Wedding Week - Part 2

After a few days of visiting friends (Herr J in Georgia and me in Myrtle Beach), catching up with our parents, and doing a little siteseeing, it was finally time for the official activities of wedding week to begin on Friday.

After a morning trial run with the hairstylist, I had a bridal luncheon with the bridal party, Herr J's and my mother, Aunt A, and Cousin B. It was a lovely treat to get to go out to the beach on Kiawah, and I'm so thankful to everyone for such a wonderful afternoon. Everyone looks so beautiful and colorful!

 

We were incredibly lucky with the weather - it was windy but sunny at the beach, but the rain began as soon as we left Kiawah. By the time we got to the church for the rehearsal, it was pouring, with thunder and lightning. We ran through the ceremony quickly, had a few laughs, and signed the marriage certificate with our witnesses. It made quite a funny picture of Herr J and I standing around the book with our pastor - and our attorneys! We were well represented by counsel licensed to practice in at least 4 states....though they were only present in their capacities as Maid of Honor and Best Man!

By the time we finished the rehearsal, the storm had passed over. Some guests later told us that as they were driving past the church there was a big rainbow overhead. If rain is a positive omen for a wedding, then I'm hoping a rainbow is even better!

(Please note - all photos below are by the wonderful Marni Rothschild)

Our church, St. Johns Parish:

Though I'd been quite worried, the afternoon storm turned out to be a blessing. The rain cooled down the temperature and dramatically reduced the humidity - and mde some lovely skies over the marsh. Since we were coming from Munich and many of our friends and family were travelling to Charleston for the first time, we wanted a wedding weekend that reflected our lives and showed off the beauty of the low country. We couldn't have picked a better spot than the Sea Island Yacht Club on Wadmalaw Island. This is what I wanted everyone to see.







It has a huge, wide porch overlooking the river and the marsh and is a perfect setting for a low country boil (a tradition in the area).  What is a low country boil? It's usually some variation of sausage, shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, and spices - thrown together in a pot and cooked outside.  If you do it yourself, you'll probably gather around the pot and have some drinks and some laughs while you wait. 



Again, the beautiful bridesmaids (with their lebkuchenherzen).



Mmmm....cornbread muffins...

To give everyone the real down home experience, my dad demonstrates shucking oysters at the oyster bar. Many of our Texas friends really enjoyed this part!


It was a perfect gathering of family

and friends 

and good food and views. 


At the end of the night, we did a fun little trivia quiz on Germany, with various German food products as prizes. Of course, you get a prize whether or not you're correct!

We fell in love with our baker Tammy's cakes at the cake tasting, so we had to get a couple of sheet cakes for the rehearsal, too. Here is chocolate cake with buttercream filling and a vanilla cake with raspberry filling.  Best chocolate cake we've ever tried. 


Enjoying the view of the river. 


The first day of the wedding events went very well. We had so much fun at the rehearsal dinner catching up with everyone - it was our first chance to see most of the guests who were not in the wedding, and a relaxed low country boil turned out to be the perfect locale. 

Also, we'd received the last minute favors from Amazon to substitute for the ones lost in the intercontinental mail. We were holding out hope that maybe another box would arrive in the morning. Being a wonderful small town, my mom asked the postwoman if she could call in the morning if the box arrived. But we were prepared and ready for the big day. 

Until around midnight I went to get ready for bed. I knew my hair had some pretty major knots in it - humidity and wind are not kind to me. But all the hairspray and styling of the morning must have created some evil chain reaction to turn my hair into one giant strawberry blonde dreadlock. Yes, my hair looks great in the photos, but if you lift up one strand, the ENTIRE mess would come with it. 

I thought that washing it and combing through some conditioner would do the trick. After 3 (small) bottles of conditioner and 90 minutes sitting in the bathtub (I was too tired to stand in the shower and too wet and cold to stand out of it), I finally got the knots out. There were some serious moments of doubt and thinking that we were going to have to cut it out...the morning of the wedding. Of all the things I thought would be major stresses in getting married, brushing my hair was not even on the list. 

Luckily my hair survived, Herr J survived the trauma of a bride fearful of losing her hair the day of the wedding, and we made it to the final, big day. And I've promised to avoid hairspray, backcombing, and anything else that might traumatize us both in the future when it comes to women trying to look pretty. 

