Bon Voyage!

John and I are heading to the train station in a little over three hours to board a train bound for Paris! We are staying about 5 km from the Eiffel Tower and very close (I think 400 m or so) from a metro stop. Hopefully transportation will be fairly easy.

We went to the PX earlier today and I bought a French phrasebook to refresh me on my français. I also had to get another pair of gloves, because the ones I got from J. Crew JUST before I came here already have a big ol' hole in the thumb. :o(

While we were at the PX, I cashed in the gift card John gave me to buy a purse. I got a nice little tan Coach purse. I can't wait to show it off.

Oh my goodness...John and I are packing right now, and we just found the red scarf I've been missing for just about 2 months now. My mom just found me one to replace it...figures!

Before I go, here are some pictures from our walk around the Heidelberg Schloss and more from the Heidelberg Weihnactsmarkt.



We'll be back midday on the 1st with plenty of pictures and stories. Happy 2008!

$2000 and 1 new Recruit

Hi everyone! John here... So the army gives $2000 any service member, active or retired, who recruits someone to join... Looks like I will be getting my money soon! I got a recruit and man is she cute! Mr. Carter, I know you wanted her to go Air Force, but I mean really, you don't want your daughter to get sucked into a jet engine now do you? Besides... Look how cute she looks in ACU's! PARADE REST! This is the position of "Flirt with your Commander". Don't make this recruit angry... she might bite your nose off. I'd salute that! Just kidding about her joining the Army, but I did have fun seeing Sarah in my uniform... Too cute!

Christmas in Review

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! John and I definitely did, even though we really missed home. We woke up late (10:30!) and opened our stockings. After that, I made an egg, sausage and cheese casserole and some coffee cake. We got ready for the day, ate breakfast (with a side of mimosas) and then opened presents. The rest of the day was spent talking to family and watching Christmas greats like A Christmas Story and The Santa Claus . :o) One of the presents John got me was Evan Almighty, and we settled down to watch that late last night.

Unfortunately, neither of us were feeling very good today. John had a sore throat and was home from work. I have just felt lethargic all day. It's only 8 PM, and I could easily go to sleep for the night right now. I need to be rested for tomorrow, because I have a lot to get ready before we leave for Paris on Friday.

We did get a bit of a surprise today -- about 1" of snow fell in the late morning/early afternoon. It was very pretty but also slippery! I didn't take any photos of the snow today, but these are from our snowfall that had accumulated by Christmas Eve.


We made snow angels!


I tried to capture some of the snow falling, but it's hard to capture white on white.


Here's our Christmas Eve dinner. We had twice baked potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, cranberries, rolls, strawberry jello salad and champagne. It was delicious!


And finally, here we are before heading out to church:


We went to two church services on Christmas Eve. The first was at 7 PM and was held at the Episcopal Church on post. The service was WAY too long for a Christmas Eve service. It did not let out until 8:50. In all that time, they didn't have a sermon or even a homily. They did, however, have 5 LONG readings (oddly all about John the Baptist) each followed by a hymn.

The second service we went to was at 11 PM in Heidelberg at a German language Protestant church. When we were walking up, the bells in the steeple were ringing like crazy. They must have been ringing for at least 5 or 10 minutes. We think it was to announce the birth of Jesus.

The church itself was beautiful. It was ornate and sort of in a gothic style. The pews had a small candle at either end, and the organ was huge. The music during the service was fantastic. All the songs the choir sang were in English, but everything else was in German. At the end of the service, the pastor told us (in German) to go out into the holy night with our candles lit to be a light to the world. We walked all the way to John's car with our candles lit.

This video clip I posted below is the song the choir sang at the very beginning of the service. Both John and I really enjoyed it. This version is performed by the Oslo Gospel Choir.



I'll try to write again before we leave for Paris. Bye for now!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We wanted to post a full length blog tonight complete with pictures of our day and of the beautiful white weather, but sadly, it got very late. We attended a German Church Service at 11:00pm and we didn't get home until 12:50. After doing the rest of our dishes from today's delicious Christmas dinner, it was 1:30am and just too late to make a long post. We will post more soon, but in the mean time, enjoy Christmas! We know we will!

-John and Sarah

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Just like the ones I never knew :o)

After a night of temperatures in the low to mid 20s and a lot of fog, we looked outside yesterday, and everything was rather frosty. This is what we saw:


These are the coolest little ice crystals I've ever seen.

These next couple of photos really don't capture how beautifully white everything was yesterday. I tried, but it's hard when there isn't much contrast since the sky is also white (very cloudy still).


