Thanksgiving - Germany Trip 1

November started our second year of marriage and a German extravaganza that began over Thanksgiving.

For Thanksgiving we went to Robert & Meg's in Kolitzheim. Robert and Meg served as excellent hosts for the weekend and we hope they will come visit us so we can pay it forward before they leave. Thanksgiving was great - mainly because of the delicious food, but the company was not too bad either ;-) we made lots of new friends. Oh yeah and I think we drank some wine which was also quite delicious as always and it turns out that Italian wine has competition from German wine. We ended the day watching the Red Skins Cowboys game until three am and Phil was one happy camper with the score.

Friday we took a short drive to Kulmbach. Kulmbach is a nice little German beer town. First we took a walk around the main sites finishing with the castle at the top of the hill. Then it was time for some gluwein by the fire at the Christmas market (that hadn't really started yet). I should note that one of the reasons we decided to make the trek to Germany for Thanksgiving is because the Christmas markets there are amazing and they generally start right after Thanksgiving - except this year when Thanksgiving was early and they didn't start till the following weekend. So after the gluwein which was the only Christmas market stand open we ended our visit to Kulmbach with a tour of the bread factory and brewery. Back at Robert & Meg's we had great leftovers and watched a movie - very relaxing.

Castle on top of the hill in Kulbach

The Christmas market is in that square -- can't see it?
That's because they hadn't even finished setting up yet!

Brewery & Bread Factory 

Saturday we took a trip to Rotenberg which is another great German medieval town. The town is one of my favorites thus far - though I feel like I feel that way about a lot of places here. Anyway, we strolled around the shops a little, had some gluwein (this is really a German requirement in the winter) and started a stroll along the outer wall and more rural part of the town which was quite nice as well. Then we met up with some more friends for a nice German lunch followed by a little more shopping before heading back.

Robert told us this was the postcard picture
At least I think this was the one :)
Everything was postcard worthy in my mind

The old city wall is very much intact and
we enjoyed exploring the outskirts. 

Kathe Wohlfahrt is a HUGE Christmas store
It ALMOST made up for the lack of Christmas Markets. 

That night Phil & I did dinner in Volkach (only a town over) and while it was pretty quiet when we were there it looked like a cute little area. We ended the night watching Meg & Robert play darts; they are part of a German dart league - how awesome is that? This of course led to a night of drinking and a card game which led to more drinking.

So on Sunday Phil and I got a little bit of a late start but all in the all the drive home was not too bad.

No promises on when the next post will be up but I promise I will try.

11-11-12

As I indicated Phil's Birthday kicked off a busy season for us.  

It was followed by another big milestone - our one year anniversary.

We had planned a four day trip to Garmisch, Germany. I was supposed to be there for work the following week anyway, and it is only about 4 hours away so we figured it would be a good relaxing spot.  Plus the Disney Castle is only a short drive away so it would be romantic too...

Unfortunately it was slightly I mean completely interrupted by two things.

First of all I had a court-martial that replaced my week training in Germany so that meant I had to prepare most of the weekend.  We would not be deterred we could do some nice stuff around our own area.

Oops wrong again problem number two Vicenza (our home town) decided to flood.  Causing a lot of roads to be closed around our house as well as surrounding towns. 

We explored the town to see how bad it really was... 

The first floor of the houses on the other side
of the river are under water. 

This is a bridge - that you can't even see under.
The truck is pulling debris, tree branches, washed brush etc
from the bottom in hopes of making the water flow more.
We watched for 20 minutes while it wasn't raining and saw no change.

The water is usually about 20 feet below the center wall. 

For those of you who have not seen already - there are pictures on the internet of people swimming in St. Mark's square in Venice from this same set of storms. 

Luckily the water receded very quickly - by Tuesday you could only see the debris - no more high waters. 

Well we weathered this storm as well as all the others during our first year and while I can't speak for Phil I think it was a pretty great year.  I can't wait to see what the next year brings. 

View from our Balcony of the only sun all weekend. 

My Birthday - By Phil

So it has been a while -- sorry -- First I am going to blame it on Phil as you can see from the title of this post he was supposed to write this one and when he didn't I felt like I was behind and the task of catching up is always daunting and just became more daunting with each passing trip. But I am going to try and make up for it over the next few weeks and catch you all up on what has been going on since October. 

We did a lot of travelling over the summer, so we were exhausted and decided to take some time off. But that doesn't mean we were sitting home bored.

So Phil turned thirty (23 October) and I went all out. The Birthday celebration began the Sunday before.  We had friends over for football and I had a great cake planned so I figured that having cake with then would be better than having cake just the two of us. 

It was Phil's first cake on a cake plate and it was a winner:

Funfetti Cake topped with M&Ms and surrounded by Kit Kats

 Thank goodness we shared otherwise we would both still be in sugar comas. Oh and I should mention that I had been planning this cake since July when Patty & Rob came to visit I had to have them bring funfetti cake since they don't sell it at the commissary. Phil had no idea and was looking for funfetti cake the day before. 

On his actual birthday we both had to work but that didn't top me from making sure it was a great day for him This was waiting on his desk (thanks for the help Mike Pachuki):  

I just thought this would be perfect for his desk :)

Phil didn't get the joke till a few days later :)

I even planned to get home early so that I could set up the rest of his gifts and start cooking dinner.  Fortunately or unfortunately Phil was also able to get off early and was right behind me so I had little time and I had to stall him.  But it was all worth to see his face when we walked in to this:

Thirty gifts in all shapes and sizes.
This was much harder to do than I initially anticipated. 

The first gift he noticed was the beer: 30 unwrapped bottles
But the first thing he "opened" was his book of birthday wishes
that you all helped me compile. 

Many of his gifts also had a little note or clue on it.
The bag which held the Nerf gun and Lego's said:
because I know sometime you will still act like you are five. 

His quest for the next 30 years is to drink everyone of the 1001 beers in the book.
He is not counting anything he drank before he turned 30 and
a lot of the beers since then have not been in the book, but he has added them.

Italian scratch offs. We might be millionaires!
He has no idea how to read them so he hasn't done anything with them yet.

Once he finished opening his gifts we enjoyed his favorite meal: chicken parmesan, which he helped me cook since he was home so early and of course some left over birthday cake while we watched E.T. one of his gifts. 

Next post the beginning of the Germany extravaganza (promise it will be posted before the end of the week when the extravaganza ends).