Aimlessly Wandering in Barca

After our late night dinner we all slept in past 8am.  We were already adapting to the Spanish lifestyle. We all went to breakfast and then Josie, me and the 4 Neves wandered through the streets of Barcelona.

We happened upon a museum of random (mostly crucifixes) and some other oddities.
We came across Plaza Catalunya and it was all decked out with a Spanish Christmas market.  The entire plaza was filled with dozens of these random, funky wooden game contraptions.
In the evening we went just around the corner from our hotel for an amazing tapas dinner where most of us just bellied up to the bar and pointed out the tapas we wanted from a huge selection of prepared single sized portions in front of us.  Dinner, of course, completed with delicious sangria.  And then ice cream and a street serenade to close out the day.

Barcelona Bound

On the 26th we packed up Christmas - the tree, the ornaments, the lights... we didn't have much but it all went in a box and the tree to the street.  We also packed our bags for our 4 night stay in Barcelona.  I have to say that packing for these long weekend trips is getting easier and easier.  We fly really pretty inexpensively on Ryanair or Easyjet but the one caveat is that we are not allowed check in bags and only ONE bag per person.  One small backpack type bag.  We've realized we don't need much for just a few short days.
Our flight didn't leave Berlin until 5PM so we had most of the day to pack up (we packed up a lot of our house as we will need to move the days following our return from Barcelona) The Neves flight left a few hours earlier than ours from a different airport so we decided to just meet up there at our apartment in Spain which was right on Las Ramblas very near the famous Boqueria Market
We landed and were on our way via public transport.  The system was quite easy but we had to wait 30 minutes for our train to arrive.  This put into our apartment after 9PM and we didn't get to looking for dinner until closer to 10.  The kids were "starving" and the first couple of places we tried searching for based on yelp reviews were closed which must have been due to the holiday.  We finally agree on a pasta place that somehow took forever to cook and we ate dinner around 11PM.  All totally fine and normal in Spain as they are definitely a late to bed and late to rise country.

Christmas Day

Christmas day brought another round of traditional German breakfast and then all 4 kids went upstairs to play.  The weather was so nice they even spent some time outside in the backyard.
Santa came with a nice variety of stocking stuffers including Berlin souvenirs and other items (thanks Chris and Amanda!!!!) Gravitrax, Benjamin's Christmas gift, got a lot of play time as did the cool little monkey toys that the Neves brought over.
After a morning of relaxing we all headed into town to Alexanderplatz  because while sightseeing the previous day it was discovered that this Christmas Market

would be open on Christmas day.  And this market had a real ice skating rink!!  The kids had so much fun at our little, fake ice skating rink in Zehlendorf, that they were all game to go again.
Chris gets the award for the day for being the only adult out there with all 4 kids.  Two of which needed quite a bit of help to stay upright!

Benjamin was VERY frustrated after a time or two around the rink.  He had so much fun at the tiny rink mostly because it was relatively empty and they could just go out there and play around.  Here at Alexanderplatz it was very crowded, much more slippery

due to the fact that it was real ice and also a much harder and colder landing when you fell and you pretty much just had to skate around along with the crowd.  After her went around a time or two he came off bawling saying he was DONE!  He didn't want to skate

anymore!!  Josie was very encouraging and talk him into giving it another go.  He did and ended up skating by himself in the end and all 5 of them skated for over an hour!
We ended the day with a big meal back at our house.  I wanted to cook a traditional Christmas ham but apparently they don't sell pre-cooked hams here.  I looked it up on the free advice Berlin page, asked around and everyone said that the butcher will just give you a big piece of raw meat and then you need to cook it yourself.  I

was not up for that as I've never done it before so I opted for a bunch of different kinds of bratwurst and sausages cut up and pan fried.  Along with a bunch of roasted vegetables, traditional Rot Kohl- German cooked, red cabbage.  I decided to buy this

premade from a jar because I did not want to be stuck in my teeny tiny kitchen all Christmas.  It was nearly as good as home made but it wasn't bad at all and it was definitely the right choice.  Julie even said that everyone she knows buys the premade stuff!

We all went to bed full and satisfied with an amazing Christmas spent with good friends.  THANKS so much Neves family for spending Christmas with us.  It was way brighter and more lively with you guys here!!

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. 

Ferocious Reader

So excited to check out
the next Percy Jackson
book before break started

We've got a new ferocious reader on our hands.  He had been reading the Percy Jackson series with Marty.  Marty read the entire first series to him.  Lately he has been reading ahead on his own.  Now he has already read an entire book and onto the next one.

I LOVE it when the kids love to read!!!

Winter Solstice at the Tropical Island

 We, well mostly just me, has been really looking forward to the shortest day of the year if only to say "we made it!" The days can only get longer from here on out!  I have been amazed at how I've not been bitter about the cold here.  I thought for sure that was going to be my biggest weakness but in fact it has been the shortness of days or more accurately shortness of daylight hours.  Berlin is so far north we get about 45 fewer minutes of daylight here compared to Seattle during the shortest days in the winter.  Which is right now.  It feels like it starts to get dark here around 3:30. 

Which is kind of crazy because Seattle has always felt so dark.  So really since about Thanksgiving we have been looking forward to December 21st knowing that would be as short and dark as the days would get.  And WE MADE IT!!!
What better way to celebrate than a trip somewhere tropical.  The Neves wanted to experience the Tropical Island and it was the perfect way to spend the shortest day of the year.

We all had a great time running around, going on slides and down the "Amazonian River" together.
On the way home Marty suggested that we take the train to Cottbus (the town his parents are from) for dinner.  The Tropical Island is about half way between Cottbus and Berlin.  We were all game and as it turned out Cottbus has never looked cuter!!  It was all decked out for Christmas with a huge Christmas Market and an enormous ferris wheel right

in the center Alt Markt.  We had our first real German meal since arriving.  I know!  Crazy, right?  There is just so many other great food to eat here that German is never on the top of our list.  We ate at our favorite restaurant in Cottbus the Kartoffelkiste and then walked around the Christmas market until it closed and it was time to take our train back to Berlin.
We arrived back at our place around 11:30PM completely wiped out. 

We had NO idea how the Neves were able to even stay awake given this was only their second day and the jet lag we experience on the second day keeps us lying pretty low.
But.. happy Winter Solstice to us all.  Longer days, even if we don't really notice them yet, are on their way.