Frohe Weihnachten! Merry Christmas!

The Fassmeister and the Wiesel would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas. Last weekend we had a few friends over to our house for Christmas Eve. We all had a nice time and all of the ex-pats seemed happy to have a place to spend Christmas Eve. We had our usual assortment of food and beverages, and I, for one, was happy to have some leftover meat sandwiches that usually end up in Bob's stomach. Also this year we produced some of the famed Ray's Punch that everyone seemed to enjoy, especially one of our German friends.

O Tannenbaum... er, O Weihnachtsbaum.... er, O Christbaum
Three words, same tree. Literally: Fir tree, Christmas tree, Christian tree. I have yet to see a sign for Tannenbaum, but the other two terms are used interchangeably, depending on the area of Germany you are in or who runs the stand (store or farm).

This year, Wir gingen groß (we went big). We decided to go slay our own Weihnachtsbaum from a local tree farm near a town called Rambach. Unlike the tree farms in the US that I have been to that plant all of the trees in nice rows, the German trees are randomly planted. This can make it quite difficult to navigate the Tannenbaumwald looking for the perfect tree. We finally found our choice tree after wandering for about 20 minutes or so. We hadn't brought a saw (we don't really have a suitable one for this kind of thing), so we had to go back to the from of the farm and find a farmhand with one. Since the area is fairly densely populated, we decided to leave the Fassmeister by the tree while I went looking for a Mann with a saw. After some fumbled German (they spoke no English), and a whole lot of hand signals, he understood that what I apparently wanted was called a Säge. He told me he could do better... eine Motorsäge!

After a little Marco? Polo! back to the Fassmeister, the helpful attendant whipped out his chainsaw and cut our beloved Christbaum down. Apparently, this is not a very litigious society, because I was standing behind him with my eyes closed while being pelted in the face with fir shavings. He was not wearing any eye protection either.

After navigating back through the forest to the from of the farm, we paid the man our 50 Euro for our 10 foot tree and helped him carry it out to the car. The Germans were a little concerned at our decline of their tree wrapping material, as they were unsure how we were going to strap it to our car. That's when we showed them the pickup we had borrowed from our American friends. For some reason, there are no pick-ups in Germany, but we may have convinced one or two of them to change their ways when we just tossed the old Tannenbaum over the side and into the bed-American efficiency. They were quite impressed. A quick drive home and some decoration has given us quite the envy of the neighborhood.

Lebkuchenhaus
This year we also took another stab at the Gingerbread house for the Christmas Eve party. Since our first one a few years ago was so successful, I decided to make a few modifications to the design. The template we use is a one story bungalow (much like our house used to be in Maryland), but simple designs like that are for simple people, and we do tend to renovate. This year we've added a second story and bumped out a few more gable end dormers on the roof. In order to offset the grand size of the gable sides of the house, we added two wings (one on the west side and one on the east side) to balance the elevations and provide that ever necessary curb appeal. We added a covered entrance way with lifesaver columns to help protect against the elements, hard candy pavers for sure-footedness, and decorated the house with candy lights and wreaths. All of the windows are stained lifesaver glass which help give a warm feeling during this cold winter days. The house survived it's first tests with flying colors. Only minutes after construction and decoration was completed, a vicious powdered sugarstorm came through, but no ill effects were noticed (except that someone left the door open... Fassmeister!) The next day a near miss with the tail of our family friend, Barley hund, had everyone concerned, but everything survived, even the shallow-rooted rare Mitteleuropäische Nordpalme (North-Central-Europena Palm Tree).

We hope that all of you had a very Merry Christmas and enjoyed your own holiday traditions. We certainly missed the holiday season in the states and seeing all of our family and friends. So best wishes to all and just in case you're wondering Santa did arrive in Germany - albeit after the Ray's punch cheer wore off.