Autumn Meets Winter

 

Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the comic strip "Peanuts", lived in Santa Rosa for more than 30 years and died here in February 2000. Therefore it's no wonder that many Christmas decorations in my neighborhood depict one or more of his characters, the most popular among them Snoopy and Woodstock. 

Winter has arrived here with heavy rain which, of course, is very welcome. In the higher elevations of the county there are warnings we might see snow on top of the mountains, however, I do think it is not cold enough for that. I'm thankful for the rain, and am enjoying the spots where autumn meets winter.

This is the time when the Geek and I often have a cup of hot chocolate in the evening, which is my ticket to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday this week.

This is only a short post and I hope to be back by Thursday with some German Christmas cookies.

Christmas Lights

 

Both the Geek and I are not big into Christmas. Of course, as long as Kaefer was with us, we celebrated it and I also used to decorate the house. We had a Christmas tree that Kaefer and I decorated, a Christmas village (that Kaefer later sold for more funds during college) and the traditional wooden figurines from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains in East Germany) that I unfortunately cannot find anymore. I suspect it's in a box up in the attic and I certainly won't go there anytime soon. We had an entire angel orchestra - it looks like this:

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Thankfully I still have the Kurrendesänger (carolers) because they are in our grab-and-go box. These are the ones that we had when I was a child. They were sent to us by a family in East Germany whom we always sent packets during the years when Germany was divided into two countries. This is my favorite Christmas decoration.

I was glad that I found the Schwippbogen, also handcrafted in the Erzgebirge. The candles are made of beeswax and almost doll sized, thus very hard to find around here. One of my students gives me a package of them every year, so that I don't run out.

The only "big" thing in terms of Christmas decorations are the lights on our home. The Geek and Kaefer used to put them up together, but now the Geek has to do it alone. And he does a great job.

We don't call them Christmas lights but winter lights since they stay up at least until Valentine's Day. They make our rather dark corner cheerful and people who walk along here really like that it is not that dark in those early winter evenings. At 10 o'clock at night the lights are switched off and turned on again in the morning at six for 90 minutes.

The Geek really goes to town with these lights - they are all around the fence as well and even grow into the lower parts of some trees. The best part? These are all LED lights and consume about 100 watt of energy (as much as just one of those old 100 watt lightbulbs) and they're all connected to only one outlet.

This is for Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date with this week's prompt "Christmas lights". Foodwise I don't have much to show today. Our wonderful bread baker has been sick for several weeks and we're running out of bread (we always buy several loaves from them at the farmers market and freeze them), so I decided to bake our own bread again. I didn't take a photo of the first one, but remembered to take one of the second, a whole wheat bread with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

I didn't cook any elaborate meals for dinner, just linguine with fresh spinach, cream and cheese. It's quick and delicious.

My last photo today is my morning view from the window at the top of the stairs. I love when the fog still hangs around and is slow to lift. It has such a lovely, dreamy atmosphere - my favorite morning mood.

Christmas Market in Tübingen

 

Advent, those four weeks before Christmas, are a very special time in Germany. In many cities and towns, Christmas markets open their booths, many of them being a part of the place for several weeks. 

I remember the third Advent-weekend in December back in Tübingen, Germany, where I spent more than twenty years of my life. It's a medieval university town with its typical old buildings that look like they're straight out of a fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers. Narrow lanes wind among medieval timber-framed houses and cars are not allowed within the city center. It's a huge pedestrian zone that makes wandering the old alleys so peaceful.

This is the setting for one of the most beautiful traditions of the town: the Christmas Market. It's nothing like its big siblings in Nürnberg, Stuttgart or München and so many other cities. First, it only takes place from Friday to Sunday and not weeks and weeks and weeks. Second, it's not commercial. There are tons of local artists who sell their work, school classes who raise funds for their annual end-of-the-year trip, small local environmental groups who fight for preservation, neighborhoods who try to raise awareness and money for people with disabilities - the list could go on and on.

So that's the eye-candy. The next is the food - just one word: delicious. The food is mainly local specialities, the best time to eat "Bubaspitzle mit Sauerkraut" (a thin rolled kind of potato pasta with sauerkraut and sometimes bacon), one of my fondest memories in the food department. There was a guy with a complicated portable special oven who made Swiss Raclette that was to die for. Of course there was Glühwein (mulled wine), very welcome in the cold. None of the food or the drink was allowed in any kind of plastic or paper container, everything had to be re-usable! Most of the plates were eatable - envision big sturdy waffles for apple strudel! No trash! You bought a beautiful mug with the words "Tübinger Weihnachtsmarkt" written on it and this could be refilled at any booth that offered Glühwein or juice punch. I still have a few of these mugs, pictured below, and they are this week’s ticket to Bleubeard and Elizabeth’s T Tuesday.

Throughout the market you could listen to music. Children were singing, little choirs stood at the fountain in the market square, someone played the violin, another one the bagpipe, and again another one the flute. There was a cantata concert in the main church. There were jugglers and clowns. It was a very festive atmosphere. 

