Prenzlauer Berg Weihnachtsmarkt

By the time we made it to the final Weihnactsmarkt, light was fading, which means it was about 4pm (living so far north is strange). Here are some pictures Keith took there:

Alexanderplatz Weihnachtsmarkt

After living near Alex for a couple of months, we knew that this would probably be the tourist trap version, just like everything else there. It was packed with people. They had an ice skating rink set up. We only walked through because we had to change trains there anyway, but the five minutes spent there were more than enough. One cool thing they had was a giant version of the wooden things that spin when you light candles underneath it:

Sorry, I forget the word. As you can see, it was many stories high.

Gendarmenmarkt Weihnachtsmarkt Food

The food at the Gendarmenmarkt Weihnachtsmarkt was delcious. There was this bread with cheese, chives and bacony-stuff baked in a wood-burning oven that was amazing.

There was also some other melty cheese on bread thing, meat being smoked, and other fancier foods.

We're back!

Hopefully by the time you read this, we will be back in the states. I'll keep posting over Christmas about stuff in Germany and possibly some about our trip home. Happy Holidays!

Gendarmenmarkt Weihnachtsmarkt

Disclaimer: Some of these Christmas markets are officially described as "Adventsmarkt." It is possible that I have or will confused which is which.

Anyway, next we went to Gendarmenmarkt, which is beautfiul any time of year, although especially so now. It's a square with a French church on one side (the French protestants were invited to Berlin when the Catholics kicked them out of France at some point in history. The French also invented the Berliner Weisse, which makes so much more sense than a German coming up with such a sweet drink.), a marginally larger and taller but otherwise identical German church directly across from it and a concert house in the middle. The Weihnachtsmarkt was set up in this square. Here are some pictures:

Potsdamer Platz Weihnachtsmarkt

Throughout Advent, there are tons of Christmas markets (Weihnachtsmärkte) throughout Berlin. The first Saturday, we went to the ones at Potsdamer Platz, Gendarmenmarkt, Alexanderplatz and one up in Prenzlauer Berg. The first Sunday we went to a crafts-oriented Weihnachtsmarkt at Mexikoplatz (seriously) that looked like it was straight out of New Hope.

Here's a picture of us at Potsdamer Platz:

Note the Glühwein (warm spiced wine) and the manmade sledding hill in the background.

This was a view along the main corridor:

And here's a guy playing with metal and fire:

More Animal Pictures

Loki Pictures

Because he's so adorable/crazy

Thanksgiving Pictures

Here are some pictures from the Thanksgiving we hosted a while back. Constans took these great pictures and was kind enough to share them with me.

Berlin Dom GIF

Keith made this gif to show the different designs on the Berliner Dom. This is a work of art designed specifically for the Festival of Lights.

Festival of Lights

A bit over a month ago Berlin hosted a Festival of Lights in which many famous building and monuments were lit up. I finally got the pictures from our Festival of Lights adventure from Keith, so here are some of my favorites:

Bread and Salt

At the Thanksgiving dinner we hosted, we received a loaf of bread and some salt as a present (as well as a beautiful poinsettia). These are traditional German housewarming gifts, so that you always have something to eat (bread) and you always have money (salt). This tradition dates back to the days when salt and other spices were rare. It was a really sweet gesture.

Fewer Posts

Things are a little crazy right now, so I'll be moving to a post every other day for a while.

Awesome Bike Ride

We went on a bike ride a couple of weeks ago in the Grunewald area. It was gorgeous and so peaceful. The leaves were starting to turn, too. The first half on the loop was pretty flat, but the second half was near some lakes and was quite hilly. We took these pictures at the top of one of those hills:

Josie and Loki

It's hard to make out what's going on in this video, but Loki is cleaning Josie. Very adorable.

Crisco

Here is it called plant fat. And you buy it by the kilogram.

TJ Maxx's German Cousin

Turkey Time!

We had a housewarming party last week and made Thanksgiving dinner for it. Here's Keith and Josie with our 8.5 kg turkey:

We had 24 people over and made a ton of food and had a lot of fun. At the end, we had just enough turkey for lunch the next day and the only major leftovers came from the chorizo stuffing that took longer than anticipated to cook. There was also a fair bit of pumpkin pie left because people took very tiny pieces since they'd eaten anything like it before. All in all, I think Thanksgiving was a great success.

New Apartment!

