My bags are packed, I'm ready to go

In case you somehow missed it between my upteen tweets, facebook posts, and, if you know me in real life, conversations, I am OMGSOEXCITED over the moon to be going back to the States tomorrow finally for vacation!

Sometimes, it's really the smallest things/creature comforts of home that you miss most when you're gone. Here are yet some more things I'm looking forward to on our trip:

1) ICE! (ice baby)- Ice is seriously some kind of American delicacy. Most restaurants in Europe won't serve it in your drinks. Last summer, when I had surgery in like 90-100 heat in a building with no air conditioning, I was beginning the nurses for ice cubes. Only to be told that there wasn't a single one in the entire building.
2) free refills- To be fair here, this is more of a suburbia thing. In NYC, I don't think any restaurant I ever went to had free refills on soft drinks. When I was in college, it was a big excitement for me to eat at Applebee's because they had free refills on sodas and for me that was practically unheard of. However, soft drinks in Germany are generally tiny. And expensive. It is usually the same cost to get a 0,5L beer as it is to get a 0,2L of Coke. If not cheaper.
3) shopping, on a Sunday- I've covered this on here before but the entire country pretty much shuts down on Sundays. I want to be able to just walk into a store that's not on base on Sunday just because again. And this brings me to my next point
4) paying with a credit card- Credit card fees in Germany are insane, so a lot of stores will not accept credit cards. It's either the German debit card which we don't have. Or cash. There was one time when the Ikea near us did not take credit cards. Can you imagine buying a bedroom set with all cash?
5) free shopping carts- Most grocery stores here charge a deposit for use of the shopping cart that you get back when you return it. I know a few stores in the U.S. do this too, but it's the exception not the rule over there as it seems to be here. I have a shopping cart token that I always have to remember to bring me whenever I go shopping to make sure that I'm not clumsily fumbling around for a euro coin in my purse at the last minute. Ultimate not a big deal, but still annoying.
6) not having so much change- Our smallest bill is 5€ (roughly the equivalent of $6.68 based on today's exchange rate) so change tends to accumulate quickly and your wallet gets heavy before you realize it. And yet you still don't have the euro you need for the shopping cart when you're in the grocery store. Murphy's Law, I tell you.
7) cheap manicures- My last one over here cost 23€! And this was for a plain manicure with polish. Nothing fancy, no gel, no shellac, no acrylic, nothing. With prices like that, you can imagine how often I get manicures over here. Yea, not very. When my MIL told me that a manicure near her costs somewhere between $10-15, I wasn't sure if I wanted to cry tears of joy or jealousy. Also, nail salons over here charge anywhere from 4-7€ extra if you want a manicure with polish. Considering I always bring my own nail polish, I think that's just outrageous. (Don't get me started on the one time a lady in a salon told me it would be 10€ more to get a manicure using OPI polish over there.)
8) throwing things out- Germans can be real, well, insert uncomfortable WWII German stereotype here, when it comes to recycling. You can't just throw something out. You have several trash bins. One with yellow bags for plastics, metals, foil, etc. One with white bags for paper products. One for regular garbage. There will also be several glass recycling bins in towns with one receptacle for clear glass bottles, one for brown glass bottles, and one for green glass bottles. The look on my father's face was priceless when I had to explain to him in Berlin that all three giant dumpster looking things outside of the apartment we were staying in were to be used for glass and only glass. And that he couldn't just throw the empty wine bottle away in whichever bin he felt like it. Priceless. I think that recycling is important and it's important to be eco-friendly, however, it is nice to be able to throw away a beer bottle top without thinking "did I put that in the right bag?"