And of course there was “Paupersingen”. The Paupersingen (paupers singing) is a tradition that originated in the Middle Ages. "pauper" is a Latin word and means poor, and in this case it refers to poor students of Latin who paid part of their school fee by singing during church services and at funerals. During Advent they wandered through the narrow lanes of the town, wearing their black scholar cloaks and singing in front of every house, hoping for some donations.

Today it's the children choirs who start out at different parts of Tübingen and slowly, with several stops in between, walk to the market square, all the way singing the old Christmas carols. They all meet at the huge Christmas tree where all of them together sing for another half hour or so. The donations today go to some charity of their choice. (I apologize for the very unfocused photo.)

We felt like community, we were community. People spending three days in the cold in order to help someone else. To serve others. To share stories. To entertain children and their stressed parents. To bring smiles on the cold faces, red cheeks from the mulled wine.

That third weekend in December was spent in the streets among those medieval buildings, no matter whether the sun was shining, it was raining or snowing. It was freezing cold - always. But everyone was there. Community.

(This is the slightly edited version of a post that I first wrote for Vision and Verb in 2010 or 2011.)

Snowed In

 

"Snowed in" is the topic this week at Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date.

At the end of last week, the sky dumped an enourmous amount of snow on Bavaria, the most southern state in Germany. There was so much snow, that all the trains were cancelled. This was bad news for Kaefer, who was in Venice at that time and had booked the night train back to Germany which had to pass Munich which was completely closed down. So she stayed another night in Venice (not the worst place to get stuck) and then was finally able to get home on trains passing through Switzerland. It took her 18 hours to finally arrive at her appartment.

This reminded me of the snowy winters we used to have when I still lived in Germany. Our home was the area between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb and that meant very cold in the winter and often tons of snow. I wasn't particularly fond of driving in the snow, but when you live in one of the last houses at the end of a street up a steep hill which wasn't on the priority list for snow clearing and you had to leave at 6 o'clock in the morning in order to go to work, then you don't really have a choice. Snow was still better than black ice and this way I became a rather experienced driver in snow. I also didn't like snow shoveling - but I did love the beauty of snow.

Therefore, today I want to show you some photos of our winters in Germany from more than 20 years ago. I apologize for an overload of pictures, but am hoping that you will like them.

Walking in the woods provided a lot of photo opportunities.

No one was going to sit on this bench...

Snow on grasses is just fascinating.

Today I don't have a dinner to share with you. Instead, I baked a German Nusszopf (hazelnut braid) a couple days ago. It's from my trusted Dr. Oetker baking recipe book that my students gifted to me several years ago.

It's an easy recipe - the only "challenge" is to braid the dough with the filling and then transfer it to the baking sheet. This is what is looks like before it goes into the oven...

... and this is what it looks like after being done baking (no, my silicone baking mat did not change color in such a dramatic way, only the light had changed).

As soon as it had cooled down, we cut a slice and tasted it - oh delicious!

The Last Two Weeks

 

I wish I could come up with something exciting this week, but I don't. Two weeks ago I started PT for my left knee and the sciatica on the right side; I go twice a week and do my exercises religiously because I really want an end to the pain and most of all, I want to take long walks again. While I see some improvement when it comes to the sciatica, I unfortunately cannot say the same for the knee. Some days are okay, but there were moments when I had just started my walk down the street to the mailbox when I had to turn around after only 50 meters or so because the pain was so bad that I knew I wouldn't get to the mailbox (a 12 minute walk one way), not to mention back home. It's frustrating, but I'm determined not to let these things get me down.

Despite the evil knee, I was able to do a few short walks - I walked at the lake (please note that I wrote "at", not "around" because that's not possible right now) on a cloudy morning and enjoyed the view of the still water and the leaves in the parking lot.

I especially liked the stunning color of these oak leaves as well as the beautiful seeds of the Horse Weed (Conyza bonariensis).

In my neighborhood I enjoyed a few leaves withstanding the autumn winds while others swirled through the air, sometimes doing crazy somersaults.

The Japanese Maple in front of my kitchen window radiated in beautiful autumn colors and I loved the reflection in the bird bath.

My native California vine "Roger's Red" (Vitis californica x 'Roger's Red') was twisting along my clothesline. Soon I will have to cut it back, when all the leaves will be gone.

My Pineapple Guava (Feijoa sellowiana) was heavy with fruit this year, so I decided to share with the neighborhood.

In my opinion, winter sunrises and sunsets are more spectacular than the ones in summer. Maybe it's because the sun is so much lower in the sky or the air is colder - I don't know. This was the sunrise seen from my bedroom window a few days ago, followed below by pink clouds at sunset.

The nightsky during a full moon was pretty dramatic as well.

We had some rain - always welcome - and also some pretty frosty nights. Perfect for staying inside and knitting some cat and bird ornaments for our German School's winter fundraiser.

While knitting, reading, grading papers and preparing classes I enjoyed my café au lait out of this wolf mug that I bought years ago in Yellowstone (still one of my most favorite places on earth).

This, of course, is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday - grab a drink and join us!