Once around the World

  English Christmas is over! We have a week to recuperate before the next celebration is due – New Year's! Again, this might differ from family to family, how things are celebrated and what activities are done. This post will be about what we did. Growing up, we traditionally would make Raclette in the evening on the 31st. I will rely again on the pictures to clarify, but here is also a short description: Raclette originally was Swiss and involved only cheese and potatoes. One has a device that heats the cut side of a big chunk of cheese and then scrapes it down onto the potatoes. There is an evolved version where we have a mini oven in the middle of the table where you can push pans below to melt the cheese and fry things on the top. The ingredients and phantasy of what you can cook on this mini stove have no boundaries. 😊 This is also a slow meal, just like the fondue, and is supposed to take several hours to bridge the time to midnight. We had friends and family invited ov...

   Vatican   Madrid   Lisbon   Venice  Verona   Valeggio   Dortmund   My moms   Regensburg   Brussels       Trick question! My mom's, of course!       Fangfrage! Natürlich der, meiner Mutter!      ¡Pregunta capciosa! ¡La de mi mamá, por supuesto!

  English We are back in Germany, just in time for Christmas. After seeing all the preparations in Western Europe, I was excited to show Doug what Christmas at my mom’s place looks like. I will say right here this is not representative of how all Germans do it. This is unique to my mom, and within my family, how it gets celebrated and how much decoration is up varied drastically. My mom is a Christmas fanatic and takes one week off work to prepare the house – inside and outside. For most people, the decoration is a little much, and I like to describe it as Christmas on steroids. However, it does make it special and unique for Christmas and Advent time. I grew up like this and loved it. The one thing that belongs to me to the Christmas Season that I did not have the last seven years was going to the Christmas markets! I LOVE Christmas markets; admittedly, it is mainly about the food, but the atmosphere is also beautiful and gets you in the mood. I went to three markets this ti...

  FAQ/ Häufig gestellte Fragen/ Preguntas frecuentes English I want to take a moment and answer some of the questions we were asked repeatedly when we returned from our Europe marathon. It is the fast version of our trip; maybe you will find your question here and the answer you hoped for: 1.       What was the most delicious food? Hard to say, since aaaall the food was delicious! I do dream about the tortellini from Valeggio, however.  2.       What was the most impressive city? Again, this is a hard call since all the cities had their amazing aspects. If pressed for an answer, however, I would have to pick Rome. This city just was something else! 3.       Did anything weird happen to you? Not really weird, but to a certain degree, intimidating. When we were on the bus from Madrid to Lisbon at the bus stop just before the border, the police came with a drug dog and searched the bus and our luggage. They even pulled a few ...

  English Innsbruck was just a short intermezzo for us, but it was lovely! Innsbruck lies in the valley and is surrounded by the Alps. It also had a lot of snow there, but the streets were clear. We used the time to recuperate and get used to the cold. We had some good food as well! The night we arrived at the Hotel, the final of the world championship was on, and I was already disappointed because I could not see it completely. Well, once in our room, I hoped to stream the last part of it from one of the major German News Outlets on my phone, but I still could not since I was not in Germany. I voiced my frustration to Doug, who said, "Why don't you try the TV? I am sure they are showing it there!"…. Yeah…. one of my typical "Sabrina-moments" how my family would say… Of course, they showed it on the TV, hanging right in front of me on the wall! And as it turns out, I just joined the game when it got interesting, so nothing was missed! Deutsch Innsbruck w...

  English Now it was time to visit one of our friends in Verona! We first met him in California, and now it was our turn to visit him in his country. He was gracious enough to let us stay with him and his girlfriend for a few days. It was so nice to see him again and meet his girlfriend and cat! They were fabulous hosts, and we had a wonderful time in Verona. We explored the city and the Christmas market and saw the balcony of Rome & Juliet. Apparently, when you touch the boob of the statue below, it brings luck… did we do it, you ask? What shall I say, we are not superstitious… We walked along the Arena and took a cable car ride up the hill to enjoy the view of the city from up above. We also went to Venice for the day and saw all the main attractions there and got lost several times, even with GPS, as is tradition. We had cannolo on our way home. Our friend also took us to Valeggio, a town near Verona with the most delicious tortellini you can imagine!! We went into a s...