Last night, we walked over to the Shopette, which is like a little convenience store on post. It's only two buildings down from where John lives. One our walk over there (around 5:45 PM), we realized it was snowing ever so lightly. It was the tiniest of snow flurries. When we woke up this morning, everything was even a little bit whiter...


Now I just hope it stays around for a couple more days!!

Our First Christmas

Here are some photos of our Christmas tree, complete with a heart tree-topper made by my 3-year-old niece, Emma.


My friend Katy went to Norway a few months ago and sent John and me this heart ornament she made in an old iron works mill in Oslo.


My parents sent us this photo ornament. As you can probably tell, it doesn't have a photo of us in it yet...just some random strangers. I'll work on getting a photo of us for next year's tree. Oh, and the ornament is also a music box. It plays Pachelbel's Canon.


We bought this "Wilkommen" ornament at the Schwetzingen Christmas market.


And thank you all for all these gifts. We are really excited for Christmas morning!

Going to the Board

John was selected to go to the Soldier of the Month Board, where soldiers must prepare a biography, a speech and answer questions on various Army-related topics. The soldiers are graded on all of these things plus their personal appearance (they wear their Class A uniforms to the board). For the past several days, I helped John study and prepare for the Board. He went before the Board yesterday morning, and he won! He is Soldier of the Month, which is pretty cool. He will have to go before the Board again when he gets back from his training in February for the Soldier of the Quarter Board. Anyway, I just wanted to post about that, because I'm really proud of him.

The other, completely unrelated story I have to tell today is about German food. I should have posted it in my previous entry, but I forgot. A week or two ago, John and I were coming back to the barracks, and as we drove on post, we got pulled over for an inspection. The German guard doing the inspection sparked up a conversation with us about food. We informed him that German food is not good, and he appeared to be rather shocked. He said there are lots of great places to eat like Brauhaus. John asked what kind of food is good to eat at Brauhaus, and the guard said "pig parts." Ew. How could he think "pig parts" are good food?! This is why we do not like German food. Pig parts should not be a part of every day's meal. He also let us know that he thinks Americans eat only fast food. John and I agree that most Germans (and probably Europeans in general) think Americans only really like fast food.

We have a theory about how this idea came about. If most Americans traveling in Germany are like John and me, they frequent McDonald's and Burger King, because the rest of the food is overpriced and not very good. Germans take note at the number of Americans at these establishments versus other restaurants and conclude that Americans only eat fast food. That's just our theory, of course.

One last thing. I'm sorry for all the typos in my last entry. I think I should have John read them over before I publish them...I'm always embarrassed by the silly errors I make. Oops!

K-town

On Saturday, John and I headed to Kaiserslautern (known as K-town by the Americans), which is about an hour away, for a little day trip. Truly, we made this journey just because we heard there was a Chili's there. We were desperate for good American food, and we weren't disappointed...not at Chili's anyway.

The night before, we went with a few people from John's office to a bar on post for karaoke night. John got up and did a wonderful rendition of Boot Scootin' Boogie. Thankfully, no one forced me to sing. It would have been worse than that scene in My Best Friend's Wedding where Cameron Diaz sang karaoke.

Saturday, we headed out around noon in search of a rumored American-style Tex Mex restaurant. We found it on a street in K-town that caters to Americans. Signs and everything were in English -- we even saw a number of American flags! The restaurant was called Cantina Mexicana, and the interior did a good job of looking the part. The food, however, didn't taste the part. It was ok, but not for the price. My queso-topped shredded chicken enchiladas tasted like king ranch chicken. That sauce was definitely not queso. John's enchiladas verdes were at least a little spicy. We both got margaritas which were decent, but the bartender used table salt for the rims...not so bueno.

After lunch, we headed toward Ramstein Air Base. The Chili's was in the Enlisted Club on base. It was REALLY cool to be at such a big air base. I wanted to take pictures, but that's not really allowed. Ya know, security and whatnot.

We explored their huge BX (Base Exchange, which is kind of like a WalMart in that it has everything) and shared a small Cinnabon. We wanted to catch a movie, but they were showing This Christmas, which we saw last week. We drove around some more on a search for the Enlisted Club. Seriously, there weren't any signs anywhere for anything, so we drove in a lot of circles before finally finding it. It's funny, though, we weren't hungry when we found it. It was only about 5, and we had not eaten until about 2:30. We decided to head back to Kaiserslautern to explore their downtown.

