Berlin at Christmas

Berlin really is pretty impressive at Christmas.  I had heard about the Christmas markets all over Germany and Berlin but other than our teeny tiny one in Zehlendorf and seeing a few as we passed by on the bus or train we hadn't really gone to one yet.  The day before Christmas Eve was going to be the day to see Berlin in all its Christmas glory.

Berlin is also mostly closed on nearly all Sundays - something we are mostly used to but this time Sunday fell on December 24th and then the following Monday was

Christmas where things would mostly be closed again.  We even heard reports that many stores would be closed on the 26th as well.  So on the 23rd Marty and I headed out to do the grocery shopping for all of the food for the 8 of us for the next two days.
We stopped by the butcher - first time for this as Josie is 100% vegetarian and Marty and I lazy vegetarian (Benjamin still 100% carnivore, by the way)

so we haven't needed the butcher yet but we happened by this butcher the week before scouting out German hot dogs and the woman working there let us taste their homemade potato salad.  We were sold and knew we would come back. 

We weren't the only ones.  The line wrapped around and out the door.  The same held true at the bakery.  Germans are NUTS about fresh bread. I wanted to get the traditional "stollen" but Marty said it would just look like typical fruit cake (It's not.  It is delicious) but just about 1/4 a loaf was something like 16 Euro. Marty said that was ridiculously expensive. Which it was.  We decided to skip it which made me miss and appreciate my good friend Kristie (Callum's mom) and her yearly gift to us of Bakery Nouveau's DELICIOUS German stollen and also made me think of the yearly Riemer fight about Grey Poupon mustard.

After all the grocery shopping and still on the 23rs,  all 8 of us headed into the center of Berlin to "see Christmas"  We first stopped at KaDeWe - the ENORMOUS department store. 

I always thought it was the biggest in Europe but I just looked it up and apparently it is second in size after Harrod's in London.  And also apparently attracts 40,000 to 50,000 customers per day!! It was all decked out for Christmas.

We then happened upon the big market just down the street.  Julie met us for a Merry Christmas hug and warm drink before she took off for Cottbus for Christmas and then to Bangkok for the month of January (lucky!!)
We aimlessly walked through the market taking in all the sights, smells and tastes.

The following day, Christmas Eve, we started off the day at our house with a big traditional German breakfast and then Josie, Elliott, Chris, Amanda and Marty took off for some sight seeing.  Marty is such a good tour guide of

Berlin because he knows so much of the history and has his own personal stories from his parents and from his coming to visit Germany (back when the wall was up and the country was divided) when he was a kid.

Benjamin and Sydney stayed back at our house with me and had a great time. They are quite a pair!  Sydney is teeny tiny in body but huge in personality.  They were quite the pair and got along great.

When the sight seeing group returned we had traditional Christmas Eve German dinner... or at least it is traditional Riemer Christmas eve dinner.  German hot dogs, potato salad, pickles, etc.

After dinner we all opened gifts.  Because we are living here, trying not to accumulate a lot of things and we plan to travel a lot this year we wanted to go really light on gifts.  My parents sent over money for the kids to purchase something of their long list of "wants" and Marty's parents and his sister and family sent a gift certificate for a "shopping spree" when she comes to visit next month.  My siblings and I all decided to take a "gift pause" for this year.  I have to say, less REALLY IS more!! 

All eight of us had one gift under the tree wrapped many different times with different names on each layer of wrapping so you never really knew who the gift was really to until you got to the final layer after the gift was passed around the group a few times.  This style unwrapping of gifts has been called "Julklapp" by Marty's family and we normally do it at Thanksgiving but decided to give it a go for Christmas this year.  In addition to the one "julklapp gift" Josie and Benjamin got one more

gift each - two if you count an Oxford sweatshirt that they helped pick out while we were in the U.K. visiting friends that they had forgotten about so we wrapped them up.  It was really REALLY nice to just have a few gifts that they really wanted that didn't get lost under the pile of gifts they normally get.  And, on top of it, they were really, genuinely appreciative in a way they haven't been before.

Traditional bunte teller - meaning :"colorful plates"

The Neves went back to our new apartment, we went to sleep at our place and waited for Santa to visit the next morning😉

Opening the cash gift from Grandma and Papa.  Similar response to the Gift Certificate from Oma, Opa, Liz and Ed but I didn't capture a photo of that.  Thank you VERY generous grandparents and Aunt/Uncle.  Two very excited kids.