A Munich Christmas

With Will being so young, our families (bless them!) made the trek out to Munich for a true, Bavarian Christmas. Even though mother nature, train fiascos, and a chain of airline connections made for good travel stories on all sides, Pam, Bill, Mary, Charley, and Crazy Uncle Pete made it to Munich for the holidays. The days were filled with visiting Weihnachtsmarkts, Gluhwein, last minute Christmas shopping, snow, and, oh yeah, canoodling a special grandson/nephew. :)

We explored not only our neighborhood's (Haidhausen) Christmas Market, but also enjoyed the Chinese Tower's Market in the English Garden, the artsy Christmas Market in Schwabing, the child-centered Christmas Market within the Residence, the Medieval Christmas Market at Marienhof (We drank Gluhwein from chalices!), and of course the ginormous Marienplatz Markt.

Christmas Eve we went to the children's service at the church down our street. We love to hear it's chiming bells everyday, so we thought it be a great place to go. It truly didn't disappoint. The sanctuary was enormously gorgeous, built of stone, there was a children's reenactment of the Christmas Story (no, not the movie you sillies!), and the singing of Silent Night in German. (We did our best!) It was so touching to realize that even in a different country, with a different language, everything can feel the same as we are unified by our faith.

It is German tradition to cook a goose for Christmas dinner. So Jeff and I decided that when in . . . Munich . . . It was a fun adventure figuring out how to brine and store our goose in our mini-German fridge (layers of garbage bags and lots of maneuvering of shelves). It was a lot of work for an average-tasting outcome, but it was a fun challenge!

Thank you, family, for making our little guy's first Christmas so very special!!

Note: Please ignore our completely dead Christmas tree in the background of all the pics. Apparently German tree lots strip the bark off the sides of the trunk in order for it to fit in German stands.This kills the tree immediately, which works for the Germans who only bring the tree into the house and decorate it Christmas Eve. However, this does not bode well for two eager Americans who purchase their tree on December 6th. Instead of watering our tree daily, we gave up and just vacuumed the needles daily.