Fastnacht, Vienna, and Our First Trip Back to the US

Wow, has it really been 3 months since my last post? That's longer that I had thought originally.

Things are going well here. It's still cold though. High of 50 most days. And of course we are getting our fair share of our April showers. If April showers really bring May flowers, then we are going to have an amazingly gorgeous May. The tulips are all blooming and Germans are big on gardening, so they are everywhere! Some farmers have these patches of land that they plant flowers in, like tulips, and anyone can go, clip whatever flowers they want, and leave the money for them in a locked box on the signpost. (You may remember the flowers Felix gave me at the airport when he picked me up back in October from my first post.) I'm eager to go and pick some. There is a flower patch about a mile down the street with gorgeous, bright tulips that I eye every time I drive past them, but with all of the travel we did in March, we've been watching our spending a lot this month. Hopefully there will still be some lovely blooms left by early May.

Back in February, I experienced my first Fastnacht! It was definitely an experience! Imagine a hybrid holiday combining Thanksgiving (the HUGE parade), Halloween (the costumes and candy), and Mardi Gras (the ridiculousness and booze). That is Fastnacht. This must be why Germans don't really care about Halloween, because they already have a holiday for dressing up in costumes. I won't really go into too much detail here because I have TONS of pictures to go with it. It will have to wait for a later post (another 3 months maybe? haha). But I will go ahead and post the only pictures I have on the computer right now.

 

 

 Freezing while waiting for the parade to start! We had on SOOO many layers and it wasn't enough!

I enjoyed my first Fastnacht, but I understood after the fact why Dr. Ridder warned us ahead of time to stay home and watch the parade on tv!

In early March, our friend Matt came to visit from KY! It was so nice to have a friend in Germany! He arrived on Thursday morning super early, so Felix worked from home and I went to language school while Matt napped and showered. Of course we fed him a traditional German breakfast of brotchen (basically hard rolls) with various meats, cheeses, and spreads first. Thankfully his body wasn't bothered by jet lag at all. This was good because we left the next afternoon after Felix was done working for Munich. We arrived pretty late and spent the next day exploring the city and left that night for Vienna. We spent a few days in Vienna before starting the trip back to Germany. Before we crossed over into Germany, we stopped for a few hours to explore Salzburg. All in all, it was a fantastic trip! Matt got to experience Mainz and Felix's aunt and uncle before heading back to the US. Once again, all of this requires a separate post, but here is a picture from Salzburg.

We spent the next week cleaning the apartment, catching up on work, and catching up on school before packing for our 2 week stint in the US. It was a whirlwind visit that including a wedding and all of my annual doctor exams. It's fun cramming those into 2 weeks. (okay, not really) We took one evening for a date night, but we were so exhausted all we could manage was a round of putt-putt and a movie on the couch at home. It was lovely. :)

 

Die Siedler von Catan

We picked up my Aufenthaltstitel yesterday evening.  This card isn't exactly useful for anything because I had all of the "functions" turned off. It is pretty much just physical proof that I am allowed to come and go in this country until it expires. I have to remember to bring this card with me when we leave to go to the US and when we come back to Germany in March. If I forget it, they may not let me back into Germany. I was going to post a picture of the card, but even after I put pieces of paper over my name and signature, I realized after putting the picture in my blog draft that they have a hidden text that holds your name under a flash. It just wasn't worth the effort to cover everything and risk the minute possibility of someone trying to steal my identity. 

Instead, here are pictures of what I have, just without my information. 

