American Toast

We finally bought a toaster. I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but we hadn't had toast since mid-July. Bob's parents don't own a toaster, so for the two weeks we lived there, between the packing of our container and our flying out of O'Hare, we didn't have toast. And the temporary apartment we were in had a coffee maker but no toaster. When we finally moved into our place, we decided to wait till our kitchen was installed (another story for another day) before buying small appliances (except for a coffee maker--we needed coffee from our first day of arrival).

Seeing my family eat toast, one would think that toasted white bread was an American delicacy. We ate a whole loaf of bread the first day I brought the toaster home.

White bread is not popular in Germany. The Backereien (bakeries) make so many different breads, including Italian ciabatta and French baguettes, that there seems to be no need for basic white bread. But you can buy it in the supermarkets, and it is called "American Toast Bread." It's basically the same as Wonder Bread, except that it gets moldy the day after the expiration date. I once kept a loaf of Wonder Bread for a month after the expiration date, and it still had no mold.

We've also discovered that Aldi (yes, the same as in the US) sells American-style bacon. German bacon, or Speck, is more like prosciutto than what we would call bacon, so it's nice to have our eggs with toast and bacon again.

Nikolauszug

December 6 is St. Nicholas Day and is celebrated in Europe but not the US. It's not a public holiday, but it is celebrated in the schools and kindergartens. Alex's kindergarten had a party, and St. Nikolaus (German spelling) visited and passed out socks full of candy, nuts and fruits. On Nikolausabend (the eve of St. Nikolaus Day), Philip's school had a Laternenumzug (lantern parade), and then each class sang songs or read a poem. Being Ukrainian, we always celebrated St. Nick's day, but since we followed the Julian calendar, we received gifts on December 19.

The best thing about this holiday in Erlangen, which is near the Fränkische Schweiz (Franconian Switzerland), is riding the Nikolauszug, a steam engine train that travels through the Fränkische Schweiz and St. Nick comes on board to pass out bags of treats to the kids. We rode the Nikolauszug twice before while living in Erlangen, so I was very excited when I found out that I could still get tickets. And since my kids still believe in Santa Claus/St. Nicholas (to them, he's the same person), they were excited about meeting him again. He looked a little younger and thinner than they expected--I told them he diets in the summer and fattens up before Christmas--but they knew it was him when he spoke to them in both German and English, because Santa speaks all language. Although, Santa almost blew it when he asked Philip where he was from. I told Phil that Santa has a lot on his mind and just temporarily forgot that we're from Chicago. As for the St. Nick that visited Al's kindergarten, Alex decided that he must have been Santa's brother.

Christkindlesmarkt

Friday, December 1, was the official opening of the Nuernberg Christkindlesmarkt (http://www.christkindlesmarkt.de/english/). We just missed the prologue by the Christmas Angel, because we were looking for parking. In Chicago, I would leave earlier than usual for special events, because I knew it would take longer to find parking. For some reason--maybe because Nürnberg is only about 500,000 people instead of several million--I assumed it would be no problem to find parking right beside the Hauptmarkt.

Chicago has its own version of a German Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) at Daley Plaza and Block 37, but it's not as festive as the markets here. It doesn't have the feel of a carnival. The Nuernberg market is the best, because they have old-fashioned wooden carousels. They also have a lot of booths with arts and crafts for kids to make, and candy, cookies, and Kinder Punsch, which is the non-alcoholic version of Gluehwein. By the way, here you can buy a bottle of Gluehwein for about 1 Euro and 79 cents. In Chicago, we were paying $6, or even $10.

We were told that the Christmas market in Nürnberg had for a long time been the only such market. Now every town and village has one. Forchheim, the town where Bob worked when we lived in Erlangen before, has a very good market. They use the windows of the Rathaus (townhall) as a giant Advent calendar (http://englisch.forchheim.de/forchheim/special_events/adventcalender/).