Stuttgart Christmas market

Dinner is served!

On Saturday the girls and I went to the Christmas market in Stuttgart. Because it was a fairly long train ride and the markets are so crowded, E decided it would be better (and more relaxing) if he stayed home with the littles. We arrived at around noon, had some pastries, and immediately hit the market. One of the special things about Stuttgart market is the roof decoration competition for the booths. Here are a few that S liked. After a while she stopped taking pictures of them. Most of these roofs are at the beginning of the market. As we moved closer to the center they became more and more elaborate. There was no way to take pictures of all of them - especially since it got darker and more crowded and the booths closer together as we went.

We thought of T when we saw the teddy bear.

The roof from the fish stand.

One os S's favorite roofs. She loves nutcrackers!

This poor kid. We don't know how he got up there or back down.

The highlight of the day was ice skating. At first S didn't quite remember how, but with some practice and encouragement from R she was zooming around the rink. I've never been able to ice skate, no matter how much practice and encouragement, so I watched. After an hour or so I wasn't having as much fun as they were anymore and gave them a fifteen minute warning. They suggested I treat myself to a hot wine since that would warm me up and improve my outlook. I did go get wine but remembered too late that I'm not supposed to drink on my medication so I felt more like I'd had three. So the girls got extra skating time while that effect quickly wore off.

Happy Birthday dear S... Happy Birthday to you!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, S!

S is 11! She started the day as she likes to start every birthday - with breakfast in bed. I remember one year she requested bacon and a slice of cake. This year is was crepes. If we were in America she would have had a nice day off with her grandparents visiting. Instead she rushed off to school. Having her birthday on a school day turned out to be good luck, though. S was allowed to bring in treats for her class. She brought her specialty, homemade brownies from scratch. They were a hit.

She had a few of her friends over for a birthday lunch. (Thanks to R! She had the day off and was an enormous help getting everything ready.) They had fruit, pizza, luxembugerli macarons , and ice cream then went outside to play on the apartment complex swings until it was time to go back to school. They were all very nice girls and I think everyone had a good time. They all knew the Happy Birthday song in English, which made S happy.

S wasn't back home very long before it was time for R to head into the city for her mandatory party. S really wanted to relax so while I watched the little ones she watched a Christmas show, played computer games, and read. You won't guess what she's been reading. The Help.  She has read all the other English books in the house and it's the last one (excluding a couple murder mysteries and some gruesome graphic novels.) E came home with a birthday cake and dinner for most of us. He made cous cous salad for S. The macaroni and cheese she had asked for originally was a disaster. The cheese was just not right at all.

After dinner we had cake (S blew out all the candles) and S opened her presents, including one sent by her friend L all the way from Pennsylvania via E. S is lucky to have such good friends! S is looking forward to lots of duct tape projects. The grand finale of the day was a nice skype talk with her friend L, who she misses horribly.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And Happy Hanukkah!

We weren't going to celebrate Thanksgiving today since we had our dinner last weekend, but we kind of ended up doing something anyway. As I cleaned the kitchen in preparation for having S's friends over for a birthday lunch tomorrow I realized it would be easiest if I cooked the potatoes that were taking up  the counter. While I was at it, I could get rid of the onions, too, if I made more stuffing. And E had some leftover chicken in the fridge. However, at dinner none of the kids wanted any of it. They were anxious to try the pot yogurts. They did and couldn't eat another bite. After that S took over the kitchen to make birthday brownies for her class.

So none of that was very Thanksgivingish, but we were able to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade live via the computer! R even made it home from school in time for the finale. L was mesmerized by the balloons but really went crazy when the Sesame Street float showed up. She was bouncing up and down, pointing, and screaming, "Grober!" (Grover.) T was just losing interest when the power rangers, the teenage mutant ninja turtles, and the Spiderman balloon showed up in quick succession. For some reason Santa didn't interest him very much. I think there must be some confusion about Santa because T had questions that he couldn't quite express and so he ended up asking, "What's he doing?" Then, when I answered, "No, Mama, what's he doing?" 

