And that's what they call Closure...

This year for Christmas, Santa brought our family a big puzzle to work on over the holidays.  He may have been a bit over-ambitious, because the darn thing had 1500 pieces, and it took over our lives for a while.  Brad especially spent many hours at the table in the dining room/office, sipping Coke Zero and looking for those ellusive pieces.

Well, I am pleased to announce that we have FINISHED the puzzle.  Here is Brad, about to put in the last piece!

Now that it is all done, I must admit it was a fun family project.  Everyone got involved in putting parts of it together, and it was nice to sit around together, eating snacks and chit-chatting.  I think this is a tradition we will repeat next year, although I'm going to talk to Santa about choosing a puzzle with fewer pieces.  I think 1000 pieces is plenty.

Here we are with the finished product.  I tell you, nothing feels quite so satisfying as running your hands over a completed puzzle. 

A Sense of Accomplishment, Closure - I don't know what you'd call it, but it sure feels good!

Polish Pottery Purchases

Lauralyn, you asked to see pictures of the pottery I bought in Poland, so here you go.  Thank you Lauralyn for always being so supportive of me and our crazy adventures here in Europe.  I love to see the comments you put on my posts.  So, if you ask me to post something, I will!

I basically bought a hodge-podge of stuff.  I couldn't decide on a pattern I liked best, so I pretty much just bought pieces I liked.  I figure they are all blue, and all pretty, so who cares if they match perfectly?  Besides, I really only use one piece at a time, so it doesn't matter.

Now, if I could only cook.  I'm hoping having pretty dishes will disguise the fact that my food is barely edible...

Kliczkow Castle

A few weeks ago, I went with my friend Karen on a Polish pottery shopping trip.  On the way, she pointed out Kliczkow Castle, an old castle-turned-hotel in the middle of Polish nowhere.  Karen had been there for a weekend with her family and recommended that we give it a try.

Well, who doesn't want to to stay in an old Polish castle?  I thought it sounded really cool, so we got reservations for our family to stay for a couple of nights the week after Christmas.  On Monday, we arrived at Kliczkow just in time for dinner, which was served by candlelight in a fancy pink dining room.  Since it was already dark, we didn't see much of the castle that night, so the first thing we did the next day was take a walk around.

Before we left for Poland, I spent some time reading up on the castle on the internet.  I learned that it was originally built in 1297, and if you look closely on the yellow wall behind Adam, you will see the iron letters "1297".  There is also "1881", which is when a major reconstruction was done.

Clearly, the castle was built in stages.  This part looks like it is the oldest.  Surely, at least one Damsel in Distress has looked woefully for her knight from those upper windows...(is my romanticism showing?)

This is the entrance at the back to the reception desk.  There is an indoor pool inside the Tudor-style addition on the right.  The kids loved the indoor pool.

Here is Pepper by what looks to have been a moat.  I just love a good moat - it seems so authentic somehow.

Behind the castle, we found this catapult-looking device.  We don't really know why it was there or what it is used for, but it was the source of much speculation on our part. 

This is the fancy pink dining room.  Sitting there eating with my family, I had a Holy-Cow!-I'm-Eating-in-a-Castle-Dining-room-Moment.  And for the record, Polish food is not my favorite.  It seems to be a heavier version of heavy German food.

Eating in another dining room at breakfast.  Again, not a fan of the food.

On our way to breakfast, I made the family stop so I could take a picture of this hallway.  I love all the woodwork, and the armoire and trunk here seemed perfect.

This is the staircase near the dining room.  I could just imagine Cinderella losing her glass slipper on this staircase.  (Yes, I know Cinderella isn't real, but still...!)

Another cool hallway.  You can see the "secret passageway" on the right.

Here is another view of the "secret passageway."  We passed it several times, and finally Brad got up the courage to go down into it.  It was a very cramped, cob-webby staircase that we guess used to be a servants' entrance from outside.

On the last morning we were there, we woke up to a dusting of snow outside.  This is a view of the castle courtyard from an upstairs window near our rooms.

Horseback Riding

One of the amenities advertised at Kliczkow was horseback riding.  Since horses are Jessica's passion, we had to give it a try.  On Tuesday morning, we walked down a lane from the castle to an old stable where we were hooked up with some horses.

I wasn't sure Luke would allow himself to be placed on the back of a horse, but he loved it.

Luke just went for a five minute walk around the yard with this cute young lady guiding the horse.  He was very pleased with himself afterwards.

