Enjoying Bavarian Holidays: Maria Himmelfahrt

Welcome to another ridiculous Bavarian Holiday! I find it incredibly interesting to have so many religious holidays in a country as secular as Germany. But that's not the point of my post.

Since the airport is open everyday, I don't get the day off. But I just wanted to take a moment to wish you all a Happy Maria Himmelfahrt Day... And for all of you to take a breath, have a rest, and enjoy... because it's pronounced, "Him-mel FART!!" Hahahaha.

Have a great day everyone!

Enjoying Bavarian Holidays: Salzburg

Bavaria is a very religious part of Germany. So religious, they have an extra 18 days a year of vacation where the entire region closes. I'm not joking. Everyone gets the day off, and people sit around try to remember exactly what the day means. In June we celebrated "Corpus Christi Day" (still haven't figured out what it means) and Erik got the day off. We took a short ride to Salzburg, just to see if the hills really were alive...

Cool palace fountain.

It was scorching hot and being by the river felt nice

They were alive.

For the first time in weeks, it was 25 C. We were so surprised considering it had snowed three weeks before. We were definitely unprepared but it felt nice.

Salzburg is a very regal city. It's very old looking and all of the buildings are palatial.

 While walking through, we stumbled upon a graveyard. The gravestones were really cool and unlike any I've ever seen-they were made of metal. We looked to find the oldest one there. It was from the 1700's!!

Salzburg is situated next to a cliff face, the same cliff face where the castle is. Built into the cliffs is an old chapel. We walked up these dodgy stairs that had been carved into the rock, and came upon a very old church that was about 20 ft-20ft, had a few pews, and a place to put holy water.

Thank goodness for this place.. it was so cool inside!! It was a nice break from the heat!

After Erik and I walked around and looked at the city, and then we decided to take a funicular up to the top of the cliffs to the castle.

The view from the top of the castle was magnificent. You could see the entire city and the hills in the background. It was gorgeous.

After this, we were tired and wanted to go home, but we shared our tickets with some friends and had to wait for them. Erik and I went down to the river and took a nap on a hill. What a gorgeous setting.

Salzburg is a nice place to visit. I didn't do the Sound of Music tour, but maybe someday I'll go back and see where it all began.

Footloosin' it Around Munich

Happy Ash Wednesday everyone, and welcome to my first Tanzverbot. Germany, the rule-loving country that it is, officially bans dancing on high-holy days, where no music is allowed to be played, and people are not allowed to dance. Burn the sinners!! After seeing the movie Footloose starring Kevin Wormwald, I was really excited. I mean, I'm no Juliane Hughes, but I've been known to shake my booty on the dance floor when the mood strikes. I was imagining these secret meetings that started at mid-night Tuesday, where all the rebellious youth of my generation was going to gather together and have a big dance off in the high school parking lot... Obviously protesting this hideously archaic rule. So I put my dancing shoes on, and dressed for the occasion:

Officially the end of "Fasching", everyone dresses up as if it were Halloween. Some people get really into it, and it's great. Eagerly awaiting the stroke of mid-night, we went out to a club and started dancing while it was still legal.

 Wahoo! We were stoaked. Quite a few people were out at first, and we were having a really good time.

But lets get back to reality. I'm in Germany. GERMANY Stephanie. The land of the U-bahn where no one checks to see if you bought you ticket.. because why wouldn't you buy a ticket? So sadly, mid-night came and went, and nothing exciting happened at all.... Who knows. Maybe all the German Youth went home and prayed.

Enjoying Bavarian Holidays: Fröhliches neues Jahr!!

Happy New Year to my friends and family around the world.
2012 is going to be a good one. I can just feel it.

On the eve of our new year, I went to my friend Elise's house for a traditional German dinner of raclette. I wish I had pictures of it. Basically, everyone gets a small tray, about half the size of a business envelope. You fill the tray up with different treats, like onion, mango, mushroom, etc. Then you cover it with cheese. You place the tray into this heating element, that melts the cheese until it sizzles. On the top of the heating element, you grill various types of meat. Then you take the tray out and place the mixture over cooked potatoes, and finish with freshly grilled meat. IT IS AMAZING. After stuffing our faces with raclette, we finished with a traditional New Zealand desert of pavlova, or like a meriangue covered with kiwi and creme. 

oh boy. were we finished. Elise and I almost decided not to go out, but thinking about what my dad said, "you are in germany. go. experience it" we decided to do the traditional Bavarian thing and go into the center of Munich and watch the fireworks. New Year is the one day a year when they are allowed to light fireworks and boy, do they light fireworks. It was like a war-zone!! They are lighting off fireworks everywhere you look. The whole streets are filled with people and you can hardly see in front of you because of all the smoke. They have no discretion: young, old, weak, strong, they let those things off in every direction.We were running and screaming as we dodged all of them going off. It was a blast. (literally)

The really cool part was how historic the buildings were. We were basically in the middle of one of the oldest parts of Germany, some things dating back to the 1500's, and they were being lit up like Fourth of July. It was pitch black outside but you could see everything in the sky. It was gorgeous. We had such a fun time. Oh, did I mention it was pouring rain??

Elise's host-brother lives in Missouri and is visiting for Christmas. We met up with him and his american friend and went to a proper German New Year's Party. That was interesting... a nice cultural experience. They just..well... drink. A lot. And eat sausage. Pretty much what you'd expect! We kind of spent most of the time entertaining ourselves and then about an hour trying to hail a cab, but I'm glad I went.

When we returned home, Elise, Bret and I sat together and finished off the rest of the pavlova. and by that, I mean I finished the rest of the pavlova. It was so delicious. All in all, New Year's was a smashing hit.

Enjoying Bavarian Holidays: Exploring Munich

Well, here in Germany, Boxing Day is a national holiday. Everyone gets it off work, and all German businesses are closed. Good news for me: I get the day off. Bad news for me: Everything is closed...

I called my friend Khaliq (who is Muslim, and doesn't celebrate Christmas) and we decided to explore the city.

We had a grand old time! We walked by buildings that looked historic and took tons pictures. There are many very old and beautiful churches in Munich. Most of them were closed except for the main sanctuaries, but it was still very neat. They were beautifully painted and used lots of gold accents. It was very fun.

We walked around for several hours before we realized how hungry we were!! We started looking for something to eat but EVERYTHING was closed!! About an hour before we had seen a McDonalds that was open, so decided to head that way. Luckily on the way, Khaliq spotted a little Kebap shop that was opened. Kebaps have never tasted so good!! For those of you who don't know what  a kebap is... basically, they slow roast chicken all day so it's extra juicy. When you order it, they shave off enough in thin slices to make a sandwich. Then they add this yogurt sauce, spicy sauce, and whatever veggies they can find. Then they toast the bread (or tortilla) and you eat it. It is SO GOOD.

After lunch, we walked around the city more and kept running into statues of lions. So we decided to make a montage of lion shots.

At the end of the day, we found this Irish Pub.. called "the irish pub" and had end of the day drinks. I had BIONADE. It's this weird hippie soda that's all natural.. but pretty tasty. It was a very lovely day off!