Christmas Markets 2012: Heidelberg

Yesterday we went to explore the Christmas market in Heidelberg. While we bought a lot more things in Heidelberg than we did in Deidesheim I was a little disappointed in the Heidelberg market. I thought it would be bigger and have more stalls with things to buy. It was very spread out over about 3 miles (Heidelberg is a big place and has an enormous shopping/pedestrian zone) with a few booths here and there and most of the booths were selling food instead of crafts. I'm sure they spread out the market on purpose so you have to walk by all the stores in Heidelberg and be tempted to shop at them.

Coming into the main square in Heidelberg, there's a big Christmas pyramid all lit up and selling Glühwein:

A shot of the top of it:

And the Glühwein mugs they sold there had hearts for handles! My favorite mugs so far:

I thought this booth was cute:

Chocolate tools!

Little cars, cell phones, clothespins, wrenches, all made out of chocolate! No we didn't buy any but we should have:

We bought one of these stars (in orange of course) to hang in our window:

We also bought one of these little handmade houses/churches with tealights in them. I wanted to buy 2 but the smallest ones are almost 30 euros!!

Maybe next year we'll add a house to our little church:

One of the meat stands. Martin got one of the long sausages in the big sausage pile in this picture. I assume it was good he ate it so fast I didn't even get a bite:

Christmas Markets 2012: Deidesheim

We decided to explore the Christmas markets in the Pfalz this year instead of traveling to a larger city in Germany to see a more well-known market. It will be good to know what's to offer here in our region in case people want to come visit us next December!

Our first market was Deidesheim which is about 9 minutes south of Bad Dürkheim by train. The market had a lot to offer - the usual Glühwein and bratwurst of course but also many ornaments, leather and wooden crafts, glassware and even some potpourri.

First things first, after enjoying the pretty sunset we grabbed some Glühwein:

Our little Glühwein mugs, with Martin taking a picture of them to send to some friends:

Then of course we had to find some sausage!

Okay so maybe the main reason we go to Christmas markets is for the food and drink but the booths were all very atmospheric and cozy too! This one had tons of ornaments hanging from the ceiling:

Here's the required heart-shaped-cookie booth:

And a few pictures of the market as a whole:

And a final mug of Glühwein while standing next to some neat burning logs for warmth:

There was also a nice brass quartet playing Christmas music but I didn't get a picture of them. Overall not a bad way to spend a few hours on a Saturday evening.

Thanksgiving 2012

We hosted Thanksgiving again this year and 6 of our friends came up from Zürich for it. We cooked up a 7.5kg turkey for 8 people and it was just enough for dinner with leftovers for two sandwiches the day after (barely). Our group ate really heartily and did justice to the gluttonous meaning of Thanksgiving. One of the guys had three full helpings of everything and another picked off every single piece of meat from the turkey after we had carved it and ate almost an entire plate of just turkey. Anyway, here are the few pictures I took.

The table (sorry I didn't get a picture until people were about done with their first helpings):

This is Sprüngli's "coffin cake" (with my grandma Nellie's cheesecake in the background - which gets finished completely every single year). The coffin cake is named as such I think because it's basically death by chocolate ... but it's also shaped like a coffin. Compliments of Nico. I love it when people bring desserts from Sprüngli!!

In Nico's own words: "This is as dense as chocolate can possibly get. If it were to be any more dense it would be a black hole." It tastes like heaven in your mouth but feels like lead in your stomach. We cut slices very very very small. Below is what a cross section looks like. The top triangle part is pure truffle, very dense, the bottom is that same creamy truffle bit layered with some cake.

Everybody spent the night either at our apartment or at hotels in Bad Dürkheim and on Sunday morning we made everybody pancakes (with real maple syrup of course) then went for a walk up to the Flaggenturm.

It was extremely windy at the top but I took a picture of everybody trying to hide from the wind anyway.

Since I haven't blogged in over a month, here are a few random pictures of things I meant to blog about but didn't like the amazing golden colors the trees turned in early November. This picture doesn't do it justice but the day we went for a walk around the woods and saw all the colors I forgot to bring a camera. Next year!

And the big heron that perches on the tiniest branch all the way at the top of a tree behind our apartment building:

Strasbourg and Mulhouse

On Saturday we were invited to a friend's parents' house in Mulhouse, France for the night. Many of Martin's labmates from the ETH were there and we all had a nice dinner followed by much merriment and not much sleep.

Mulhouse is only about 2.5 hours from Bad Dürkheim but we still decided to break up the drive by stopping in Strasbourg for lunch (which was exactly halfway to Mulhouse). I had never been to Strasbourg before and Martin had but he didn't remember it so it was a worthwhile stop.

