Things I already miss about home

In case you were wondering, "home" is now Germany. I'm currently in the U.S. for a wedding (of two super amazing and AWESOME people!) but I'm definitely homesick already. Not only is this a really long time away from hubby, but so many things are just better in Germany...

Groceries.

• I love that the eggs I buy aren't washed (which is keeping a protective layer on, allowing them to be un-refrigerated) and it's always a little funny when I have to inspect them carefully before breaking to avoid eating any renegade feathers still stuck. (I had another picture of a HUGE feather that I found, but thought that might be a little too crazy for you guys to show you!)
• Yogurts and milk, and really any dairy products are delicious.
• Tasty lunch meat and amazing cheeses.
• I can buy these Espresso Sticks easily.
• My main grocery store is half a block from my apartment.

Beverages.

• Beer. Enough said.
• Wine /weinschorle. Weinschorle is a delicious blend of wine and sparkling water, creating a wine spritzer kind of drink that is super tasty. You find it most often with some of their sweeter Rieslings, which cuts the sugar perfectly. 
• Sparkling water. I've really grown accustomed to fizzy water, and although I'm having some here, it somehow tastes better in Germany. They did have the German brand Apollinaris at the store, but it was too expensive... maybe I'll treat myself later in the trip.

Festivals.

There really isn't a good U.S. equivalent of wine, beer, music, and other festivals. You can drink outside, sample goodies (like pan fried noodle dishes, oh my goodness probably my most favorite festival food!) and relax. You drink out of real glasses because Germans can be trusted to not break things, and if there's a fee to return the glass, you do and get a few Euro back. (Hubby really likes this, because it's like someone is paying him to drink responsibly.)

Weather.

The weather is also far and away better. I video chatted with the hubby yesterday and asked what the temperature was: 60-65 degrees. How pleasant. At the time it was a humid 90-something and sunny. Blech. And it keeps sporadically raining. I miss that river breeze already.

However, I am enjoying the fact that when I wake up on most mornings, there is Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee brewing. And I got to roam around a Costco yesterday. And the Container Store.

Anyway, here is the schedule of posts for July:

Monday July 1: regular post
Wednesday July 3: regular post
Friday July 5: no post - I'm at a certain bride's beck and call for her upcoming nuptials!
Monday July 8: regular post
Wednesday July 10 - Wednesday July 24: no posts (I'll be at the beach, traveling, and generally enjoying my holiday!)
Friday July 26: back to the regular schedule

Even though I won't be blogging regularly, I will be constantly updating my Instagram account with new and awesome pictures, so feel free to stalk me there :-)

Happy weekend, all!

Some of the Rental Furniture has arrived!

I was so SO excited to get some items before I headed back to the U.S. Unfortunately it was during a heat wave in Mainz, so the day before it showed up, I was sweating it out inside moving boxes, bins, suitcases and all sorts of things to make room for the closets, guest bedroom and other stuff.  It wasn't any cooler when the guys showed up so I can only imagine how un-fun their job that day was as they moved and assembled furniture.

So worth it to have closets and drawers to put our clothes after months of tossing them on the floor (hubby's preferred solution) or stacking them in piles on other objects. Only one of the wardrobes showed up, so I put hubby's clothes away since he'll be the one using it while I'm gone. The deal was he gets the smaller, two-door wardrobe and also a 7-drawer tall dresser, but I get the three-door wardrobe, which has shelves built in.

Here's some of our bedroom stuff:

At the entrance, we decided to house this large wardrobe to for coats and assorted outerwear, in addition to picnic and sporting items...

And the guest bedroom looks like it fell out of an Ikea catalog:

It's starting to feel like a home now. Hubby and I also hung up some of our pictures on the walls and I started organizing the wedding pictures to FINALLY get large prints and albums pulled together. We also got our lighting fixture for the dining room, which is going to look near identical to the style of furniture we're getting. It's a long process but I think that when it's all said and done, we're going to be really happy with the final product.

Weinwanderung in Rüdesheim

"Weinwanderung" or wine walk/hike/wandering, is a fine way to spend a Saturday. Hubby and I joined some friends on the second Saturday in June to attend one at a nearby town. It was a good deal, too - 12 Euro gets you a 0.1 liter glass and a sampling at 10 stands over a 5k walk.

Here's the glass:

You even got a yellow card to take to each stand for a "stamp" so it was a clever passport-stamping system.




















Although rain threatened, it never came, and the weather turned out to be pretty perfect. Hubby and I made sure to have on plenty of sunscreen (since last time I got a pretty great farmer's burn-tan going on), and also bring tons of water.

