Germany/Switzerland Extravaganza Day 1

Dad and Ruth left this morning, so now I have some time to tell you about our trip, sorry for the delay. 

Train: Prague - Nuremberg, 5:11AM 

So we took the train at the crack of dawn, got a little bit of sleep on the train, but mostly we were all too excited (and a little bit uncomfortable) to sleep. 

Nuremberg was a nice little town, it looked like it was set up inside old castle fortress walls, which was neat. 

After finding the hotel and checking in, we went to the Christmas market, which was pretty impressive. One of the cute things about most of the Christmas markets we went to is that they served hot wine in a small mug which you could keep, or return for 3 Euro. We kept all the mugs and now our cabinet is full!

After wandering around the Christmas market and grabbing lunch, we went back to the hotel for a nap, where we got to watch a brief anti-nazi parade/protest from the window.

Afterwards, went to the coolest restaurant ever. The place was called Bagger's, and there were no waitresses, but excellent service. Each big round table had two computer screens where you ordered your food and drinks, and each table also had a difficult to describe way of receiving the food. Basically it was sent down to you from the kitchen upstairs and spiraled down to your table. Here is a video of the place: 

All in all, Nuremberg was wonderfully fun and I think my favorite German city we visited. Germany was pretty impressive overall. For some reason I didn't expect much from it (maybe it was trumped by the anticipation of Switzerland) but every place we saw there was super clean and everyone we met was extremely friendly. 

Our mugs from the Christmas market.

a small section of the Christmas market.

the rally/protest/parade, safe from our hotel window.

Figuring out the ordering system (most of it was in German, thank goodness for pictures!)

our food getting served (the first dish came with a sparkler!)

spirals all over the place!

if you look in the background, you can see the steel spirals.

Tomorrow I will post Day 2 (I think we will all benefit from updates one at a time)

Quote

perhaps the best from the whole time with Dad. 

Said to Jace while Jace kept beating him at cards:

"I hope my son turns gay so I can have a favorite son-in-law."

We're Home

Alright, so after a 9 hour series of train rides that began at 2AM, we finally made it home. 

8 days and 700 pictures later, we are exhausted. 

But we had a great time. 

I will post many many more details later as well as some pictures. 

Love you guys!

Merry Christmas!

Hey Everybody!
We are in Zermatt, Switzerland and having a great time. We just finished taking a train across the Alps, and we went to some Christmas markets in Germany a few days ago. Everything has been beautiful and we have had a wonderful time so far. Tomorrow we leave for Munich and will be going to the castle that inspired the Cinderella castle.

We love everyone very much and will post pictures ASAP!

Christmas Card

Sorry we didn't mail this, but you can print it and pretend we did. 

They're Here!

Daddy and Ruth made it safely! It is great to have them here. 

And they brought goodies!!

Dad kept pulling things out of his suitcase as if it were Mary Poppins' bag. It just kept going. 

Tomorrow...

Dad and Ruth will be here!!

And on Saturday we begin our Germany/Switzerland Christmas Extravaganza!

I can not wait!!!!

Czech Christmas Part II

You know who delivers the presents on Christmas Eve?

No, not Santa....

Baby Jesus. 

Here are some more Christmas decorations in Prague

Practical Czech

In my Czech lessons, we learn many useful Czech phrases like "how much does it cost?" (Kolik stojí) and "I dont speak Czech" (Nemluvím Česky)

But at school, I get to learn the really fun phrases like "gross" (fuy) and "cool" (husty)

Today at school I learned the word vši.
it means lice.

(I am vši-free though)

Jace is Home!

He went to Dublin to get his Visa, it was complicated and he ended up staying 3 days longer than originally planned, but he has a 3 month visa, and a long-term visa pending, and we will be able to travel without any problems. 

We are now both legal in Prague!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

So, aside from the snow, which started falling again yesterday, Christmastime is in full swing over here. 

Actually, some Christmas decorations were up the first day in November, I guess thats acceptable since they don't have Thanksgiving here. 

There are Christmas markets in abundance which sell food and drinks, toys, gifts, clothing, and soon - live carp. So many stores have lights covering the outside, and there are lights decorating all the streets. 

All these pictures were taken from the same street corner: 

This is an Advent calendar in the mall windows, each day of the month gets replaced with a lighted picture. 

This is a very small example of the Christmas markets that are everywhere. Downtown they are many more stalls. This particular one has a smoked ham cooking over the fire that you can order. 

This is how all the streets look, though there are different lights. 

And it's Christmas in our house too! 

Our Santa ornament from Paris

Czech Christmas

So the Czechs certainly have some interesting Christmas traditions. 

For one, they eat fried carp as their Christmas meal, and you can buy these carp at anyone of the abundant Christmas markets in town. They are alive, and you can buy it live to keep fresh in your bathtub until its ready to be cooked, or you can have it killed right then and there. (I can only imagine the conditions of the market streets on Christmas Eve......)

Now on the 5th of December, they celebrated St. Nicholas Day. On this day St. Nick (better known as Santa) comes and visits the children, asks if they have been a good  boy or girl, and gives them some chocolate. This is often done by friends of your family, and we did this at school as well. 

But Santa does not come alone - no no. He is accompanied by an angel and a devil. And when we went out at night on St. Nicholas Day, it looked like Halloween: Santas, angels, and devils all around. The tradition - I believe is that the children generally perform for the 3 visitors to earn their chocolate, and the devil walks around with an empty sack to carry off any naughty children. 

We had this tradition occur at our school with the kids, but only the devil and Santa - there were only 2 ppl to dress up, and apparently the angel was best excluded. 

Here are 2 pictures. No, that is not the Pope, it is Santa.  (But I guess it is closer to the likeness of St. Nick than our fat, red man)