More Holiday Fun

This weekend there was another... Festival!  You guessed it!  Since Germans don't have Thanksgiving as a "marker" for the start of the Christmas season, November 1st began all the Christmas preparation.  (I guess in the States they start pretty early too...)  Right outside our apartment are the beginnings of the Striezelmarkt, an annual Christmas Market.  The whole thing (Weihnachtsmarkt) runs from the Neustadt past our apartment all the way to the main train station.  I couldn't believe it when they started constructing some of the houses the other day.  But, being that its the 576th year of Christmas Market and that its such a big deal here, I guess I could see it taking a month to set up (it opens Nov. 26th).

To kick of the holiday season, a nearby town (Pulsnitz) celebrated with a Pfefferkuchenmarkt (or Gingerbread Festival).  Again, the weather was cold and rainy, but nothing was going to stop me from going to a festival that celebrates my favorite holiday food!

It was a lot of shopping and a lot of Gingerbread.  Here I am standing in line at one of the best Gingerbread Bakeries where I bought gingerbread, of course.

The gingerbread festival had the usual festival stands (bratwurst, wooden crafts, socks, etc.) but there were also a lot of exciting "Gingerbread-y" items to try like Pfefferkuchen Bratwurst and Pfefferkuchen Glühwein (I'll do a whole post sometime about glühwein, but just know that it is the best Christmas drink ever!)

The coolest part about the Pfefferkuchenmarkt were a bakery showroom where we got to see some of the Gingerbread being made and the museum where we learned all about making Gingerbread (in German, of course)

Some Gingerbread "cutters"

Gingerbread in the oven

Gingerbread "resting"

 

Gingerbread Spices

Some Alpine horn players

The making of Gingerbread is fascinating.  It used to be 1/2 flour (with spices) and half honey.   Now they use sugar, but there are never any eggs or milk in the dough.

There are 10 different spices in Gingerbread.  

When the dough is made, every day each family bakery saves a piece of dough from the gingerbread batch in a box (under lock and key).  The next day, that little bit is mixed into the new batch of gingerbread, so really, each piece of gingerbread has molecules of 125 year old dough in it (yum!).

Another interesting fact is that the dough must rest for three months!  During that time some bacteria (sort of like yeast) form and cause the dough to rise a bit in the oven.  

German gingerbread is definitely very different than the gingerbread I'm used to, but it's fantastic!  I almost had to be rolled home I ate so much!! 

Christmas Decorations in Germany

On Saturday we ventured to Langenwolmsdorf, a tiny town about 45 minutes outside Dresden to visit a Kunsthandwerkerhaus (a long word that pretty much means artist workshop/showroom).  It was a really cool place with 6 or 7 buildings all for Christmas decorations!  Unfortunately, it was very cold and rainy, so I couldn't get a lot of good pictures.  Also, the coolest parts were inside and there was no photography allowed :(.  This is the outside of one of the shops.

German Christmas decorations are the Christamassiest decorations anywhere (in my opinion).  There are a lot of paper stars (which I am learning to make), and a ton of wooden decorations.  At the workshop, we were able to see how some of the wooden decorations were made.  We also saw more Christmas decorations in one place than we'd ever seen before!  My favorite type of decoration is called a "schwebbogen."  It is a thin wooden carving that is in the shape of an arc.  Usually there are two layers with lights in between.  Here is a picture.  We bought ourselves a "pyramide," which, contrary to the way it sounds, doesn't really look much like a pyramid.  I guess it's sort of triangular...  Its more like a wooden carving with windmill blades at the top- you light candles under the blades and they spin because of the heat.  Its probably easier just to look at it!

We also had a fantastic snack of hot chocolate and apple strudel while we were there... a perfect snack for a cool rainy day!

R is for Rhino

A Hauntingly Hip Halloween Party

What to do when you're an art teacher stuck at home and desperately needing to create things?  Throw a awesome Halloween Party of course!

Usually, Halloween is not my favorite holiday... I don't really like dressing up much, and we never got trick-or-treaters where I lived, so the only fun thing about it was carving pumpkins, which either got smashed or rotted in a few days.

BUT, Halloween is the best holiday for party throwing.  Its one of the few holidays with lots of characters (frankenstein, skeletons, ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, witches, etc.) and probably the only that doesn't require any seriousness what-so-ever.  Also, you can make people wear costumes to your house. (Which, in Germany, is quite funny because few people here celebrate halloween and most of the people that came to my party had to use public transportation.  Can you picture riding on the tram in a witch costume, or dressed like a fireman?)

First we had to think of a great costume.  Can you guess what we were?  Its something really "cool".

ceiling fans

I made all the food for the party, and of course, had to go all out and make cute and creative snacks.

mummy dogs

rice krispy pumpkins 

rice krispy frankensteins

graveyard dip

witches fingers

puking pumpkins

tomato eyeballs

snakewich

We had a blast at the party.  We even held a costume contest.  Here are the winners for "Scariest" and "Best".

scariest: our friend Chris in a dirndl

best: Glyn the bin