EuroLife: Day 69

We have our first visitors!!! Karen and Phil came to see us, some friends from Notre Dame, and we've had a blast. Here are some photos from today:

Breakfast at Einsteins! The best croissants I've ever had; the slowest service I've ever experienced.
Walking near the Napoleonstein in light snow.

Sheep, also walking near Napoleonstein in light snow.


Thuringian "XXL" brats from Grill Teufel. The bread's about 4 inches long, the brat's about 15 inches long, and it's delicious. Michael and Phil had two a piece, and later had smaller brats at another stand...and then went back to Grill Teufel, disappointed with the mediocre generic brats, and found that they had closed. Hard to tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

All in all a wonderful day!

Now, I'm sad to say, Eurolife 2.o is going on hiatus. We will return early by mid January, once I'm back in Jena.

Merry Christmas!

EuroLife: Day 71

Today I'm going to cheat a bit. Michael's been working so hard on finishing up his dissertation, he doesn't have much "writing energy" left for a blog at the end of the day. I am spending my days reading philosophy, though not nearly as much as I should be reading, and thinking about the next couple of days. Tomorrow I have another appointment, so we should get to see the baby again. I'm very excited about that. Tomorrow evening two of our good friends will be coming for a quick visit, and I'm also very excited about that! When they leave, we leave, and get to go back to the States for a while. That I am really, really, very excited about.

So I don't really have much to share today. However, I have long been meaning to include a link to my friend's blog, so that's what today's post will be. Rather than writing something interesting, I will direct you to something interesting! If you scroll down a bit, there's a great post about German greetings--and Jeff and Deanna's as-German-as-American 7 year old son. I highly recommend it :)

http://jndministry.blogspot.com/

Enjoy! I promise to start doing interesting things again once we get back in January; then I'll be able to share fun stories and photos again. For now, my head is already back in the States!

EuroLife: Day 70

Coming soon to the American Market!

A little tiny car. A "smart" car. A German car, as it turns out. I had heard a little about these "smart cars" before coming over here, but I did not know that they were German. Not only are they German, they're fairly popular; we see them pretty often. They will be available for sale in the US in early 2008, though there are some in the States right now. Apparently you can import them through a dealer, provided they are modified to meet US safety and emission standards.

So here's a little bit of information about the tiny car that's coming to America:

• It really is tiny. It's as long as a parking-space is wide. (More specifically, it's 8.8 feet long, 5.1 feet tall and 5.1 feet wide.) The website claims that it is "small on the outside and big on the inside." If so, that's some impressive, Harry-Potter style technology.
  
• According to Wikipedia, the original plan was to make a car that was easy to park. Where most cars have to parallel park, the smartcar can park facing the curb. I've seen this done; it looks weird, but it fits.
  
• Also according to Wikipedia, the purpose of the car was "to transport two people and a case of beer." (Whether the creator was more inspired by the parking possibilities or the passenger & beer transportation Wikipedia does not tell us.)
• "Smart" is an acronym for "Swatch Mercedes ART".
• Yes, Swatch! The creator of the most excellent Swatch Watches of the 1980's is also the creator of the smartcar! Mercedes chipped in a bit in the end, I'm sure, but this car is Swatch through and through.
• It can be yours for a reservation fee of $99 plus the price--anywhere from $11, 590 to $16,590. (Remember, it's big on the inside.)
  

EuroLife: Day 69

We have often written about the German "coffee and cake" tradition, always with praise and admiration. This afternoon our church hosted an "Advents Feier"(an Advent Celebration.) At 3:30, the hour for coffee and cake, we all returned to the sanctuary to find a beautiful arrangement of tables filled with various cookies and cakes. The photo doesn't quite capture the feel of the sanctuary...picture about 2 dozen tables, each laid with nice china and platters full of cookies. It was really very nice.

Michael and I sat with a few of our friends, and there was one seat still available when we had all sat down. To our happy surprise, Reinhart (who I fear I previously called Reinhold) came and joined us! He and his wife Ulricha (I really must learn to spell their names correctly) were the ones who treated Michael and I to an outstanding lunch last Sunday. They had been sitting together at a nearby table, but each gave his (and her) seat up for some people who wanted to sit together. Once again, we all had a great time. The food was delicious--I particularly liked the pound cake with cherries in the cake and chocolate chips on top--and the conversation was great. I just love our church; it has made such a difference in our lives here in Jena.

There was only one slight downside to the service this evening: something that, I suspect, would never have worked in the States. After we all sat down to our cake-filled tables, we were told that there would be a number of musical pieces and readings before we were to begin eating. The music was really very good--there is a classical guitar player in our church who can't be older than 14 or so and who is exceptionally talented. The difficulty, of course, was that there were platters full of cake sitting tantalizingly near. We all braved the trial, and eventually were rewarded for our patience. The rest of the service was also very nice, with more music, some singing, and a few seasonal readings.

In the second photo above, left to right, you see: Kirstin (from England), Ulricha, Reinhart, Michael, me, and Rose (from Kenya). We asked if we could take a picture for the blog and all gladly obliged :)

EuroLife: Day 68

The Nicer Side of the Weihnachtsmarkt

I did a bit of Christmas shopping with my friend Laura in the Weihnachtsmarkt this evening, and it was lovely. (The center of the market is set apart from the area with the abominable beast of steel, so all was well.) There was live music throughout our time there--sometimes a choir, sometimes an instrumental group--and stands selling all sorts of crafts and Christmas decorations.

Gluhwein is perhaps the biggest attraction at the Weihnachtsmarkt. It's a kind of mulled wine, and people wander around drinking it out of glass or ceramic mugs. It's not uncommon here for an outdoor stand to sell beverages in nice glasses with a deposit, rather than paper or plastic cups. I cannot attest to the gluhwein, but I did have some delicious roasted almonds with a sugary coating. Laura got a Jena specialty (though I can't remember the name right now), and that was also quite good. They start with something that looks like pizza dough and tastes quite garlicy, fry it, and top it with salt and whatever else you want on it. (Laura had one with cheese.) In the end they look like oblong mini pizzas without the sauce. Chocolate covered fruit is big as well--apples, bananas, skewers of strawberries, all dipped in nice German chocolate. Michael brought me a chocolate covered apple while I was in the Frauenklinic; it was a lifesaver.

Just before we headed home, I caught this picture on the left. If you look closely, or click on the photo to zoom, you should be able to see various horn players leaning out of the windows. They were playing through the windows out over the square; it was great. Earlier there was a quartet playing from a rooftop terrace.

I'm not sure I've really succeeded in capturing the markets, but there you have it! On an unrelated note, Michael and I went out for pizza tonight--our first attempt at getting pizza in Jena. We found a restaurant run by a family from Venice. The restaurant itself was very nice, and the pizza was pretty good. It wasn't great, but there are plenty of pizza places to try yet. There is a very large Italian population in Jena, so surely we will find the perfect pizza at some point in the next three years. Fortunately, the restaurant tonight had Italian ice cream, and that was delicious.