Here's a video tour of our new apartment. It's technically a three room apartment (the kitchen doesn't count as a room in that calculation) with a bathroom and laundry room and balcony as well. The way it looks on the video is pretty much how it looked when we moved in. Since then we've changed some of the light fixtures, but we haven't had a ton of time to change other things. The bathroom is really strange. Some day I will write a post devoted to the bathroom. The lack of logic that went into its design really bothers me. Anyway, hope you enjoy the movie!

UPDATE: Sorry that the video was not available for viewing. I changed the privacy setting, so it should be watchable now.

No Internet at Home

My apologies for the lack of regular posts lately. We do not have internet at our new apartment and will not have any until December 5th because Deutsche Telekom has to come out to install something (cable maybe?). I don't quite understand what it is that they have to do, but I think it may be because there has never been internet in our apartment. In the meantime we're tethering to our phones, which is quite slow.

Anyway, I'll do my best to post from work or from here with limited pictures, but things may be a little sparse for a while. Keith made a video tour of our new apartment, so I will try to upload that at work tomorrow.

I miss my TV shows.

Puppy Perch

Josie is protecting us from any rotating advertisements.

Seen in Ikea

Christmas is already here in a big way.

Halloween in Germany

Halloween is a new holiday in Germany, so it's not that big yet. The young people use it as an excuse to party, but there were sadly no trick-or-treaters. No jack-o'-lanterns or decorations, either.

On a positive note, I got the 31st off from work. I work in Brandenburg, which is historically Protestant and celebrates Reformation Day as a public holiday. However, because we live in Berlin, which is apparently without a historic religious preference, they didn't have the day off (or November 1st, which the Catholic states celebrate as All Saints Day). This meant that I had a day off of work where I could actually go shopping. Pretty awesome.

So. Much. Ikea.

Over last weekend, we went to Ikea three times in four days. The first trip took five hours. I did not realize how much stuff we did not have. We got into the kitchen section and realized that we needed everything: plates, silverware, cups, pots, bowls, etc. Plus, we needed lights and tons of furniture. After our first trip, this is what we bought:

This is Keith tying down the back of our "bus" aka Ford Focus that we rented for the move:

On our second trip we discovered that we could get Ikea to deliver our purchases, which we took advantage of on our third trip. I hope that the trip number will not have increased again by the time this posts, although we've been eyeing up the couches in the "As Is" section and almost bought one on the third trip. However, they did not have any more covers for the couch, which is kind of a deal breaker. The couch that was left in our apartment by the previous tenants has a trundle underneath and slips apart as you sit on it...

Welcome to 1989

I was talking to my father a while back about paint in Germany and how there was no paint mixer, just bottles of different colors to hand mix together. He said that when we lived in the old house, the first paint mixer came to the area. We moved 22 years ago. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I saw this in the local Hellweg (basically a Lowe's):

This is brand new and says "We mix any color!" I was here a month earlier and there was a wall set up with different textures of wall paper. (Here, paper gets glued to concrete. If the paper is like real wallpaper, you're done, if the paper is like newspaper, you paint it.)

Can you find Loki in this picture?

Hint: Josie's looking at him.

Germany's Higher Education System aka Why it's hard to find a seat on the 7:12 train to work

Once we get some pictures of the apartment I'll be posting those, but until then I'll write about another topic: why my morning train is so full.

Germany's old education system limited the people who could go to university to those who graduated from Gymnasium (the highest level schools) and did well enough on their Abitur to get into the program and university of their choice. Those who went to Hauptschule or Realschule could also attend university, but only after graduating from a vocational school, work for five years, and then completing upper vocational school.

However, this year, a lot has changed. The Abitur is no longer necessary, German men are not conscripted for 6 months-1 year and lower education has been decreased in length by one year. It's pretty much a perfect storm of overcrowded universities. Der Spiegel has a really interesting article about it here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,792830,00.html.

The effect on my life is that the train to Golm is always full, even at 7:12am.

Immigration Office Day 2

In order to better ensure that Keith could get an appointment for a visa, we arrived at the Ausländerbehörde at 5am. Yes, arrived at 5am. We were about the 10th and 11th people in line. It was cold and completely dark excluding the bright halogen lights of the Ausländerbehörde. The building has a gate out front that was closed. Around 5:30am security guards arrived. Around 5:50am the employees arrived. Employees were not let in the gate until 6am, at which point there was also a stampede of all of the people who had waited in line outside. Approximately 50 people raced to their appropriate entrance, where another line was formed. At this point we were the second and third people in line. At 7am the doors opened and another stampede ensued, although this one was less ordered and involved stairs. Our friend from yesterday, the ticket machine, was taped over with a sign that said "no more waiting number for today," which was very scary. However, it was just left there from Monday. Eventually, a somewhat surly lady came out and removed the sign. Keith got the second ticket. We felt awful for the people in the A-E line for tickets; after 15 minutes of standing in like waiting, they were told that no one would be in their office that day, so they should try to find space somewhere else even though most of the tickets had been given away by that point.

