Baby It's Cold Outside!

This year, Christmas felt more like it should during the holidays. Mom came to visit and arrived with Wayne on the 23rd. Luckily, they were here for the last day of the Christmas market in Wiesbaden. They tasted potato pancakes, Gluehwein, and a bratwurst at the market, all within the first few hours they were in Germany. Not bad and that was just the first trip down. They wanted to see the market, which is called the "twinkling star market," at night. So around 4:00, when there was only a few more minutes of daylight (I'm not kidding), we went down to walk around again and have more food--this time potato soup.

On Christmas Day I had 12 of my closest, crazy friends over for dinner, drinks, and fun. Come to think of it, that's really what happens every time we get together, but this time it involved a tree and hot oil--Will and the other boys fried a turkey in my backyardish area and it was delicious. Everyone brought something to share and we had more food than we could stuff ourselves with. Surprisingly, Mom and Wayne weren't scared away and enjoyed meeting everyone. Mom realized that I am not an alcoholic--ALL of my friends drink this much ;)


We visited Ruedesheim the day after Christmas and then on Sunday we drove down to Trier and stayed the night. In Trier there are a ton of Roman ruins, which they enjoyed seeing, even if we couldn't get into some of them. It was colder than a witch's.....well, you know, so walking around outside was hard after while. Luckily there are heated churches and bakeries for kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake) during the afternoon, which we delightedly sampled during the afternoon.

The next morning, although Wayne was feeling really sick, we drove the 20 minutes across the border to Luxembourg to see the American military cemetery and where Patton is buried. After that, we came straight home and Wayne went straight to bed, where he remained until they left on the 1st. Poor Wayne, on his first trip to Germany he stayed home sick for most of it.

Because of that, Mom and I just did little trips around here. The best was when we went to this old monestery, Kloster Eberbach, which isn't a monestary anymore. We had a great lunch there of Riesling soup, then took the walking tour of the monestery.

Mom was also starting to get sick and by the 31st, she had it. I went to a party and they were in bed by 8. I went to a couple's house down the street for a small party with fondue. Just before midnight we went downtown, where I went last year, to watch the crazy Germans light fireworks. This year, however, some of those crazies were my friends.

Although everyone could have done without the getting sick part, I'm glad I could have family here for Christmas.

Here are the pictures from Mom's visit and from Christmas.