And two things about Germany that I will miss in the States:
1) tax (or lack thereof)- The European tax system is called the VAT (Value Added Tax). The tax is figured into the final price of the item and that list price is all that you have to pay. It makes shopping so much more convenient. While the 19% VAT here can be outrageous at times, I love the European system so much and am not looking forward to having to go from a country where you don't get charged any more tax that's visible to you as the consumer, to going to a country where they like to charge tax on every.little.thing. (And then, if you're in New York City, it seems like they just tack on taxes to the taxes you've already paid them. Just for the fun of it.)
2) tipping- Europe has a very different culture about tipping than America does. Part of your VAT from the cost of your meal goes to cover a reasonable living wage for your waiter so things like server minimum don't exist. You are not obligated to tip, and if you choose to, the idea of something like a 20% tip is unheard of. Since a 5€ bill is our smallest note, the unofficial tipping rule is to just leave the coins on the table if you want to. If you don't, that's ok. Your waiter won't be terribly offended. If your meal is 20€ and your Coke costs 4,20€ (ouch, I know), it's perfectly acceptable to pay 25€ and call it a day. This is a huge benefit because when you go to a restaurant, you know exactly how much your meal is going to cost based on what you order. In the States, you have to figure out tax and tip and after not having to do that for well over a year, I've grown to like not having to deal with that. (If you eat at the restaurants on base with servers, you do still tip there. Or at least I hope you do. No tax however.)

So now it's your turn- no matter where in the world you live, if you were to be gone from your home town or country for over a year, what small things would you miss the most? If you currently live abroad or have in the past, what do you think your host nation(s) does better than America?

Kindertransport memorial

When we were in Berlin, we saw a lot of various Holocaust memorials. A lot. Of everything that we saw, I have to say that the Kindertransport Memorial was the most haunting and moving.

In 1938, after Kristallnacht, a group of Jews and Quakers in England organized a fund to get Jewish children out of Germany and to safety in England. The children traveled by train and were taken into camps or foster families in England. This movement was able to save the lives of nearly 10,000 children before the transports had to stop due to lack of funds.

When we were walking around Berlin, we saw the memorial right outside of the Friedrichstraße train station. At the time, I only had my iPhone on me. I took a few pictures, but the memorial had such a profound effect on me, that I had to come back before I left and take pictures with my real camera.




This memorial was created and donated to the city of Berlin by Israeli sculptor Frank Meisler. He was one of the children that was saved by the Kindertransports.
The memorial is meant to look like a train platform along a track. There are two sides to it.

1938 side

1945 side

The 1938 side of the memorial shows two children about to board the train for England. The children are lighter and shinier. They look hopeful and happy. The little girl is clutching her Teddy Bear.

The 1945 side is darker in color. There are 5 children huddled in a group. They all look worn out and tired. There is an opened suitcase lying on the platform behind them and it contains a broken doll. You can see of the girls wearing the telltale yellow star.

These children don't have any hope to them. They know that they are being deported to the camps.

The point of the memorial is that the direction of the train track decides if you live or die. The Friedrichstraße train station was the station that children who were going to England departed from.


These photos were uploaded via the BlogPress app on my iPad and appear blurry when viewed in Safari. To see them clearly, click on each photo individually to see the emotion and detail of this memorial.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Two Things

1) When living in a foreign country it is just as important to pay attention to their holidays as it is to pay attention to American ones. Case in point: I still need a pair of brown slacks for my conference next week, and since yesterday was my only free day before leaving for the conference and I was meeting some friends for dinner in Saarbrucken, I decided to take the train down there early so I could go shopping there. Fun fact: May 1st is German Labor Day. All of the stores in Germany are closed on national holidays. That was a fun surprise. Thankfully, Starbucks was open so I set there for two hours just drinking my tea and enjoying the free wifi. Since the closest Starbucks to us is about 30-45 minutes away, now going to a Starbucks is a special treat for us instead of a regular occurrence the way it was in NYC for me. It felt so nice and luxurious to be able to just actually sit in a Starbucks and enjoy it. Also, I made an important discovery that day- the German Starbucks have their own rewards card- you get a stamp for every drink, and your 10th drink is free. (A lot more generous than the American gold card rewards, but then again, drinks over here cost A LOT more than they do in America.) I excitedly emailed this factoid to my husband, who replied stating that spending 21,50€ on a train ticket from our house to Saarbrucken, plus an extra 25€ on drinks does not really constitute a savings to get the free one. I don't get his logic, do you?


2) I absolutely loved last night's Glee. Longtime readers know that I am absolutely obsessed with Phantom of the Opera (my husband proposed to me right after a Phantom performance on the West End) so I had to control my shrieks when I heard Kurt singing Music of the Night. While I love Glee, I hate how most of their song selections lately have been from pop culture. It was so great to see them doing Broadway songs again- especially some of my favorites. I really hope they continue to do more of those in the future.

