Zweibrücken, Alemania

We spent a large part of our vacaciones in a small town in southwest Alemania called Zweibrücken, which isabout 10 kilometers from Francia.  We went to visit my tíos.  They are actually my mamá’s tíos.  So that means that Tante Anna and Unkle Jakobhave put up with three generations of our family’s young girls’ antics!   

They haven’t lost their touch as OUTSTANDING tíos!

 

Sofía also got to meet a cousin with thesame name!  (Tocayas!)

 We also got to catch up with cousins wehaven’t seen in years!

 

And we visited the Rosengarten—which Ihave many fond memories of—running around the roses just like Sofía! 

Burg Eltz

Do you recognize that pink coat?! Papi took a foto of us from a mirador! This beauty is Burg Eltz!

After a short jaunt to Burg Pyrmont, we drove to our real destination which was Burg Eltz.  The outside was amazing.  In fact, it was more interesting to see the outside than the inside. 

We got there much later in the day than anticipated, and before we were even out the doors, Sofia was asleep.  Jetlag is rough on a three-year-old!

Repollo

Driving across the southern half of Alemania, we saw an AMAZING amount of repollo (cabbage) crops. The color of the repollo was a magical purple just like in the foto. I ask myself how much repollo one country can really eat, especially when I’ve only seen it made ONE way…..hmmmm??  Anyway, we were driving by WAY too fast for me to take a foto, but I was able to find one at Floridata. (If you click on the foto, it will take you to extra interesting información about repollo!).  Ironically, right before we left for our trip, I found a recipe for Roasted Cabbage Wedges by Martha Stewart.  I was not really a fan of repollo before eating it prepared this way.  Now, I can’t get enough!

 

I don’t use caraway or fennel seeds as Martha’s recipe calls for….I came up with my own concoction Below are mine, and yes, I used all of them together along with salt.   I also found that I only have to bake the slices for about 20 minutes.   

Repollo is really healthy as well as filling and is a great accompaniment for many main dishes.  Adiós vinegary and tangy over-boiled repollo….now we have a fresh and flavorful alternative!

Burg Pyrmont

The first castillo we visited in Alemania was Burg Pyrmont, located in the hills the Moselle River Valley. I think it was Sofía’s favorite castillo because its structures reminded us of a Fairy Tale castillo.  

We enjoyed being able to walk through the castillo without a guide and take our time.

 

 

 

Sofía and her Papi walked all the way up the Rapunzel tower!

 

An antique doorbell!

A cool look-out room!

 

 

The only down-side to the castillo was that there was no restaurante to enjoy the gorgeous view!

Odd Things I Spied in Alemania

During our viaje a Alemania, I tried to do many things at once—translate for my family, take touristy fotos, remember all the names of the delicioso dishes we ate, and of course, make mental notes and snap fotos of cultural tidbits here and there!  Although I didn’t get as many fotos as I made note of, here are a few to share at least!  In the tienda Globus, Sofía had fun pulling (and pushing) the basket on wheels!

 

 

Our buffet breakfasts were really big on honey and this hotel served the entire panel!

 

 

 

I mentioned before that the majority of restaurantes in Alemania were CASH ONLY!  (Yes, even the 5 stars, popular chains, and fast foods!) So all of the waiters carried these black leather expandable clutch purses; they are a cross between a wallet and a coupon filer. I’m not sure what the advantage is for carrying them, but I definitely see what the disadvantages are!

 

 

 



One of the fancy hotels we stayed in had neat modern gadgets. This panel by the front door controlled all the lights in and out of the hotel room. No more guessing which button is for what light! And….no more sneaking the “Do Not Disturb Sign” on the outside of the door while indecently dressed OR trying to close the door quickly before the sign catches in the door!

All you have to do is touch the appropriate button on the panel and a red or green light blares outside on the door plate making it look like a shiny rhinestone on a gaudy gold ring!

 

 

I found this add (and its irony), posted in a bathroom stall, for a feminine cranberry product, to be hilarious!

 

Many Alemanes smoke and this vintage cigarrillo machine still works!  (I remember them from my summer holidays as a child!) Now they have electronic ones which require you to swipe your ID to prove age!  I didn’t get a foto of that one!

 

 

How cool is a plastic glove to wear while pumping petrol!  We need THAT!

 

I am always nagging my esposo to take off his shoes in the house.  He complains that his feet are cold (although he has designated house shoes!).  In one of the castles, they gave us all these oversized slippers to put OVER your shoes!  Now where can I buy a few pair of those??

 

 

 All the baby strollers, buggies, prams and carriages had an umbrella attachment!

People EVERYWHERE were using these ski poles (as I refer to them) to walk.  This couple (who didn’t know they were being photographed because of my spy-like skills) were using them to walk the grounds of the Neuschwanstein Castillo.  But we saw people use them in the mall, on flat sidewalks, and in crowds of people. 

