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...

Pre-slope beers with Danielle, Josh, Amanda, and Zach

Gondola ride up the mountain

Amanda and me, taking a short break

A much needed beer break

A beautiful evening in the alps

Oh crap, I think I just taught myself a lesson about procrastination. Is it to always leave a note?

"Ich bin ein Berliner"

Berlin was fabulous. Berlin was beautiful. Berlin was saukalt!

As a special Christmas treat, Josh and I took to the rails and traveled north for a few nights last week. It had snowed about a foot the day and night before our trip and the scenery from the train ("mountains", trees, German villages, hilltop castles) was gorgeous! Snow is pretty, but snow is basically just fluffy ice and Berlin was frigid the entire time we were there. Fortunately it was the first trip to Berlin for both of us and there were many museums (aka sanctuaries from the cold) to explore. But trust me, we still spent plenty of time out in the elements as you will see from the ridiculous amount of pictures that I am posting.

Speaking of, let's get most of those out of the way...

Josh on an antiquated Berlin U-bahn train. I for real saw a door fly open during transit. Not cool, train, not cool.

A festive Bradenburg Tor

Friedrichstraße

Unter den Linden

My favorite Christmas decorations yet! Very large cloth and wood frame lanterns hanging from trees lighting a neighborhood near our hotel.

TV tower in Alexanderplatz

Yeah, those are ice chunks...

Part of the reconstructed Pergamon temple at the Pergamon Museum

Part of a reconstructed market gate at the Pergamon Museum

Detail of the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum

Our lunch stop had a fancy atmosphere. It was kind of like a Mexican tiki bar?

Cha-a-a, it was cold. But as we all know by now, I love me some snow.

I dunno, some art gallery? I thought it was pretty.

On our way to the Neues Museum

I'm not sure what I was expecting from the "world's largest granite bowl" in the Lustgarten (Pleasure Garden), but reading about it was more exciting than seeing it...

Uhhh...inside at the Neues or Altes Museum - cannot remember

Berliner Dom with the tv tower in the background

On our way to to dinner along the Ku'damm

Joshy the snowman

A portion of the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

A Christmasy Checkpoint Charlie

 

 

Highlights of the trip:

- The Pergamon Museum
-The interactive, independently ran DDR museum gives you a little insight to what everyday life was like in the German Democratic Republic.
- Gemäldegalerie
- The bar near our hotel that served proper cocktails
- Machine Guns, everywhere! This is not so much a "highlight" as it is something of note. I did not care for the machined gunned guy standing in the middle of a side street 30 feet away from an unattended large duffel bag, also in the street, who did not appear to have anything on him that would identify to the casual observer that it was okay for him to be armed, at night, near the Reichstag.

We packed our days full, but there still is so much more Berlin to see. I hope we make it back.

Oh, and I was under the impression that Berlin is known for their jelly donuts (the Berliner, duh!), well I did not chance upon any of these delightful sounding num-nums but one particular American chain was even more prevalent than Starbucks in the tourist areas. I probably saw at least 10 different shops.

Do these still even exist in Oregon? (Photo inspired by and taken for Ms. McGibbon)

Zuhause

All the boxes are unpacked, the wardrobes are assembled, pictures are on the wall, half the curtains are hung (wait, what the...curtains? c'mon!), the kitchen has been installed, and there are even some Christmas decorations out! Plus, I haven't even ruined our "unfinished" hardwood floor yet thanks to my mom's and Duman aunties' advice. Please note the "yet" in that sentence because I'm bound to ruin the thing that can't really get wet or be cleaned.

Ohhhh, actually nevermind. I left some dirty wet shoes in the entryway. There is a stain. If Josh has noticed, he hasn't mentioned it. I like to believe that my trick lighting and object placement in that area has masked it for now.

 At any rate, I took some pictures this afternoon of our apartment to share. I turned off the flash to avoid it shining back at you in the pictures which I think is why the pictures are a little fuzzy. I'm not sure. Meh, they're good enough. For me that is, you guys definitely deserve the best but I doubt my limited capabilities with the camera will produce anything better if I try again. Or I'm lazy, you choose.

The Living Room aka "Guest Room"

 

Some Portland love and a tiny Christmas tree!

You've now seen the extent of my Christmas decor. And the messy internet cables and router. And the living room door. Exciting!

Guess.

That is Josh's muse in the back corner.

Washer and dryer in the bathroom? Hey, it's better than in the kitchen...or basement.

