Eurotrip 2007-2008: Berlin, Day One

Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Blather, christmas, dining, wide world of vacation | 1 Comment

I really loved Germany. Overall, it’s very clean and orderly and I found it very pretty. I guess it’s as-advertised. The Germans are good at design, Christmas, and engineering. They’re efficient. The trains–even the S-bahn and U-bahn, which are more or less like our subway trains… AND the buses–run like clockwork. It was chilly, but that was perfect. I mean, it was Christmas/New Year’s! But I’d better go in more or less chronological order, as much as I can recall, or I’ll get everything mixed up.

So… We flew American Airlines through London. I do NOT recommend American Airlines. Their seats are pretty cramped and their food, at least on the way over, was GOD AWFUL. It was without a doubt the worst airline food I’ve ever had. Our layover in London was sort of funny in retrospect. We were so tired and out of it. It was fairly early in the morning, and as the airline food had been so terrible, we decided to get a cup of tea and a bite to eat. I got toast (it had some grand name on the menu that I wish I could remember) and a pot of tea and Ez got a little omelet. This was our first encounter with the little portable credit card machine that servers use in Europe. They don’t have to take your card away from the table–the whole transaction happens right there. Maybe these are showing up in the U.S., too… but I haven’t seen them here.

We arrived at Tegel airport in Berlin sometime around noon, I think. As soon as we got off the plane it was like, “so THIS is Germany!” Passport control was right there at the gate, as was the baggage claim for our flight! The carousel was literally right at the gate. Fantastic. So, we quickly gathered up our bags and headed for the buses. There is surely a simple way to buy a bus ticket from a machine, but a bunch of us travelers hadn’t figured that out, so there was a bit of a line. Once we had our tickets, though, we hopped on the bus and were on our way.

The bus stopped just a couple of blocks from our hotel, the Hotel Art Nouveau, which I highly recommend. It’s in what appears to be a quite nice neighborhood in Charlottenburg in the western part of the city. We were quite near the Kurfürstendamm, a long tree-lined shopping avenue. As we made our reservations a bit late, we ended up in a suite (oh woe!). It was beautiful. The whole hotel is in an old art nouveau building with very high ceilings, big lovely windows, and an old-fashioned elevator.


A bit of our clean, airy, cozy suite

Though we had every intention of going out, we had to take a little nap. After sleeping an hour or so, we set off to find our first Christmas market. It so happened that one of the biggest and best was not far from our hotel, next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. I loved the Christmas markets! They’re sort of these little carnival villages with lots of food and drink stalls, rides, gift stalls, and bright lights. Lots of the food stalls sell gluhwein (Ez tells me this means “glow wine”), a hot mulled wine that’s a bit sour-sweet for my taste but that warms you up quite well. When you order a mug of this stuff, or of beer or hot cocoa, a euro or two of the price is a deposit on the mug or glass in which they serve you the drink. The gluhwein and cocoa are served in special Christmas market mugs, which I guess some people collect. Ez and I brought home a few, of course.


Stall selling gluhwein and wurst


Note the mugs warming in the foreground. We brought home two of those.

Several of the markets had big indoor Christmas shops selling ornaments and decorations. It was like German Christmas wonderland. Here’s Ez in Christmas glow outside the one by the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.

We were hungry, so I ended up getting veggie lo mein from a stall (yeah, they even had that!) and Ez got what I think was his first wurst of the trip.

After that, we decided to track down the large and famous German department store, KaDeWe, which was just a few blocks away. It’s a big shiny department store–the largest in continental Europe. It’s interesting in the way that it’s interesting to go to food shops in other countries–just to see what they have and how they do things. AND they had a big, beautiful sock and stocking section (bliss!)… Falke, a fabulous German hosiery company, was well represented. In fact, they had some lovely tights on sale that I snapped right up. They’re so warm! Totally worth the price (which was considerably less than it would have been at home, even with the unfavorable exchange rate).

Vintage Christmas postcards

Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, christmas, me and my brain | 5 Comments

I think I did actually post about my Christmas postcards once quite a while ago, but my collection has grown and there’s been a request from on high (well, from Kim) for another post. I love my cards, so I’m happy to fulfill that request.

