Christmas in Germany - Traveling with Margaret, Part II

The trip from Ulm to Berlin takes about 7 hours by train, which I found to be actually quite nice. The train is very nice. It's like flying but with more legroom and no snacks, but you can get up and walk around whenever you want. It's a good idea to make a seat reservation in advance to make sure you get a seat, but you can also sit in the restaurant car, provided you buy something to eat or drink. For this leg and most of the others, we reserved our seats well in advance, so we had a couple of nice comfy seats. It was a nice change of pace to be able to sit for a long time instead of walking around to different places or carrying a huge backpack. I could listen to music or watch videos on my ipod - no, wait, my headphones decided to stop working on one side. It's just not the same to listen to half the song, knowing there's a lot more you're missing in the other ear.

We eventually made it! The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is for some reason the most confusing train station I've ever been in, and I've been there twice before so you'd think I'd at least have a general idea. Wrong. It took us about 20 minutes to figure out which level, which train, and which ticket we needed.

It's New Year's Eve, right, so everybody is getting antsy. A party of 20-somethings got on the train a couple of hours outside of Berlin with backpacks full of "milk," (shout-out to my MIT friends if they're reading) and by the time we hit the suburbs of Berlin they were singing either a drinking song or some soccer team's fight song, I couldn't really tell. Fireworks are legal everywhere, and you can sometimes find them in grocery stores. Firecrackers, bottle rockets, mortars, groundflowers, and little pop-its were flying around wherever you looked. In a way, it reminded me of driving by the Native American reservation's fireworks lot at home - you drive by, trying not to jump every time something goes boom, but you're really paranoid something is going to explode a little too close.

As we were coming out of the subway near our hostel, a firecracker came bouncing down the stairs. Now, those are loud to begin with, but you put it underground in a subway station and it is LOUD. So with ringing ears and increasing paranoia, we head for the hostel.

Most common actions of the night: flinching every time a firecracker blows up in the street/ checking the apartments overhead before walking underneath to make sure another firecracker isn't about to be tossed into the street.

On Unter den Linden, a major street near downtown Berlin
where the "Party Mile" is at.

Our spot for the party. Brandenburger Tor in the background.

Happy New Year!

Other destinations in Berlin: the Jewish Museum, Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe (and visitor's center), Musical Instrument Museum, Checkpoint Charlie, Potsdamerplatz, the Sony Center, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, the Bauhaus Museum, and others. We also tried to go to the Reichstag, but they only recently made it so you have to reserve tickets ahead of time and the wait was three days. So we just admired from the outside.

Bust of Kaiser Wilhelm. Come November, I think I'll try
the sideburns/mustache combo.

Siegessäule, or Victory Column.

Reichstag, the capitol building of Germany.

Same spot as New Year's Eve, two days later.

Left: Döner. Right: Dürum Döner (in a tortilla instead of flatbread).
If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, I'd choose Döner.

Beer, brewed right in the alehouse at the Sony Center.
Delicious.

Four days in Berlin was a great choice. We knew we couldn't do everything there is to do there, so we chose several things we thought would give us a good feel of the city and not worry about the rest. We were able to take some time to relax and sleep in a bit as well as take our sweet time doing things. By the time we left for Lutherstadt Wittenberg, we were feeling pretty good.

Lutherstadt Wittenberg is a lovely small town an hour or so south of Berlin. It's where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses and lived for many years with his family. His wife was apparently an excellent beer maker!

95 Theses

Margaret meets Luther.

After Wittenberg, we spent a night in Halle, the birthplace of Georg Friedrich Händel. There's also an interesting museum about the work of August Francke, who started an orphanage and school for the poor that eventually became one of the leading schools in the area. We spent the afternoon there, and unfortunately missed the Handel House, a museum located where Händel was born. But we enjoyed our time there anyways, and managed to play a bit of cards in the basement of the hostel.

I think I was winning.

Statue of Handel in the market square.

Leipzig: the city where Bach spent almost 30 years as the cantor at the Church of St Thomas. Also the home to many other composers, from Wagner to Schumann to Mendelssohn.

