Thanksgiving in Deutschland + A Recipe

For Thanksgiving, we got gigantic Schntizel at Bei Oma Kleinmann's and ended our feast with a sour cherry galette. Galettes are basically the lazy person's pie, which was perfect since (a) I have no pie pan and (2) one pie is way too much for two people! Sour cherries (Sauerkirschen) are found in a lot of German desserts, including Schwartz Wald Kirsch Torte (aka, Black Forest Cake) and on top of waffles with a side of whipped cream.

Sauerkirsch Galette
1 pie crust
4 cups sour cherries (in juice if canned)
3/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or sugar
pinch salt
squirt of lemon juice
1 egg white, lightly beaten

1. Make the crust according to the directions, making it at least 2 hours before you want to bake the pie. 
2. After rolling out the pie crust to fit your pan, lay the crust in the pan, but don't crimp or cut the edges as you'll be folding them over later. Put the pan in the fridge while you make the filling.
3. If the cherries are canned, drain and reserve the juice. In a medium bowl, mix the cherries, 1/4 cup of the reserved juice, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla, salt, and lemon juice and let it sit for about 5 minutes to thicken.
4. Scoop the cherry filling into the prepared pan, spreading them evenly. Dump some of the remaining juice over the top, about enough to come halfway up the cherries (there may be some leftover juice).
5. Fold the crust edges over the filling. Brush the crust with the egg white, and sprinkle a bit of sugar over the top.
6. Bake at 375F for about 45 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Let it cool a bit, then served with whipped cream!

Germany is already in the full-on Christmas spirit, so we ate our Thanksgiving feast with red-and-green all around and this fine fellow to keep us company. I'll be posting about the Christmas markets and a few other things soon, but in the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving aus Deutschland!

T-Minus One Month

our first 1. FC Köln game

We have only a little under a month left before we fly back to the US--time has flown! Here's what we're looking forward to when we get back to the good ol' USA, in no particular order:

• Inexpensive, high-quality steak.
• Tacos, sharp cheddar, and good salsa.
• Maple syrup and brown sugar available at the grocery store.
• French toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs...eating at Parker's Maple Barn and Soundbites.
• Our stinky hound!
• Getting reacquainted with my kitchen gear and all my other clothes.
• Having a cell phone with a camera and being able to text family on the go.
• Seeing family and friends who we have only seen online for too long!
• Being able to effortlessly speak with shop owners, administrators, and pretty much everyone without having to compose each sentence in my head beforehand. (Though I will miss this, too!)
• Having a car! Oh, how I have missed the freedom of having a car! (And, yet, oh how I will miss the fabulous trains and public transport in Germany!).

And here are some plans for the rest of our time here, also in no particular order and not including work and research:

• Go shopping for gifts at all of Cologne's Christmas markets.
• Visit a Christmas market in a small, charming village (Bad Munstereifel? Monschau? Münster? We shall see...).
• Eat schnitzel at Oma Kleinmann's.
• Eat saurbraten (J's favorite) at a Kölsch pub.
• See Radical Face at the Kulturkirche in mid-November.
• Cheer on FC Koeln at another soccer match.
• Attend mass at the Dom.
• A quick, 3-day trip to London, staying at a super posh hotel using our free Hyatt nights.
• Experiment with more interesting ingredients from the market.

I still can't believe we've been here for 11 months, but we have had lots of interesting adventures. Now to pack in as many more as possible before Decmber 14!

Ausflug: 4 Countries in 14 Hours

A few weekends ago, we spontaneously rented a car at the Cologne airport and visited a few places that have been on our 'to see' list, but are annoying to access by public transport. Our plans were loose, but we knew that we had the car from 9am to 11pm that day...and the sky was the limit!

First stop: the quaint Monschau, accessible only by bus (and webcam).

This little town is right on the border with Belgium and it at one point was part of France, so we saw a lot of Dutch and French in town. The best part of this cultural mixture -- poffertjes and waffles!

The winding, narrow streets, the castles on the hills surrounding the valley town, and the pretty stream flowing through town make Monschau the epitome of a small, German village.

We spent about 3 hours wandering around, then hopped in the rental car for the next leg of our trip.

Word of the Week: Martinszug

This evening as I was getting ready for a class, I heard children singing outside. It's a bit early for caroling, so I looked out the balcony, thinking that it was probably coming from the music school behind our apartment. Instead, I saw hundreds of bobbing lights in the next street over, and heard trumpets, tubas, and drums accompanying kids singing. So I naturally had to check it out!

source

Turns out that it was a neighborhood parade (Zug) to celebrate the catholic holiday of the feast of St. Martin (Martinstag), which I mentioned last month when the Weckmann appeared in bakeries. Groups of kids had special, and often very creative, homemade lanterns, each lit with clever wands with hanging LED lights. It was so fun! I could tell the kids were having a blast, too, despite the cold evening and mist. There have been parades all over the city, including a big one from the Dom to Groß St. Martin--skip to the end of the video to hear some of the songs :)

there were about 500 kids in the parade, with 4 bands spaced throughout to lead the songs -- so fun!

