are all the fire pictures I got while I was their, but I also got Rich a little Lego firefighter playset at the Lego store in Munich and a German firefighter stein in Trier as souvenirs. I'm glad I got the stein when I did, because I never saw another one! :-) Here are pictures of them:

I'm not sure if you can get this in the USA, but I thought it was pretty neat while I was in Germany. Plus Legos are really big there!

This was just too neat to pass up! The price was right and it also says "Made in Germany" on the bottom, which is great to see on a souvenir from another country. :-)

German Food: Schnitzel!

I've been slacking a bit with blogging about my trip to Germany and I wanted to get back to it! I'm hoping to share about the whole trip, a little at a time, by the end of January.

I loved the schnitzel in Germany! The first place I had it at was a restaurant called Waldgeist, fairly close to my parents' place. They serve everything in platter size portions there. I ordered a quarter of a jagerschnitzel and, even though it was smaller than a whole, it was still a lot to eat. I don't even think I ate half of it! Gigantic portions! The jagerschnitzel is schnitzel with a creamy mushroom sauce. They served it with french fries, or 'pommes'. Since there was so much, I ended up taking it back to my parents' place to eat as leftovers and had it 3 more times!

The other place I had schnitzel was in a little restaurant in Rothenburg. It was called championschnitzel. It also had a mushroom sauce, but it wasn't as creamy and had more of a reddish tint to it. Still very good and thankfully not such a huge portion! I was actually able to finish it there :-)

Every time we ate at a restaurant in Germany, we always would here pounding from the kitchen and we knew they were making schnitzel. It almost sounds like it would be fun to make, so I'm hoping to try it sometime now that I know I like it. I'll have to blog about it if I do and let you know how it turns out! :-)

This is what was left of my schnitzel at Waldgeist. As you can see-there was still a lot left to eat and I had already had half of it! (Sorry it's so dark.)

This is me with my leftover schnitzel. I have a goofy look on my face, don't I? I think I still had some jet lag going on.

Germany Trip: Christmas Markets

I felt fortunate to be able to visit Germany during the holidays. Seeing all the Christmas Markets, or Weihnachtsmärktes, was truly a neat experience! Each town and city hosted a Christmas Market and length and size of the Christmas Market depended on the size of the town/city. All the markets we made it to were in large cities and were open every day of advent. Others may have only been on the weekends and even smaller ones may have only been on one weekend of advent.

I loved the look and general feeling of the Christmas Markets. All the booths were wooden and they all matched. There were usually lights and greenery hanging from each of the booths. Each market usually had either a huge Christmas tree, a pyramid or nativity or a combination of a couple or all of them. A lot of times there was also a carousel and other rides for kids.

The products that were sold really varied, but were mostly wintertime related. I saw things like ornaments, wooden toys, hats, mittens, scarves, pyramids, nutcrackers, and the list goes on! On top of that there were all sorts of food booths that usually had potato cakes, sausage, sweets, crepes and many other goodies depending on what market we were at.

It seemed like the main draw of the Christmas Market was the gluhwein, or hot spiced wine. I think we had gluhwein at nearly every market we went to. The area surrounding the gluhwein booths were always packed and hard to get to. When we'd purchase the gluhwein, we'd have to put a deposit on the mugs that they served it in. If we didn't want the mug, we just had to return it and get our deposit back. We never returned them, though, we kept them as souvenirs :-) The only Christmas market that didn't have gluhwein was the Medieval one, but they had Love Potion, which was actually gluhwien :-)

Here is a slideshow of my gluhwein mugs:

I'll admit after so many Christmas Markets, we were kind of Christmas Marketed out at the end of the trip. We were seeing a lot of the same things over and over again at them. I wouldn't change anything, though. The Christmas Markets were still a wonderful part of our Germany experience!

Germany Trip: Sir Blake

I did a lot of shopping for the kids while I was in Germany. I looked at every toy that I came across trying to find something 'German' and something that I couldn't find here in the U.S. It wasn't easy, though. It seemed like everything was something that I had either seen before or it was way more than I was willing to spend. I was able to find a couple things that at least looked German, but nothing on them said they were. I ended up getting some little Bavarian puppets, for both Morgan and Blake. I also got a little Bavarian guy on a spring for Blake and the toy that I'm the most proud of finding was a little wooden sword.