At the Bach Museum.

I think this is the inside of the church of St. Thomas but
I can't remember.

Bach's final resting place.

Yup, that's Bach.

Wagner.

Mendelssohn.

Leipzig University and the City-Hochhaus (high-rise).

I think this is self=explanatory.

We had planned on seeing the St. Thomas boys' choir on Friday afternoon, because they normally perform/sing for a service, but it just so happened that the one Friday we were there the schedule was changed. So we changed our plans a bit to stay later in the afternoon on Saturday to hear them sing. Worth it! They performed a short piece by Telemann before a short sermon, but the main attraction was the 6th Cantata from Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium.

After that we hopped on a train to the last stop on this crazy trip: Eisenach.

We stayed at a hostel that was (again) not all that close to the train station, so it was a good 30 minute hike across town in the rain and dark to get there. However, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. I mean that in the most literal sense too-after reception closed, there was no one but us to be seen. Margaret and I were enjoying a bit of wine and playing cards in the lounge at about midnight when somebody knocked on the window...just a bit sketchy. But we talked to him through the window, and then I went to the door to talk to him and it turned out that his wife had called ahead to say he would be arriving late. I guess she only left a message, because nobody was waiting for him, and even after calling all the numbers we could find for the hostel, we couldn't find anybody to help us. He didn't speak a word of German, just some English, and he was pretty pissed. I would be too, but I didn't know what else to do for him since it was impossible to get ahold of anybody in charge. I called another hotel from our Lonely Planet guidebook to see if they had a room for him, and then called him a taxi so he wouldn't have to walk all the way back into town.

It made us wonder...if there was a fire or a break-in, who would Margaret and I call? It was lucky we were downstairs to help this guy, or he might've had to sleep on the porch until somebody showed up the next morning.

Anyway, we were only there for one day, so we had to make our time count. We got up early to cram in as much as we could, and we checked out but left our stuff there to keep it safer and so we didn't have to schlep it with us. In this case, I think the term "safer" is pretty fluid since the lady working there didn't really want to hold onto it in the office for us, so she had us stash it under the staircase in the basement...nothing got stolen, but that's the only city where I would ever do that. I don't think I'll stay at that hostel again.

Several influential Germans have strong ties to this small, yet colorful town. Johann Sebastian Bach was born here, and the oldest museum dedicated to the composer is only a short distance away from where his house used to stand. The museum has lots of interesting information about Bach and his life and works, and also has a small performance/lecture hall filled with several historical instruments, from a harpsichord to small house organs, which are all demonstrated every hour for free to visitors of the museum.

Winning with the Bach House

Listening stations inside the museum.

Part of the old city wall.

Talk about squeezing in a house!

On a hill just outside the city lies Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German in a matter of weeks while "kidnapped" and excommunicated from the Church. If you take a tour of the castle, you can see some pretty cool rooms, including a room covered in mosaic tiles depicting the life of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, who also lived there for a number of years. You can also visit the room where Luther worked separately from the tour, and walk around the grounds. On a clear day, the views from the castle would be spectacular, but we missed that and visited on a day with lots of rain and fog. Nevertheless, it was worth the hike.

Me and the castle. I'm a bit soggy at this point.

Since we didn't really know what time we'd be all finished at the castle, we didn't reserve any seats on the ICE train back to Cologne. By the time we wanted to, there weren't any left. We spent our train ride in the on-board restaurant making a cup of coffee last 3 hours so we could sit in a booth instead of standing in one of the doorways. But we made it safely back to my apartment by about 10:00.

After over two weeks of carrying our packs around, our shoulders were pretty tired. Margaret had a lot of trouble getting her pack to stop sitting crooked, try as she might to adjust straps and shove things around. I think I still have knots that I can feel if I roll my shoulders. We did buy a few things along the way, so by the end of the trip I just wanted to arrive someplace so I could take off the danged thing. We weighed our packs when we got back: mine was 65lbs, hers was 60lbs, which was odd because hers felt way lighter than mine.

