If it's not Raven, it's crap...

Our actual Christmas celebration was...different. Even though it was a reflection of our own personal tastes, there was still a (perhaps unconscious) integration of some of the family traditions practiced by C.Dub and Frosty's family. We decided against getting a Christmas tree early on. I grew up with artificial Christmas trees and tend to prefer them over live trees (less hassle and maintenance). So not having a tree didn't bother me one bit. Plus there was a perfectly decent potted plant in the living room. We just slapped some lights on that bad boy and we were basically good to go. C.Dub got some festive tree branches from a colleague and we put some decorations and candy on those. Way less work and clean up will be a snap. One element that differed greatly from last year's celebration was that this time we had actual gift wrapping paper for the presents. Last year, most of the presents were wrapped in carefully chosen newspaper articles. From what I gathered, the a

Barneby is quickly becoming my favorite location in Dresden. We (well, I) went there the first time back in June. It's a spacious and comfy bar where the drinks/food are affordably priced and you can choose from a bunch of board games. Four hundred and sixty-five, according to their " game menu " but many of those seem to be variations of dice-rolling or card games. This is a picture of us playing a game called Stalinallee and of my 0.5L Staropramen (my beer of choice when in Dresden...yum!). The game is described here as "[a] simple game asking for knowledge about Stalinallee, Berlin, about 1950, with some more or less humorous elements drawn from GDR everyday life." That sums it up pretty well. We didn't really get to complete the game, but I was declared the winner anyway.

Sometimes I think to myself that I should take more time to expand my cultural horizons by going to the museum or theater or whatever in Hamburg. But then I think to myself that it's not really necessary, because I make up for all of it whenever I come to visit Frosty & C .Dub or whenever one of them comes to visit me. Even before I arrived, there were multiple telephone discussions back and forth (me & C.Dub , C.Dub & Frosty , then me & Frosty and then Frosty & C.Dub ) regarding which theatrical pieces we wanted to see and when. We settled on two (for the curious/lit nerds, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Peer Gynt ). This way, I feel like I get in the rest of my theater quota for the year. It's not nearly as high as C.Dub's or Frosty's , but it's enough to keep my conscience feeling clear. We reserved our tickets before Christmas and planned to pick up the tickets while we were out finishing up our Christmas shopping and buying the ingredie

The first week of my two-week Dresden visit is nearly over. Yesterday, was our 3-person holiday celebration. Germans (well the ones that celebrate Christmas, anyway) typically do the dinner/present thing on the 24th. I'm sure I probably mention this every year. Frosty , C.Dub and I had a tasty vegan dinner, then we went for a walk, read a story together after we got back and then opened presents until 3am. That's the abbreviated version. Stay tuned for the longer version. But before we get to that I'll give you a brief rundown of the days leading up to Christmas. I arrived last Saturday evening. Frosty was due to come in on Sunday evening. Usually, I try not to arrive before him, because I don't particularly enjoy walking around Dresden by myself at night. It's definitely an after effect of my 10-month stay here in 2004-2005. Luckily, Conni (aka Bierfred McPhail) and FQ -- together known as "the Ludes" -- came to meet me at the train station when I arri

I intended to leave for Dresden on Sunday, but I probably waited a little too long (until today) to find a ride. I'm leaving on Saturday instead. Frosty probably won't get there until Monday, so it'll be like 2 days of quality time with C.Dub (aka die böse Schwiegermama / evil mother-in-law, as she often refers to herself when she leaves messages on my answering machine). This isn't a problem, because C.Dub and I get along quite well. And if we run out of things to talk about (which isn't often) then there's always a backup cache of Frosty -stories. We're celebrating as a trio this year in Dresden, in part due to last year's "fiasco" in Annerod . Ok, it wasn't quite a fiasco (hence, the quotation marks). Overall, it was a lovely family gathering: Frosty's mom, his grandparents, his 2 uncles and their wives, plus his two adorable little half-German/half-Venezuelan cousins. It was the heaping side of emotional tension that made thing

Here are a few more pictures, this time taken by Cherry and her awesome camera. I think she takes very lovely photos, so I will direct you to her Flickr page if you would like to see more. Some more Dom-related frolicking I have been in love with hot dog for almost 9 years. This is probably my favorite sign in all of Germany. This dude was kickin it colonial-style at Balzac Coffee

So, like I said, Mau Mau and Cherry were in Hamburg from Friday until Sunday. Even though the BPPV was bothersome and undiagnosed when they first arrived, it really didn't get in the way of activities...aside from the boozing and lying in a horizontal position. Since we were walking around the city most of the time, I was fine. As for the booze, I kept it classy with a couple of Clausthalers . I've been known to mock non-alcoholic beers, but if you want the whole beer drinking experience (i.e. beer-taste + peeing a lot) without the intoxication part then I'd say that Clausthaler is the way to go. At least it's not insulting your intelligence like Jever Fun . Before Mau Mau arrived, she told me that she wanted eat some decent Mexican food in Hamburg. As you should know from various posts over the years, Hamburg isn't really known for it's Mexican cuisine. However, in the last couple of years, a few decent places have opened up. I've been to three ( Jim Bu

Mau Mau , my good friend and fellow CBYX-Alumna, made it down from Glasgow to spend a couple of days with me in Hamburg. She brought along her friend Cherry and I had my usual itinerary of "tourist activities" all planned out. I'd known about the visit for about a month and I was quite looking forward to it. And really, it all went splendidly for the most part. I'll even show some pictures once Mau Mau uploads them to Facebook and I steal them from there (with permission, of course). But until then, I'll tell you the story behind that lovely bruise up there. As I mentioned in a recent post , I went to the doctor last Tuesday. It was the second day in a row where I woke up in the morning and while still lying in bed, I experienced some dizziness. And no, smart-asses, I wasn't drunk. I did, however, decide that this merited a trip to my doctor, since it was very weird and off-putting. My regular doctor wasn't there so I saw another physician in the office.

I spent the better part of the afternoon (after the prerequisite unemployment job application stuff) trying to clean up the audio and rotate a video that Pickles sent to me. She shot it with her cell phone, but with all the laughter and loud talking over one another the audio is pretty much unusable. I can't even decipher enough of it to write a transcript, which is too bad...because it looks like the conversation is/was hilarious. It started out with something about garlic, then bad breath (or maybe breasts?), then a story about a man whose name sounded like "Tom McCrackin"(?) ...and then at the end a story of perhaps...my cousin running over my aunt in my aunt's jeep in an accidental parking break failure? Here's a quick clip and mini-transcript of the parts that I understood. The woman in the middle of the screen is my Aunt Helen , on the right side sitting on a stool is my cousin (my aunt's younger daughter) Heather , and in the left corner is my other co

This seems like the type of post that would be fairly picture-heavy. But it's not. Sorry. I didn't have my camera with me yesterday, since I typically don't take my camera with me to doctor's appointments (again...my apologies there as well). I wanted to take some time out to talk about German Christmas Markets ( Weihnachtsmarkt , Pl. Weihnachtsmärkte ). No, nothing about the history or cultural significance or stupid crap like that. Instead, I want to talk about German Christmas Markets and how they impact my life (which you may or may not agree is more fascinating than like 600 years of Christmas tradition). Like I said, yesterday I was at the doctor's office and afterwards I went to a pharmacy to fill my prescription only to find out that the particular drug that I needed was out of stock and that a delivery would take about 3 hours. After checking at two other nearby pharmacies (who didn't have the medication either), I went back to the first and decided to