Smores, German-style

Graham crackers are one of the few American foods or ingredients for which we haven't found a good replacement yet.  However, I suspect crushed Spekulatius cookies would even better than graham cracker crumbs for making a pie or cheesecake crust. So we took that guess a step further and made smores. 

Marshmallows are widely available in Munich, so we paired those up with some Milka minis and our homemade Spekulatius cookies. 

Milkas are the perfect substitute for the Hershey's squares commonly used for smores, and they actually melt more smoothly than Hersheys. 

Put in the oven around 200˚C and cook until the chocolate melts and the marshmallows are toasted.



Mmmm....perfectly browned marshmallows....the kitchen is smelling really good at this point....



And the finished product - a perfect winter treat, and I think the Spekulatius added a nice twist to the smores. If you make your own, you can make them more or less spiced or buttery to fit your taste. We'll definitely be making these again and I'll probably never use graham crackers again. Hmm...I bet Spekulatius and peanut butter would be really good....

Thanksgiving 2012

We hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. Here in Munich, most people who do celebrate Thanksgiving either have a dinner after work or postpone the celebration until the weekend. We opted to celebrate it on Thanksgiving Day, but to go out for an American dinner. 

A couple of places here offer Thanksgiving menus, and we decided to go to Hard Rock, where they were showing the NFL games. 

We started off with some beer and wings.

 

Since they offered both a Thanksgiving set menu and a selection off the normal menu, we decided to have the best of both American food worlds:

Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cornbread, and cranberry jelly. The turkey was surprisingly moist and perfectly cooked, the gravy tasty like a pot roast or zwiebelrostbraten gravy, and the stuffing was pretty good too.  The cornbread was a little dry, but tasted good enough that it reminded us how much we love cornbread. We'll be making some soon!


And for the other meal, we ordered a cheeseburger and fries. Maybe not traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but classic American and so good.


And the Thanksgiving menu included "pumpkin pie," which really was more of a pumpkin cheesecake. Very nicely done. The funny thing is that crust on the bottom seemed to be uncooked storebought pie dough. Not that it tasted bad or that I expect Hard Rock to have experience baking pies, but it was kind of funny that they seem to have forgotten to cook the crust. Of course, the pumpkin cheesecake part was so good that we ate the raw dough anyway. 



Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels from Schnitzelbahn! 

The Honor System

There are some days where living abroad can just beat you down and you succumb to the frustrations of living somewhere with a totally different system and having trouble communicating. 

But then there are other days when something happens and you are so thankful for the differences.  

We bought some DVDs Saturday and then left the bag at another store.  We tried to go back, but the store already had closed for the weekend. 

In most cases and places, you'd just write off ever getting back your DVDs. But we decided to take the chance that someone had found it and turned it in to the store. 

I'd prepared and rehearsed in my head what to say in German and tried to figure out how to prove that they were our DVDs without the receipt. And after all of that, it was about a 30 second exchange of "I left a bag with 3 DVDs here Saturday, do you have it?" and "Is this it?" "Great, have a nice day."

There are a million blog posts out there about how parts of Germany still work on the honor system (subway tickets, etc), so I won't rehash the details. But I will say how nice it is that somet days the system works in your favor and sometimes things are easy!

This Weekend's Firsts

In the short lull between the blur of wedding/travel/Oktoberfest and the start of the really busy time at work and Christmas/honeymoon, we've been trying to fit in some hobbies. 

This weekend I finally made some progress on a few firsts....

My first knitting project more difficult than a simple scarf: Herr J's new trachten vest is finally starting to take shape. Just 12 more cm and the back will be done. 

This would also be my first attempt at knitting with a pattern and the first time trying to knit in German. Maybe not the wisest combination of "firsts" but after some serious frustration at trying to understand the pattern, I think it's back on track and I'm optimistic. 

And this weekend also brought the first batches of Spekulatius and Vanillakipferl!

Germany has such wonderful Christmas cookies that it would be a shame not to learn how to make them. And the variety of cookie cutters and baking forms available here is astounding. I always want to buy a bunch when I'm in the store. And since the only way to justify buying kitchen gadgets is to use them....

Here are the first two attempts, with a spekulatius form purchased a couple of years ago and a new vanillakipferl form. I'm excited to try some more cookies and experiment with the recipes. Once we figure out the best one, we'll post the resulting recipe. The first batches were a pretty good start, but I had to adjust a few things to make the dough come together and I'd like a little more spice to the Spekulatius. Luckily the stores are stocked with baking goods in preparation for Christmas!

