Fall in Munich

Well, fall has definitely arrived in Munich. As have apples - Kyle purchased 5 kg of them, so we've been eating them steadily. Sunday, however, was baking day. After an interesting trip to the grocery store on Saturday -there's no such thing as all-purpose flour, so I purchased Type 405 after searching ToyTown; brown sugar comes as crystals; plain oatmeal is hard to find; real vanilla is so far impossible to find; and the word for cinnamon is 'Zimt' - the cooking began. End result - lots of delicious homemade applesauce and a very crunchy apple crisp. Instead of using cups and teaspoons, they measure everything by weight here, which is very exact. The ironic thing is that our oven doesn't have the most precise of temperature knobs - it's marked every 25 degrees. In Celsius, 25 degrees is quite a bit!

Woher kommen Sie?

Well, I started my language lessons this past Wednesday - I jumped into a class that started on Monday, but I've been able to catch up just fine with Kyle's help. So far we've done the basics of My name is__, I am ___ years old, I come from ___, I am a ___ for my job. And lots of counting. My class has bout 15 people in it, from all over - I am the only American, there are people from Turkey, Tunesia, Iraq, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Portugal, Brazil, Afghanistan, and I forget where else. German truly is the only common language, which means that our teacher does a lot of acting to get everyone to understand what words mean. But we're getting there!

Meanwhile, some of Kyle's co-workers were kind enough to invite me to a 'Girl's Nite' last night. We played Cranium - in German! It was a ton of fun, even though I didn't understand quite a bit of it. The girls were all very good about speaking English though and translating for me. A new word I learned - Butterfahrt!

Weekend in south west Germany

On Thursday I took the train up to Nurnberg to meet Kyle. We drove to Karlsruhe in western Germany (yes, on the Autobahn ) where he had another seminar/presentation. Then we headed south for a relaxing weekend in Staufen, which is outside of Freiburg. We basically stayed at 'Grandma Lotte's' house, in one of her rooms upstairs above her bar/restaurant, with a bathroom down the hall. The town has an old castle overlooking it, as well as many wineries specializing in white wine. We took a day trip out to Freiburg and to a clock museum in a small town called Furtwangen. The museum was really quite good, and surprising for such a small town. On a recommendation, we went to the Hohenzollern Castle the next day on our way back to Munchen - it was absolutley amazing. A bit of a hike up to get to it, but what a gorgeous day to visit!

German Reunification Holiday

Today was German Reunification day, celebrating when East and West Germany became one Germany again in 1991 (relatively recently!). Germans celebrate by taking a holiday, though we haven't exactly figured out what they do. The streets were quite empty today, and of course all the grocery stores, shops, etc. are closed much like they are on Sundays. However.... beer gardens are still open! We went to the nearby Englisher Garten, alternating between lying in the grass reading and sleeping and going to a beer garden . We also rented a paddle boat for a half hour, introducing ourselves to the local ducks and swans. All in all a great day, and quite relaxing.

Live at the Wies'n!

Well, we managed to hit up the Oktoberfest three times while we were here - once the Sunday of 'Italian weekend' (many excessively inebriated Italians, as they can't quite hold their liquor, apparently), the Thursday of the last full week with some of Kyle's new workmates, and then the Saturday of the last weekend, which was quite packed. Altogether, quite enjoyable, though I think I've had my fill of beer for quite a while!