Wine Country smells like pee...

It would seem that I haven't written in a while. That means this one's going to be a doozy. I have a list a mile (1.6 km) long to cover. I might even add some pictures later. I have to get them off of the camera. Actually, I have a few lying around. Maybe I will start with those and see what happens.

So… Where to start? Christmas turned out OK here in Germany. We kept it small. It made it quite relaxing, and the kids didn’t get too many toys to play with. That was a first. For Christmas dinner, we had a rabbit. I hadn’t noticed when I was looking at them just how long the packages were. I asked Sarah to pick one up and then didn’t look at it until I pulled it out to cook it. Turns out, when you buy a whole rabbit in Germany, you actually get the whole thing. Except for the digestive tract, feet, ears, and eyes. Yeah, the head was pretty unexpected. And a rabbit head without eyes and ears is pretty creepy looking. I had initially intended to cook the head since it was there, but I hadn’t mixed up enough flour coating, and my skillet wasn’t big enough. It was a big ol’ bunny. Surprise number two came when I started cleaning the body cavity. I found kidneys, a liver, a heart, and lungs. So they are in my freezer awaiting some inspiration that happens to call for the insides of a rabbit. It hasn’t hit yet. The rabbit was amazing when it was cooked, though. I coated it with flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg; browned it in olive oil and butter; and then simmered it in chicken broth with onions for about an hour. I reduced the drippings and made a nice, creamy gravy. It was really tender and mild flavored. We loved it.

Oh, along with regressing my general lifestyle to about 1930, I have started eating parts again. Christmas eve (I think), I cooked up some chicken hearts, livers and gizzards in flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper (with a long butter milk marinade prior to coating). It was fabulous. New Year’s eve, I cooked up a kilo (2.2 pounds) of chicken hearts that I had marinated in beer. I like to keep them handy and eat them a lot like shelled nuts. A handful here and a handful there.

We had forgotten how amazing New Year’s eve is in Germany. The custom is to get blazing drunk and then fire of fireworks for half an hour at midnight. And when I say fireworks, I mean bombs and mortars. It is awe inspiring. We bought a few small fireworks that we could shoot off early with the kids. Sparklers, fountains, snap pops and the like. The snap pops here are like Black Cats. They are the size of my thumbnail (about 4 or 5 times the size of the ones in the US). When you throw them at the ground, you get stung by flying debris, and they explode brightly. I would NEVER be brave enough to pinch one of these guys to make it pop. So after the kids did their part, we got them to bed. We then spent an exciting evening sick and sober playing cards while I rebuilt all of the computers we own due to a series of freak accidents and/or failures that had broken them. About twenty to midnight we started hearing the start of the show. We got our shoes on and then decided to see if the kids wanted to see everything. As we started up the stairs, things were getting noisy outside. Briana all but leapt into Sarah’s arms. Aiden, however, would have nothing to do with it. Period. I even went so far as to drag him bodily from his bed and hold him up on his feet in front of the window so he could see the 16 inch fountain in the middle of the road (yeah, with this population density, they just go nuts in the street around what traffic is crazy enough to be driving around out there). He turned and went straight back to bed. So I told him it was about to get really loud, and we would be out in front of the house if he needed us.

So we get outside and assess the situation. There are a bunch of people over at the house next to us. There are a few people in front of the bar on the other side of us. Almost no one is across the street. So I step back inside our gate and start poking through our little sack of fireworks to see if there is anything I want to light. Sarah is standing on the sidewalk and starts frantically calling under her breath for me to come out there because some of the neighbors are coming over to talk to her. I step around the gate to do a little translating. We see an older lady (late 50’s or early 60’s) and a young guy in his mid-twenties or so. The guy steps forward and says, “So, I hear you guys are American.” In an east coast accent. He was from Boston. He was in the military, met a girl here, and stayed once he got out. He now works for the police. His dad was also here visiting, so we talked to them for a while. The guy talked to us for a couple of minutes and then went over to start the fireworks. He had a wagon about 3 feet long, 18 inches wide, with sides about 10 inches tall with fireworks mounded in it. His first choice was what looked like your standard Black Cat firecracker pack with the hundred or so firecrackers in it. Except that this one was made with what looked like M-80’s. He lights it, throws it into the street, and then turns to us and says, “Oh, this is going to be loud.” It was more than loud. It was painful. It lasted for a good 20 to 30 seconds. About ¾ of the way through, I see Sarah’s eyes go wide. She had been holding B’s head against her so that one ear was against Sarah’s chest and Sarah’s hand was covering the exposed ear. She realized that the boy must be reacting to this as well. I grabbed B as Sarah threw her at me on her way back into the house. She apparently ran in the door in time to see a blubbering Aiden disappearing into the living room. She managed to corral him in short order. He immediately, through tears, confirmed that he had every intention of going outside to see what was happening. He told Sarah that he wanted to see the battle outside.