My nemesis, the hardwood floor. It's worse for me in this room. I somehow managed to dump a whole Brita pitcher full of water on the floor last week, but apparently mopped it up quick enough. I doubt that will always be the case.               Note: snowflake lights!

Totally worth the wait! The most counter space I've seen in a German apartment yet!

What is going on here?

What is behind this bookshelf?

A-ha! 

Aaand...I'm a dork.

I still think there is a lot more we can do to make it "ours" and feel cozy, but we're getting closer!

Looks Like It's Time for an Update

Wow, we've been in Germany for over three months now! Some days it feels much longer than that, but I think I'm finally settling in a bit. Of course, just by writing that I could jinx myself and cause something to happen that would derail all the progress I've made going through culture shock. Though the cause of most of my discomfort and frustration was not being able to speak any German (oh, we got yelled at a number times because "If you are living in Germany,  you must speak German!" Yeah, I know, I just effing moved here and am trying to learn) but at least now I start typical day to day conversations in German thanks to our language class. I say "start" because as soon as Germans hear my American accent, they are usually more than happy to respond in my native tongue and see it as a way of practicing their English. This does not result in many occasions to practice my German out in the real world, but it is convenient. Eh, my lack of practice could also be attributed to the fact that I tend to stay in "safe" conversational situations. And actually, most of the Germans that I have met are extremely helpful to cluing us in on key German phrases and regional pronunciation.

We moved into our apartment in the middle of October and it finally has that feeling of being a home. We had so many things that we needed to buy and install for it to feel like people actually lived here. While it's not quite "cozy" yet, it is picture ready and I'll post a tour of the apartment soon. I even "decorated" for Christmas with a 1.5 ft fake tree. It's adooorable. And yes, the kitchen is in and  wonderful!

While Josh is at work I have also been keeping kind of busy. In October I signed on to help the Deutsch-American Institute as a volunteer with their high school Battle of the Books. It's a reading challenge among area high school teams that focuses on American literature. There are 10 novels in English that each team must read and in February there is a question and answer competition covering the content of these books among all the teams. What I have been doing is reading the books and writing questions for the competition. Starting next week and continuing through January I'll be going out to the schools to go over the competition rules and discuss the books with the teams. It's a fun project and the other people working on it are great! And I just got a freelance gig helping German PhD students edit English language articles for a publication.

We also have a few trips coming up! We're going to Berlin for a few nights between Christmas and New Years. So many museums and restaurants...it'll be good. After our favorite band, the Decemberists, released their tour dates a few weeks ago we scheduled a trip to Amsterdam in March.  It's somewhere we have wanted to go, and seeing excellent band is a great excuse to make it happen. I think we are going to try for a long February weekend in Prague as well. A nice little winter. However, this spring we are set to make our first visit home! We'll be at various locations along the west coast for the last half of April. More specifically, we'll be home in Portland for a few days during the last week of April. I had hoped to watch the Blazers in the playoffs, but yikes...

So do Josh and I like living in Germany? Yeah! Some things are a struggle to get used to and there is still a major language barrier and a minor cultural barrier, but yes it has been a great experience so far. I miss the U.S. and all the people there that I love, but three years in Europe will fly by. So please, come visit us while you can! *wink*

And finally, I appreciate all the nice and encouraging comments I've received about this blog! Thank you so much for reading it and understanding my laziness surrounding timely and frequent posts. Love you all!

I Heart Snow!

I know many of you out there don't agree with my sentiment towards snow. Yeah, it can be a huge pain in the ass and cause all sorts of traffic and commuting issues, but I've always been able to avoid that and therefore my love of snow is still very much intact! It has the ability to make the mundane magical and the beautiful magnificent. I more or less embody an overly excited 5-year-old when there is snow on the ground. And as a true Oregonian speaking, the fact that there has been a significant accumulation of snow on the ground over the last week with more continually being added blows my little mind. Oh and in our city the self-proclaimed "most famous Christmas market in Germany" also opened on exactly the same day this snow frenzy began.

I'm. loving. it.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I've been out with the camera again. Most of these pictures are from Monday. We have quite a bit more snow now, but you'll get the idea.

St. Johannis Cemetery

 St. Johannis Church

 

 

St Johannis Cemetery

Nuremberg's Castle Wall

View of Nuremberg from the castle

Yeah, I walked down that in sambas. Not the smartest or safest plan ever.

 

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Christkindlesmarkt

Yum!

One of many booths selling Christmasy items.