I am going to ask R to write a post next week. Once again there are strange doings at school. Tomorrow night she has a mandatory party at school which runs until 1 a.m. (getting home is her problem) and at which she has to do a Charleston dance solo. We're not the only ones who think that's strange, right?

Globus again

Today S babysat for the littles (with R's help when R came home from school) while I went to Zurich so I could go to the Globus food hall again. I had two objectives: to get Bordier butter and to get cheddar cheese. The butter you know about if you read our blog the other day. I got a very good baguette to go with it. I guess Globus is the place to get bread. It's the place to get everything. I also found Christine Ferber jam, which isn't widely sold even in Paris. As for the cheese - why did I have to go to Globus for cheddar cheese? Because I couldn't find it anywhere else. You might think Switzerland would have all sorts of cheeses, but here macaroni and cheese is made with Swiss cheese. I could have used Swiss, but it tastes entirely different and this was S's birthday request so it has to be done our usual way.

The Globus food hall is the sort of place where everything there is something you would love to try. I reduced the damage by not bringing the girls and not even entering most sections of the store. But the yogurt was right next to the butter, so I couldn't help seeing yogurt sold in little red clay "Joyeuses fetes" pots. The picture shows the yogurt pot, though ours are still in the fridge. I only bought a couple since I wanted to check out the inside of the pots and taste the yogurt before making too much of an investment. However, I am already planning on a trip back to Globus for more. I think these would be so cute with tiny flower arrangements in them. Or displayed with some candy canes inside. Or used to serve egg nog. Or to serve chocolate mousse at Christmas dinner. 

I couldn't resist taking some pictures around town. You can always spot my phone pictures because I forget to turn the camera horizonatally to make things fit better on the blog page.

Stringing the lights by the train station. Town Hall in the background.

I won't have to worry about the suspicious water fountains for a while.

R's shortcut.

A stubborn apple tree. I will have to watch the apples to see how long they can hang on.

I had been watching the roses on the hill to see how long they would bloom. 

But today I was very disappointed to see that the rose bush had been pruned.

Zibelemärit

Today was the onion market in Bern. It is huge. I lost track of how many streets were filled with all types of stalls. And it was crowded! The SBB had added several extra trains from Zurich and other cities to handle the traffic. That worked out well for us - our train was pretty empty and T and L had the entire play area to themselves on the way there.



There were lots of onions, but not as many as I expected. After the carrot market I expected there to be piles of onions everywhere and every type of onion food imaginable. It was more of a mixed market, though. The smell of onions was in the air and there were lots of onions, but most of them were in decorative forms like wreaths and every size braid from earrings to as long as a door. The vendors made onions as pretty as possible, that's for sure. Since the market had opened at 5 a.m. some of the stands were already sold out and packing to leave.  We arrived at noon and I think we saw everything there was to see.

My favorites were the novelty onions. There were all sorts of things. Clocks were popular and so were animals (I thought I had a picture of the squirrels, but I guess not. Bummer.) There were our favorites, though.

Schmutzli is coming to town

Who is that with Santa? Well, that's not exactly Santa. That is St. Nicholas. He's in town until December 6th. On the night of the 5th he leaves a little bag of treats in the shoes of all the good children. The bag usually holds a mandarin orange, nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate. After that he leaves town. Baby Jesus will take care of bringing gifts on Christmas Eve. With St Nicholas (who is called Samichlaus here) is Schmutzli. He is a holdover from old pagan winter festivals. Traditionally he is a dark bad guy who beats the bad children with switches and stuffs the really bad children into his bag. Why St Nicholas thought Schmutzli would make a good companion on his big night is unclear. 

Nowadays Schmutzli has undergone a  makeover. He is much more PC. He has a beard, but does not make-up his face anymore, thank goodness. And he doesn't abuse children. In fact, at the Samichlaus parade tonight he was downright helpful, passing out gingerbread to all the children. The floats gave us a glipse of his new hobbies - cards and playing in the Schmutzli jazz quartet.