Jessica and Brad took a guided ride through the woods surrounding the castle.  Poor Brad and his ginormous head - even the biggest helmet they had was too small.

I took this picture because I thought the building behind them was interesting.  Kliczkow Castle is really in the middle of nowhere.  There is nothing but forest and a few old buildings surrounding it.  All of the houses look something like this pink building in the background, broken window panes and all.

Adam took a 30 minute lesson on Lady.  His hands got really cold, but he loved it.

Here is Adam doing some stretches on the horse to learn balance.  After his lesson, he considered himself an expert horseman.

Pepper also took a 30 minute lesson with the Woman In The Big Fur Hat.

Pepper's poor teacher didn't speak hardly any English, but that didn't stop Pepper from talking to her non-stop the whole lesson.  About halfway through the lesson, she sent her little sister into the barn to get a Polish/English dictionary.  Pepper proudly told me afterwards that he taught her how to say "rope" in English.

Here are Pepper and Adam taking their lessons in the shadow of this old church.  We didn't go inside the church, but I understand it has been there at least since around 1580.  This is a scene that likely hasn't changed much in almost 500 years.

Boleslawiec

After spending the morning horseback riding, we decided to take a drive to look around some of the surrounding areas.

This house is right behind the castle; in fact, I took this picture from the castle grounds.  I just thought it was a cute house, and I wondered how old it was and who still lives there.

This is just one example of a phenomon that we saw on all the houses surrounding Kliczkow Castle.  It looks like the house is a couple hundred years old, except for the satellite dishes hanging off the walls.  As we drove through this little village, we didn't see any house without a satellite dish.  In some cases, the houses seemed barely habitable, yet there was at least one satellite dish.  But, hey, who am I to judge?  I know I would lose my sanity if I didn't have my "stories"...

About 15 minutes away from the castle is the city of Boleslawiec.  This is the city that has all the cool Polish pottery.  This part of Poland was part of East Germany under Soviet rule, so there is a lot of evidence of its communist past.  The city was obviously bombed at some point during World War II, as there are old and new buildings intermixed on nearly every street.  The old buildings are obviously old, and not particularly well-maintained, but you can get a sense that they used to be lovely.  The new buildings have the signature communist architecture - no frills- just walls, doors, and windows.

It was very interesting to me to see Boleslawiec after having just been to Rothenburg ob der Tauber a week ago.  Both cities are more than 500 years old, but Boleslawiec had none of the charm of Rothenburg.  Clearly, the years under communist rule took their toll on poor Boleslawiec.  And now it appears that it is still quite a poor area, because everything is pretty shabby.  Maybe it was the gray weather, but I thought it was a depressing place.

But then, I stopped and bought some pottery and I felt much better!  Poland is famous for its hand-painted pottery, and I just love it.  We stopped at a little shop and I bought a platter and a covered baking dish, so I got my souveniers. 

That evening, back at the castle, Brad and the kids swam until they were pickled and I got to read my book.  We all took a break at 10 p.m. to watch "Bully Beat Down" on MTV (the only English show we could find - it's amazing how un-picky we are as long as it's in English), and called it a night. 

The next morning, we had another weird breakfast and drove home to Berlin.  By the time we got home, there was a good snow storm brewing so we were glad to be safely in our house.

And now we can say we have stayed in an old Polish castle.  So cool!

Weihnachten 2009

I loved talking to so many family members on Christmas day and hearing that everyone is doing so well.  Here is a glimpse of our Christmas here in Germany...

When we moved here, I made the decision to to leave all of our Christmas stuff in a box in Michigan.  I thought it would be a good excuse to replace our tired old decorations with some nice things from Europe.  Unfortunately, my family does not approve of my plan, and I've heard about it all month.  I must admit there are some things that I miss, most especially our Christmas stockings.  Because our "real" stockings aren't here, we had a paper-stocking-making party on Christmas Eve.  I think they turned out cute, but the kids were not convinced.

Here is one of the new things I've gotten in Germany.  I bought this pyramid on our trip to Rothenburg.  It is so cool, because when you light the candles, the hot air ascends and turns the blades on top so the whole thing rotates. 

Every year, my mom makes Christmas jammies for all her grandkids.  She had the foresight this year to make the jammies early and send them with us when we came in August, so we had them to open on Christmas Eve.  Brad and I were excited to see that Mom had even made jammie pants for us.  Brad's have a golfball motif, so clearly she made them special for him.

