The quintessentially ambivalent vox populi regarding the holidays and their derivation doesn't seem to exist in Germany. The festivities surrounding this holiday season are off to a sublime start. The Christmas Markets are up, Advent calendars have started, and the reindeer have finished their arduous training in preparation for hauling the rotund jovial man in red.
No really though, the Christmas season here is super cool. Not only does it vary a little from the traditional American Christmas, but they also have Christmas Markets here. Something that Germany and Austria are famous for are their Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas Markets). I will be visiting these festive hoards of Christmas cheer several times before Yuletide day is upon us. Most notably I will be visiting Leipzig soon, the city where Classical composers went to create many of the melodies we know today. One of these composers was Bach. In a church in Leipzig, Bach wrote many musics, some of which we will be seeing in concert there. Naturally I am excited for this endeavor.
Not only is it almost Christmas time, which makes me very happy, but it also was quite recently my second favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. As a strictly North American holiday, I was not expecting to have a Thanksgiving here, that is until very early on, our professors told us we would have the latter half of the day off and be able to have a ginormous repast. This made me, and the other Americans very happy. We spent an appropriately long time preparing the wonderfulness that is Thanksgiving. Our spread was shared with a small group of other, non American guests. It was really fun to show them Thanksgiving and tell them what it was all about. It was even more fun showing them first hand that Thanksgiving is all about being with friends and family, those close to us and of course an absurd amount of food. Because it was us students cooking and we are not the magicians of our respective grandparents, we naturally could not achieve this monumental proportion, but there was enough food to render most of us immovable for a pleasantly long period of time.
As I prepare myself for the Yuletide season, I also prepare myself for the imminent cold that comes with it. The people around me still think I am crazy because it's colder than the underside of an iceberg and I still wear my flip flops. Of course I am not all crazy, so I put on a big coat. I am glad that it has become cold enough for me to wear my coats. In recent years, cold and most importantly snow, have been evading me. This makes me very unhappy. I love both. So when they run away to places where places I have just been, it makes me sad. They will of course be where I am a year after I am there. This Christmas I will be in Salzburg. Hopefully there will be snow, however the people here say that there in no guarantee.
I don't know when I will post a blog next. But soon I will be going on a trip to southern Germany, Austria, and Italy, ultimately ending in Rome. This should be an epic adventure. I am sure I will have many hours on a train to write of my experiences. Until then, Merry Christmas.
