Boot Candy and Broken Teeth

To make everything just feel absolutely festive, Old Man Winter recently hobbled in with the first waves of snow.

Schneeflocken Freude

As December goes along its merry way, I've found myself already into my fifth month here-- and with the coming of this month, I think I've fell in love with Germany just a little bit [a lot a bit] more.
What I've found is that like everything else wonderful and German, December itself gives off a feeling of being structured, with a lovely Advents timeline.

Schokoschokoschokolade

The first of December marks the beginning of Advent, and Advents' calenders here are such a fun, important tradition. A visit from my host-grandma supplied both me and my host siblings, Jan and Anna, with chocolate advents calenders... [Jan's of which was all opened up and half emptied not even two days in, prompting this from his sister: "You know that's one piece of chocolate for 24 days-- not one for each hour of the first." Who said that Germans don't have a sense of sarcasm?] 
These things are really wonderful. Jan's is a Kinderschokolade calender [oh my goodness, Kinder goodies fer dayyyz], Anna's has these lovely little creations like figured of sweet curled up chocolate cats and dogs. My host dad gets his daily chocolate fix from a Milka calender, and my host mom is trying to avoid the extra Christmas calories with a calender with quotes from The Little Prince for each day. 

Ach! Noch ein?

 In addition, my host mom set up a little series of advents stockings which Jan, Anna and I take turns opening gifts from [it makes me so happy:)]. 
Feeling festive, and wanting to do something for this wonderful family who has already done so much for me, I played Shoemaker's Elf and put together an advents calender all for them:)
Waiting until they were all asleep, I had several very, very late nights as I stayed up to sort out, wrap up, and tie together the little presents for them.  Needless to say, they were very surprised when they woke up on December first with a completely unexpected calender strung up under the one for the kids:) [Yay!]

Boot candy!

The next notable day was St. Nikolaus Day on December  sixth.
The night before, we put our boots out on the porch [brilliant-- you could never fit this much stuff in a mere stocking] , and woke up the next morning to both snow, and boot treats! Each was filled with chocolate figures and socks and chips and little treats.
[First mistaking his sister's boot for his own, Jan was quite offended after thinking he was receiving frilly star-adorned socks.]

What's interesting though, is that while houses in America already have Christmas trees up and decorated, here, trees aren't even set up until the 24th of December [yet another date on this timeline!].
That doesn't mean that decorations already up though-- albeit from the inside rather than out. Although a few houses here do decorate the outside, they're few and far in between, and not to the extent as in America; I have yet to see a fully decked-out, lit-up house. On the other hand, houses on the inside are all lovely and made up, and the snow is taking care of giving the world outside its share of holiday spirit.

Really, everything is just so festive here-- and not in the commercialized, exaggerated way it feels like in America. With this timeline [of sorts] comes a feeling of tradition and culture, leaving this warm fuzzy tingly glow deep deep down inside.
D'awww:)

However, perhaps the most brilliant Advent's thing that I've experienced here up to this point has to be the Christmas markets-Weinachtsmärkte- scattered everywhere. They're literally these little [or sometimes huuuge] German markets that suddenly pop up out of nowhere with stands of all sorts of festive trinkets and ornaments and food.
Oh my goodness, the food.
These Weinachtsmärkte warrant a post of their own if I want to do them justice.

Böse Kerle..

However, I do want to feature this post's Christmas-Pastry of Honor.
Stutenkerle, which are holiday goodies that have recently popped up both in the markets and in bakeries everywhere, are little guys made of Hefeteig- sweet leavened dough- with raisin eyes and a little pipe.
Somebody, however, misinformed me of what the pipes are constituted of.
Rather than sugar- which I believed as I bit down hard on one such pipe- they're made of clay.
Clay.

I'll go work on my next post about Weinachtsmärkte and nurse the pieces of my broken jaw then.

Baking in a Strange Land

In tenth grade, my best friends and I had an unofficial but sacredly observed tradition of baking every Friday. There were three of us, one of which is a baking demigoddess who left us with no shortage of sweets. We tried out just about everything that year; berry cobblers, apple pies, raspberry bars, all sorts of cakes, frying our own doughnuts and a memorable Bûche de Noël with meringue mushrooms.
[Our principal ran into us as we were very seriously discussing the 'shrooms'.
"What was that about shrooms??"
We sheepishly showed him the chocolate hunk of a log with the sugary fungi.
"Oh- those mushrooms."]

Keep in mind, we were a group of three.