And, what am I most excited about this weekend? 

Not really a first, but something that has been plaguing me for months. Between me forgetting and buying a new roll and Herr J moving in with a couple of his own, we have sooo many rolls of cling wrap. Which is always a pain to use anyway...it always sticks to itself more than anything else and is tough to tear evenly...you know...

But this one box has been like the loaves and fishes of cling wrap - it NEVER ends. For the past couple of months I think I'm at the end and will finally use it up and be able to throw it away, and no...there's plenty more. How old is it? Well, you might notice the writing on the box in Thai. I left Thailand over 7 years ago. It's THAT old. And today, I finally used the last of it. I know that there's no real accomplishment in using up something, but I feel some sense of accomplishment.  

I think Herr J is probably pretty excited to finally throw out that neverending box, too, or at least to have one less box cluttering up the kitchen. But what he's super excited about is that we got tickets this weekend to see Rush when they come through Germany next summer!

All in all, a pretty good weekend. Hope you all had good weekends, too!

Friday Photo Favorite: Ice

On the Ferry to Suomenlinna, Finland. 

Sauna Ettiquette

When I opened up the internet last week, the Yahoo!Deutschland homepage immediately caught my eye with it's front page article "Sauna Ettiquette: How Naked is Too Naked?"

While I'm a little bit too old to giggle simply at the sight of the word "naked," I did laugh at realizing that the uncertainty over what to do in the sauna isn't just a question for tourists and expats.   

My first visit to a German sauna was a bit of the opposite experience...I'd been so forewarned by other Americans that the German saunas are textilfrei (i.e., no bathing suits allowed) that I didn't bother to take one with me at all when I visited the Therme Erding in Munich.  After I travelled quite a ways on public transportation to get there, there was no way I was going back to get a bathing suit after I finding out that there was a textilfrei part and another part that allowed bathing suits!  

I have to say, it was an empowering experience. Of course, I went alone and didn't know anyone there, so it was a bit easier when everyone is a stranger! But I also realized that no one has a perfect body and probably most people are either (1) not caring what you or they look like, or (2) so worried about how they look that they don't even notice you. 

But, given my general confusion about what are the rules of the sauna, it's pretty amusing to see a German story about the same questions. I guess I'd just assumed that everyone here knows the rules and we tourists or new arrivals were the only ones confused!

So, out of curiosity, what are the rules of sauna ettiquette according to this article? 

• Proper Preparation 

Whether it's just a quick shower outside the sauna or avoiding garlic/onions for a few days prior, take steps to ensure you don't smell bad. And don't wear perfume.

• Proper Attire

Funny when you don't wear anything, but be sure to bring a small towel (for the pre-sauna shower), a large towel (to sit on in the sauna), and flip flops. (And they mention that using the towel to reserve a chair in the relaxation room is frowned upon)

• Good Courtesy

Just like in an elevator or waiting room, you should politely greet everyone upon entrance. And avoid being a space-invader by asking "is this space free?" before sitting next to someone. 

• No Chattering or Staring

While most saunas allow some talking (some are strictly for silent relaxing), it does seem like good common sense to refrain from too much talking, especially gossipping, talking about work (not relaxing) or talking about how hot that guy/girl over there is. And of course, while you don't have to stare at the floor, don't let your gaze linger on anyone. Very few like to be stared at while they're naked!

• Sweat in Style

I'm a little surprised that this has to be said, but I do hear complaints so it must be true. Don't do anything that others might find disgusting. Meaning, a public sauna isn't the place for shaving, clipping toenails, sweat-scraping, or other personal grooming. 

• Your boss in the sauna

My personal favorite on the list, since I avoided the sauna in my gym due to the fact that so many male co-workers worked out there. But, what do you do if you run into your boss or coworker in the sauna? Just greet him/her politely and try to find a place where you're both looking in the same direction. And above all, maintain the #1 rule: What happens in the sauna, stays in the sauna. Not that anything significant can happen in the sauna when sticking to prescribed ettiquette....but wise advice not to go back to work and talk about your colleague's cellulite or the size of anything. 

 

Many of these rules came from the site of the German ettiquette authority, Knigge.de. If you're curious about a particular social situation, or just feel like browsing and looking for interesting items, it's a good resource.