Out with the old, In with the new

And so we end another year, reflect and look forward to a new one. In the everyday routine of days, we often feel we are in an endless cycle of eat, sleep, work, weekend and repeat. But when Tanya and I reflect on what 2014 was to us, we can point out some fairly noteworthy accomplishments.

We moved to our new apartment on Freseniusstrasse.  We have some kind and friendly neighbors. We take walks through the nature preserve across the street or take strolls down the hill into town. The best of everything.  
Tanya got a new job with a promotion and is enjoying her career immensely. Her garden in summer is the envy of the neighborhood. Jay started taking golf lessons and practices at the driving range regularly. He looks forward to improving and to becoming a regular at the golf club. His German language skills still need work, but progress is being made.

We had some interesting and fulfilling travels in 2014. We visited seven different countries, including Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Hungary. We experienced several great cities this year: Dublin, Budapest, Paris, Oslo, Dresden. And, we took three trips back to the US. Seventy-five nights on the road.
The Guinness Brewery, opera houses in Budapest and Dresden, the natural beauty of Norway, Notre Dame at midnight, the flowers of Colmar, the somber dignity of the US military cemetery in Luxembourg and the joy and laughter with family and friends in Portland, Newport Beach, Monterey, San Antonio and Cologne will be our fondest memories of 2014.

                      Happy New Year and Best Wishes to Everyone for a wonderful 2015!  

                                           

Weekend in Köln: Christmas Market, Friends and Family

Last weekend we spent a fun weekend in Köln, meeting up with friends we met on a cruise of the Mediterranean last year and meeting one of my cousins and his family for the first time.

Our opera-loving friends, Jürgen & Det

Our friends, Det and Jürgen, introduced us to opera when we first met them  and they invited us to join them for a performance of The Damnation of Faust at the Köln opera house. While not technically an opera, more of a choral performance with orchestra, this work by Berlioz was very enjoyable. The soprano and baritone were excellent and it was a great evening of music. But the most important thing was being able to see our friends again and to have tea and coffee in their beautiful home. The two also encouraged us to keep up our blog. I didn't know we had any readers, but now I'm inspired.

The other highlight was finally meeting my cousin, Thorsten zur Jacobsmühlen, his wife Jozefina, and their two daughters, Sophie and Isabella. We connected via Facebook and while we aren't exactly sure how we're related, our best guess is that our great-grandfathers were brothers. We plan on meeting his sister later next year who is the chief researcher of the family tree. Apparently, we have records tracing our family back to 1530. For second-generation Americans, like Tanya and me, it really gives us a sense of history and connectedness to Germany, or as my grandparents called it, "the old country".


And, of course, no visit to any German city at this time of year would be complete without spending some time at the Weinachtsmarkt. Köln has five of them and we successfully toured three. Glühwein anyone?

Our New Kitchen!

The first several weeks of our summer has been taken up with moving and getting settled into our new apartment on Freseniusstrasse.  We're getting to the finish line and now it's just the ongoing process of putting things together one day at a time.  Of course, the biggest excitement was a week ago when we got our NEW KITCHEN!

It's funny. I never imagined that two people could get so excited about having a kitchen. But, after living for five weeks eating off paper plates, cooking with a microwave and washing dishes in a small utility sink, having our new kitchen was a big event.  Three guys worked all day unpacking, cutting and installing the cabinets, counters and equipment. The counter was almost 14 feet long and couldn't be maneuvered up the stairwell or fit in our building's tiny elevator.  So, our ingenious kitchen experts were able to stand on some boxes outside and below the window and get it in that way.  Quite a process.

So now that we've been "nesting" for the last several weeks, we'll be hitting the road again for weekend trips for the rest of the summer.

Buying a Kitchen

One of the interesting things about renting an apartment in Germany is that most places come as a shell. And, when I say "shell", that's what I mean.  The only thing that usually comes with the place is the toilet, bathroom sink and shower/bath.  Nothing else.  Not even a toilet paper holder.  Not a kitchen, no light fixtures, no closets, no drapes, nothing, nada, zippo, zilch.  When tenants vacate their apartment, they take everything with them, including tearing out their kitchen and presumably installing it in their next home.  Sometimes they're able to sell their kitchen, light fixtures, etc. to the next tenant. Closets are not typically built in so places like IKEA do a booming business in selling stand-alone wardrobes, like we have done.

We were fortunate that in our current apartment, the kitchen was already in place, so we didn't have the expense of putting in a new one.  However, in a few weeks we're moving to another apartment on the other side of town and this one is in a shell condition.  Here's what the kitchen looks like right now.

So, it was off to the home improvement store to buy a kitchen.  While not necessarily cheap, the kitchen buying process here is completed with typical German efficiency. You go to the store, where there are several sample kitchens on display in various price ranges.  You sit down with a designer and within two hours you have designed your kitchen, selected appliances and scheduled your installation date.  A few days later, a technician comes out with a high-tech laser system to precision-measure the exact location of outlets and plumbing so any design adjustments can be made. About six weeks later, voila!

Our new kitchen is scheduled to be installed in mid-July, about a month after we actually move in so we'll post the final result.  Stay tuned.

