Starkbierfest

Oma and Papa's obvious #1 draw to Munich was William. Jeff and I like to think we're #2, but unfortunately, this trip I'm sure our pull ranking dropped and Starkbierfest slipped right in to second place.

Ahhh, Starkbierfest, how we antcipated you! Bill Milam has always wanted to attend a true-blue Bavarian festival, and we Muencheners want winter to be over with. Enter Starkbierfest to answer both of our wishes!

Monks used to brew beer with more calories during the Lenten season so as to help them through the fasting. More yeast made it darker, hence, Starkbier. Today, this comes as no surprise to our loyal blog followers, Bavarians make it into a huge party! Yes, try a mini-little Oktoberfest at the end of March just a few blocks from our neighborhood at the Paulaner brewery.

We were fortunate enough to score our own table reservation at this fest, so we got to invite our favorite of Bavarian friends to come along too!

(L to R: Lauren, Lawrence, Juliette, hiding Oskar, Jeff, hiding Pete, Michele, and me!)

We ate . . .

drank . . .

and got merry!

I love these beer hall parties. They start out so refined: an oompah band playing traditional Bavarian tunes, Germans slowly sipping starkbier brewed from an age-old recipe, and gorgeously decorated wooden boards boasting cheeses, breads and radishes for knoshing . . .

the next thing you know everyone's standing on the benches singing along to "YMCA"!

Everyone else pooped out, but the six of us stayed on!

A GREAT time was had by all! Thank for being true party animals, Mom and Dad!

Oma and Papa visit!

April brought sunny days to Munich via weather and grandparents! After a few days of touring Berlin, Oma and Papa couldn't take being in the same country as their only grandson and not be with him, so they b-lined here via ICE train. William was lucky enough to have his grandparents shower him with love and affection for 10 whole days . . . some of them with them all to himself, but more on that later.

We had fun just kicking it Munich style, enjoying some of our favorite local spielplatzs and letting this haus frau run a few errands ohne kinderwagen. I didn't know what to do with myself! (Well, I did. I got to visit the opthamologist and optometrist as I earned my first pair of "you're-old, Sarah" reading glasses. Sigh. At least they've got Euro style!)

I'd been wanting to dye Easter eggs with William but hadn't gotten up the nerve to purchase any in the stores because I

1) didn't feel like translating all the directions

and

2) didn't want to do it the German way of blowing out raw eggs to dye.

Leave it to Oma to save they day by arriving with our good ol' American PAAS dye kit!

William LOVED the stickers. He still insists on wearing them on the back of his hand on a daily basis.

Hope

On a beautifully sunny day we drove out to Dachau concentration camp. Not quite the place to take a bunch of fun family photos, but I did manage to snap this starkly-contrasted, simple moment.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, we took advantage of Munich's 1 Euro entrance fee day and toured the Modern Museum of Art as well as the Alte Pinakothek in less than 2 hours. Jeff Zabel -- super speedy tour guide extraordinaire! Here's Will leading his entourage through the MOMA.

Uncle Steven and David sent along a book for William in order to stoke the fires of the rival university flames in our family. Oma and Papa, presumably on strict order from the uncles, dutifully tried to teach Will USC's fight song and victory sign. William, on the other hand, was just more interested in the page filled with sports balls! Don't worry guys, we have a few more months till football season.

William couldn't get enough of his new bath toy!

We had one last breakfast before sending Oma and Papa off to the airport. It was a wonderfully fun visit filled with fun playtime. Thank you for all the special moments, Oma* and Papa!

* Please note that in previous blog posts the adorable grey-haired woman featured in the above pictures has been referred to as "Grandma". However during this visit, "Grandma", hearing William call her 'Amma', decided to shorten her name and in a fit of Bavarian loyalty deemed it only appropriate to have the German name for a grandma: Oma.

From here on out, we proclaim thee: Oma!

English Garten Sundays

Mom and I purposely left some open weekends in our calendar without planned trips so that Dad could ski this winter. Unfortunately for him, the snow was super bad this year and he didn't want to go. Lucky me! If the sun was out, we made it a habit of hitting the English Garten (with the rest of the entire city) for some Sunday fun. Here's some of my favorite things to do there:

Chat it up with Mom, pointing out autos, birds, and dogs

Leave Mom in my toddler dust

Refuel on pears

Check out the great intricacies of Gus's kinderwagon totally oblivious to the beckoning gelato stand nearby

Touch my toes

Stand near the safety of my bodyguard protecting me from all the paparazzi around

Bis nexte Sonntag!

Manga!

Okay, okay, you caught me. I know what you're thinking . . . "Sarah, how did you spend four days in Rome and only post a handful of photos?"

Well, folks, since you called us out on it . . . We just didn't take that many pictures because we were too busy STUFFING OUR FACES!!!! We had to fuel our fast-paced touring selves somehow, right?!?!

Here's one of our lunches in a recommended deli where the guy behind the counter encouraged us to eat the house potatoes and then insisted we needed wine too! Grazi!

This is what breakfast looked like everyday . . . sometimes twice.

Even our little bambino tackled pasta like a gladiator.

Those long strings of spaghetti can be slippery little suckers requiring full-arm engagement.

And then there was the gelato . . . "Mmmmmm, gelllaatttoooo."