A Refresher in Field Biology

In early October, many trees around here began dropping loads of beautiful, shiny brown nuts. I watched kids and their parents at the park loading bags and boxes of gathered nuts into waiting wagons. It seemed like a perfect fall activity--the kiddos go on a treasure hunt, the adults catch up on adult conversation, and everybody goes home with...nuts.

almost as fun as Easter eggs

making off with the spoils

So I got in on the action.

Aren't they pretty?

I read online about the nuts, called Kastanien in German, and all my German-English dictionaries indicated that these were chestnuts. Having never seen chestnuts before (that I can remember), I happily looked up recipes and began to roast the nuts.

But they were horrible. Like, blech, patooey, ack, not even going to taste it twice, nasty.

Adventures with Interesting Vegetables

Whenever I visit the market in Wilhelmsplatz, I try to look for interesting seasonal vegetables and fruits. So far, we have tried:

Kohlrabi

surprisingly sweet and crunchy

it was better raw than cooked

Daikon

A giant radish, which I originally thought was a parsnip...but wasn't.

source

Celeriac

aka, the brain vegetable

Physallis

which tastes like kiwi, starfruit, and watermelon

and comes in translucent, crinkly packages

Tiny plums (Zwetschgen)

Chestnuts

(more on this cooking adventure later)

and of course

Johannisbeeren

twice over!

Plus various cheeses, flours (spelt, rye), and alcoholic beverages (port, vodka, calvados, various rums). It's been a blast! I'm hoping to work in a few more before we're back in familiar food territory :)

Ausflüge von Wien (Day Trips from Vienna)

enjoying the fall leaves in Slovakia

Although we spent a good amount of time in Vienna, the temptation to make a couple day trips was too much to resist. So one day we hopped on a 2.5 hour train to Budapest, and the next day we went to a Viennese cafe in the morning and visited Slovakia in the afternoon.

Budapest

Our trip was a bit less planned than usual, so we read up on both stops the day before and then mostly wandered around. Getting off the train at the Keleti Station in Budapest was very much like what I expected from a post-Communist eastern European country--pretty bleak, with lots of concrete and moldering buildings and abandoned construction projects. We also discovered that Budapest isn't big on promoting tourism at the train station, so we pretty much had to pick a street and hope we were walking the right way.

the statues are important people in Hungary's history, including fierce-looking Magyar chieftains (right picture)

We walked about 3km before we finally saw something I recognized, the Heroes' Square (aka, Hősök tere). We congratulated ourselves on not completely walking in the wrong direction, then found an invaluable walking tours map in the art museum by the memorial. Next stop: the famous Széchenyi Medicinal Bath (the largest in Europe!) and then Vajdahunyad Castle (yeah, we don't know how to say it either) in the City Park.

The baths are one of the many things I would like to try if we ever go back to Budapest. Unlike in Germany, it looks like most of the bathers wear swimsuits, which is a requirement if I'm going to be sharing any sort of water body with strangers. Next time! The castle was quite eclectic and housed the National Agricultural Museum that, according to TripAdvisor reviews, is actually pretty interesting. That's another thing for the 'next time list!'.

Vajdahunyad Castle

home of the national ag museum, in the castle grounds

We then walked even further and finally made it to the old part of town. Keleti train station is on the Pest side, which is much flatter with wide, tree-lined avenues. We heard about several interesting-sounding museums in Pest (the Terror Museum and the Hospital in the Rock), but we decided to see more of the city instead. We finally crossed the famous chain bridge, over the Danube, and into Buda.

looking across the Danube at the Buda side of the city

Goats in the Gürtel

Cologne is surrounded by a ring of parks called Die Grüngürtel (the green belt), which is lovely for afternoon walks. Over the weekend, we headed to the southernmost part (the Stadtwald, or city forest) to enjoy the fall leaves and to visit one of my favorite places in the Gürtel:  The Lindenthaler Tierpark

source

The park has been around since the early 1900s, at first filled only with tame Damhirsche (fallow deer), but now also with a bunch of goats, fowl (ducks, swans, turkeys, geese, chickens, and guineas), cows, and donkeys. This time we met some baby burros...

the ears!

I just can't get over those ears!

Some chickens...

we loved the contrast between the big, fluffy Brahmas and the long-legged Kraienköppe!

Of course goats...

And last, but not least, Highland cows...

feeding cows by hand is slimy, but fun :)

Entry to the park is free and a box of animal food is only 50 cents, so it's the perfect place to stop by on a weekend. There are always little kids running around, an icecream cone in one hand and goat food in the other. That and ears like this never fail to make me smile!