Chillin' in Schwäbisch Hall

Two weekends ago, we took a drive south into Baden-Württemberg to stay in the beautiful town of Schwäbisch Hall.  Now, we didn't realize until just before we headed down here that there really isn't a Hall in Schwäbisch Hall.  I mean, we thought maybe it was the name of an old beer hall, or maybe a medieval hall where German knights used to hang out.  No, "Hall" means "echo".  The town lies along a river valley and supposedly, at least in the old days, one could hear the echo of young men calling out for their girlfriends, or maybe their cows or whatever.

Anyway, it's a charming place, with about 25,000 people and a thriving Goethe Institut which attracts about 2,000 students from around the world.

This is one of several warehouse towers around town, built by wealthy medieval merchants.  It was a real status symbol to have a tower higher than your competitors'.  Big tower, big..........

Here Tanya tries to help a lady pull her donkey up the steps of City Hall.

Whoa!! The Harlem Globetrotters are coming to town!

Some pretty Russian girl I picked up along the way.

The oldest and most famous brew pub in town.

This fanfare band was helping celebrate the birthday of a lady staying in our hotel.  Pretty cool.

We Love Strasbourg!

Maybe because it's so walkable and pretty, maybe it's because it's only a 2-1/2 hour drive from Wiesbaden and maybe because it's just so....French, or Alcacian, or a little bit German.  Anyway we love Strasbourg and spent the weekend there last week.  I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

And, of course, Goethe was here.  Isn't he everywhere?

A Visit to Maria Laach

A few weekends ago, we took a day trip to Maria Laach Monastery, near Andernach in the Rhineland. This Benedictine Abbey was founded in 1093 and the abbey buildings themselves were built between that year and 1177, then added on to in 1225.  Things just don't move that fast when dealing with medieval churches.  The church itself is considered to be a masterpiece of German Romanesque architecture and the adjoining building is home to approximately 45 monks. We were fortunate to be there about noon on a Sunday and watched as the monks made their procession into the church and sang their haunting liturgical chants.

The abbey is a working enterprise and the monks sustain themselves through a number of agricultural and horticultural enterprises.  They have a "Gärtnerei" or nursery on the grounds and do a booming business selling plants and organic products.  Oh, and did I mention that there's also a beautiful hotel on the grounds and an impressive visitor center.  Pretty enterprising, these monks.

Living quarters for the brothers

Church grounds reflect the Moorish style of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain

Tome of King Heinrich II, 1270

Tanya is very excited about the flowers in the nursery

It's important to pick the perfect plant

Re-Uniting with Old Friends in the US

The last two weeks of February we took a trip back to the US to see old friends and to listen to some terrific jazz.  First to Newport Beach where we heard some of our favorite musicians: John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Ken Peplowski, Tamir Hendelman and others and to have dinner with our longtime friends Bob & Carol.  What a great time!

Then on to San Clemente and Santa Barbara to catch some waves.  Santa Barbara, now there's a place.  It's kind of like Eugene but with the beach.  Another place that time seems to have forgotten.

 And then on up to San Francisco to see Tanya's sister, Kat, and Michelle and my high school buddy pianist Larry Dunlap and his wife, singer Bobbe Norris.

Up to Portland to catch some jazz and see our friends John & Deb, Kathleen & Babs, Sam & Carol, Dave & Ann, John & Susan, Laura, Annie, Pam & Gary, my soon-to-be 100 year old Aunt Gertrude and old workmates. What a wonderful visit!

Essen: Kind of a Dismal City

This is a beautiful country with a fascinating history and we enjoy every day we are here.  We have already been to most of the major cities and places tourists would normally visit.  So, it's natural that we keep venturing out to see cities and towns that are not usually listed in guidebooks.  We love uncovering hidden gems.  Very few guidebooks mention Essen as a place to visit so we thought we'd give it a try.  What we realized quickly was that there was a reason Essen is not on the tourist trail.  Essentially, it's a pretty dismal place.  Normally, we're not critical of the cities we visit here in Germany but with Essen we've made an exception.

Of course, there are reasons Essen is not what you would describe as charming.  From the middle ages, it has been an industrial town and has long been dependent upon coal and steel production.  It was heavily bombed in WWII, primarily because it was the home of the Krupp industrial complex, makers of much of the heavy weaponry used by the Third Reich.  Over 90% of the city was destroyed.  Unfortunately, even though the center of town, located north of the railroad tracks has a pretty good retail base, we found it very depressing.  Graffiti everywhere, even on the sides of the cathedral.  Lots of beggars, downtrodden souls and groups of punks hang around drinking beer in the middle of the day, trash everywhere.  It is as if Essen has become a magnet for everyone who doesn't necessarily fit in anywhere else.

To its credit however, the re-built part of town south of the tracks was more inviting.  Lots of restaurants and neighborhood shops line the main street and we found a nice little Italian place for dinner.  So, we may give Essen another try to give it a chance to redeem itself in our eyes.

The beauty that we did see though was primarily centered around Villa Hügel, the 269 room, 87,000 square foot mansion built by the Krupp family in 1873.  It was in front of the mansion that Alfried Krupp, was unceremoniously arrested in 1945 by the Allies and then stood trial in Nuremberg for war crimes.  It was estimated that over 100,000 forced laborers were used by Krupp during the Nazi regime.