Zabel Travel Tips

See the signature white cord of an Apple product coming out of Jeff's jacket?

Zabel Travel Tip #1 - Check iTunes to see if there's a walking audio tour of your city that you can download. Rick Steves walked us through the Acadamia, Uffizi Gallery, and all-around Florence -- all for $1.29. We didn't have to pay all the audio guide fees inside museums, plus we got to enjoy his cliff note version of things all with his sense of humor.

Zabel Travel Tip #2 - Check LonelyPlanet.com before traveling to any city. Their list of restaurants never misses. We literally ate our way through Florence. Yes, there was the occasion of getting stuck at a tourist trap restaurant, but what can you do. When we could, we would track down a LP recommended restaurant. (They can be off the beaten track and hard to find at times.) We had the best beef stew at this small, family run restaurant and what Jeff swears to be the best sandwich he's ever eaten at this panini stand. I personally think it was his accompanying glass of chianti that sealed the deal!

Coleman Fun!

My friend from high school Nicole, her husband Taft and son Remi just recently moved from Paris to Zurich, Switzerland. They came to stay with us for a weekend in December. It was so fun having our little boys meet, shopping around Christmas Markets, and meeting some of their German friends.

In February, we had the chance to visit the Colemans in Zurich as well! They were amazing hosts taking us all over town. We enjoyed walking around Zurich, pretending we could see the Alps through the clouds, eating Sprugli's hot chocolate and macaroons, and stuffing ourselves with the awesome Borner-family recipe of fondue. Thanks for a wonderful weekend, guys! What else will 2010 hold for these Coleman-Zabel adventures?

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.

Thanksgiving x2!

Our first Thanksgiving in Germany was spread out over two weeks. (Seeing that it's Sarah's favorite holiday, she was perfectly fine with that!) Our official Thanksgiving was spent just the two of us -- Will was nice enough to sleep for most of our meal. We decided to keep it simple (it was a work day for Jeff) and Bavarian (to celebrate our new home). Sarah went to our butcher around the corner and picked up schnitzel which we paired with kase spatzel and the Oktoberfest beer Sarah had saved for the very occassion. We definitely missed being around family, but thank goodness for Skype! Our hour-long Skype sessions with California and Colorado that evening made it seem less lonely.

Our second Thanksgiving was celebrated two weekends later with fun friends and former expats from the BMW Technology Office in Palo Alto. The Schambecks always celebrate Thanksgiving for their daughter Lily (above) who was born in California during their time in the states. (Looks like we'll have an obligation to William to celebrate Oktoberfest every year since he was born in Germany. The sacrifices we make for our children!) It was potluck, but let me tell you, it was the most AMAZING GOURMET potluck we'd ever been to! Everything was made from scratch. Forget the stuffing out of the box and pumpkin out of the can -- well, you have to because you can't buy it here! Ute and Joachim brought Pumpkin Chicken Soup and pumpkin pie -- both made with real pumpkin! Who knew you could do this?!?! :) I brought sweet potatoes. Sylvia provided amazing green beans in a luscious sauce and scalloped potatoes from scratch. Mark and Maren provided the stuffing with roasted chestnuts (Maren roasted them herself!) and the freshest, brined turkey we've ever tasted. Take that Butterball! Fortunately there was one thing that was similar to Thanksgivings in the past: we all ate too much!

* This post is not intended to offend any mothers or grandmothers with whom we've shared wonderfully meaningful Thanksgivings in the past. But seriously, the Germans put our Thanksgivings to shame!

Cold Snowy Sunday

On the way home for the museum, dad stopped for a gelato, the first of the season just 'cause he could and it was open despite it being freezing outside. I wanted a treat as well, so we called mom. She met us out and about at one of our favorite neighborhood cafes: Brasserie Romanow.
I had a bottle, yum, mom had hot chocolate, dad had a cappuccino (he said I wore him out), and we shared a strudel. A European treat! I was really hungry. We love Sundays.

I am now cultured!

If you know me well, you know I like lights. Today was a special day! Dad was thinking about going skiing this morning, but lucky for me, I slept in until 8. Therefore, dad and mom did too. As it was cold and snowing outside, my dad decided to stay home and play with me instead. He gave mom a break and took me to the museum. I think it is because they are only 1 euro on Sunday:)

Dad is not much of an art guy, but he does like design and architecture a lot. Plus the modern stuff isn't too bad sometimes. So we went to the Pinakothek der Moderne. They had this room that was full of green lights in a design and I loved it. Plus the ceilings there were really neat skylights all over. I loved it so much that I talked to everyone there to tell them how cool it was. It had a fun afternoon with my dad!

Pete English breezes through town

We sure do love it when the U.S. comes to town and squelches any home sickness we might have been feeling. We never would have guessed that one of those said visitors would have been the one-and-only Pete English from Jeff's high school days. It was great to see him as he breezed through town!

Will's First Trip

With our home visit to California looming at us in February, this nervous new mom wanted to get a trip with a baby out of the way to work out any cobwebs she might not anticipate in a 14-hour plane ride. What does every new parent do as a trial run? Florence, naturally!

In January, the Zabel 3 hopped aboard a 7-hour train ride to Florence, Italy. It poured rain most of the time, but it didn't stop us from exploring the city, eating gelato, climbing church towers for great views, and taking in the art.


The verdict? We're set to travel! Will is a trooper. Train rides are fabulous because we can feed, change, and walk him around whenever he wants -- no need to pull over our car to the side of the road to do so. Traveling during non-peak times is to die for! Who would have guessed we'd walk right into the Academia and only have to share Michaelangelo's David with about 30 other people. Sign us up!

Lunching with the LoAHFers

Well, it's April 1st and it's snowing, no fooling. Just noticed (ha!) that our blog seems to have forgotten about posting itself since November . . . . let's see if I can catch everyone up.

One of my favorite outings during the week (before and after Will) was my weekly lunch with the LoAHFers. Yes, Munich has it's own League of Accidental Haus Fraus that eat at various restaurants every week. It's a lively gathering of formerly professional women who now find themselves footloose and fancy free due to their husband's expat assignments. We laugh as we share the ins and outs of German living such as the wonders of Persil, where to find decent Mexican food, and any other such giggles of the week. The picture above is from a few weeks ago once most everyone had cleared out and us hard-core haus fraus remained.

Will and I haven't been to as many as of late, but nonetheless, there's always next week!

Red Bull Crushed Ice

Another fun outing we had in the winter time was a trip to Olympia Park for the Red Bull Crushed Ice Tour. Basically it was a downhill, ice-skating race. We were hoping more for a roller-derby meets Nascar kind of knock-outs and blow-outs, but it proved much tamer and COLDER than anticipated. Thank goodness we all stayed warm thanks to gluwein (for us) and Will's warm snowsuit (for him). Nonetheless it was a great time spent with good friends Andreas, Lauren, and Lawrence!