Things Never to Say to Me

Living overseas, my tiny kitchen is the very bane of my existence. And I don't mean it's too small to eat in. I mean that both my husband and I physically can't stand in there at the same time. It really annoys me when American friends mention how small their kitchens are. When I bring up mine, they say "oh it can't really be that small." You wanna bet? I now present to you, the Kitchen at Chez MMS.

This is my whole kitchen if I stand directly in the doorway:

And this is all of the usable counter space in said kitchen:

For the record- when I lived in a studio, my counter space was a lot bigger

It gets to be really interesting on the days when I make four course meals in there. Usually the step stool in the top picture, coffee table, dining room table, and on occassion, couch are all covered in trivets and mixing/prep bowls.

So there you have it folks, my entire kitchen. So please, for the love of all things that are holy, unless your kitchen is actually located inside your linen closet, do not complain to me about how small it is.

Trains, Trains, and Automobiles (picture heave post)

Over the weekend, TLS and I finally got to make it to two Christmas markets. With his schedule this year, we were not able to go to as many as last year and wanted to get some in before the markets close on the 23rd.

TLS found a deal on the Deutsche Bahn website where you can buy a regional ticket for 20€ and up to 5 people can ride all trains/buses/trams in the region for 24 hours. On weekends, the deal is good all weekend long through 3am on Monday. (Interesting thing to note- the fare rules for the ticket say that you can have a dog with you on your ticket, but then the dog counts as one of your passengers.)


When we saw this, we decided to take full advantage and head to Heidelberg, about 1.5 hours from our house, for their Christmas markets. I purposely left my camera on our hallway table to make sure that I did not forget it. We were running late, and I forgot it. We first had lunch with a friend who was on base from England before heading to Heidelberg, so we did not get there until about 5:00pm. Because it was the last Saturday of the Advent, hours for the markets and most stores in town were extended through midnight. Heidelberg has 6 Christmas markets in town, and we walked in between all of them. It was roughly a 2 mile walk. I like to think I earned my gluhwein that day!

I will now present you with a few iPhone pictures from the day:

The first thing we did was get gluhwein to warm up. We kept the red mug.

a bratwurst vendor- the food wasn't good for the Jews but I loved the lights and the windmill

I loved seeing the the streets all decorated for Christmas and loved all of the shooting star lights that they had in the city.

This is a gluhwein vendor in the town square. The top of it is shaped to look like a wooden candle decoration that is traditional in Germany for the holidays. (Smoke from the candles makes the blades turn and spin. Very cool.)

I have got to remember to take my camera with me everywhere.

We ate dinner at a noodle place called Mosch Mosch. The interior was cute and had communal seating and kind of reminded me of Wagamama in England. I wish I could say that the food was good, I really do, but it just wasn't. It wasn't bad, but it definitely was not what we expected. Maybe after eating so many times at Wagamama in London and Republic in New York I had higher standards, but we both left sorely disappointed.

On our way back, we passed by a gummy bear shop that had a display made out of soccer-playing gummy bears which I thought was cute.

Proof that I really will take a picture of just about anything.


The next day, we took advantage of our tickets and took TLS's sweet coworker Marie to Mannheim for her first Christmas market with us. We love Mannheim and had so much fun at last year's market so we were excited to go back!


We snacked a lot from all of the different food stalls. I always have to get roasted chestnuts from the vendors and we got the most delicious creme fraiche, herb, and smoked salmon crepe. It did not live long enough to be photographed. 


One of our absolute favorite vendors at the market was a spekuloos vendor. Spekuloos are Dutch cookies that are pretty similar to Biscoff cookies. They are delicious no matter what. This vendor was amazing because he had an oven and made the cookies fresh at his stall. 

It was really fun watching him roll the dough into the shape frames and the cookies were delicious! We all bought a bag, and neither one lasted very long. At all.


