To make everything just feel absolutely festive, Old Man Winter recently hobbled in with the first waves of snow.
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.
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.
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!]
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-Weinachtsm- 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 Weinachtsm
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 Weinachtsm
 |
| Schneeflocken Freude |
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 |
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? |
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-Weinachtsm- 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 Weinachtsm
 |
| Böse Kerle.. |
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 Weinachtsm