A quiet evening in with Samichlaus. Jazzy Schmutzlis.

We got to the parade early and spent some time listening to the singing Christmas Tree. Then we went searching for a place to change L's diaper. Because it is Sunday nothing was open. I thought one of the department stores or the huge grocery stores might be open, but they weren't. Finally we found a Japanese take out restaurant. So the kids and E ate sushi and edamame (the cost of admission to their bathroom) while I scoped a parade spot. We were very lucky to find a great spot (with a Jersey barrier behind us to limit crowding) and it stopped raining right before the parade started.

Birthday Blog

Today's blog care of E

It's winter in Zurich, there is snow on the ground, it's hovering around 0 C, so we decided that a great way to celebrate my birthday (tomorrow) would be to go swimming. So we packed up our bathing suits and water wings and headed to Bernaqua, a pool/water park/spa.

The cold air and hot water make for a dense fog

Giant faucets give great shoulder massages

Our first stop after arriving and changing was one of the two outdoor pools (you enter the water indoors and swim through a down out into the snow. With the air at 0 C and the water at 33 C (and the occasional snowfall) it was surprisingly comfortable -- though we skipped jumping out to go run through the snow as others were doing. I've done my polar bear swim and this was MUCH preferable.  The pool had several different attractions.  There were chaise lounges with small holes in them that water bubbled up through.  L particularly loved this as the water pushed her right up to the surface to her excited "Wheees!" and "Oooohs!"  There was a wall with jets of water coming out and up to give a great massage, as well as what looked like giant faucets that gave great shoulder massages.  Even a waterfall (to swim under, not go over).  

Instant Christmas

For a couple of weeks now we have seen signs of Christmas around town. The grocery stores have chocolates and Christmas plants for sale, the farmer's markets have wreaths and arrangements, the chocolate shops are selling candy bags for St Nicholas Day. And there have been some decorations like little trees here and there or Christmas shop windows.

But last night was the real deal. S, the littles, and I left the house at 5:00 just as the first snow was starting to fall. We met E and R in front of the Bretzelkönig stand at Stadelhofen station. In front of the station was a big new hot drinks stand in the shape of a lit up Christmas pyramid, complete with spinning fan.

From there we took the tram to Bahnhofstrasse, where a crowd had gathered. There were very few signs of why the crowd was there, though, hanging out in the street under umbrellas. Here and there were some unusual sights: a small hot drinks stand manned by Santa, a gospel choir, and a couple of tv news vans. Then, at six o clock it happened. Just as all the church bells were ringing the lights went on in Zurich. The Christmas lights strung across Bahnhofstrasse turned on starting at the station and moving toward Bürkliplatz. (We were at Paradeplatz next to Sprüngli, of course.) But it was more than just the street lights. All of the buildings lit up with their Christmas lights for the first time this season, and all of the side streets lit up with their lights, too. Christmas trees lit up. And all of the stores stayed open late (meaning past 5 or 6) for Christmas shopping.

BEFORE

AFTER

I thought this was cool. Instead of lights, a projected image.

The circle also rotated.

Each of the gift boxes had a little scene inside. 

For example, one had a scene of antique tin toys.

Baking

When I was growing up my family focused on one type of Christmas cookie, called "Christmas cookies." The note at the top of the recipe card says that it was from my grandmother Louise's grandmother Louisa. Unofficially, I think I remember Grandma saying that the recipe was even older than that and had come over with the family from Germany. It was a very secret recipe. Grandma used to make the dough and bring it to us to cut, decorate, and cook.

E's family went for an assortment of cookies. I think the first time I went to his house for Christmas they had: lefse, krumkake, meringues, frango mints, mint brownies, and peanut butter kiss cookies. I'm probably forgetting something.

So we do things E's way with an assortment of cookies heavily weighted toward Christmas cookies and krumkake. I've already written about how the assortment has to be different this year. But I have been surprised to find some more things not easily available here like mint extract, food coloring, colored sugar, vanilla extract, etc.