We got back to Cologne on a Sunday. Margaret's flight was on Tuesday morning, so we had all day Monday to do stuff. At that point I was still going to the literature class at the university, so while Margaret climbed the Cologne Cathedral tower I did my reading. When we both finished, we went over to the university district to find some genuine German food for lunch. The Schnitzel place I wanted to go to turns out to be closed on Mondays, so we had to settle for a different place, but their Jägerschnitzel was also delicious! We wandered around for a while after that, stopped for cake again, and then it was time for me to go to band practice out in Bergisch Gladbach. When I got back, we made dinner and Margaret finished packing, and went to bed.

My Tuesday morning teacher emailed me to let me know she wasn't going to be in, so I was able to take Margaret to the train station and make she got underway okay. We got her on the train just fine and I waved her off.

What a fantastic trip! I'll admit, I probably wasn't the best traveling buddy the whole time, but I am sure grateful that I had someone to travel with me for two weeks. It's always more fun to be able to share an experience with someone, and this trip will be one I'll remember for a long time. We had a ridiculous amount of fun taking pictures and sampling the cake in different cities. We climbed a lot of stairs, walked miles upon miles just to find our hostel, tried our luck with unknown dishes and won more than we lost, and most of all just lived the dream - two siblings just going where the train takes us with just a backpack full of dirty clothes and a couple of cameras.

Deutschland's Top Chef

Sidetrack from Christmas break...

I decided I was watching too much American TV online during the day, so I started turning on the regular TV set while I eat lunch to try for a bit of listening practice, and to see what daytime television auf Deutsch was like. There are lots and lots of stations that are available, but for a reason explained to me by my landlord but I didn't quite understand at the time, I only get about 9 of them. Most of them have some sort of Jersey Shore-type show that runs all the time, but for a few hours starting around 2pm at least one channel has two cooking competition shows, in which people make a dish or a complete meal and try to stay on the show for another day. Both are hosted by colorful chefs who run around between guests, stealing bites and offering advice, or demonstrating some quick-and-easy recipe to try at home.

Since living alone means cooking for yourself for every meal, I've amassed a small collection of favorites. Breakfast is some sort of müsli, which is just a type of cereal that always seems to have some kind of oats in it. I always just get the cheapest one on the shelf since it's reliable and actually not too bad. It has dry oats, a little bit of some kind of crunchy thing, and bits of real chocolate. With milk or plain yogurt, it's not bad. And at 5:50 in the morning it's the best I can do.

Lunch is also fairly simple. Usually it's a sandwich with a few pieces of lunchmeat. Lately I've been fancy and toast it, spread with pesto on one side and melt slices of gouda on top.

Dinner is always a variation on chicken breasts, various types of pasta and tortellini, rice, or meal-in-a-bag mixes. I've also tried my hand at making Spätzle (pronounced "sh-petz-luh), which is delicious but time-consuming.

Here's a selection of what I've managed. They all look really greasy but that's just because I haven't figured out how to soften my flash to keep it from reflecting so harshly off the food.

Müsli. Yes that's a sheep in my bowl.

Greek salad

Something called "Maultaschen," which are a lot
like potstickers. With chicken and red peppers.

Spaghetti with pesto, chicken, onions, and peppers.

Käsespätzle, plain and with pesto and tomato sauce.

Tortellini with chicken and pesto

Spaghetti with actually a lot of chicken. More like
chicken with a garnish of spaghetti.

More tortellini with pesto and tomato sauces and leftover
feta cheese.

Homemade teriyaki chicken with mixed veggies and

stovetop rice.

Okay, here's the thing about stovetop rice. I'll admit, I'm Asian, so you might think that being able to cook rice is like being good at math - it just comes with the territory. Actually, that's kind of true. Not every Asian is good at math. I'm not good at stovetop rice. I like love rice so it's kind of depressing to keep making rice that turns out either too soggy or that is crunchier than a gravel driveway. I'm used to having a rice cooker that makes perfect, fluffy rice every time. I'm also used to cooking more than 1 portion at a time, which also makes a big difference when you only need enough rice to barely cover the bottom of the pan. It's harder to get the temperature and simmering just so, so that it boils and then steams without burning or just soaking. If you do the same method for 4 people, it's much easier because the layer of rice is thicker and it magically helps manage the boiling/simmering/not burning.