[Three girls one dessert..]
Although we certainly tried, I'm not sure we ever made it through an entire cake, which means we made a lot of friends that year auctioning off leftovers.
[Same concept for making friends still applies. As long as it involves food, it's foolproof.]
Ever since that year, I've been hooked. I can't say I've baked as often as I'd have liked to, or tried out as many recipes, but I do enjoy it and bake whenever I have an occasion to.

What better occasion to bake then, than being in another country?
Looking forward to baking all sorts of American goodies for my host family, I planned ahead, even bringing my own measuring cup/tablespoon/teaspoon set, having read online that German baking uses weight- as opposed to the U.S., which uses volume.
[In other words, in the U.S., a cup of sugar is a cup of flour is a cup of milk etc etc. 
In Germany, each of those is different, since you'll be using a kitchen scale to weigh your ingredients.]

However, as prepared as I [thought] I was, I ended up with one baking disaster after another after another :(

Fruit soup for the soul.

This first mess had actually nothing to do with measurement/ingredient differences. This supposed berry cobbler came from a German recipe, and was made by my lovely German friends at a joint dinner gathering. Something went wrong though as the oven tried to work its magic, with our frozen berries somehow turning the whole thing into a berry soup with a crust. Attempts to disguise the goop with sprinkles and a need to eat this with a spoon helped this noteworthy experience make the list.

Things didn't turn out much better with American recipes.

Batch two was significantly more edible.

The first problem I ran into was while making sugar cookies. Thinking they were a fairly safe bet, alarm bells started to go off when my batter turned green.
What?
 It turns out the vegetable oil my host mom pointed me towards was, quite literally, vegetable oil.
As in it turned my sugar cookies green and made them smell like vegetables.
With flawless reasoning, I stuck them in the oven anyway.
Maybe it will bake out, like alcohol!
Right?
No.
The second batch, however, with sunflower seed oil, turned out fabulously [as seen by how few were left:) ].

My next venture into overseas baking was with a classic Devil's Food Cake. Although I didn't have any significant problems in the process of making this, it fell a little flat... literally. As opposed to being fluffy and decadent, it was rather dense and sad-looking...

I later learned that baking powder and flour are a bit different in Germany... the flour is a bit 'heavier', and the baking powder isn't as potent. 

Chemistry):

The baking powder issue persisted when I made pancakes. Although they tasted fine, they simply weren't as fluffy as in the U.S.

A taste of home <3

My most recent enterprise was making chocolate chip cookies, which became a lengthier process than it ever was back home.
To begin with, there are no chocolate chips here. There are little chocolate drops that are similar, but not the creamy milky chocolate that Hersheys has spoiled us with. So, I ended up buying huge slabs of milk chocolate, melting them, and making my own chocolate chips:)

There would've been more if I hadn't
eaten half the chocolate.

The second problem was a bit trickier; there's no brown sugar in Germany.
Brown sugar, as you find it in a grocery store here, it the same as granulated sugar but with bigger grains, and colored brown.
No problem, I thought- you can make brown sugar with molasses and white sugar!
Germany doesn't have molasses either.

Close enough...

After some research, I ended up substituting sugar cane syrup for molasses [1 tbsp syrup for every cup white sugar], which doesn't have the same deep smoky taste at all, but gave the sugar the moisture necessary to make soft, chewy, melt-in-your-mouth, good ol' Amercan chocolate chip cookies.
Substituting a substitute for a substitute alongside another substitute in the same recipe. Bah.

They actually turned out quite nicely; I made both sugar cookies[not green this time] and chocolate chip for a dinner party my host mom hosted, and they were referred to as 'American pastries' the whole night.
And then they were gone. :')

Fancy fare.

Green cookies and fruit soup and substituting messes; baking is something in and of itself on this exchange.
But.
It's so, so worth it.

Die Deutsche Sprache

When i first started learning German, people were encouraging.

They kept saying,

"You'll pick it up quickly, it's really similar to English!"

 Let's see...

 ------------------------------------------------------

In German, also means so, whereas the English also translates to auch.

So, also does not mean also.

Eis [pronounced ice] is ice cream.

Don't ask for that in your water :(
 

Ordering peperoni pizza will result in peppers on your cheese rather than pepperoni.

A scarf is a Shal-

A shawl is a Shal as well.

A handy [although handy] is a cell phone.

A handy object would be considered praktisch.

We call ballerina flats just flats, whereas German makes use of the other half of the word, calling them ballerinas.

Which sounded ridiculous at first [I'm wearing ballerinas. On my feet.], but wearing flats isn't any more logical, with a flat being synonymous with a condominium.

[I'm wearing living spaces on my feet, aha..]

Art isn't art- it's a type of something, whereas art translates to kunst.

There's certainly more than one art of art though.

