Pumpkin is carved!

Jack Skellington

Pumpkin gutting

A few touch ups

The finished product

Ich bin ein Berliner (I wish)

Berlin is a great city, thoroughly destroyed by WWII, separated by a huge wall, and now more progressive than Frankfurt in almost every way. For instance, speaking on the train, speaking English, being non-white: nicht verboten! The Berlin Zoo and Aquarium did not disappoint. We waited outside the gate at opening time and made a dash for Knut and Gianna, two famous polar bears. About a dozen people were already there trying to get pictures of the bear antics. Gianna (the person) really liked all the animals at the zoo and the aquarium. She got to pet fish and see some animals she had only seen in picture books, like the panda.

Using the efficient U/S Bahn system, we were able to take in a lot of other sites in West and East Berlin including the Brandenburg Gate, Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Homosexual Holocaust Memorial, Tiergarten, Checkpoint Charlie, and a bunch of other museums and old buildings. We took a boat tour of the city on Sunday (while it was raining) and drank copious amounts of Dunkin Donuts coffee the entire weekend. No, they did not have pumpkin spice. I was disappointed, but settled for my year-round flavor, caramel. It felt great to slam down a few Boston Creams and Munchkins.


Take a look at the photos here, but one word of warning, the Jewish Holocaust Memorial was loads of fun. I don't think anyone meant disrespect to the millions of Jews that lost their lives, but the undulating concrete slabs form an irresistible hedge maze to run up and down and ample platforms to pose for photos. The one security guy had his hands full chasing people off the slabs.

Celebrate!

One year ago, I held my baby girl in my arms for the first time. Sure, she didn't like me very much back then, but she eventually came around :-) Last night after dinner, I unveiled my surprise DVD project called Gotcha Day 2009. It was touching; there were tears, smiles, laughs, group hugs, with Gianna saying "I wuv you guys". The festivities continue with our weekend trip to Berlin to see the polar bear Knut and his Italian girlfriend Gianna.

Halloween cupcakes

My cake decorating order finally arrived from the UK this weekend. That means it's open season for festive cupcakes and cookies. For Halloween, the package contained cupcake liners, two types of sprinkles, bat/spider candy toppers, and food coloring dye for the icing. I still have to work on my icing recipe for Gianna's birthday, but thankfully that's another month away and I now have plenty of supplies. Gianna had a great time spreading (and eating) the icing and making a mess with sprinkles.

On this date in 2008

October 18, 2008 we flew from JFK to Hanoi to adopt our precious daughter Gianna. I can't believe it has been one year already! Take a look at my old blog if you want to reminisce, but be aware, the photos have been hastily moved to picasa. We have lots of festivities planned to celebrate Gotcha Day, which is officially October 23, so stay tuned.

In other Oeder Weg news, the bakery down the street is getting people into the spirit of Halloween with bat or ghost quark pastries. Yum! I love these sugar coated treats. Gianna bites off all the chocolate and leaves most of the body and raisin eyes for me to eat. We make a great team :-)
If you like dahlias, take a look at this photo album. The Palmengarten is having a mediocre chrysanthemum show, so come for the chrysanthemums, stay for the dahlias. Unfortunately recent frosts have damaged a lot of them, but there was still much beauty to behold.

Therapy for homesickness

Today I crossed two things off my list from the previous post with a trip to Starbucks and a homemade apple pie. While the closest Dunkin is in Berlin, there are Starbucks in Frankfurt, and they sell pumpkin lattes, at least they do in the States. So I marched into the Starbucks on the Zeil, convinced the barista to speak to me in English and tried to negotiate a pumpkin latte. She claimed to not know what I was talking about. I walked out with a peppermint latte instead. Close enough. Next stop was the farmers market for a couple kilos of apples. I made a crust from scratch and followed the same recipe my mom uses. The photo does not do it justice, it smelled and tasted delicious if I do say so myself. We ate it hot with milk for dinner like we used to do when I was a kid. Tomorrow I think I will eat lunch at KFC ;-)

School picture day

We'll have to wait to get the prints back to see if she smiled for the photographer or not. She would only give me a goofy smile or the back of her head after school. In other news, the XBox 360 is dead, adding to the list of reasons to return to the States. The XBox played our US DVD's and streamed US TV shows to the flat screen from the computer. We have jerry-rigged Dan's computer directly to the flat screen, but it's less convenient (no remote) and still does not solve Dan's problem of not being able to play his XBox games.