Hope you have enjoyed my “Odd Cam”!  I will have to be more diligent on our next trip!

 

 



İSí; This is Real!

 

Hmmm….how many times have you secretly wanted to be doing this at the park with your niños? Well while in Alemania, we took Sofía to several parks and we found this very cool one in München.  Forgive the poor camera skills…I was secretly taking the foto as we walked by!  Before the beer and cigarillos even came out, I had already pegged this group to be nannies.  (Although I could be wrong…I doubt it!) But when ‘Blond Braids’ came pack with her stein full of beer and lit up her tabaco….I could NOT resist to sneak in a foto and share it!  I did NOT witness this type of behavior in ANY of the other places where we took Sofía to jugar! 

Mickey D's in Alemania

My esposo is embarrassed to admit that we stopped at McDonald's while travelling through Alemania.  But when one is zooming on the autobahn at a distorting velocity at dusk, sometimes the only restaurants that one can make out are the golden arches, albeit blurred, as their bright color and teetering height can be seen for miles before actually arriving at the location. (But I digress…)

Originally I took these fotos to share with Tamara from Non-Native Bilingualism who speaks Germa with her daughter, but I couldn’t resist pointing out some of the fun cultural jazz here too!   

Like other McDonald's that I have seen in other countries, those in Alemania were also PACKED with people! And Shell must know that as well because if you look closely at the paper tray liner…..Shell has teamed up with McD's and offers a discount off your gas the more you eat at the Golden Arches! 

ofia loved the free globos that McDonald's Alemania offered.  You are free to pick out the one you want without having to wait for someone to give it to you!

The Happy Meal looked chévere so I took fotos of it….I don’t know what they look like in la USA;  I am going to have to check it out then next time we patron McD's. 

What I found to be very, very cool was that the “toy” in the Happy Meal was a really nice hard-back book.  They had several different titles also!



 

 

 

 

Try to say this five times rápido!

The BIGGEST surprise to us at McDonald's Alemania was not the absence of trash cans and the use of tray holders as waste elimination, it was that (like THE MAJORITY) of establishments in Alemania, it was CASH ONLY! 

Toys in Alemania

It seems that Alemania is famous for their jugueterías (toy stores) and toy makers.  We visited a great jugueteria and had fun looking at all the things for sale that were different.  There were a lot of well-made wooden toys.  I don’t know how the Germans can afford to buy any of the toys because they are extremely expensive!  We also came across a ToysRUs, but didn’t have a chance to peek in—I would have loved to have been able to make cultural comparisons there also!

I really liked these hand-made wooden puppets with different types of characters!

Here is a Lego® vending machine in the metro!  In case you really need something at the last minute I suppose, since the stores close at 8 PM!

My favorite toys were the wooden food toys!  The variety was amazing and a splendid representation of the culture!  Again, they were super, super, super expensive or we would have bought a bunch for me Sofía to play with! 

I really admired this wooden toy—yes it is wooden and not a supermarket packet!  I took the picture because it happened to be one of my esposo’s favorite Schwäbisch dishes!

Many of the food toys were little tin containers (Think Altoids) with tiny wooden hand-made pieces inside!  I thoroughly enjoyed opening all the tins to see what kind of surprise was inside!  (My esposo didn’t enjoy it as much—what a shocker!)

Lastly, we came across this construction kit.  We should have bought it, but we were too tired to think at that point!  If you look closely at the picture of the house, you will see that it is the exact replica of how German country homes are built.  (Coincidently, it is how many of the houses in Latinoamérica are also built!) Included are mortar and trowel too! But we really wanted it to build castles like all of the castillos that we visited!  As you can see…we thoroughly enjoyed the cultural analysis of the toys in Alemania!

 

 

Viaje a Alemania

These are my babies.
Somewhere in the hills of Germany’s Moselle River Valley, at Burg Pyrmont, my babies pose for some of the first of what will be quite a plethora of fotos that I will have taken over the past 2 weeks. My esposo and I have been planning this trip for over three years! The first time we had tickets in our hot little hands, I was pregnant with Sofia during the first (God-awful) trimester. We ended up cancelling because I spent the majority of those three months vertical on a couch somewhere. (But I digress!) soo... All our estrellas lined up and we spent dos splendid semanas visiting my relatives and sight-seeing! I will try to write about some interesting points of our trip over the next few days starting with hoy!

Sofía was so excited to go on an airplane again! I love the special treatment given to familias with small niños and I especially love Lufthansa with small niños (even in spite of the strike!).  They gave Sofía a busy packet and one of the azafatas even gave Sofía her wing pin!

Here is a string of fotos inspired by the sticker-badge given to us by the TSA agent at Dulles Airport!

We tried out headphones for the first time during this flight and they worked beautifully!