Where in the World is Meilo #3

Our last installment for the year. Can you guess the city and country Meilo is in?

Pretzel Envy

No doughy foot-long heroes here. Behold the German tradition of making party fare out of giant pretzels. Easily serves 20 and tastes delicious!

Fasnacht revisited

Fasnacht is the carnival season before Lent. Throughout February there are parades with folks sporting fantastic wooden masks. What I found most interesting is that the parade people don't just participate in the festivities in their own towns, but travel all over the region on the weekends to march in other towns' parades. It means that anytime you go somewhere by train during Fasnacht, you run into scores of these masked monsters uncannily out of context. Buehl boasted 130 groups marching. We watched rapt for three hours and left before it was over.

This pair was quite brave. People standing close to the edge of the parade in Buehl are routinely "kidnapped," that is, carried off by parade characters, put in a spinning barrel and covered with confetti. When they are let out, they have to walk back to where their family and friends are. This usually means walking back through the parade, making them highly vulnerable to getting snapped up again, but this time by a different group. The "snow" on the ground is the confetti that is specially cut with serrated edges to stick to your clothes. We were tramping it around the house for weeks. 

Where in the World is Meilo #2

Here is the second installment of Where in the World is Meilo? Can you guess what city Meilo is in AND his exact location?

<

Look Mom, (Almost) No Hands

Anyone who has spent time with me in the kitchen knows that I hate to bake, which is mostly due to the fact that I am not very good at it. I happened to mention this to Stefan's aunt, Camilla, who is a fantastic cook and baker. My Christmas gift from her and her husband, Uli, came in three packages--a handwritten cookbook, a springform pan and a metric measuring pitcher. Also included was a gift certificate for baking lessons. I had my first lesson last week and thought I'd share the results. Camilla kept telling me that baking is science and to just stick to the recipe, but I'm not sure I am ready to fly solo and have things turn out as deliciously as they did with her doing most of the heavy lifting. I will just need to keep practicing while I am here. Whether things come out light and airy, or leaden, I am sure there is an essay in it. So, for those of you who have enjoyed/endured my many years of apple crunch (and only apple crunch) as a desert, I can happily report that new options on the horizon. Bon Appetit!

Yum, marble cake with chocolate glaze.

But my favorite is apple torte à la française.
.

Of Pretzels and Pigs

One of the many fun elements of being in Germany for the holidays has been experiencing the different traditions. New Years is much as you would expect--fireworks, champagne and kisses at midnight. But whereas Americans have a diapered baby in a top hat as the personification of the start of the new year, Germans celebrate with pretzels and pigs. No one we asked seemed to know how the pretzels fit in, but everyone had childhood memories of receiving them on January 1. As for the pigs, there is a German expression: Du has Schwein gehabt, which directly translates as You had a pig, but really means You are lucky.

Wir wuenschen dass ihr Schwein habt in dem nuenen Jahr. Wishing everyone luck in 2011.

Marzipan piggy and pretzel, with a dime for scale.

Old McDio Ate the Farm

In Germany, Christmas is three days long, beginning on the 24th and ending the evening of the 26th. We were with family for two meals a day and in that time managed to consume a barnyard's worth of critters: duck, rabbit, chicken, lamb and goose. I might not have felt so porcine if we hadn't also eaten our share of German desserts: stollen, linzer tort, candied chestnuts, spekulatius cookies with cream, chocolate and more chocolate. Good thing we had all that wine to wash it down. Dahlia wished for a white Christmas and we ended up with nearly two feet of snow. It was a welcome sight. Stefan and I were on our cross country skis on the 27th, burning off the farm.

The house early in the storm.

Meilo has fallen and can't get up.

Trick skiing in the backyard.

Dahlia relaxing in the yard with one of opa's sculptures.