Even though it was VERY cold, and I wasn't as prepared for walking around outside as I could have been, I am glad we did that. We ended up stumbling upon their Weihnachtsmarkt (by the way, Heidelberg has them beat on that), and we found a music stage where two guys were playing American music. We listened to them do a cover of Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." They also covered Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." By the end of that song, I think you could say my face was comfortably numb. The cold had really gotten to me. We headed back to the car and back to Ramstein for Chili's.

When we got there, there was a wait, so we went downstairs and tried our luck at the slot machines. I ended up winning $30! John lost $10, so we came out $20 on top. I'd say that's pretty good. When I won all that money, I had only placed a 3 cent bet, too!

We got a table pretty quickly, and we were so excited to get to eat Chili's that we ordered quite a bit. I don't regret any of it either! :o) We each ordered a presidente margarita, glass of water (yay it's free! you have to pay for water on the German economy...ugh) and skillet queso for an appetizer. I ordered the quesadilla explosion salad for my entree along with a coffee. John got the chipotle ranch blue cheese bacon burger and a Coke. It was all fantastic. The chips weren't the same as the ones they use in the states, but they sufficed. We also indulged when it came time for dessert, and we ordered the chocolate chip paradise pie.

We declared December 15, 2007 as eating day. It was fabulous.

And now, for a few pictures...

Schwetzingen Weihnachtsmarkt

Finishing up my post about last weekend, I have a number of photos of the Schwetzingen Weihnactsmarkt to share. Just so you all understand, Schwetzingen is the small town we are nearest to, and Heidelberg, the other city Christmas market we went to, is about 10 minutes away.

Schwetzingen has an outdoor ice skating rink across from its market, so that's where these first several photos are from. The skating rink is also where John and I first tried glüwein. It's fun to people-watch there, because either the skaters are really good or they're just plain bad (like I would be), and eventually, those with less talent or practice will fall. On warmer days, like the day we were there this time, the ice was exceptionally slippery, because it was melting.

The rest of the photos were taken at a small concert at the Christmas market. Even though we were pretty cold (even considering the warmer weather), we decided to stay and watch a children's choir from a local church perform. We weren't familiar with most of the songs they sang - they must have been primarily traditional German Christmas songs. They sang one about the Christmas bakery (all in German) that is still in our heads.

The last of the photos were taken looking down the street on our walk back to the car. I had so many photos, that I decided to make a slideshow for this whole post instead of posting individually. Enjoy, and don't miss the video posted just below the slide show!!



I had to include this, too. It's a video (1 minute, 17 seconds long) of the very beginning of the children's concert. You can hear some German!

Heidelberg Weihnachtsmarkt

I began this entry on Wednesday, but between Christmas shopping, getting groceries and other chores, I'm just getting around to posting this. I have a lot more to catch everyone up on, and John is working staff duty tonight (overnight), so I should have plenty of time to write. For now, however, I will just catch you up on the Heidelberg Christmas market.

Friday night, John and I decided to go out for dinner and also explore the Heidelberg Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market). We went to Cafe Xtra Blatt, which is the restaurant John took me to when we first explored the Hauptstrasse when I had just arrived in Germany. It was much more enjoyable this time, because I wasn't completely jet-lagged. We shared some pinot grigio, jalepeno poppers and a chicken fajita pizza. We have really been craving American food lately. The food here is really disappointing. Most of it is pretty bland, and nothing is very satisfying to the taste. Surprisingly, the jalepeno poppers weren't half bad. They had an extra layer of potato between the jalepeno and the fried coating, but that is to be expected. You can find potatoes and French fries EVERYWHERE. The pizza was also quite good. The barbeque sauce, fajita chicken, hollandaise sauce and onions gave the pizza the most taste of anything I think I have had in the past month. Yum.

After dinner, we explored the Chirstmas market. There are several areas around downtown with booths, and we spent most of our time in what seemed to be the main area. I think it was in the Universitatsplatz. There were some food vendors (mainly sausage, schnitzel, and potato-based things) and many beer and gluwein booths. John tried the blueberry gluwein, which I will admit does not taste as bad as the last one I tried, but I still wouldn't ever crave it. I was happy just having a plain ol' Pilsner.

We walked around to all the other booths, which mainly had tea, sweets, candles, scarves and other handmade things. I suppose there isn't much else to tell, so I'll let the photos do the talking.

This is across the street from one of the Christmas market areas in Heidelberg. Galeria Kaufhof, which you can also see in the photo, is a huge (as if you can't tell) department store.