(We also didn't bring the camera, so all the pictures here are from my phone.. in some shots you can still see how swollen the Rhine was from the flooding.)

We got plenty of snacks along the way as well. Here's hubby coming back with a bratwurst and roll.

Just relaxing and enjoying the day.....

We were all doing just fine until we made friends with a few Germans at stand 9. All of a sudden there were more glasses of wine and that's when things got a little hazy.

For instance, I have very little memory being inside this building (that church from an earlier shot) and taking this picture:

Oh well. We were hydrated and fed, and hubby and I decided to hang back afterwards and have dinner next to the Rhine before taking the train home to Mainz. We had grand plans to do this during the day (we started at 11:15am) and then hit up a festival in the evening, but, after about 7-8 hours of drinking, we were pretty spent.

Maybe next time...

The City of Reims

Reims was the perfect city to transition us back into Germany. The hotel was in listening distance of the church so we could hear the bells and there was a towel warmer in the bathroom - just like home! The city itself was walk-able, people friendly, not crowded, and had lots of green spaces.

There were plenty of great restaurants to choose from, like this place where we had a nice brunch outside:

The weekend we went also happened to be the weekend of their Renaissance Festival.

While neat, hubby and I had grown accustomed to drinking at festivals and unfortunately France is lame when it comes to this - there was no booze at this fest.














But there was a crazy looking buzzard and what I can only assume was an escapee from Hogwarts:

We also got to go to the Museum of the Surrender. Hubby chuckled when I first mentioned this to him, joking that it was so appropriate to have such a museum in France. Har har har - this was actual location of the German surrender of WWII. They left the room totally intact:

Reims, like most cities between Paris and Germany, had tons of rebuildling to do after the war and, you know, bombings. One thing that remained, though, was this Roman arch:

Pretty neat. We also were treated to a fancy music and lighting show at the Notre Dame Cathedral on Sunday evening:

I'd love to come back here, too :-) There was a grocery store across from our hotel, so on our final night we got some tasty rolls, ham, and cheese for sandwiches. We also got some small cheesecakes and these chips (which tasted EXACTLY like cheeseburgers! Yum.)

Sadly, all great trips must come to an end sometime. After 10 days in France, we were ready to get back home. We stocked up on necessities for the train:

... it really made the four hour trip sail by :-)

Champagne Country Tour

After an amazing time in Versailles, we got back to Paris and boarded the TGV for Reims, the capitol of Champagne. The TGV, of course, is France's high speed train and it did not disappoint. Hubby was a little miffed on the train from Frankfurt to Paris because it wasn't going super fast, but this one was hitting a top speed of 320 kph (198+ mph).

Needless to say, we made it to Reims in a cool 46 minutes, right on time. We went to our spiffy hotel for the evening to prepare for our guided tour the next day.

We woke up Saturday and made our way to the tourist office next to the train station where we met up with our guide and the rest of our group. There were 6 of us total in a minivan - me, hubby, a couple from Surrey, England, and a French Canadian woman who couldn't have been sweeter :-). A great bunch for sure.

The group started off toward Épernay, a city slightly south of Reims that has most of the big Champagne houses and cellars. While en route we stopped for some views and history:

We drove past Bollinger, 007's Champagne of choice :-)

More views (and you can see a little flooding, too):

Soon we were pulling into the Moet & Chandon parking lot for our Champagne cellar tour. Parts were pretty moist...

Tons of bottles....

Oh yeah - Napoleon stole this from the Germans while it was on its way to the country to give to a friend. It's the thought that counts, right?

At the end we got to have a glass, yay!

We were swayed and bought a bottle. While we were checking out we found out that the person assisting us had actually been born in Mainz. Small world! He seemed excited.

On to lunch: Our group had actually been split into two vans so we met up with the others to have this absolutely delicious lunch with, I think, 6-8 different kinds of Champagne. We also got to try their regional liquor (and bought a bottle, yum!)

Our lunch spot in the cutest little French town:

This food was amazing - and the huge macaron at the end was raspberry and peanut butter! Swoon.

More views on the way to the smaller Champagne house:

And we stopped by Dom Perignon's final resting place! Aaahhh!

Here's the cellar in the smaller Champagne house, after we toured the bottling facility.

All in all, quite the bubbly day. I'd definitely recommend our tour group, France Bubble Tours.

Next post: I'll share our adventures staying in Reims and (sadly) leaving France.