We were in Rothenburg, when I came across the sword. We may have never stopped in the shop, but mom was looking for a wooden umbrella holder that this shop carried. The man that ran the shop did beautiful wood burning and had neat scenes burned in wood of the town on the wall and on the floor, leaning against the wall, there were all these little wooden swords. The swords had either 'Master', 'Sir' or 'Lady' on them, then a child's name could be added. I thought that was such a neat idea since it would be both German and original, plus the price was great-only 5 euro! We were also in a medieval town and a sword really seemed to be a great souvenir. So I ended up getting a sword that said "Sir Blake". I know Blake is way too young for a sword, but "Sir Blake" sounded good and I just loved the idea of it. I was even able to get a picture of the man as he was burning Blake's name into it!

Didn't it turn out nice? I figure I can give it to Blake for Christmas, then hide it while he's sleeping and give it back to him when he's old enough to play with it :-)

German Food: Potatoes and Soup

I don't usually think of Germany when I think of potatoes and soup. Ireland probably comes to mind a bit more, but Germany had some really interesting potato and soup dishes that I thought were really good!

When we were in Trier's Christmas Market, we kept seeing people walk by with what turned out to be potato pancakes, or Kartoffelpuffer (pictured). The same man who recommended the bratwurst that I tried in Trier, also suggested that we try these potato pancakes. They reminded me of a doughy hash brown, like at McDonald's, and just as greasy! They served the pancakes with applesauce, which really didn't sound too good to me, but I tried it. The applesauce turned out to be great with them-almost like it cut back on the greasiness!

I also had other potato dishes, but they weren't much different than what we can get here in the U.S. I had some french fries, which they call 'pommes' that came with my schnitzel and I also had American fries, which I mentioned in my previous 'German Food: Sausages' post.

The soups I tried while in Germany were nothing like what I expected! The first soup I had was in Munich while we were at the Hofbrauhaus. I ordered a potato soup, which was quite different than what I would usually order in the U.S. The U.S. potato soups are usually creamy and have bacon, cheese and chives on top. The potato soup there had a thick broth with potatoes and wasn't nearly as flavorful, but it was still good.

The other soup I had was a goulash soup, which I had in Rothenburg. I had never heard of goulash soup before or, if I had, I never thought anything of it. The goulash soup was very tasty and had potatoes and pieces of what I'm assuming was beef in it. I had thought there would be pasta in it, since I associate goulash with pasta, but there wasn't any. It was definitely a great soup to have to warm up, since it was also very spicy (for me at least).

German Food: Sausages!

Now, what better way to start talking about Germany than to talk about the food! And what better way to start talking about German food than to talk about the types of sausages! I didn't realize before going to Germany, that there would be regional differences. The first one I tried was in Trier, Germany's oldest city. We only ate in the Christmas market while there and were told by a local to try the brats. The bratwursts that they served there were very long and skinny. When they served them, they broke them in half and stuck them in a roll. The bratwurst, even split in half, was still almost double the length of the roll. It had a nice flavor, but wasn't spicy, like the kind we get here in the U.S.

The next one I tried was in Munich and was actually a sausage. Munich is actually very well known for their Weisswurst Sausage, which is a boiled white sausage made with veal, bacon, parsley and lemon. It is served with a pretzel and sweet mustard. I loved the mustard, the pretzel was good, but the sausage was just okay. It was very soft and I could mostly only taste the parsley. I'm glad I tried it, but I probably wouldn't get it again. :-/

The last bratwurst I tried was in Neiderjoshbach, the town my parents live in. I'm not sure if it was a regional bratwurst or not, but it was more like what we have here in the U.S. It was quite spicy and very good! It was served on sauerkraut with american fries on the side. I am very good about eating everything that I am served, and if I can't finish it I'll take it home and finish it at another meal. It's a different story when it comes to sauerkraut, though. I tried it, because I was going to try as much as I could in Germany while I had the chance, but it had never been for me in the past it wasn't for me then, either.