Once we got to one of the bigger market areas, I took a video to show a 360 degree view of an area we were in:

I was happy to find this carousel. John and I ended our night at the Christmas market by taking a ride on it.

mittag surprise!

Last week, John came home from work at lunchtime and had a surprise for me...flowers! There were 3 roses (1 red, 1 white and 1 pink/yellowish one) and 4 stargazer lilies all mixed in with baby's breath and some greenery. They were so pretty, and I was so proud of them that I took some quick snapshots.


I have a lot more to catch everyone up on. We hit up two of the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas markets) this weekend, so I have stories and photos to post. I will have to get to that tomorrow, because I need to use the rest of the afternoon for studying.

As for Sunday, we went to the Episcopal church on post and spent the rest of the day grocery shopping, cleaning and doing laundry. The church service was interesting...it was a rite II service, but they didn't do the Eucharistic prayer. They also didn't have a sermon. If they do church that way every week, it really doesn't make sense to me. There wasn't any indicator, though, that this was anything but normal for them. *shrug*

a belated Thanksgiving post

John worked on Thanksgiving from 7:30 am until 7:30 am on Friday, so we postponed our celebration until Friday. We used the opportunity to cook together and coordinated dinner around the start of the UT v. A&M game, which kicked off around 9:30 pm here.

We didn't have a turkey, because that would have been pretty difficult to cook in the barracks, but we made everything else: sweet potatoes, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit salad, rolls, green bean casserole, cranberries and pumpkin pie.

The dinner was great, and despite the outcome of the game, we had fun. Enjoy our pictures!

on the way home, we stopped in Ulm

John and I had made the decision to stop for lunch somewhere along the way back. The problem is that we did not have much of a choice of places on the way back, because we mainly just drove alongside small towns. Most of Germany is like this. However, on the way down to Garmisch, we drove through a town called Ulm that had looked pretty cool. On our way back, we decided to stop in Ulm for lunch. (We later found out we were really close to the Danube, which runs through Ulm and that Ulm was the birthplace of Albert Einstein. Pretty cool.)

When we exited the autobahn, we noticed a really tall steeple not too far from where we were. We decided to head in that direction. (We were also unsure of where we could eat. Most places are closed on Sundays in Germany.) We parked near the church's steeple and started walking in that direction. This is what we found:


The carousel is part of the Christmas market they were setting up. Most towns have Christmas markets. I'll write another post about those soon, because Schwetzingen's is about to open - I'll have a lot more information and photos then!


I don't think cameras were supposed to be taken inside, so I turned off the flash and snapped this one really quick down at my waist. I wish I could have photographed throughout - it was gorgeous.


It turns out this church has the tallest steeple in the world!! I think it's so cool that we just happened upon it.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the church, Ulm Münster (also called Ulm Cathedral):

"Ulm Münster is a Lutheran church, the tallest church in the world with a steeple measuring 161.53 m (530 ft) and containing 768 steps. Located in Ulm, Germany, it is a famous example of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture. After climbing to the top level at 143m there is a panoramic view of Ulm in Baden-Württemberg and Neu-Ulm in Bavaria and, in clear weather, a vista of the Alps from Säntis to the Zupspitze. The final stairwell to the top (known as the 3rd Gallery) is a tall, spiraling staircase that has barely enough room for one person. The church is not a cathedral in the proper sense as it has never been the seat of a bishop. This is indicated by the single steeple (where cathedrals generally possess two towers). The responsible bishop of the Evangelical Church in Germany resides in Stuttgart. Like the famous Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) - another building of the Gothic era - Ulm Cathedral was not completed until the 19th century."

We didn't know the background or anything about the church until we got home and looked it up, because everything inside was in German. It was neat to look around, though. Oh, and it was very cold. There wasn't any heating - we could see our breath even indoors. The sanctuary was beautiful. There were statues of Biblical figures all around, beautiful stained glass and large crucifixes (one of which was pretty intense).

The neatest thing we saw, though, was a prayer wall. It was a large bulletin board where people had written prayers on pieces of paper and attached them up all over the place. We saw prayers in at least 5 or 6 languages including Turkish and Arabic.

After our wonderful detour, we located a McDonald's (one of the few places open on a Sunday) to eat lunch. John is really good at being able to order in German, but the lady that was taking our order was incredibly rude. He started off saying (in German) "I'm sorry. My German isn't very good," and he proceeded to order. The lady then tried to ask him something, but I swear she didn't say it above a whisper. We couldn't hear her, and John leaned over and cupped his hand to his ear. She then turned around and yelled for help with the English-speaking customers. Rude. We were trying to order in German, and I know she could have understood him. Ugh. That still annoys me a little, and it's been over a week since it happened.