Keith was called up early. Unlike the man who took care of my case yesterday, this woman did not speak English at all. However, the three of us fumbled through the interaction and Keith has a four month provisional visa and another appointment for a longer term visa in December. Despite all of our visa success, it is somewhat unfortunate that success still comes with two more trips to the Ausländerbehörde.

Immigration Office Day 1

It was getting to be time for visa renewal, so last Monday we headed to the Ausländerbehörde (Immigration Office). It's only open for non appointments Monday and Tuesday 7-2 and Friday 9-12 (and appointments are reserved over six weeks out), so we got there at 7. Unfortunately, there is very little direction and signage. We got to Keith's area just in time to see the long line of angry people being told that there were no more slots available for the day. It took us 30 minutes or so to figure out how to get an appointment (number giving machine with no indication that you were supposed to press the button to get a number) and I got the last one for the day. Things improved significantly after that. We waited a couple of hours, but I had all of the necessary paperwork and I was able to get a significantly extended (14 month) visa. Since I'm getting an ID card instead of a visa pasted into my passport, I have to wait six weeks to get the ID card and until then I'm not allowed to leave the country.

Tomorrow I'll tell the story of Keith's visa adventure. It was much more exciting than mine (hint: two stampedes of visa hopefuls).

Searching for an Apartment

I apologize that the posts lately have been about stuff so long ago. The past couple of weeks have been consumed by the apartment search. Here are some important things to know about finding an apartment in Berlin:
1. 95% of the places will not respond if you email them, so you must call and speak to someone (in German).
2. The viewings tend to be between 2:30 and 6 pm Monday-Friday, which is not ideal if you work an hour out of the city. This is because a lot of the places don't have overhead lighting, so you have to view when there's sunlight.
3. You will not necessarily get an apartment if you are interested in it. There is an application process, wherein the leasing agent collects a bunch of applications and presents them to the landlord, who then chooses his/her favorite.
4. You can wait weeks to find out whether you will be offered apartment.
5. As a result of 3 and 4, you must apply to many places and see even more.
6. Pretty much all of this is in German.

In short, the past couple of weeks have been pretty stressful, but we will be moving into an awesome new apartment next weekend and my comfortableness with speaking German has improved considerably as a result of all of the cold calls and appointments. We've also now visited a lot more of the city.

The Bird

A couple of weeks ago we went out to eat with some people from work. A French guy was heading back to France and chose to have his last meal here: http://thebirdinberlin.com/. Yes, it's that good. To be fair, in America it would just be a solid burger joint with great service and a good beer selection, but here, it's heaven. The burgers come with delicious hand-cut fries and are served on effectively English Muffins. Anyway, the highlight of the night was when all the guys decided to try this hot sauce: http://www.insanechicken.com/da-bomb-hot-sauce/. I had never seen four grown men crying together before. They also had to spend 10 minutes outside cooling down. I guess that's what happens when you eat something with a Scoville rating of 120,000.

Germany Unity Day

October 3 is Germany Unity Day, which means I didn't have work. Instead, we met up with some people from work and had a barbecue in the Tiergarten. We brought Josie along and we all had a great time.

Just like with the 5th of July in the US, only about half of the people made it to work the next day.

Boat Tour

In Bruges, we wandered around, visited some museums and too a boat tour of the city. On the tour we saw this very comfortable and adorable dog:


From Bruges, we took the train back to Brussels, and then to the airport and got in late that night. Loki was very happy to see us. The next morning we picked up Josie from the kennel, and she was also quite happy to see us. Her lack of exhaustion after spending three days there made us feel that she didn't get to play enough and that we will not return there.

Hot Chocolate

After wandering around for a while, we stopped for some hot chocolate. It was delicious!

King Albert I Park

To get from the Bruges train station to the main part of town, we walked through a beautiful park. It was made even more beautiful by the morning mist and sunshine through the trees. Here are some pictures Keith took:

Heading to Bruges

By the end of our second day in Brussels, we had decided that a change of scenery would be nice. Not only had we seen most of what we wanted to in Brussels, but the marathon was the next day and we did not want to deal with that. So we went to Bruges. Since we're both 25 and under, tickets were only 6.50 each way. Pretty awesome.

On our way to Bruges, we saw bike parking at a train station. Wow.