It's one of the few things I begrudgingly share with my son.

But if we grab a cone when he naps . . . . bellisimo!

When in Rome . . .

Bonjourno! In March, we Zabel 3 jetted on down to what's become our favorite country in Europe to visit: Italy!

Rome was our city of choice this self-created, 4-day weekend. We toured the city taking in all the sites of this amazing ancient city. St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Museum, and the Sistine Chapel? Check.

Family pic in front of the dome

Colloseum? Wow, check.

It's a pillar party!

We each tossed a coin over our shoulder into the Trevi Fountain in hopes of returning to Rome someday . . .

We didn't let a little rain stop us from admiring the amazing Pantheon.

" 'ight!"

Our last day called for one last climb up the Spanish Steps.

Ciao, Italy! We'll see you again in June!

Fancy night at the opera

For Valentine's Day this year, I knew I needed to come up with something really good.  By the middle of February, the winter days are short and the cold weather can lead to cabin fever.  What a better gift to give a super mom, but a night at the Opera and a nice dinner for some culture and adult time.  I knew I had the perfect gift.

When booking tickets, a random Tuesday night in March was about the closest time I could find a decent show at the National Theater of Munich for an Opera that still had tickets.  Of course, a little research would show that this is perhaps because it was Fasching (Fat Tuesday)!  Only a couple weeks before the show did we realize this schedule conflict.

So, after a great afternoon out with afro wigs, we went home to prepare for the Opera.  On the way home Sarah told me she had laid out her nicest pant suit for the show, to which I relied, "Sarah, we are going to the Opera in Europe!  We need to get dressed up."  After booking tickets the same night as Fasching, this was mistake two.  Forcing your wife into a dress after being at drunken party in afro wigs with only 20 minutes until the babysitter comes is like calling an audible at the last play of the game.  Needless to say, she looked great, but the change cost me a taxi ride as no lady dressed like that rides in the subway!

We then had a great early dinner at a fancy restaurant near the Opera in Munich.  My Valentine's Day gift was really turning out to be perfect despite the date and dress incident.  Little did I know this would all quickly change.  But first, here are some pictures of inside the theater.  Really a beautiful place. 

I was lucky the place was so nice because I knew I had booked some of the cheaper tickets in the theater's balcony seats.  But as you can see as they go straight up, I figured it couldn't be that bad!  After walking flights and flights of stairs, we entered this gorgeous theater to find people sitting in what we thought were our seats.  We checked with the attendent and in fact people were in our seats.

Picture this, Sarah is a gorgeous dress and heels, me in a suit.  We just took a taxi to a nice dinner and entered this gorgeous old theater, to find our seats were not seats, but stehplatz.  For those non-German speakers out there, this directly translates to standing place.  That's right, in the picture above, our "seats" were behind the rail in the back of the picture with our butts against the wall.  It seems these seats are popular as you can see from the markings against the wall and the fact that people were not in our seats, but in our places and the attendant had to ask them to move (I figure to even a higher standing seat!)

Really classy.  The tickets did seem like a good deal, but I figured it was just due to the thin air in our bleacher seats.  Now I know it can get worse than just being in the nose bleeds.  To my credit, the booking site only had an 8 point font warning that SP stood for stehplatz, but not even on the booking page!  So my first opera was quite memorable.  We were all dressed up, stood against a rail in the top section against the back where we had to lean down to see the German subtitles above the stage for an Italian Opera.  Needless to say, we sat through intermission and we took a taxi home as well.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Fasching

Fasching, the festive season occurring immediately before Lent, is big with a capital 'B'. Leave it to the beautiful city of New Orleans to be the only locale in the states to truly represent this annual shindig. Out here, it's not just Munich, but the entire country of Germany that celebrates "Fat Tuesday" in a big way. Germans, never being ones to miss an opportunity to party, shrug off work for a day to dress in crazy costumes and drink in revelry.

Having experienced it as a newbie haus frau last year, Jeff didn't believe me when I told him my story of stoic looking bavarians dressed as pigs, frogs, and even the opposite sex (very impressively, I might add). This year, I insisted he see it for himself. So Jeff dutifully took off from work early to join our little monkey and his afro'ed haus frau for a little soiree in Marienplatz.

Will enjoyed people watching, but couldn't stand to have everyone prosting around him while he remained empty-handed. After much fuss we delivered his sippy cup to the backpack's resting place which allowed him to cheers anyone and everyone around him. We're not sure to be proud or embarrassed about this, folks!

This year's sitings at Fasching didn't disappoint. We spotted a nun making out with a lion, a bunny relieving himself on a tree, and Cruella Deville with her dalmations pulling a wagon of beer . . . Just to name a few photo-less moments. . . but here is a sampling of visuals from our one-hour romp downtown.

I think I just lost my appetite for whatever she was serving.

Even pretty fairies have their pump up playlists

"Nein, you look sillier."

Dud-un. Dud-un. Dud-un,dud-un,dud-un . . .

Helga? Is that you????

Man, I've got a headache

Clucky love

Thank goodness someone masked the statue so she doesn't have to see Grandma get tipsy.

Jazzer-rabbits

Someone should tell him he looks a bit bloated

On our way home from the craziness. One hour of fun was all we could handle!