Speaking of ordering in German, I finally ordered something in German the other night. Before I said it, though, I had John tell it to me several times. I said "Zweimal Glüwein bitte," which means two glasses of mulled wine, please. By the way, I did NOT like the Glüwein, but John did. Lucky him...it really seems like it would keep me warm, but it tasted so gross.

Coming soon: a very late Thanksgiving post

Garmisch Part Zwei

All right. I'm back to finish my previous post about our trip to Garmisch. Before I begin, John and I figured out something that happens to be one of the most ridiculous things that has ever happened to either of us. We were looking at a map and trying to trace our route back from Garmisch to Schwetzingen. The routes we were finding weren't making sense. We didn't recognize any of the city names. The only route that made sense...went through Austria! We actually drove for about 40 minutes through Austria and didn't know it. I feel jipped! If I'm going to go to Austria, I at least want to know about it. There wasn't even a sign saying something like "Willkommen nach Österreich!" or an equivalent when we got back to Germany. When you cross a STATE line in the States, there are signs all over welcomming you to a new state. Apparently when you cross a country's BORDER here, you get nothing. My trip to Austria was a sham.

So back to that whole Garmisch thing...

John and I exploring a main street in Garmisch.


Being ourselves...aka silly happy Texans


We went to a little Italian restaurant for lunch, and I had one of the best pizzas I have ever had. Mmmm I wish I could have eaten more of it, but it was huge. So was my beer...I think this is the first draught beer I have had while in Germany. Mine is on the left.


Don't they look like tusks?


Another shot of Garmisch:

We love the mountains!


When we got back to Edelweiss (the lodge), we decided to check out the hot tub. The view was amazing! We enjoyed relaxing in the hot tub for awhile and taking in the amazing view.


When we got back to our room, clouds were rolling in about halfway down the mountain. Again, very pretty...


We decided it was time we made a snowman. Unfortunately the face recognition feature on my camera did not recognize Frosty here and chose to focus on the mountain instead.

We wanted to go out for a celebratory dinner that night (Saturday) in honor of our engagement. John asked a man working at Edelweiss about his recommendations for local restaurants. The man sent us to a restaurant that I believe is called Werdenfelserhof. When we got there, the restaurant was full. Apparently, it is customary to sit down wherever there is a seat available, even if it's with another random group of people. We ended up at a table with 6-7 people all over the age of 70. Across from us was a table of three drunken Germans. One of them took off his shoe and walked around to nearby tables to show them something about it. We were laughing, because it was ridiculous. This brought the drunk young man's attention to us, and he started spouting out German. We just smiled and laughed and nodded. He could have said "I'm going to punch you" for all we know. He looked jolly when he said it, though, so I don't think he wanted to hurt us. :o)

Soon after the shoe incident, this table of drunkards ordered a life-size glass boot filled with beer. They called John over to their table and started coaxing him to take a gulp. See...here they are trying to brainwash him:


It looks ominous, doesn't it? Anyway, John decided he would just take a sip and not a gulp. It turns out they were playing their own little game. Whoever they could get to take the first gulp of the beer would have to pay for it. John insisted that because he sipped it instead of gulping that he was not held to these rules. Language barriers and the mens' inebriation prohibited their understanding of this. We eventually wandered back to our table to drink our colas. Yes...cola. Not coke...ugh. It's so called a coke.

Here we are with the big boot and crazy drunk Germans.


Our food was pretty gross, by the way. The menu was seriously something like 25 pages long, and it took us a LONG time to go through. It was overwhelming! Out of all 25 pages, all I could find to order were potato pancakes (think hashbrowns). They came with a side of applesauce I was supposed to smear over the top. They were pretty good, but not a great dinner...ya know? John's dinner was not so good. He ordered a steak cooked medium. It came out close to rare. Because we don't speak much German and the steak had sauce poured all over it, we figured it would be a pain to send it back to the kitchen. He ate as much of it as he could. That whole restaurant experience was quite the German adventure. When we got back to the lodge, we went down to one of the lodge restaurants and ordered a drink and shared a Snickers pie. That was yummy for sure.

Sunday morning, we checked out. This was the last view we had of our room, Mr. Frosty and the mountian:


Leaving town...


Bye Garmisch!!


I have another good story from the drive home, but this post has taken me well over an hour. It's quitting time for now. Check back soon!!