Here are our purchases from the market:
a pearl ring from TLS- this was so gorgeous and a steal at only 6€!
2 ornaments
2 gluhwein mugs- we cheated because we liked the blue boot one so much that we asked to buy just the mug even though we were all gluhwein'd out
a small bottle of sour cherry liquer- they had samples of this at the stall. TLS thought it was the grossest thing in the world. Marie and I tried it and then reached for more samples. Then we wanted more. Then we just reached for our euros. Delicious. At least I don't have to worry about him drinking my alcohol!
giant lebkuchen heart- after swearing up and down that we were done eating and making any food-related purchases* we walked past a lebkuchen bakery stall that was offering samples of fresh lebkuchen. Not the packaged stuff that we normally buy at the supermarket. It was A.May.Zing. You could even taste the orange peel in it. I was just going to buy a small cookie, but TLS and Marie convinced me that it was a much better value to buy the big one. Oh darn.

To thank us for taking her to her first market, Marie bought us a chocolate train from one of the chocolate stalls. So sweet of her. :)

We ate dinner at Sushi Circle, one of our favorite chains in Germany. It is a conveyor belt sushi place. Delicious. We've eaten once at the Stuttgart location and several times at the Frankfurt one, and the Mannheim one is by far our favorite. The sushi chef gave us a free sample of a spicy shark roll to try. We were intrigued by it, but being that shark is not kosher, we made Marie take one for the team. She said it was chewy but not bad.




*at this point we may have had a bag of roasted chestnuts, 2 grande Starbucks drinks, 2 mugs of gluhwein, the aforementioned crepe, liquer samples, a bag of spekuloos cookies, half a brick oven flatbread with cheese and potato slices on top of it (delicious! by far our favorite food stall at the market). And, you know, a partidge in a pear tree.

Today I am Grateful For

Our insanely amazing home phone plan.

It's wonderful knowing that I can spend 45+ minutes on the phone with my BFF in NYC, 30 with a sorority sister in NC, 15 minutes with Andrew Marc customer service (without much success), and entirely too long on the phone with my mother convincing her that no I did not drink too much at last night's holiday party (also very grateful that my mother doesn't have twitter and can't see my face) and know that our phone bill won't be more than like 10€ for the month. 


Some days, this calling plan is a godsend. Today is definitely one of those days.

The Search for the Great Pumpkin and give*a*way

I love pumpkins. A lot. I love everything about them. Mostly including eating them. This year, I have pretty much been on a "no pumpkin left behind" kick and have been making pumpkin stuff up the wazzoo. I'm pretty sure that if I do make any more pumpkin stuff, my husband will turn orange. I still have quite a lot of pumpkin stuff to make, so we're getting there.

Last year we found out about a pumpkin festival in Germany. Unfortunately, we found out about it after the festival had closed which meant I spent roughly 355 days sulking about it. This year I found out that there was a pumpkin festival right in our town (!!!) and kept on reminding my husband of that fact every half an hour. Of course in between plans we previously had and the fact that I wasn't walking for a while, it took us some time to actually get there. So we finally set aside yesterday to go to the park for the festival. The whole day.

Germans love their festivals and they are usually amazing so we were so excited! We got plenty of cash to try out pumpkin soup and pumpkin wine and went on our merry way.

What a disappointment.

The admission to the park for the two of us was 13€ and once we got in, we realized that all of the pumpkin-specific vendors had already closed up and there were only their usual food kiosks there (which are really good, but not what we wanted). 


Every year, the pumpkin festival has a theme and they make dioramas made out of pumpkins. This year's theme was fairy tales. While as a festival itself, it was pretty darn disappointing, we did have fun looking around the different dioramas. 

the prize-winning big pumpkins- don't ask me about #1- we didn't see that on display

the Frog Prince

the Pied Piper- love the little ears on the pumpkin mice

Beware of Dragon- Siegfried and the Dragon (this is a German thing)

Mother Goose

Like I said, the pumpkin displays were definitely cool, but it took us roughly 30 minutes to go through the whole thing. Perhaps this would have taken longer or been more exciting had we had a kid with us. I just don't know. In no way was this worth our nearly $20 admission fee. We bought some crepes from the crepe stand (delicious!) and ate those pretending like it was 18€ for just the two of those. The park that the festival was in is called the Dino Park because it has huge sculptures of dinosaurs all around it. There was a hollow dinosaur head in there so that little children could go in and take pictures of themselves in it.

Obviously. We had to.