If it's starting to rain lightly, don't try using the word Mist- that would be manure

If someone offers you gift [stranger or otherwise], you should by no means accept it; it's not a gift-- rather, poison is the English word.

You'll look a little odd winking an eye if you wink, seeing as winken means to wave.

And the worst one of all---

A million is a Million, 

but an English billion is a Milliarde,

whereas a trillion is a Billion.

What.

-------------------------------------------------

German and English being similar?

That right there is the problem.

Thanks, false friends.

However, that's to say absolutely nothing of German grammar...

And not even the nitpicky, complex, advanced grammar.

Just basic, necessary, everyday nouns are impossible.

Thanks, der/die/das.

And then there's the problem of straight-up English

 being pumped into the language at every given opportunity.

Thanks, globalization.

 

Ich liebe die Deutsche Sprache <3 <3 <3

Süßes oder Saures?

Right off the bat, I'd like to say I hope you're all reading this with a big tub of accumulated candy:)

Halloween in Germany was quite a different experience from that in America.

Although making jack-o'-lanterns is a popular activity here as well, that's about as far as decorating usually goes. Unless a party is being thrown [in which case there are fake webs and candles and spiders galore], houses just don't get decorated.

None of this at all :(

Trick of treating is strictly for little kids here- none of the obnoxious middle and high school kids [of which I may or may not have been one of] trying to get in on the fun. In addition, rather than saying 'trick or treat', kids say 'Süßes oder Saures?'-- literally translating to 'sweets or sours?'.
[Although there were two little witches who came to our door and sang some chant or other, which was pretty impressive:) ]

However, the biggest difference is in dressing up. First off, students don't get dressed up at all going to school [awww...] and not everyone does when going out at night.
But when they do, they only dress up as scary, 'typical' Halloween beasties.

A ghoul of a host brother.

When asking around what people are dressing up as, the only answers I got were as vampires, devils, monsters, witches, and the like. None of our American cutesie Disney princess and Dorothy of Oz get-ups; real horrors come out to play when the sun goes down. Which isn't to say that there aren't cute costumes-- only that there's more Halloween spirit in the sense of all things scary and supernatural, as opposed to the "let's eat lots of candy!" vibe one gets in the U.S.
[Not that there's anything at all wrong with that.]

The best part though? The following day is a holiday, letting us sleep off the previous night's shenanigans-- an absolutely brilliant idea, in my opinion:)

Paprika flavoured Pringle puppy

Regardless, whether in Germany or America or anywhere else in the world,

Happy [late] Halloween!(:

Ich bin ein Berliner [for a weekend, at least]

I found myself in Berlin with my lovely host family this last weekend, and before elaborating on the city itself, I would like to say that I found Kinder Eggs there.

Maxi Edition

"Einfach Riesig!"

 These supersized pieces of joy are pretty much the size of half my face.

[Let's take a moment to recall my Kinder fixation....]

Berlin hat sich gelohnt(:

Now, as for the rest of Berlin.

The fam bam and I left for the capital Friday afternoon via a four-hour ICE train, getting there after dark. My host dad, who had arrived before us to attend a conference, met us at the central station. After dropping off our suitcases, I got my first taste of Berlin at night [at below-freezing temperatures but nonetheless exciting].

A ten minute walk from our hotel in the Kurfürstendamm neighborhood [or as the locals say- Ku'damm] led us to our first landmark, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church).

Unfortunately, it was under construction. :(

The "Hollow Tooth"

I'd been rather looking forward to seeing the old church, irreparably damaged in WWII during a 1943 air raid, still standing today right next to the new church. However, it's entirely covered and under construction until sometime in 2013.

Ampelmännchen liebe <3

However, in the same neighborhood was an Ampelmann shop!

These little traffic light men from the former GDR- East Germany- are absolutely adorable, and I still have my eye on the little Ampelmann plushies for the next time I'm in Berlin:)

[Three cheers for stopping in the middle of the road on more than one occasion to get pictures of these guys, aha,]

 

Boy oh boy, a double decker bus!!

The next morning was a tour around the city from the top floor of one of these [life goal right there].

Checkpoint 'C'

  We passed by Checkpoint Charlie, the best known crossing point between East and West Germany in the Berlin Wall with the "you are now leaving the American sector" sign [but I looked out of the wrong side of the bus and missed it ): ]. 

 And then past the Gendarmenmarkt, with almost identical French and German cathedrals facing one another, and the Konzerthaus Berlin with a statue of the German poet Friedrich Schiller in the middle.