Gianna has been talking about going back to New Jersey. She wants to "ride in a car" and "see her friends", referring to her Vietnamese buddies. Some days I even think Bruno is telling me (through dog telepathy, of course) that he wants to be back in his old yard. Being an "Accidental Hausfrau" is getting to me, especially with the gray Frankfurt winter nipping at our heels. The only consolation is that there are hundreds of other women in the same situation, well-educated women that gave up their career to follow their boyfriend/husband to Germany and are now out of work, spending long days in the home, pondering the cleaning power of Persil and debating politics with the dog. But I digress. Top 5 things I miss about the States this time of year:

1. Mom's apple pie (yeah mom, you make #1)
2. Fall leaves in Central PA at my Dad's farm
3. Chipping leaves with Dan (a lot of work, but quality time with power equipment and my husband)
4. Pumpkin spice coffee at Dunkin Donuts
5. Looking forward to Thanksgiving with the fam

Columbus Day

Although Germany celebrates neither Columbus Day nor Canadian Thanksgiving, Gianna had off from school today. To celebrate, we decided to hit the Frankfurt Zoo. It was a ghost town partially due to the cold, damp weather and the fact we got there right when it opened on a Monday. After seeing all the animals, we feasted on hot coffee and a Papagei Waffel (mit chocolate sauce and the German version of M&M's, see above).

Apple orchard tour

Deutsche Börse held a rare family event on Thursday at Obsthof am Steinberg, an apple orchard where they make their own cider and apfelwein. It was nice to get out of the city and walk around a farm complete with sheep and a free roaming goat. The goat was getting into all sorts of trouble, eating the flowers and holiday decorations. At one point I turned my back on him and he butted me twice in the thigh, much to the delight of the gawking Germans. Hilarity. They had a creepy magician for the kids. When I say creepy, I mean I just question the motives of any man working as a kids clown/magician. During dinner, he held a magic show in a back room with me and two other parents supervising. Gianna volunteered us to participate in one of the acts. Mind you, this was all in German, so the kids got a real kick out of the fact that I had no idea what this magician was telling me to do. At the end of the night, Gianna let him give her a dolphin tattoo on the arm.

The goat in question:

Frankfurt Harvest Festival

There is never a shortage of festivals around here. For the next three days at the Frankfurt Harvest Festival, farmers have displays downtown with live farm animals, fresh apple cider, pumpkins, and all sorts of food. Gianna and I went this afternoon for two hours. She pet pigs, gazed at horses and cows, rode a small tractor, drank fresh cider, and ate a bratwurst and chocolate ice cream cone (with fresh ice cream). I was delighted to see the pumpkin tower, as was Gianna despite the pouty look on her face. She carefully examined several candidates until we found the perfect pumpkin, for only €3! We plan to go again tomorrow with Dan after work as long as the weather is nice.












After watching the large pig on the left scarf down food from a trough, Gianna thoughtfully remarked "eats like Bố loi". I had to concur. We spent a good five minutes petting the sleeping pig on the right, whose lethargy and pointy ears reminded us of Bruno.

Halloween decorations are up

Halloween is my favorite time of year. I love the costumes, the candy, and the seasonal decorations. All of our costumes and decorations are in storage, except for Gianna's dragon costume that I bought for her last year. After trying it on, she informed me she does not want to be a dragon, she wants to be a zebra instead. Well too bad, I don't think we'll be able to find a kids zebra costume in Germany. I was surprised to see the Galeria has a few costumes for sale (mostly witches and devils, all macabre, nothing cute), and a few decorations (mostly skulls and goblins, again, mostly macabre). I was able to pick up bat window stickers and bat and pumpkin garland for the balcony/kitchen door. Now all we need is a fresh Jack-O-Lantern. There are some pumpkin patches outside of town, but we don't have a car and can't drive a rental now that our grace period for using a US drivers license in Germany has expired. Also, Frankenstein's castle is located just 20 minutes south of Frankfurt, but again, no car to get there. We need to hire a private driver for all these Halloween destinations!