Maybe I just need to find a smaller pan. Or maybe I'll somehow manage to perfect the art of rice cooking before I come home. Maybe with the help of this chart, I'll figure it out.

Christmas in Germany - Traveling with Margaret, Part I

I'd make this all one post, but with all the pictures it would be ridiculously long and nobody would read the whole thing.

On December 26th, my entire family checked out of our hostel in Frankfurt and took the train to the Frankfurt airport, where my mom and dad hopped on a plane for a short ride across the ocean back to the Pacific Northwest. However, Margaret and I bought ourselves our first train tickets to start our own adventure - an unbelievable two weeks running around Germany. First stop: Worms.

Christmas in Germany - My family comes to visit!

Almost exactly one month ago, my family arrived in Germany. I think we all lucked out by the fact that they arrived on a Wednesday, which is one of my days off from school. Since they arrived in Frankfurt, I figured I could meet them there and then we'd spend the day walking around the Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas market, in downtown Frankfurt.

Before they left home, we'd arranged a meeting point in the airport so that we could find each other. It worked perfectly! And man, seeing them for the first time since last summer was such a great feeling! So once we were all together, we headed out from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof to stash their luggage in some of the 24-hour lockers most big stations have. After spending several minutes trying to figure out how to shove several suitcases and carry-ons into three lockers, we finally headed off to the market. First problem: nobody had written down where the market actually was. Everyone had read about them, but without writing down directions. So I took a guess as to where it would be, and after I mentioned the place and the trains we could take to get there, everyone agreed that it was probably right.

The market was good times. We got some food and, of course, some Glühwein. Let me just say that crepes with Nutella and bananas are the way to go. I've had other crepes, like with applesauce and other things, but nothing has reached the level of Nutella with bananas. We also started our collection of Glühwein cups with some quality Frankfurt mugs.

We did a bit of walking around outside of the market too, but it was raining off and on with scattered downpours, so it wasn't the best day for it. But we had a great day, and caught our train home with no problems, except a 20 minute delay that meant we missed our scheduled transfer. I managed to catch a Deutsche Bahn worker and got her to validate our passes in time to run to catch a train leaving the station two minutes after we arrived there. Basically, the train stuff all day was really complicated and I don't think they would've arrived in Cologne unless I met them. The train stations in Frankfurt are super complicated and the network of trains is confusing, plus with tons of luggage and being tired, I think it would've been overwhelming. I was stressed trying to figure things out and I actually slept the night before!

The next week and a half were awesome. We took day trips to Aachen and Düsseldorf to see a few things, check out the various Christmas markets, and add to our growing collection of Glühwein mugs. Each city, and sometimes each market if there are several in a city, has its own unique mug that has a special picture or design on it, and usually the year. Some places had mugs from years past, and it took us a long time to figure out how to get the current year's mug. We ended up buying several drinks, from hot chocolate to "kinderpunsch" to Glühwein, to try and get the 2011 mugs. Toward the end of the two weeks, we figured out that you can ask to trade mugs for a clean, current mug. That would've been so much easier to know sooner, but probably not as fun.

I still had school, so for several days I left the house before everyone got up. Since they were staying with me in my itty-bitty apartment, it made moving around a bit tricky. With two cots and an extra mattress on the floor, there was just enough room between beds to squeeze through.

When I got home, they'd have folded up the cots and cleared out all the floor space, and we'd make lunch together. Some days they'd take off before I got home and would spend the day in Cologne checking out different things, like the Dom or other various churches, and of course the Christmas markets. Sometimes I'd meet them downtown, and other days I'd just head home and they'd be back not too long after. I ended up buying them a cheap phone since I had an extra SIM card, so meeting up with them wasn't a problem.