 

The bus then drove by the Rotes Rathaus, Berlin's town hall. Like the Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, this building was also damaged by bombing in WWII, but it was later rebuilt with the original plans. From where we drove past, we could also see the Fernsehturm (Berlin's TV tower), the tallest structure in Germany at 368 m. Like the Space Needle back home, there are two elevators leading to a rotating restaurant and visitor's platform up top:)

'Alte Fritz'

 Then came the

Reiterdenkmal Friedrichs des Grossen, the statue of Frederick the Great, kind of Prussia in the 1700s. We saw this driving through the boulevard 'Unter den Linden', and it's actually huge, with three tiers stretching up to 13.5 m (44 ft) high...

 

Oh boy oh boy oh boy(:

And then things started to get really exciting;

Our tour ended right in front of the Brandenburger Tor!

The former city gates with the Quadriga up top, which I'd seen everyday on German euro coins [and on a National-Treasure-esque movie where this group climbed into the gate!!], right there.

...

With Darth Vader and Mario and giant teddy bears mulling about taking pictures with tourists and ripping them off like that Roman guy in Cologne ...

Direct opposite of the gate was Hotel Adlon, a building that is rich with history, withstood both world wars, appeared in a host of famous films, contributed to pop culture...

Not ringing a bell?

This is the hotel from which Michael Jackson dangled his baby 'Blanket' from a window  in November 2002.

 Ta-da.

:)

 And then, one block away: the Reichstag.

This was perhaps one of my favorite parts of our trip; Germany's parliament building [quasi, the equivalent of the Capitol] with its glass dome and history is absolutely breathtaking. 

Glass and more glass and mirrors reflecting light everywhere, and glass again letting you look down into parliament floor itself. The dome afforded a 360 degree view of the city, and I only wish I could have been there at night with the stars out(: 

Photos in the column of mirrors(:

You're not allowed to stand on these, by the way.... oops.

After the Reichstag was a memorial I'd been particularly interested in--

Das Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Europas [Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe]. Pulling some facts straight off of Wikipedia, this memorial is a 

"19,000 square meter (4.7 acres) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The slabs [...] vary in height from 0.2 to 4.8 m (8 in to 15 ft 9 in) [and] are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere. The whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."

 Let me put that in perspective: it's huge.

From a distance, it looks interesting, but walking through the concrete maze forces you to appreciate the intricacies of it. As the slabs get taller, the ground dips simultaneously, hence the 15-foot-tall blocks. The ground is like rolling waves, adding another variable to the varying block-heights. And when you finally step out again and look back, you see that the tops of the blocks also tilt, adding a diagonal aspect to the field.

It's disorienting; it's brilliant. 

Yum yum bubble gum

The morning bus tour had taken us past stretches of the Berlin wall, but later by foot, we came across these preserved sections. The pieces we got up close and personal with though  honestly reminded me more of the Gum Wall in Pike Place Market than anything else...

 The Berliner Dom on Museum Island is gorgeous, and the stretches of street and farmers' markets in the surrounding area are so perfect. Those little tents just made Berlin seem so alive, one of the key things about this capital that just makes me happy. Washington D.C. felt like one big museum at times, but Berlin was alive.

'Goldelse'

On a bus, we later passed by the Berliner Siegesäule [Berlin Victoria Statue]. It was designed to commemorate Prussian victories in war, and is really quite aesthetically pleasing.

 In Potsdamer Platz was the Sony Center, a Sony-sponsored center with everything from entertainment and cinemas, to restaurants, to residences, to offices all in this circle of buildings. In the 1920s it was one of the most important business districts in Berlin, with Europe's first traffic light system being installed there in 1924. 

And it has a giant lego giraffe:)

 

 We got rather lucky, seeing as the day we went, all the shops in Ku'damm were open until late in the night for "Late Night Halloween Shopping"--- something entirely untypical in a country where stores close early and our American 24/7 stores are not a likely upcoming trend.

So what better place to hit up then the KaDeWe, the second largest department store in Europe
With six stories, one of which is dedicated entirely to food and then a restaurant on the seventh, this place has literally everything.
Including American chocolate, which I most definitely stocked up on.
[Hersheys and Reeses, how I've missed you <3]

I could live here.

...With the exception of a few entirely unforgivable items, like a fur jacket for your dog (I mean, whut) and this freak bear-centaur plush. No. Just no. No, no, no. Aghgf.
 Yes, this was actually a legitimate item for sale.
....................

One last thing I particularly enjoyed in Berlin were these uniquely painted bears spread across the town, not unlike the pigs that used to grace Pike Place/the Seattle area some time ago. It becomes a little scavenger hunt, really. [Gotta catch 'em all!]

My heart may still be in Köln, but Berlin is working it's way up there.

I can't wait to go back. :)