I love the UK

Germans love conformity. They have about 3 styles of kids shoes available in mauve (pictured), burgundy, or brown. They are ugly, overly supportive (like our kids are nurses on their feet all day), and EXPENSIVE. These modestly priced Lauflern-Booties will set you back €55. I guess that's why Germans buy all their kids shoes two sizes too big, so that they will last two seasons. Thank God for the UK, they are our lifeline for tasteful fashion at sensible prices. They offer US brands like Skechers and have character shoes like Dora that you can buy online (online purchasing is a concept foreign to traditional Germans). You should see the stares Gianna gets with her current pair of white [gasp!] Dora [choke!] sneakers [arg! not the German way!]. They have one too many sparkly stripes and a little Latino girl; what could be worse in the eyes of a German?

Tết Trung Thu, Mid-Autumn Festival

Otherwise known as the Moon Festival, Tết Trung Thu celebrates the full moon at the end of the harvest season. There are many traditions during this holiday that vary throughout Asia. Most often, families celebrate together by eating mooncakes while admiring the full moon and children light paper lanterns to show Chang'e (Cuội) and Jade Rabbit the way back to earth.

We celebrated with dinner at Mai Viên, a local Vietnamese restaurant. The feast included steamed rice dumplings (bánh cuốn), spicy Huế noodle soup (bún bò Huế), caramelized claypot chicken (gà kho gừng), and Vietnamese fried noodles with prawns (mì xào tôm). At the end of dinner, Gianna gave us a rare demonstration of her chopstick prowess. She puts me to shame.

The celebration continued at home with the lighting of a paper moon lantern. Gianna took it out on the balcony and called for Jade Rabbit.
Then we cut into the white lotus seed mooncakes. I almost bought the durian variety (authentic Vietnamese), which would have been a huge mistake in the taste department, but thankfully, the shopkeeper warned me at the checkout. Mooncakes are very rich; you can only eat about a quarter of a cake at one sitting, maybe half if you are really hungry.When we tucked Gianna into bed, she was chattering on about Jade Rabbit and the moon palace, wondering if he will find his way back to earth.

Oktoberfest

Mothers make a lot of sacrifices for their kids like catching vomit in your hands and cleaning up poop. I almost made the ultimate sacrifice--missing Oktoberfest :-O Gianna was über sick on Monday, with what I presumed was schweinegrippe, but turned out to be a simple rhinovirus with 105°F fever. Dan went to Munich without us while Gianna saw the doctor and recovered. By Wednesday morning she was feeling fine and ready to party, asking to go see Bố. So, in classic Marvin Landis* fashion, we did Oktoberfest in one day, catching an early Munich-bound train and arriving at the festival before the beer tents opened.

Dan met us at the gate with a Löwenbräu stuffed lion for Gianna. First stop: the beer tents. They were indeed large and I was amazed that they were actually modified tents and not completely solid structures.We ate breakfast at the Löwenbräu tent: weisswurst, a large doughnut, a beer, and mineral water in one of those huge beer mugs. Afterwards, we strolled around the fairgrounds, going on the slide and the ferris wheel.Shortly before lunch, the pony rides opened up. Gianna overcame her fear of horses and rode a pony without crying! It was so cute to see her bobbing up and down on top of that horse wearing her dirndl, she looked like a real cow girl...well a German cow girl, I guess. She also got to pet a lot of horses that were pulling wagons full of beer barrels. For lunch, we ate roasted chicken and bratwurst with some friends at the Paulaner tent. There was lively music and beer of course; Gianna was dancing and having a great time.Thereafter a novelty hat was purchased.By the end of the day, Gianna's dirndl was messed up with chocolate ice cream and whatever was all over the floor in the beer tents. We were ready to say auf Wiedersehen to Munich and head home to Frankfurt. Oktoberfest: mission accomplished!

Click here to see my Picasa album:

Oktoberfest

*Marvin Landis is my intrepid Dad. He believes whenever possible, all trips should start and end within a 24 hr period, thus eliminating the need to pay for a hotel room. The earlier in the morning you have to leave the better, as this accomplishes the task of "beating traffic". He has inspired such trips as driving a moving truck from PA to AZ without stopping to sleep, and driving a moving truck from MD to FL, again without stopping to sleep. Sleep is for sissies. Suck it up and keep driving!