Frohe Ostern aus Deutschland und der Schweiz!

a traditionally decorated fountain in St. Gallen, Switzerland

Since getting back from Switzerland, we have been easing into our regular work habits and also enjoying Easter activities in Germany (more on this in a later post). While we were in St. Gallen on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, I dropped by the Historisches und Völkerkundemuseum to see their Easter egg exhibit. The museum was undergoing renovations, so it was a small but lovely exhibit. Here are a few shots from my visit:

I also love that they sell pre-decorated eggs at all the grocery stores:

In addition to egg exhibits and markets, we have also seen a lot of small Easter trees in people's yards and on their balconies. Some of the decorations are real eggs!

Happy Easter!!

Ausflug: Half-timbered Houses in Bad Münstereifel

Whenever I think of a classic German village, I always think of half-timbered houses. On another weekend adventure, we headed to one of the few villages in Nordrhein-Westfalen that still has its medieval walls intact.

Orchheimer Straße, with houses from the mid-1600s

Most other towns in this region tore down their city walls, often in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the cities expanded. Gates were usually left intact, but the walls were demolished.

Johannistor: cars drive through it to get in the city,
but it used to have a draw bridge and portcullis!

The view from our window

We love looking out our back window on the church. The other day the weather was so crazy! One minute, it was snowing the most lovely, fluffy flakes....

...and 20 minutes later it looked like this!

Sam has been enjoying the balcony and the heaters, too. She keeps us entertained with her antics!

We're in Switzerland for the next week to check out some archives and libraries for J's research, and to see the Eiger and Matterhorn in the snow. I will to post about our trip soon!

Ausflug: Here be dragons...

Every weekend we try to take a day trip, or an Ausflug, somewhere interesting--sometimes we hop on the subway and go to a new museum or church in Cologne and sometimes we go a bit farther afield. The other week we visited Drachenfels ("dragon rock" or "dragon cliff") in Königswinter, which is about 45 minutes south of Cologne by train and has a nice walk up a hill to a ruined 12th century castle.

This area was made famous by Wagner's Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen), the opera that includes the famous song, The Ride of the Valkyries. Wagner based the opera on an old Norse legend about the warrior, Siegfried. On this hill in Drachenfels, Siegfried supposedly killed the dragon, Fafnir, stole its treasure and then bathed in or drank its blood. Our visit to the area was a bit tamer :)

One reason we went here is that the hiking trail is very near the train station (oh, how we miss having a car!). You start going up a nice wooded trail, complete with hobbit holes.

The trail takes you to Drachenburg (literally, dragon castle), which has been around since the late 1800s and has quite an interesting history. We didn't spend much time here, but continued on to the ruined castle atop the next hill.

The castle can be reached by a cog train, and it over looks the Rhine and surrounding farms and hills.

Drachenfels is also known for its rocks--Drachenfels trachyte was quarried by Romans and then later used to construct the Cologne Cathedral!

After checking out the castle, we wandered back down and enjoyed the snow. It's so nice to get out of the city!

view of Drachenburg through the snowflakes and trees

American Chocolate Chip Cookies in Germany

After a couple trial recipes and reading expat blogs, I found a way to make really tasty, just-like-home chocolate chip cookies. We may not be able to make tacos the same way in Germany, but we can at least have our chocolate chip cookie fix!

But before the cookies, a quick detour into general differences between baking in America and Germany. (I won't judge if you just skip to the cookies.)

So it turns out that flour in the US does not necessarily equal flour in Germany. Who would've thunk it? There's actually a really wonderful variety of flour here--even at the discount grocery stores, you can get pastry flour, whole wheat flour, and spelt flour. At the regular grocery stores, you can get 2 types of wheat flour plus rye and spelt flours, often at 2 or more levels of 'fineness.' (Fineness is in quotes because 2 types of flour may look and feel the same, but bake veeery differently due to the different mineral content. Yeah, it's weird, but read on if you want an explanation!) At home I never tried baking with anything except all purpose flour, bread flour, and whole wheat flour, so I'm pretty excited to try the spelt and rye flours.

Here's the deal:

• Weizenmehl 405 = pastry flour, most common flour at the grocery store
• Weizenmehl 550 = all purpose flour
• Weizen-Vollkornmehl = whole wheat flour
• Dinkel Mehl = spelt flour
• Roggenmehl = rye flour

There's a great article on German vs. American flours here, which I found really useful when I first started trying to understand the baking aisle im Supermarkt. It explains the difference between 405 and 550, which has to do with the mineral or ash content of the flour that I alluded to earlier in this post. I have also enjoyed reading other expats' (often similar, usually funny) reactions to the baking aisle in Germany.

One more thing: Germans generally don't bake with baking soda and it turns out that their baking powder (Backpulver) isn't exactly equivalent to ours. Bah! This makes translating recipes complicated. Oh, and the grocery stores don't sell vanilla extract -- they sell little packets of vanilla sugar. Fortunately, Vanillin-Zucker has substituted just fine into all the recipes I've tried so far, and if worse comes to worst I can always make my own vanilla extract.

The Costumes of Karneval

I loved seeing the entire city dressed up for Karneval. At the very least, people were sporting a Kölsch scarf or fake tattoos; others went all out. It is a blast! Here's a round up of the most common costumes as well as some of my favorites.

Red, White, and Kölsch
Even if you don't like dressing up, simply wear anything red/white (the colors on Cologne's coat of arms) and you will be all set. Shops on every street sell scarfs, beanies, socks, gloves, and temporary tattoos, so you can put together a Karneval-ready for just a few Euros.

striped socks + flats + some stuff I had already = done!

Clowns
Unlike in the US, clowns aren't considered 'scary' in Germany, so this was a very popular costume. Some people painted their faces, some just wore clown noses (Pappnas) or a wig, and many wore the traditional Lappenclown (rag clown) costume:

Animals
Bears, dogs, lions, and other animals were really, really popular, especially with younger guys. Jeremy and I had to smile at this, since most guys in the US wouldn't be caught dead these suits (unless they were wearing them ironically). But after thinking about it more, I realized that these costumes are probably very warm! Sehr praktisch.

many families dressed up together!

Let's Play....The Price is Right!

Bob Barker would like this one. Can you guess the price of these two items?

Item #1 is a nice red wine, straight from the Bordeaux region of France.
Item #2 is a package of soft flour tortillas. Both were purchased at the grocery store down the street from us.

Hint: One item cost 3.75 Euro.

Word of the Week: Der Zoo

One sunny Monday afternoon a few weeks ago, J and I headed to the Cologne Zoo to enjoy the sunshine and learn some new nouns. 'Der Zoo' is yet another word that English and German share, and many animal names are also pretty similar:

die Flamingos

der Nilkrokodil 

die Asiatischer Elefanten
the little 6 month old in the foreground may or may not have
been  playing with a steaming pile of poo

ein Sibirischer Tiger
when we walked up, he was just chillin in the sun....
and then a toddler walker by and the tiger went into full stalk mode...

we later learned that a couple years ago a tiger got out of the
enclosure and killed its keeper....so this guy was for-real stalking
the little kid

babies for breakfast?

die Giraffen; specifically, die Netzgirrafen
(Reticulated Giraffe)

die Amerikanische Bison
they live in a hut from the 1800s, originally build for Tibetan yaks