Technorama field trip

This is S again, reporting about my awesome field trip.

There was a take your kids to work day last Thursday and kids who weren't participating were allowed to go on a field trip to a science museum called Technorama. At Technorama most of the time the teacher just let the kids do whatever they wanted and come back at a certain time. Except one time we all went to a chemistry lab for a special demonstration where there were tables with different chemistry experiments and they just let the kids do whichever ones they wanted with all the explosive chemicals and stuff with no supervision unless they raised their hands for help. The kids were also allowed to check out the museum shop which had a lot of cool science toys.

My teacher Herr S brought his son with him. My partner and I near the end of the trip did some things with them in the body section. There we did some things like learning how cats can make their landing soft and seeing if we could make our landing soft, too, and there was a camera that said it could predict where we would land before we even landed. It took pictures of us in midair and was usually about right. There was also a part with humungous plasma balls. When I saw them it made me think of R.

I loved it there so much that I finally decided what I want to do on my birthday. I want to go to Technorama on my birthday. I think T and L will even like some of the stuff there. I think L will like the bubbles. They were really huge. I bet a bubble like that will fit over her whole body. I think she will also like the plasma ball because it is as big as she is.

On the day after my birthday, hopefully we will have some pictures to show you, too!

Got the wreath!

Yay - I got my wreath and it is already on the wall. The girls and I went to the market on Saturday especially to get it. (R was awesome. I stepped away to buy something and when I returned she had the wreath wrapped and ready to go and had gotten instructions in German on how to keep it fresh.) Our plan had been to do some shopping on Saturday and then kick off the Christmas season on Sunday decorating, listening to music, and making cookies.

It probably sounds crazy to start Christmasy things on November 17th. But we had our reasons. 1. Since there is no Thanksgiving here and the girls we be in school that day, we had no reason to follow our usual day after Thanksgiving kick-off. 2.  The weekdays are very busy for the girls with their school work. Some days R leaves for school and comes home, too, in the dark. That leaves just the weekends for us to do our usual things: making cookies, watching movies, making presents and decorations, etc. Keeping in mind that we also want to visit some Christmas markets, that we are leaving to ski on the 22nd, and we have E, S, R, and T's birthdays to celebrate having an extra weekend or so seemed like a good idea. 3. Sprüngli chocolates puts out its full line of Christmas stuff on the 15th, it's Christmastime in Zurich anyway.

In the end, we just didn't feel Christmassy enough to make Sunday the official start of the season. Instead we had a preview. We made some cookies and watched Holiday in Handcuffs. For anyone who has talked to T lately - you know he is obsessed with gingerbread. I got him some cookies at Ikea just to hold him over and he had a great time decorating them. We will kick off on Saturday the 23rd with a birthday/Thanksgiving combo.

Räbechilbi turnip parade

 

This is S writing again! During the turnip festival in Richterswil the town is a turnip city. Every house is town is covered in lit up jack-o-lantern turnips and so is every stand and store. Mama and I went there to see it. In the parade there are a bunch of giant posters covered in lit turnips on wagons pulled by people. There were also cute little kids in kindergarten or so carrying turnips in baskets or on boards they carried on their shoulders. There were several different turnip floats and a lot of turnip carriers. There were a few bands who had the music stands on their instruments lit up. The bands had a lot of drummers. Sometimes the drummers were the only ones playing. 

I really liked the turnips hanging on hoops.

It doesn't look like some of the turnips were lit up, but everything was. We had some problems taking pictures in the dark which is why everything is either unlit looking or blurry. 

Here are some floats which we took better pictures of.

Here is a side picture of one of the floats so you can see how the turnips are attached. 

This float was one of our favorites. Each section spun to give different faces.

This helicopter was the grand finale float. There were crash dummies sitting in front. The rotors on the helicopter even spun and made noises.

After the parade we walked around town a little bit to see the turnip decorated houses. 

There were about a million turnips on each house!

Trees and turnips, both orange.

We liked the way the turnips reflected in the windows.