Now on to the giveaway portion of this post. As most of you know, TLS and I have a huge soft spot in our hearts for a certain cartoon beagle. This month's giveaway will reflect that. I will be giving away one movie of the winner's choice:

I know it's a bit late for this one- but it is adorable and a true classic

The rules:
This giveaway is open to current followers via GFC only. Leave a comment here. That's it. I will draw a winner after it closes at midnight EST on Sunday, October 31st.

Rüdesheim

A couple of weeks ago, TLS and I went to Rüdesheim for the day. Rüdesheim is a gorgeous town on the Rhine river that is known for its wine there. It is popular among tourists, but has retained a lot of its charm. In typical Masha fashion, I forgot to bring my camera with me, so I only have pictures from my iphone to post here. (Once again, in typical Masha fashion, at the end of the day, on the drive home, I found my camera in my purse. Go figure.)

To get to the town, you had to take a ferry across the Rhine River. I was fascinated by it because it was my first time ever seeing a car ferry!

one of our first views of the town

Once we got there, we walked up to a cable car that went up the mountains, through the vineyards, and left us higher off in the mountains where we walked to the Niederwald monument. We bought a small bottle of wine and two souvenir glasses for 6,00€ and enjoyed it on the trip up.  (The next few photos will be blurry because I attempted to take them on an iphone in a moving cable car. Smart.)

view from the cable car

can't wait to drink all that!

This is the Niederwald Monument. Sadly, it was being cleaned when we were there so most of it covered by scaffolding.

 

It was built to commemorate the establishment of the German Empire. Here is a picture I found of what it looks like when it's not all boarded up.

There was an observation platform there that provided beautiful views of the town across the river.

After we took the cable car back down, we went to a little restaurant for drinks and this amazing cake! We walked around a bit to wine taste and found a square where a jazz band had set up and were playing so we bought two glasses of white wine from a kiosk there and sat and listened to them play.

Then we walked around some more going into all of the little shops that they had there. I got a little stuffed hedgehog (not pictured) named Pieks who now resides on our dashboard. One of the wine shops there had a person there who could etch your wine bottles, so obviously, I had to monogram one.

This bottle goes under the "too pretty to drink" category.

It didn't photograph that well because of the light reflecting off the bottle, but it has a picture of grapes on it and underneath it says

Rudesheim

Germany

2011

MST

Trier and Luxembourg

Yesterday, TLS and I went to the Trier Christmas market. Since Luxembourg is only a 38 minute drive from Trier, we made a semi-spontaneous decision to drive there for dinner and get in another country before the year is up. (Last year we made a joined New Year Resolution to visit 10 countries together in 2010. Luxembourg made #9.) In typical MRM fashion, I left my camera at home. Thank goodness my new iphone 4 takes good pictures.

Trier was the third Christmas market we went to together and of those three (the others were Mannheim and Kaiserslautern), it was definitely the smallest. In my opinion- it was the best though. The town itself is gorgeous and adorable and lends itself nicely to the atmosphere.

A gorgeous church in Trier.

I thought this shop was pretty and fun with the giant bow and twinkle lights in the window, so I had to take a picture of it.

The entrance to the Medieval Jewish  Quarter.

Gluhwein mug. Gluhwein is a hot, spiced wine that's traditionally served at the Christmas markets. (You will not find a Christmas market without at least one Gluhwein stand.) You pay a deposit on the mug when you buy your wine, and you can either return it and get your deposit back, or keep the mug. Many people collect these mugs because they are adorable. (TLS has one from 2008 that's in the shape of a snowman! I hope that they bring that one back.) This year's was in the shape of a boot. (I am not certain of the significance of this, but I do know that there is some German legend about drinking out of a boot. I've seen boot-shaped beer mugs as well,) It has 2010 written on the toe, a picture of the town on one side, Santa on the other, and Trier Weihnachtsmarkt on the front. Naturally, we kept ours.

The Porta Nigra- a Roman gate in Trier. A hermit monk named Simeon lived inside it. After his death, a church was erected on site as a monument to him. It is no longer in use today.


Luxembourg:
We only drove to Luxembourg for dinner and back, so I did not get a chance to take many pictures. Of what we did see, however, the city is beautiful. We plan on going back next year for longer than just three hours. While we were there, we saw a mini Christmas market. There were only 3 food stalls and 2 or 3 crafts stalls.

