Holiday Cheer

(my parents' backyard in Germany these days)



Frohe Weihnachten & Merry Christmas, my friend!

It's Christmas Day. I'm sitting at the kitchen table typing, while my two daughters decorate gingerbreadmen. Actually, they are gingerbread-girls as I was forcefully informed. I'm itching to get out of the house. A nice hike would be awesome right now. In fact, I think that's what I'm going to do. Yay!

I received quite a few holiday-emails and cards in the past couple of days, also from friends and family in Europe. Thanks to all of you. While I'm glad I missed out on the long lines at the airport, canceled flights, and piles of snow to shovel, I sure wished I could share the white Christmas with you. Bay Area Christmas weather just never seems satisfactory if you grew up in need of Gluehwein to keep your core temperature somwhere close to 37⁰ Celsius at this time of year (if you're not sure what I'm referring to, check out the previous post). In fact, I moved here in December, 11 years ago. The weather had been lousy in Germany at that time, and I arrived at SFO with an awful cold and wrapped up in layers and layers of clothes. The first day, I took my then 2-years-old son to the playground where children played barefeet--yes, BAREFEET!!--in the sand. Talk about culture shock!

No, let's just talk about culture for now, without the shock. Yesterday I made Brataepfel (baked apples), like I always do on Christmas Eve, because that's what my mom does on Christmas Eve and probably my two sisters do as well. It's almost like a pandemic of Brataepfel cooking. One of my daughters commented last night "Mama, hier riecht es nach Weihnachten!" ("Mom, it smells like Christmas here.") Well, it looks like the next generation of Brataepfel cooks has arrived! See the picture below for my creation from yesterday. Just imagine them smothered in a pile of whipped cream. Mmmhhhhhhhhh!!

(Do you wonder how I managed to get the soft-edged, blurry-frame effect around this photo? I do, too. I awkwardly fumbled around with my camera, covering the lense with one sweaty palm--next thing I know is the photo turned out like this...)

It even appears that I am getting used to blogging over the holidays. I was warned by more experienced bloggers, that it has addictive properties and "checking the blog" would become a first priority. Well, I don't know, I'm still figuring out the technical side of it. So many colorful buttons to press! I discovered one yesterday, that I think is very cool: the "stats" tab. Clicking on it will give me a list of the activitiy on the blog--hourly. The pressure is on, my friend, make that click to view this blog--it'll show!

Oh, and even better, it gives a list of countries the blog has been accessed from and shades those countries dark on a map of the world. Now that's were the fun really starts. The U.S. is in first place so far, followed by Germany, Czech Republic (Hi Kate, I hope you have an awesome, well-deserved vacation with your family!), and Malaysia. That's odd. I don't know anybody in Malaysia. Somebody traveling? I'd love to see photos!

So much for this Christmas Day post. I'm off to the outdoors! That's one reason to love Northern California for sure. I'm also feverishly experimenting with chai (see my first post in German for details, or simply know that I'm on the verge of discovering the most delicious recipe for chai from scratch). I'll share as soon as I found it. And I'm also seeing a guest post or two in the near future of this blog--inspired by the muses!

Have a beautiful day, filled with warm fuzzy thoughts,

Ute