A Working Vacation in Vienna

It's not very often that J and I spend more than 2 nights at a place on a trip--we usually have a tightly packed agenda in order to do and see as much as possible. For this trip, however, J mostly needed to access materials in the Austrian National Library (and possibly the archive), so we rented an apartment on Kolschitzkygasse and called it home for 6 nights.

many buildings on our street were social housing complexes--it's an interesting system

We started out at the National Library, which is housed in the Imperial Hofburg Palace. Outside, it's quite impressive! We found the quality of the catalog and the service to be much less impressive, but it was pretty to look at. Mostly, it's the go-to study spot for college students in Vienna. Nevertheless, we spent about a good portion of the trip working in the library.

the entry to the Austrian national library...not intimidating at all :)

The Beers of Germany

It seems incredible that I have been writing about our adventures in Germany for 10 months (!) already, and I have yet to write much about beer. Every American knows that Germans love their beer, and one of the first things people think of when they think of Germany is Oktoberfest, the annual beer festival held in Munich. We didn't go to Oktoberfest (which is actually held in September) because it was quite expensive, but we have done our best to sample as many different beers as possible. Our taste tests aren't comprehensive, by far, but we're working on it :)

enjoying Kölsch with schnitzel at Oma Kleinman's

marks on the coaster track your drinks (img source)

First, Kölsch (said more like 'kohlsch' and not like 'koolsch'), the beer of Cologne and much of the Rhineland. When you go to a bar in Cologne, you can either get Kölsch or (maybe) Bitburger. But nothing else, unless you're at (a) a tourist bar like the Bier "Museum" or (b) a specialty shop like Cafe Eichhörnchen (Belgian beer, chocolate, and coffee). Kölsch is always served in tall, slim 0.2 or 0.3 liter glasses, and the waiter tracks your beers by making slashes on the Bierdeckel (coaster). I particularly like that the glasses are so small--sometimes I just want a taste, not a huge brewski! And it's not a Kölsch unless it's brewed within the Cologne city limits.

Altbier in Düsseldorf

Germany is highly regional when it comes to beer, so you will never see Kölsch served in a Kneipe (aka, pub) in Düsseldorf, though it's only 40km north. Instead, all the pubs serve Altbier, the Düsseldorfer favorite. We especially enjoyed our visit to the charming and cozy Füchschen Brauhaus.

Fruit and Fountains in Rome

When we visited Rome this past August, it was hot. Standing in the shade and drinking cool water made all the difference, so we spent a good deal of time hopping between shady spots and looking for cool snacks. Fortunately, Rome had an incredible number of gurgling public fountains, so all you needed was a water bottle. The fountains were unlike any I have ever seen before, though--unlike the utilitarian 'bubblers' in the US, the fountains in Rome were often decorative and always located outside. And almost every one of them was stone cold and perfect for a hot day.

I didn't get too many pictures of the fountains, unfortunately, but we never had to worry about running out of water! Around the Forum, some of the fountains had long lines as other tourists like ourselves tried to cool off. We even came across some pups that had figured out the system!

On our way from the apartment to the center of the city, we walked through Porta Giovanni, where the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran and a handy Metro stop are located. On our way there were two very tasty stops: The first, a perfect cappuccino to go, and the second, a fresh fruit stand owned by a very nice Bangladeshi guy named Paolo (in Italian...unfortunately, his Bengali name has slipped my mind).

interactive map

We bought fruit there every day in Rome, and I think we were probably his best customers. When I stopped by on our way out on the last day, he asked after my mom and sister, and then we got to talking a bit. He has owned and run the fruit stand for the past 14 years! The fruit was really good, too. Everything I had (watermelon, fresh coconut, melons, apricots) was perfectly ripe. The fountains and that fruit stand were two of my favorite everyday things in Rome :)

J and I are in Austria (and perhaps Hungary) at the moment as we're visiting archives and libraries, while squeezing in some touring. More soon!

Word of the Week: spachteln

As in, to spackle or fill in a hole. Such as the hole in our bathroom wall.

The apartment directly above us is undergoing a complete renovation, including ripping out all the flooring and walls and replacing all the pipes. They needed to make a hole in our wall to do something to the water pipes for the apartment above, so we've been living with a hole in the bathroom wall for the past few weeks. Finally, they began to spachteln and it's so nice not to feel like there is a huge peep hole into our most private room!

Oh, they also accidentally made a hole in the living room ceiling while drilling into the above apartment's floor, so that's being (slowly) fixed, too. I sadly did not get a photo of the chaos of plaster that rained down, but I'm sure you can imagine. I'm looking forward to having a clean, orderly apartment again soon!