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.