Sea shipment and meds

On Thursday we got the sea shipment with the rest of our stuff from Jersey. About 98% of what was supposed to arrive actually arrived, so I was pleased. Gianna got all of her toys, I got my camera tripod, Bruno got his shampoo and coats, and Dan got his giant TV--unharmed from the voyage. Gianna likes to mess around with the tripod as much as I do, so here are two pics from this morning: a self portrait where Bruno was one second too late, and another fine pastry from the bakery down the street. This one was kuchen filled with creme.

Poor G Mai has another cold and I am all out of US children cold medicines. The medicines over here are all different, they don't sell Dimetapp or Mucinex, so I researched some alternatives. You have to be careful; the pharmacy will sell you herbal meds with unproven effects, and drugs that are banned by the FDA because of harmful side effects. And with children's meds, I don't want to mess around. The medicine I bought is supposed to break up mucus, and is considered safe for kids by the FDA. I am also having trouble getting my prescription drugs over here. The exact formulation is not available, but there are injection and liquid forms produced by the same US company (Sigma Tau) that makes my tablets. You can buy it without a prescription here, however they are very expensive. So for now I am getting someone to pick up my prescription in the US and ship it over to me.

Ash Wednesday Transit Strike

The local U-Bahn, buses and trams are not running today on account of a labor strike. They are calling this a "warning" strike, so it will just be for today. We were joking that they probably did not file their strike paperwork properly 6 months ago and are only allowed to have a 1 day strike. This strike will not completely cripple the city, as Frankfurt is not that large. People can walk if they have too. We live in the city center, but Dan's work is located on the far west end. Since it would take him around an hour to walk, he took the day off. I guess if the strike lasts any longer, he's going to have to put on those walkin' shoes or hitch a ride with some random neighbor.

Fastnacht Day

My Mennonite family back in Pennsylvania and the entire PA Dutch community celebrate today with the eating of doughnuts called "fastnachts". I was lead to believe this tradition started back in the old country (Germany), so Gianna and I set out to conduct a survey of German bakeries in Frankfurt to see if anyone was selling something called a "fastnacht" or any type of special doughnut made only for the day before Lent. We also checked out the local churches to see what they were doing to celebrate the start of Lent.

German bakeries are normally heavy pushers of kreppels (doughnuts), but I have noticed in the past week, some bakeries are making more kreppels than other pastries. Dan said he saw someone carrying half dozen boxes of extra-large kreppels this morning, which was out of the ordinary. So maybe there is a solid German tradition of eating kreppels on the day before Lent. Gianna and I visited four bakeries where everything was business as usual before we found this guy with a little stand out front hawking kreppels to the people passing by. We bought two, one apfel (left) and one pflaumen (center). Gianna and I ate the apfel kreppel as we resumed our bakery/church walk-about and saved the pflaumen for Bố.

We visited half a dozen other bakeries where nothing was out of the ordinary. None the pastries were called "fastnachts" and the kreppels weren't any different than the kreppels sold at other times. Maybe there were more varieties and maybe people were buying more of them, but I don't have enough data points from other times of the year to back that up ;-) My conclusion? In this part of Germany, kreppels seem to be more popular the day before Lent, however they are not called fastnachts like in Southeastern PA and they are the same old kreppels sold at other times of the year. Perhaps in other parts of Germany or Switzerland, you may find something called fastnachts, but not here.

I guess we were one day early for church, as nothing special was happening there either. Some churches are having pancake suppers tonight, another Shrove Tuesday tradition. Here are some shots of our somewhat irreverent visit to St. Bartholomäus.

Fastnachtszug

Today was the Frankfurt Fastnachtszug, "fast night parade" or Karneval. Despite the cold and dreary day, we all had a great time enjoying the food and watching the parade. Fastnachtszug is much different than anything you would see in New Orleans Mardi Gras or Carnival in Brazil (although I can't speak from personal experience, as I have never been to either). Fastnachtszug is family friendly, with candy and fun costumes. I didn't see one woman flashing her boobs...but maybe it was just too cold for that ;-) We caught a lot of hard candy, bags of popcorn, and peanut puffs. Gianna caught a stuffed dinosaur, Dan caught two bags of some spiced bread called magenbrot, and I caught a chocolate covered marshmallow waffle from one of the bäckerei floats. Holy yum! During the parade, the people would yell "Frankfurt! Helau!" which was some sort of local greeting. I posted a whole album but here is a summary.

We've arrived! This is the Römer part of the city, Gianna, SpongeBob, Barb, and Bruno. Yeah, the coat makes me look like the stay puff marshmallow man, but I stay really warm.

Gianna is tired since the parade is happening over nap time. She's wearing her carnival mask that we made together.

Bratwurst for me. Dan got the currywurst, a spicy chopped up sausage in a hot curry sauce.

Gianna was curious about this woman in elephant costume until we got close enough to take a picture with her. Then she started screaming and burried her head in my chest!

These "paper mâché" bobble head guys are a big part of Fastnachtszug, see a video here.

I don't know what this guy was supposed to be. He was wearing what looked like a stone on his back. Anyone out there have an idea?

Are these people supposed to be Vietnamese? It was part of a troop that were dressed from different parts of Asia.

Not sure what was up with this tropical-themed black-faced crew, like they were out of the jungles of Africa. They were one of many strange, sometimes offensive groups of "fools" dressed up for Fastnachtszug.

Quark

Today Gianna and I were out and about the city looking for stores that sold toys, art supplies, and/or stickers. I stopped in at Rewe for a few groceries on the way home and found the elusive and intriguing quark cheese. Quark intrigues me because the Germans bake it into all kinds of pastries and it's delicious. Wikipedia told me that quark is local to Germany and other parts of Europe. My friend Eric said German guys at work eat it with fruit, but he didn't care for it. So of course I had to try it myself! Tengelmann's (where we usually shop) only sold quark mixed with chives, dill, or radish--yuck. But today I found plain quark and relatively low-fat (0.2 g per 100 g container). It only cost me 0.35€. Here's what the product looks like in action.

Opened the package, the texture was a bit like ricotta.

Threw it in a bowl with kirsche mit orange preserves...

...and made Gianna try it. We both tried it. The verdict? I liked it plain, it tasted like plain yogurt, but thicker. With the cherry preserves, schmeckte sehr gut!

Schnee!

We woke up to a nice coating of snow this morning that turned the city into a gingerbread wonderland. Well, that's exaggerating a bit, but it did look nice. Around lunch time big flakes were coming down but it wasn't sticking to the ground much.


This weekend we took a trip down to the red light district with Gianna [gasp!] to go to a Vietnamese grocery store. I was impressed. The Hong Kong Supermarket back in Jersey was huge, but sold almost exclusively Chinese food. Asia Land had food directly from Vietnam, not Thai knock-offs! So we stocked up on noodles, fish sauce, seasonings, and shrimp chips. Both Gianna and the dog are huge fans of shrimp chips. I like them because they are not too messy for snack. Here's Gianna enjoying a trough of noodles for lunch. She ate the whole thing (one whole pack of instant rice noodle Phở).


We also took a walking tour of the Main this weekend. It was really cold, but the sun was out, so that made it a little easier. I uploaded the photos and other photos from around town into a Kodak Gallery if you want to take a look.

My Valentine

Little Gianna Mai will forever be our Valentine. Last year on February 14th, we got a phone call that a little girl living at an orphanage outside of Hanoi needed a family. We saw her pictures, read her file, and fell in love. I still keep her baby picture as the wallpaper on my cell phone. Look how much she has grown!