#30 Boston - The Other White Christmas, December 27, 2007

Germany welcomed her long lost daughter (that would be me) this past Sunday with a stunning landscape dipped in white, low-lying fog and frost painted a beautiful picture - as if it had snowed just a bit, but not quite so. The frost highlighted every tree and plant with white outlines. Red, brown and black berries littered the white landscape with their brightness. This amazing winter beauty provided a White Christmas of a different sort, and made you almost forget that it was cold as can be (upper 20s) and that your toes and fingers were just about to fall off. Nevertheless, magical it was and it set the right tone for the Christmas holiday here in Southern Germany.

I arrived this past Sunday at Frankfurt Airport after a travel odysssey that I believe has only been rivaled by Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal". Mostly this is my own darn fault, since for reasons that cannot be explained rationally I kept postponing and postponing and postponing buying an airplane ticket, and once it was early November replaced this laziness with a masterpiece of a panic attack, which involved several hysterical phone calls to my brother in Germany and involved both of us frantically scanning the internet for last minute deals (for Christmas - hahahahaha). Well, as luck and my own stupidity would have it, I ended up finding a reasonably priced flight, but not without noticing that I would have to fly through Newark and sit there for about 9 hours. I was desperate and afraid I would have to pay more than my monthly mortgage, so decided to go for it. Now comes the really bad part - apparently I am unable to tell time, or time differences for that matter, and once I was at my designated terminal in Newark, and again looked a little closer at my itinerary noticed that it was actually an 11-hour layover. I can tell you one thing - if I am faced with this choice ever again, I will take the more expensive flight - whatever mulah you save on the cheaper flight, you will spend in the terminal in those 11 hours - food, nice things in stores (I should never be allowed near a Brookstone store with a credit card in my hands, ever!), cheesy magazines, more food - you name it.

Just like Tom Hanks, I made many nice friends, including a family with two charming boys who tried to sell me on several of Brookstone's nifty massage tools (they may have been hired by the store for a hefty commission), and who at the end of their stay in the devil's store told me exactly how much their mommy spent there. Mommy did not seem too delighted that her sons shared this kind of information with me and quickly herded the two little brats out the front door.

Another new friend was a very charming. Toronto-based Jordanian gentleman, who was on his way to his girlfriend in Berlin, and who apparently also employed the Petra Method of Travel Planning (again, not to be recommended). We chatted for quite some time, mostly about the fact that this was his first time ever leaving Canada and his first trip anyhwere, but my favorite tidbit of the day centered around the fact that he told me that his father was born on the 25th of December in Bethlehem, and that his mother's name was Mary (their last name was the Jordanian version of Jonas - enough biblical references to go around). He did say it is the family joke that his dad may be Jesus and that maybe after that many years though he (the dad) may have lost his sense of humor about it.

We only left about 1 1/2 hours late (add that to the layover time), but I popped a Benadryl and as soon as I put the spoon down after dinner (which felt like eating in slow motion), I slept almost all the way to Frankfurt. From then it was just a nice two hour train ride (after a one-hour wait in the freezing cold) to Freiburg where my family awaited me (I did have to stand up the last 20 minutes as I was in serious danger to fall asleep and continue on to Switzerland, possibly Italy) .

Aside from the ususal Christmas activities - Christmas Eve is the main event a nice meal and presents are being exchanged that night (we made it in under 2 hours, yeah); 1st Christmas Day where we have our traditional deer ragout meal at Andrea's - we explored some of the traditional Christmas faires. The day of my arrival we visited Freiburg, my college town, for the last day of their famous Weihnachtsmarkt (http://www.weihnachtsmarkt-freiburg.de/) and stuffed ourselves with some nice "Flammenkuchen" (tarte flambee fort the Francophiles among you) (http://www.badenremembered.com/flammenkucken.htm) and yesterday on the 2nd Christmas Day (St Stephan's Tag) we headed over to France to the historic town of Colmar (http://www.colmar.de/Colmar/colmar.html) for their version of this tradition. Colmar's event featured four Weihnachtsmarkets all over the center of town, and one had to stroll through the ancient streets with their beautiful Tudor Style architecture (Fachwerk http://images.google.de/images?hl=de&q=Fachwerk&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi) to get from one to the other. We ate some Alsacian sausages, drank some Gluehwein (mulled red wine) and I topped it off with some roasted chestnuts. Very Christmas-y indeed.(http://german.about.com/library/blrezepte02.htm)

Time to pack it up now, tomorrow I am heading for some snow-related activities in the Blackforest. The Schauinsland Mountain I believe has a good 10 inches of snow, and armed with my new stylish gaiters and an even more fashionable plastic bag around the good old surgical boot, we'll see what we can do.

Sending you all the best wishes and a Happy New Year!

pet:)