I apologize because I don't think the iphone did any justice to the Strasbourg cathedral. I might rank it within my top 5 cathedral interiors ... after the Venice cathedral that's filled with gold mosaics and St Peter's and the teeny tiny Sainte Chapelle in Paris. And I'm probably forgetting a few others but my favorite churches are not the point of this blog post. What was neat about the Strasbourg cathedral was all the stained glass in it - not just in the bottom of the church but also along all the windows in the very top of the church. Of course the iphone could not manage to capture any of that very well. So here are some pics of the outside and the inside of the cathedral:

There was a big Jesus in the church:

And I lit a candle for my mom. They were orange which I took as a sign:

I'm trying to capture the stained glass in the top and bottom of the church. It's all washed out here but I want to give you an idea of it all. Just add beautiful colors to it in your minds. It was really beautiful with the sunlight streaming through the windows at the top:

It is also interesting to note that this cathedral only has one spire. It was supposed to have two but they ran out of money after they built the first one and so they stopped. So the front of the cathedral is a bit off balance:

The awesome lunch we had at a completely packed restaurant near the cathedral. Martin had stag stew and I had chicken in a riesling sauce and of course since we were in the Alsace region we complimented our meals with some Alsacian wine:

And a picture of some of the cuteness of Strasbourg:

After Strasbourg we continued on to Mulhouse where we went for a little walk in the old part of town. We tried to go into the cathedral there but there was a mass going on so we couldn't.

This is a bit dark but the main square was really cute:

Our little dinner party with 16 people. Good thing the house was enormous! Not everybody's living room easily sits 16 for dinner with room to spare. And there was a pool and hot tub and sauna in the basement that we enjoyed after dinner as well.

Hiking Deidesheim-Wachenheim-Deidesheim

This past Sunday we went for a little 9-mile hike through the forest and vineyards near Bad Dürkheim. The town just to the south of Bad Dürkheim is called Wachenheim and the hike started a few more towns south of that in Deidesheim. From there it looped up to Wachenheim through the forest, then back south to Deidesheim through the vineyards. So you got a little bit of everything in this hike.

Here's a little shack and picnic bench in the middle of the woods:

A little beyond the picnic bench we found a little restaurant where Martin had some new wine:

New wine is made by harvesting the grapes, mushing them into juice, then letting it ferment for a week or two. It's pretty sweet, like drinking juice but with a little kick. You don't drink a lot of it because it's obviously high in sugar and calories but a little glass just hits the spot.

After our break for new wine and lunch of packed sandwiches we climbed a tower above the little restaurant to get a view of the surrounding hills to the west and the towns to the east:

I'm not sure why they planted trees in rows like you can see in the above picture. Maybe when they got done planting all the vineyards in perfect rows they decided to keep it up in the forest by planting trees in rows. That's my current theory. The picture below is looking east towards the vineyards and towns.

We found these really pretty mushrooms:

A pic of some trees:

Finally at Wachtenburg castle (in Wachenheim)! Still have a ways to go after this though ... plus we can see our apartment from this castle, it's so close, but we had to turn south instead of north and head back to Deidesheim and our car instead.

Martin had some real wine at Wachtenburg castle. They served it to him in a little schörle glass instead of a wine glass probably because the castle was absolutely packed full of people enjoying the beautiful day and drinking wine and the kitchen had run out of wineglasses. It was so packed that we had to sit in the tent area where there was no view of anything but tent walls and people. But it was okay because we had cookies and wine:

I like that everybody is outdoors when the weather is nice on a Sunday afternoon instead of sitting inside watching football. Americans should learn from this example.

And I got a pretty decent shot of Wachtenburg castle from between two houses after we came down the hill into Wachenheim:

The Quest for the Schneckennudel

This morning we decided to go for a long walk in the forest to the west of Bad Dürkheim. We have a map of the town that shows paths in the forest and a few sights to see ... my goal is to visit each of the sights on the map.

Here's the map. We live where the pen tip is pointing to on the right side, and our goal is the big red circle in the lower left of the map with the number "39" in it. It is labeled as "Schneckennudel", which I think basically means a spiral (schnecke is "snail"). We had to find it to see what it actually was!

It's not all that far to go, I'd say 5 miles roundtrip, but what's missing on that map is about 785943789643 other trails in the forest. Thankfully we had an iphone with us and google maps actually had most of the trails in it so we just had to stop a lot and find the correct trail to take. You could easily wander around in the forest for days and days completely lost and finally die a slow horrible death of dehydration or starvation or hypothermia in there. It's going to be really pretty once the leaves change though so I'm looking forward to spending more time in there this fall.

So, as expected, the "Schneckennudel" was a big spiral that you walked up in order to get a nice 360-degree view of the surrounding hills and forest:

I didn't take a picture in the direction of Ludwigshafen/Mannheim as that wasn't the pretty direction. :)

Some shots from walking through the forest. Don't let old-man-Martin fool you it was like 60 degrees out! He still set out in long underwear, t-shirt, sweater, and hat! There's definitely something wrong with him.