In my family growing up, we always had a monstrous breakfast on Christmas morning.  While our breakfast here in Berlin wasn't monstrous, we did have cheesy eggs and sausage.  I also bought a Stollen, which is a German sweet bread I've seen at the grocery store. For the record, Stollen is disgusting.  It is very heavy and dry, with a fruitcake-like substance running through it.  This will not be repeated next year.  (When I called my family that evening, it happened to be just as they were sitting down to Christmas breakfast back in the States.  As I talked to everyone, I could hear "pass the bacon" or "pass the french-fries" in the background.  Ahhh, the sweet sounds of Christmas...)

   I had to take this picture of Luke on Christmas day.  Even though he got some new Christmas clothes, he didn't choose to wear them when he dressed himself.  You will notice that he is wearing 2 shirts, a sweater vest (inside out), a pair of Adam's shorts, and shoes with no socks.  The best part was that when he walked, he did so with his legs really wide apart so the shorts wouldn't fall down.  I tried to get him to change, but he would have none of it.  So, he was our Little Christmas Orphan all day.

Christmas in a German Walled City

Now that Brad is off work and the kids are out of school, it is time to play.  This last week, we took a little road trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, an old German walled city about five hours south of Berlin.  Rothenburg is one of the few remaining medieval towns left in Germany.  Apparently, during World War II, the mayor of Rothenburg defied Hitler's orders to never surrender, and when Rothenburg was attacked, the mayor gave up immediately so the city wouldn't be destroyed.  I think he did the right thing.

Here we are outside the entrance to Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  There was a little snow, but it wasn't too cold.  The snow only added to the Christmas ambience.

The inner city was surrounded by this wall.  As we got closer, we saw pock marks in the wall that were probably wounds from wars gone by.  So cool!

Here is the moat that went around Rothenburg.  Can't you just imagine knights on horseback prancing across that bridge?

Once inside the city, we all felt like we'd stepped back in time.  It was especially fun to come at Christmas time because there were lots of decorations and market booths.  When we moved here to Germany, I left all of our old Christmas decorations in boxes in Michigan.  My family is kind of mad at me, but it gives me an excuse to buy lots of cute wooden German Christmas things.  We took advantage of the Christmas markets in Rothenburg to pick up some nutcrackers and a wooden Christmas pyramid.  So fun!

Jess, Pep, and I all thought Rothenburg had the same magic as Prague.  There was the overall sense that nothing had changed in hundreds of years, and every time we turned down a new street, I just wanted to squeal with delight.

  We passed this Nativity as we were walking down an alley near the town hall.  It was nice to see a blatantly Christian display.  These are getting scarce in the U.S.

    In the middle of the town square, next to the town hall, was this clock tower.  It was like the clock tower in Prague's Old Town Square because every hour as it chimed, the doors on either side of the clock would open and the statues would come to life.  The guy on the right slowly took a swig from his mug.  How German.

This is the market under the clock tower.  The buildings surrounding it were so cute.  My favorite is the one in the background in the middle of the photo.  It is painted mint green with candy-cane-striped shudders.  It was impossible not to get caught up in Christmas excitement as we walked through the streets.

Near the market was this carousel for the kids.  One of the best things about our day in Rothenburg was the lack of crowds.  You can see the streets are mostly empty, and our boys had the carousel all to themselves.

One of the reasons we planned this trip to Rothenburg was to visit the Christmas Museum there.  It is basically a totally amazing Christmas store that has made its upstairs into a museum about the history of various Christmas traditions.

Even though it was obviously a marketing ploy to get customers into the store, we all really liked the Christmas museum.  They had some awesome old Christmas decorations and it was interesting to see how Christmas has evolved through time.  We learned that in the 1700's, Santa had an assistant called Knecht Ruprecht.  He was a mean old guy who carried a big stick, and it was rumored that he ate the naughty children.  Our boys were fascinated by this old legend, and it has given us more ammunition for our You-Better-Be-Good-or-Else lectures.

This display was just inside the Christmas Museum/Store.  The kids loved it - it was like a mini Small World.

This store was all about teddy bears.  What's not to like?

When we passed this store with the suit of armor out front, of course we had to go in.  What a store!  Now we know where to go for all of our medieval weaponry needs.

After a day spent wandering around the charming town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, it was time to go.  You can see how narrow the entrance way into the city is - only one car can fit through at a time, so everyone takes turns.   We parked just outside the city, and this is us on our way out.

A lovely, lovely day!