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