Attached to the crepe stall (we got a crepe with chestnut cream- delicious!) was a postbox addressed to St. Nick so children could drop their letters in and know that they would get delivered to the source.

Last picture of the night- the beautiful train station.

How Bazaar

Every year in the fall, the Officers Spouses' Club hosts a bazaar on base. This is without a doubt one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) event of the year here. This year, the bazaar ran from Thursday-Sunday. There were 2 airplane hangars (!!!) and a large white tent full of vendors, and a row of tents of food vendors along the flightline. Each squadron or organization on base can apply to be a food vendor and every year, my spouses' association has a lemonade tent at the bazaar where we make lemonade and sweet tea. I volunteered at the tent most of the day on Thursday, and went to the bazaar with TLS and one of our friends on Sunday. (Thursday during the bazaar, while I was in the lemonade tent, a plane was flying directly overhead. I instinctively covered my ears while everyone else just continued talking like there wasn't a huge jet flying right above us. They all laughed at me and said "newbie.")

There were vendors selling everything from gummy bears to furniture and fine antiques there. As much as I wanted this, a $625 wine rack was not in the cards for me. Lest you fear for my lack of shopping, let me assure you that we did not walk away empty handed.

Pictured: bottle of chocolate liquer (delicious!), blue and white Star of David porcelain ornament, wooden penguin ornament, Italian stationery portfolio, Stroopwafels, three homemade soaps (seaweed, lotus flower, and coconut), masquerade mask, foldable pink and green Reisenthel mini shopping bag, set of crystal Nachtmann candlesticks (I'm not 100% sure of this but I've been told that they either own Riedel glassware or they are owned by Riedel).

For those of you who are questioning the mask, this year for my spouses' association, the theme of our holiday party is a Masquerade Ball so I saw the mask, it was a great price, and went for it. I have no clue what I'm wearing to the party yet, but thankfully, the mask is a great neutral that will go with just about any dress.

I did not want to open the Reisenthel mini tote but here is a picture of the one I got.

There was also some caramel fudge and gummy bears that did not make the picture. Also, I got a few items as gifts for friends and fellow bloggers as well as items for my gift closet that are not pictured.

Le Chaim!

Today, TLS and I drove to Bernkastel Kues for their annual wine festival. It is a town in the Mosel region which is home to one of Germany's largest and most famous wine festivals. The weather genie was nice to us today and we managed to have a beautiful, sunny day without a single drop of rain.

On the drive over, we got majorly lost because the road that our GPS told us to go on was closed and we struggled to find an alternate route. We ended up caravaning behind two other American cars and driving down a gravel road in a forest and parking 1.2 kilometers from the festival and having to walk the rest of the way. Fortunately, it was a beautiful walk.

See where that town is? That's how far we walked!

You can see some of the grapes on the vine in this picture. On the way down, I got intrigued and had to pick one and try it. It was delicious!

When we got into town the first thing that we did was get a glass of wine each, naturally.

There was a parade going on! Each winery has a float (a few had themes such as Dionysus or the Vikings) and there was a "Wine Princess" on top of each float. There were also bands playing traditional music of the region and dancers in regional costume doing the polka!

Throughout the parade, there were people walking behind each float with open bottles. If you got lucky, they would pour some of their wine into your glass to try! Definitely not something you would ever see in the States! TLS and I both said that this was one of the most incredible things that we have done together.

After the parade, it was time to move on to more wine and food.

I will leave it up to you to come up with a comment about all that sausage and the 1/2 meter weiners. Tee hee.

While we were walking around, we ran into one of the guys from TLS's squadron and his wife and ended up spending the rest of the day with them. We saw a street vendor that sold different wine and beer glasses that you could have etched in front of you to say what you wanted. TLS got a beer glass with sheafs of wheat on one side and his name on the other, and I got a pretty wine glass with my name on one side and flowers and grapes on the other. Unfortunately, try as hard as I could, I could not manage to photograph it at all. At this point, we had sampled a lot of wine, and I had put the camera away, but I did manage to take a few last pictures of the gorgeous scenery.