I'm Home!

I have actually been home since Saturday night, but I'm still trying to get back to normal and catch up with a few things, so I haven't had much time to blog. I'm hoping to, though, within the next week or so. I have a bunch of pictures and all sorts of neat things that I learned and experienced to share, so stay tuned! :-)

Be a Joyful Shopper!

In some ways I'm glad that I'm in Germany right now. (At least I should be, but I can't say for sure, since I'm writing this in advance.) I haven't quite decided yet if I like Black Friday. I love a good deal just as much as anyone, but I also hate waiting in line (just as much as anyone.) So by being in Germany, I don't even have to contemplate wether I should try making my out today. For those of you who are going out, I urge you to remember what Christmas is about. I know you've been up since 4:00 a.m., you're tired and grouchy and just don't want to put up with anything (at least that's the way I would be), but Christmas isn't about finding the best deal or about shopping at all. Christmas is about giving. So, instead of being grouchy, try giving up your place in line or saying "Merry Christmas" (happily) to the person who just cut you off. In general, just try to keep the Christmas spirit alive, despite the nature of the day. I'm sure those grouchy feelings will melt away and you'll feel more joy in the attitude you kept, than in the deal you got. I'll be thinking of you while I'm over here in Germany. I have a feeling that I'll be needing take some of my own advice from what I've heard of the German culture ;-) I better start practicing 'Frohe Weihnachten!' (German for 'Merry Christmas!').

Only 2 Weeks Away!

It is hard to believe that my trip to Germany is only two weeks away now! My sister and I will be leaving on Thanksgiving and spending 10 days with our parents in Germany. I've been making lists and gathering things to take a little at a time. I've researched what I can and can't take on the plane, information about duty and how to get the German tax back when I come home again. In all the preparations, I've also been thinking about how anxious I am to be able to travel and see my parents, yet I am also worried about leaving my family.

It feels like it's been forever since I've seen my mom and dad, so I'm really excited to see them again! It's been since February that I've seen my dad and since May, when she came home to visit, that I've seen my mom. For some reason, I've really been missing my dad. I can't explain it, but there are times that I find myself bursting into tears when I think about him. It's mostly things that bring about good memories, like a father-daughter dance at the last wedding I was at, that make me so emotional. It's crazy that I thought I'd have the hardest time without my mom, being that we did everything together, yet I get the most emotional thinking about Dad. We talk on the phone and the web cam, but it isn't the same as seeing them in person or just having them home again.

Besides seeing my parents, I'm also looking forward to getting a better idea of the German culture and, of course, the sightseeing! I know mom and dad had a tough time adjusting to how different it was to live in Germany. I would have never guessed that they are so culturally different than the United States. It will be neat to see how my parents have adjusted to life over there and actually experience some of what they did when they moved. We'll also be checking out all sorts of sights. Between the research I've done and the places my parents have been, I don't think we will have any downtime in the 10 days I'll be there.

As much I'm looking forward to the great opportunity I have to travel to Germany, I'm also apprehensive about leaving Rich and the kids behind. In some ways it will be nice to not have to worry about changing diapers, naps, tantrums, etc., but I know that I am going to miss the kids like crazy! I have only ever left them overnight with their grandparents before. One night without them wasn't bad , though, because it gave me a little break and I always knew I'd be seeing them the next day. Being gone for 10 days, I'll be going to bed several nights knowing that I won't be seeing them again for days! I admittedly cry ever time I think about it and I know it'll be even worse when I'm in Germany. I guess I feel guilty for leaving them and I am also feeling guilty for leaving Rich. I know he would love to see Germany too, but he keeps telling me to go and have a good time.

In the end, when I think of the trip as a whole, I am definitely a lot more excited about going than apprehensive about leaving. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel. It'll be great to see my parents, have some time away from the little ones and tour a beautiful country. As much as I'll miss the kiddos, I know they'll be in good hands and 10 days isn't forever, right? I may have red, puffy eyes the whole time I'm gone, but gosh darn it, I'm going to do as Rich says and have a good time!