We're Going Home!

We have been teasing our friends & family with plans for a Seattle visit for months now. Now the rumors can die as we have something even better:

Plane tickets!

We are flying to NYC for the first time and will fit in as much hot dog/pizza/bagel/deli eating, Broadway shows, comedy, art and pictures as possible. I've got a happy little NYC Pinterest board together gathering all the info of things I want to see & do (please feel free to give us tips, we're flying blind). No joke, we're excited. 

Egads - We're Moving Again

I've always liked moving. I guess that makes me a bit of an anomaly. But I like getting rid of all the old things, re-organizing, and making a new Home.

What I do not like, what I am completely and totally over, is looking for a new place. When we moved to Berlin in 2007, we stayed in a total of 2 sublets. It was a relatively inexpensive and pain free experience, so when we returned to Berlin in 2009 it made sense for us to look for sublets again. We have now lived in 6 apartments, been ripped off, and been rejected in our application for our own apartment because we are foreigners. We're tired, so very tired, of this whole apartment debacle. I loathe thinking about how much time, energy, stress, and money we have spent on it.

10 Things we Didn't Know about Paris

Rocking some 'stache for France

 1. People smiled! I can't even explain how this lightened our already luminous moods. While the stereotype of Germans being cold and humorless is far from totally true, they don't smile much, especially in the blustery NE corner. The first time we went to London was after a month in Berlin and there too we felt the friendly vibe we didn't realize was missing in our Berlin lives. Obviously this is just our experience, but we always laugh when people talk about how unfriendly the Londoners are or about the rudeness of the French. 

Vienna: Much more than a little Sausage

Ian & I were excited to return to Vienna as we have been there several time and indulged in the cafe culture, oohhhed & ahhed at Stephansdom, and ate and ate and ate. But returning with the parents this time, we realized we actually hadn't spent much time in this Austrian wonder. In our usual whirlwind fashion of travel we had been here on our way elsewhere, but only actually stayed for 1 or 2 nights. This was an egregious error that needed correcting and we couldn't have been happier with our latest experience.

As always, what follows are our highly unscientific, capricious ratings of "The City of Dreams" (home to Sigmund Freud).

Vienna Ratings:

 

It's just not quite Christmas without Family

Doesn't it always seem like warp speed toward Christmas, followed by an utter melt down in January? With our trip to Paris, harrowing apartment hunt, and plans to return home, it's easy to forget about the German Christmas magic that swept us off our feet not so long ago.

Here are the pictures of Christmas I didn't share in our Christmas Advent Calendar Count - Down

glühwein

Disneyland...in Paris!

We had an epic time the last time we went to Disneyland in California. Both of us had been as kids (Ian went many times as his family is Disney obsessed) but our first trip together was during our 1 year anniversary (Married - yea!). We road tripped all the way to SoCal- visiting fam AND to visit the "Happiest Place on Earth". And we were deliriously happy. A week before Halloween, the place was decorated like never before and lines were almost non-existent. We rode every ride in the place in one day and rode some of our favorites back-to-back, gleefully getting off a ride only to run right back on.  Best. Disney. Trip. Ever!

Silvester in Berlin

Today we are flying back to Berlin from Paris - our glamorous Christmas gift to each other (glamorous in name only - we flew for less than 200 euro, stayed in a tiny studio, and subsisted on croissant). Glorious nonetheless.

It may seem odd that we flew in after Christmas and are retuning before New Years, but we just couldn't tear ourselves away from Berlin. Christmas in Germany is magic. When we went to London in December 2007 we expected their Christmas markets to be English. Nope - just crummy imitation German.

Instead, we prefer to spend Christmas in Germany. Midnight mass in the Berliner Dom, friends, & Weihnachtsmarkt held us hostage.  We've heard that neighboring European countries offer trips for people to visit Germany & the markets. Everyone should be lucky enough to experience the markets once.

Love, Photos, & Christmas Cheer

Our photo advent calendar for our p's has become a grotesque thing of beauty. We've enjoyed  showing our culinary accomplishments (sugar cookies), showcased our Berlin life (kita Christmas pageant), and showed our decorating skills (Axis of Evil member adorns our tree).

Since we couldn't be with them this Christmas, we hopefully made them smile and laugh at least once a day.

Day 17:

Snowman were swiftly created, just to get into a food fight. We finished them off.

Our Plan of Attack on Paris

When we plan (aka fall into an internet sink hole) for travel to places like Bratislava, Reykjavik , Polignano a Mare, Italy, Sighişoara, and Ljubljana - any resource is a good resource.

Researching our xmas gift to each other - a trip to Paris - is different. Much written about, photographed, and waxed on about lyrically, everyone and their mother has advice on Paris. And we have our own thoughts as well. I had one day in Paris on my month long high-school-group-adventure back in the day, and Ian & I spent 2 nights there on our month-long traipse around Europe in 2008. We are crazy excited to go back.

Onto what we have used to prepare for the trip.

Advent Calendar with Crazy Cute Kids

 We continue our photo advent pics for the parents with week 3:

Day 10:

15 days till Christmas & time to pick our tree. That means 17 euro tiny trees at a hardware store.