The Curti Abroad: January Round-Up

Oh, my poor little neglected blog!

January has never been a good month for me. The vitamin D deficiency firmly settles in by mid month and I think the decades of PNW winters are starting to take their toll. I force myself to get dressed in the morning and call it a victory if I don't go back to bed before 9:00pm. I'm not a huge fan of California in general, but this time of the year usually finds me compiling a mental list of pros and cons on what living in SoCal would be like. Sandals year round (yay!), douchy tan people (boo!). The pros list usually wins out and I weave an intricate fantasy of an eco/solar friendly house with equal amounts of indoor and outdoor living spaces. However it's a little too rich for my blood at this point in my life. So anyway, despite the lengthy break on the part of this blogger, a big thank you to anyone out there who may still be following The Curti Abroad!

To set the mood for this update I have cracked open a German lager (no, Josh isn't home yet. yes, it's after five. totally acceptable in Bavaria) and put my Tom Petty collection on shuffle. The latter is in honor of little Jacob Roberston's birth. Congratulations Josh and Annie!

In case you get the idea that I'm just a lazy housewife that gets all self-congratulatory over getting out of bed in the morning, I have actually been fairly busy this last month. I tried some new recipes, went on a quite a few out of town trips, and met with students at many different high schools in preparation for the Battle of the Books competition. Since students are required to take English language classes, having a native speaker come for a small discussion group is, like, totally cool. The Battle takes place next Thursday and while this next week will be really busy with last minute details, I'm really looking forward to it.

The rest of this post will just be bits and pieces of our life in 2011 so far. I hope you enjoy!

In an effort to spruce up the apartment a bit, we decided to buy a few house plants since we had to leave ours in Portland. Don't worry, we found a nice adoptive plant parent in Ian. We were surprised when the lady at the garden store started wrapping our plants...


There was at least three layers of paper on each plant. Um...thanks?

One of the new recipes I tried this month was actually a German recipe! Bryan and Katie gave us this very cool book, Culinaria Germany, before we left and I found a recipe for quark dough cabbage rolls. I meant to post this recipe as a stand alone about, oh, three weeks ago. They were so good! The Tabasco was key though. Email me if you want the recipe.


These don't look too awesome, but they taste amazing. I was going "borrow" a picture from someone online. I couldn't find one that adequately represented what I made the night before, so I dug these out of the garbage. Classy.

This was also a veeery big month in my developing positive attitude towards babies. I'm still not going to have any, but I do think friends' babies are adorable. I held a baby for the first time in, like, 5 years, I saw the hilarity that can happen when a new mom finally lets wine touch her lips after many many months, and I actually had a baby in my home. Shut up! She was too cute.

Lena-bear with her daddy (and my animal friends)

Hang in there, we are most definitely not done yet!

Soooo...finally made it to Munich. Not sure why it took us this long since it's only an hour and a half away by train, but it was worth the wait! I would live there in a heartbeat. We made it a day trip and checked out a few things. There is great food market on Saturdays that we were drooling over. We're considering taking a cooler down there with us and loading up. Oh man, I can't even imagine all the stares and judgmental looks we would get if we brought a cooler on a train. "Something out of the ordinary is happening in my periphery, I must now stare daggers at the people responsible until it stops!" I'm totally going to do it now and take pictures of the people staring. I'll report back.

Spices at the food market


Super cool church

Inside the Residenz


At the Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall


A large group of at least 50 people dressed up as "Where's Waldo?" descended upon the beer hall while we were there.

We have another trip to Munich planned for this weekend. Eeeeeee!

Last weekend we went down to Garmisch with some friends to snowboard the alps. We lucked out and it was gorgeous weather! I'm not sure it's the best place for beginning snowboarders though, there were a lot places where it flattens out quite a bit. It was crowded and the slopes were pretty icy by the end of the day, but all in all it was a great day. I just wish that there had been a hot tub to sit in that night...