I think my favorite part about having them here was just the fact that I had someone to sit around my apartment with. It was so nice to come home and have somebody to chat with, cook and eat with, play cards or even just watch tv with. Plus, I didn't have to pay for groceries! Total win. But it was a new experience for me to cook dinner for four. I'd gotten used to estimating what I could eat, but figuring out how much would be enough for four people with different appetites was a bit of an adventure. Of course, my dad wanted some German potato chips and other snacks, so we never went hungry, that's for sure!

After the last school day before break, we took off for Koblenz, a town about halfway between Cologne and Frankfurt. I'd booked our stay in a DJH hostel, which are practically everywhere and reliably clean and include breakfast, but I hadn't really looked at the distance between the train station and the hostel. It turned out to be a half-hour walk to the other side of the city, and up a mountain. The hostel was actually part of an old castle. But with all the luggage we brought (my folks' stuff, including all the things we bought as well as an obscene amount of mugs - I can't believe they fit everything in so easily! and my backpack for the next part of my Christmas journey) it was a trek and a half. We lucked out by discovering there was a nifty lift that you could take from the bottom of the mountain up to the castle.

The castle at the top is the DJH hostel in Koblenz.
Coolest place ever.

After checking in, we headed out for the evening to explore the city and see a few of the major sights. This time, we took a bus back to the downtown area. We walked along the river, through the old town, and found someplace for dinner. This was where I introduced my family to the wondrous Döner. None of us were very hungry, so we got two to share; one with veal, one with chicken. We passed the two round and round so everyone could sample both. The flavors are quite different, but both are absolutely delicious.

At the Deutsches Eck, the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers.

We walked around a little more after dinner but it was pretty cold, so we headed back around 9:00. We had some time in the morning before our train, so we got to see a few things in the daylight as well.

Then we were off to Frankfurt. We stayed at the same place Isabel and I had stayed at when we first got to Germany, since the location is great and prices reasonable. We celebrated Christmas here, and it was much different than most Christmases I've experienced in the past. It didn't feel like Christmas usually does. There wasn't a tree, I wasn't at home, and a lot of the familiar things I'm used to doing around the Christmas season just weren't there. Instead, we did things differently. We talked and read and played cards (which are all normal, I guess) and played cards and drank German beer (which is not that normal) and went on long walks all over the city. On Christmas eve, or "Heiligabend," we were out walking along the Main River when we noticed tons of people gathering on the footbridges that go over the river. We decided to stick around to see what was happening. We ended up standing on the riverbank next to a group of four people who seemed to know what was going on, so I went over to ask them what everybody was doing. They told me that on Heiligabend at 5:00, all the church bells in the city ring together. People like to stand on the bridges because they can hear the different bells equally without being overpowered by a specific church that's too close. It ended up that they had brought a flask of plum schnapps with them to keep warm, and they offered me some. I was kind of cold, it sounded good, and it was Christmas. I thought it would be bad form to turn it down, so I said yes. And you know what? It was delicious. I ended up chatting with them for a few minutes, and got to hear about a few of their kids who lived in the States or had been to the states. They also told me about different things or buildings in Frankfurt too. My favorite piece of information they gave me that I hadn't known before was that sometimes Frankfurt is referred to as "Mainhattan," a sort of word-play on Manhattan and the Main River since Frankfurt could be compared to New York as a major economic center of Germany.

The Christmas markets may be over and no Glühwein to be bought,
but that doesn't mean you can't bring your own wine and tables to the
marketplace and keep the party going!

Mom gets too close to the animals in the Japanese Garden

Dad makes the mystical beast angry

Occupy Frankfurt. Good location right next to the European
Central Bank

To sum up this part of Christmas break: having my family here was probably the best gift I could have asked for this year. After spending so much time alone in the first few months, having a part of home here with me was a welcome change. I loved being able to show them what my life is like here and see some new sights with them!

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and on the 26th, my folks headed home. Margaret and I dropped them off at the Frankfurt airport before beginning our own crazy adventure. Check it out in my next post.