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This is a picture of the stickers they put in my passport as my temporary Aufenthaltstitel. It takes up 2 pages. While we were waiting for Herr Elseberg to finish up my paperwork yesterday, I realized that I only have 4 pages left in my passport. That is essentially 8 trips. That may not sound like much, but if Felix and I make 3-4 trips a year the way we have planned for this year, I will have to get a new passport before its expiration date. And that is just trips to visit the US. If we take long weekend trips by plane outside of Germany as well, I will need a new passport even sooner. To be fair, the Aufenthaltstitel took up 2 pages and my visa for Indonesia took up a page. I was a little baffled because I am pretty sure that before I met Felix, I never would have thought I would fill up a passport, let alone need a second one. I'm only 25. I still have decades of travel left in me. Felix has brought a lot of enrichment and joy to my life in many ways, but some of the big ways have been exposing me to travel, different cultures, and helping me to embrace being outside of my comfort zone.

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This is a picture of the actual card given to all Ausländer (foreigners) who qualify for an Aufenthaltstitel. It has your full name, city of birth, expiration date, signature, birthdate, country of origin, height, sex, eye color, and address somewhere on the front or back. The most interesting part of the residence permit card is on the back. There is a horizontal holographic oval that shows your picture and the expiration date depending on which way you are looking at the card. It's about .5 inches wide and 1 inch long. Pretty tiny for a picture of your face. 

If you read my last post first, then you know that language school is finally paying off big time (!), but I didn't mention the other way I am appreciating language school: the structure it provides to my week. Before I began school, every day was "the weekend" to me. My days didn't have any structure and I never knew what date it was because that information didn't pertain to my life. I love that I have somewhere to be during the week. I appreciate my weekends now. They feel special and "earned" instead of mundane. 

It's been a good week. Besides learning the key to the German language, Felix and I did pretty well with our cooking. Last night we made a sort of date night out of our evening. 

We picked up my Aufenthaltstitel after Felix was done working and had to go directly to his physio appointment. I took his phone and his money and walked down to the grocery store about a quarter of a mile down the road to pick up veggies for dinner. I walked back to the physio office and we hurried home to get out of the arctic winds. Together we made rice and steamed veggies (peas, broccoli, carrots, bell pepper, and potatoes) with Helle Soße (light sauce). We ate at the table (which happens frequently, but not every night) and shared a bottle of wine. After dinner, we played a game of Die Siedler of Catan (The settler of Catan). It is a game Felix played when he was younger, but it was completely new to me. 

 
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This is a picture I pulled off the web because I forgot to take one of our finished board last night when we were done. We have a cheaper version where everything is cardboard (the streets, towns, cities, and Räuber (robber)), but this is a nicer board. The idea is to get to 10 points to win. Building a town is 1 point, building a city is 2. You have to upgrade a town to a city; you can't just build a city. The cards that you can sort of see on the top of the picture and the bottom left corner are the "materials." You need a wood card and a brick card to build a street, for example. You take turns rolling the die twice. If you have a city or town on the corner of the number rolled, you get to pick up 1 (for a town) or 2 (for a city) cards of that corresponding "material." For example, if I am the red player in the picture above, I have a town on a 6, an 11, and a 5. If a 6 is rolled, I get to pick up a wheat card because the background image on the 6 is wheat. If a 5 is rolled, I get to pick up one wood card, because the background is of the forest. And if an 11 is rolled, I get to pick up a stone card. I can then trade in the cards in my hand to build streets, towns, and cities.

It gets a bit more complex obviously, but that is the gist of it. After Felix kicked my butt, we watched a movie with Kiera Knightly and Andrew Garfield called "Never Let Me Go." I vaguely remembered hearing about it, but I didn't remember hearing anything of what it is about. It was an interesting premise based on a world where children were created for the sole purpose of "donation." They are purely sources of organs for actual people. It's based on a book and I actually quite liked it. It was uncomfortable to watch at times because it causes you to wonder what a life would be like if you always knew your only purpose in life was to "donate." Creepy. 

There aren't any big plans for our weekend. I'm going to paint my nails after I post this and Felix is at his first meeting as a member of the DJK. He is getting sick, so I imagine we'll buy groceries for the next 3 days tomorrow and spend a lot of time tidying up the apartment and relaxing.

I hope everyone is doing well! :)