On the Day that Conny Kramer died

Until just this week it has been in the 50s and 60s (I guess I should say the teens) here. But it has turned cold - 30s and low 40s. On Monday and Tuesday we had a strong wind storm, so most of the leaves have suddenly fallen and that makes it feel very winterish. I think that the change is especially noticeable to us because the bare trees are opening views that are totally new to us around town.  We are wearing only winter jackets now and are scrambling to find our hats and mittens. I'm not sure I brought enough. L has already managed to lose a very cute hat and outgrew her warmest coat before she ever wore it.

The weather forecasts here are interesting. Today the low will be 2, the high 5. That kind of small range makes me feel pretty confident even though I know that half the time when they predict rain it doesn't. The warnings are the best, though. When we had the wind storm we were in the stormy winds and continuous rain categories. Just one notch up from continuous rain is "permanent rain"! That is bad enough, but they have two categories that are even worse.

Yesterday we went to the market in Oerlikon. It is already somewhat small because I go on Wednesdays as opposed to Saturdays, but yesterday was even smaller than usual. My favorite vendor wasn't there. But maybe I have a new favorite - a man who looks like a walrus, is crazy about L, and who lets me try to speak German. When I asked for a head of lettuce he gave me one that was so big it looked like three heads in one. I left the market with two resolutions: to see it on Saturday sometime, and to try to blog everyday. It would probably be my New Year's resolution anyway since blogging gives me an incentive to get out and do things even in nasty weather. I might as well start it now, especially since E is coming home with a wonderful birthday present I got from my Uncle J and Aunt K - a rain cover for the stroller which will also help with wind. Thank you Uncle J and Aunt K - we will dedicate our next rainy day post to you!

Aarau Carrot Festival

Is this meant to be the rabbit's hallucination or am I not seeing something?

Wow, it's been a while since I posted! I was waiting for a turn with E's computer, where all the photos are kept. However, he has been working to submit a paper and that has to take priority until I become an internet sensation and can support us all. Our readership is growing exponentially, but our base number is only 2.

This week the littles and I went to the Aarau carrot festival. From what I can translate one day the residents of Aarau were bemonaing the fact that Bern got so much attention for its onion festival when Aarau and its carrots were more interesting, and so they began their own festival. Now 30,000 people or more go every year. It was quite rainy (the first time it has ever rained on the festival) but still mobbed along the main drag. I hope the Christmas markets have a little more room to maneuver.


So, as you can guess, carrots were the star of the show. Carrot soup, cakes, muffins, pickles, jam, juice, liquor, relish, vinegar, etc, along with every color carrot. T was asleep most of the time, but we got a carrot cake on the way out to take home for everyone. T carried it all the way and did a great job! However, I was careful not to get the same kind of cake I had gotten for L to snack on during the festival. She wolfed it down and then struggled to scrape the plate for the last bits of icing. I was helping her when I realized that the icing was made with rum or something. Oh well. She was happy!

Here is a photo that kills two birds with one stone: it shows how the festival merges into Christmas-time,
and you can see L getting tipsy.

We miss our car

Since E is going back to the US for a week, today was the last reasonable day to go and rent our skis for the season before things start to sell out. So we took a bus and train to the rental place (next to Ikea!) That was fine. We were measured, weighed, fitted for boots. Then the hard part. Paying was hard, but much less than renting by the day. I'm talking about getting everything home. Skis and ski boots are shockingly heavy. Of course, they are awkward, too.

We put together what we could. We kicked the littles out of their stroller and filled it with boots and little skis. R carried the poles, E carried the skis, S wrangled the littles. Then we got to Ikea and thought, wouldn't it be a shame not to stop in? So I took T to reduce the wrangling. E insisted they could make it home that way. They did, with lots of help from samaritans and some stroller use which I would have freaked out over if I had seen it. We still have to get helmets.

T loved Ikea! He has so many ideas for remodeling our kitchen now. He wants drawers behind doors, pull out shelves, and everything should be white. He also wants a stainless steel wall oven. Who knew?