And battle it was. It was about 35 minutes of full on siege. They sell guns here that are like starter pistols. You put a special firework in the barrel (kinda like a black powder gun), point it, and pull the trigger. The fireworks are like the missiles in a Saturn battery. Real screamers. Every six shots, you empty the spent caps, reload, and commence launching fireworks. The kids are convinced that they are each getting one next year. The whole time the sidewalks are full of people darting into the road to light off huge bombs and the like. There is no coordination, and there are people EVERYWHERE. You can barely see what is going on due to all of the smoke rolling through the streets. It is so cool. Next year we are going to try to figure out a way to film it.

I had to go back to work on the 3^rd. It was nice and quiet. I had two people on my team present the first week. It made for some nice, uninterrupted work. The 4^th we decided to take the kids to the public ice rink that had been set up downtown. The local utility company apparently sponsors it. It was interesting. I had only been ice skating twice prior to the trip (a side effect of growing up in Arkansas). The kids have never been. Aiden decided that everyone would be watching him since he didn’t know how to skate, and said he wasn’t going to try. Briana almost had to be tied down to a bench while we got skates on her. She did OK, but mainly only because she is small enough that I can easily hold her up while I skate without her feet interfering too often. She would pretty much stomp her feet, which kept them under her, and we would tool around the rink. Aiden finally decided Briana was having enough fun that he should try it. His efforts were more…interesting. He was much more like an epileptic jellyfish on the ice. I mean his legs were everywhere. And they were never under him. It was like he was completely incapable of controlling anything about where his legs were flailing. It was really weird. I would have liked to have had them piddle around more on their own, but the rink was too crowded, and there were some teenagers tearing around too much for a flailing kid to survive. It was a fun evening overall, but very tiring and challenging. There is a rink not too far from here (maybe 45 minutes by tram) that we may try later. Or I might just write off ice skating this winter.

Sarah and the kids have had some issues lately with chapped lips. She bought some German Blistex stick and another brand to try to help it. Aiden and Briana are bad about chewing on their lower lips, so the skin under their lips looks like they always have a rope burn. Sarah noticed, however, that her lips seemed to be sloughing off when she used Aiden’s chapstick. She realized that she was having a reaction to it. So she mentioned that the next time he offered to share it. She told him it made her lips hurt and the skin fall off. He told her that when he rubbed it on his tongue, it made it feel like his tongue was throwing a party. Definitely disturbing.

The day after we went ice skating, Sarah brought the kids to my office so we could all go eat together in one of the cafeterias here on site. They were having roast chicken (they just plop half a chicken right on your plate) and French fries (I have completely adopted the European taste for fries with mayonnaise and ketchup). That happens to be one of my favorite lunches. I thought the kids would enjoy it as well. They spent the three days before they came talking about coming to the airport to eat lunch with Daddy. For those of you wondering if traveling a lot for work while your children are young has any affect, the answer is a resounding yes. Aiden asked me about three weeks ago if it was still cold at the airport where I worked. This came from a long, nine month project in Nebraska when he was three and Briana was about 18 months old (yes, over two years ago). I would fly home every other weekend, and I always had on heavy clothing when I arrived and when I left. This apparently leaves an impact on a kid living where it was 60 or 70 degrees. I would often leave St. Louis wearing lined pants and a few shirts with a heavy coat when it was easily long sleeve t-shirt/sweatshirt weather because I would land in Omaha and it would be 5 degrees. When we mention that I don’t actually work at the airport, they just look at us like we are crazy and give us a sympathetic little laugh. Briana used to also frequently ask which airport I was going to when I left for work in St. Louis. The big one (Lambert) or the other one (my office).

I went on a bike ride Sunday. It was cold. I would say low- to mid- 30’s. I borrowed some shoe covers from my neighbor to see if I could keep feeling in my feet. It didn’t work. My shoes are too narrow. When I wear warm socks (thin, fleece lined, neoprene) I lose feeling in my toes and the balls of my feet. I think that part of it is nerve pressure and the other is from being all jammed up against cold leather shoes. Maybe I will buy some cheap winter shoes for next winter. I had a nice ride in spite of that. It was really sunny with almost no wind. I went out again with my friend who is training for the Iron Man. I keep telling him that he won’t be getting any training when I go with him, but he doesn’t seem to care. We took off north and east of Neureut and rode into the wine country that is in the hills north of the Black Forest. It is really pretty. I believe we started with Stutensee and then looped down through Gondelsheim and then over through Jöhlingen to Durlach. Or something like that. It was about 45 hilly miles. It felt good, but I was tired as hell when I got home. I rode the last few miles by myself, and it was hard to commit to it. And by commit to it, I don’t mean ride fast or get a little more training in. By commit to it, I mean ride. Then one thing I noticed, however, is that much like the Alsace area of France (one of the most popular wine production areas in the world), when we were riding through the country hills dotted with vineyards, it smelled distinctly like pee…