I can’t remember when I started collecting them. It’s been a little while, because I think I’ve been collecting them the whole time we’ve been doing our annual advent calendar, and we started doing that in 2001. I recently separated out my cards into those with clear postmarks or hand-written dates, those with unreadable postmarks, those with writing but no postmark or hand-written date, and those that appear to be unused. Of the ones that are dated, the vast majority of my collection is from 1907 to 1932. My oldest and newest dated postcards both came from Nora, who rescued them for me from the Georgia State Historical Society. The oldest appears to be from 1905 and the newest is from 1944. Some have stamps and some have Christmas seals. Most were produced either in the United States or Germany. A fair number of them are embossed–especially the older ones. I also have about 10 old Christmas cards that I couldn’t resist, but at this point I’m much more interested in the postcards.

The breakdown of my collection is something like this:

Hand-written, no postmark or date: 71

Handwritten with unreadable postmark: 14

Unused: 34


Three of my favorites from among my unused postcards

Sample: 1


My sample postcard, front and back

With readable postmark or hand-written date: 158

Antique Christmas cards or card fronts: 10

Which, if you include the cards, gives me a total of 288. My collection has certainly grown!

Some of them have pretty designs on the back:


I don’t collect any particular images or designs–just things that I like. I seem to have a lot of bells and holly–so I guess I like bells and holly!

Among the cards with dates, the breakdown goes something like this:
1905: 1 | 1907: 13 | 1908: 19 | 1909: 15 | 1910: 12 | 1911: 11 | 1912: 6
1913: 4 | 1914: 4 | 1915: 5 | 1916: 9 | 1917: 6 | 1918: 4 | 1919: 6
1920: 7 | 1921: 3 | 1922: 5 | 1923: 5 | 1924: 5 | 1925: 7 | 1926: 2 | 1927: 1
1928: 1 | 1929: 2 | 1930: 1 | 1931: 1 | 1932: 2 | 1944: 1

Among the newer ones, this one is one of my favorites:


Dated 1920

My impression is that people sent them more from about 1907 to 1917, and most of my favorite ones of those I have that are dated are from 1907-1911.


Two of my favorite Santa postcards. The one on the left reminds me a little of W.C. Fields! Heh. It’s dated 1910. The other is undated.

And I’ll leave you with this pretty one.



It’s a good example of a lot of things I like in vintage postcards. It has good color (the scan doesn’t quite do it justice), a bit of shine (gold or silver–there’s a bit of metallic gold applied to this one, which doesn’t really come through on the scan), snow, holly, a pretty scene… I love it when I find rich cards like these. This one is dated 1911.

Start as you mean to go on… Christmas

Posted on January 15, 2008
Filed Under Blather, Gastronomie, Pennsylvania, christmas, daytripping, dining, family, friends, photography, the pusses | Leave a Comment

OK, so my updates are going to have to stretch back into time here. I’ll get up to the present eventually!

This year felt even more busy at Christmas than usual. Between the Bazaar Bizarre, our party, getting ready to go to Berlin and Nice after Christmas, and the usual Christmas festivities, we were in a bit of a tizzy. I’m not complaining, mind you, though I do hope we can spread things out a little more next year somehow.

Our party was super fun. We had SO MUCH food. Our friends really are the best chefs ever, and this year we were even treated to fabulous homemade bread courtesy of John and Sonya, who made it down for their first (hopefully the first of many) Terri and Ezra holiday party. We were also pleased that the Breens could join us, as we hadn’t seen them for a while.


The Breens: Christie, Elizabeth, Jeffrey, and Patricia

We spent Christmas in State College with my parents and Kim, Glenn, and Hope. The Saturday before Christmas we got a sitter for Hope and went to the State Theatre to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. Ez and I have seen it several times at The Brattle here in Cambridge, but Mom, Dad, Kim, and Glenn had never seen it on the big screen before. I think the screen at The State is actually bigger than the one at the Brattle. Anyway, it was great. Afterwards Ez and I caught up with our friend John Kenyon for a couple of drinks.

During the day on Saturday Kim and I did a big antiquing extravaganza at Big Valley Antiques and Dairyland. For those of you who don’t know, those are big antique co-ops practically across the highway from each other near Lewistown, PA (I think they’re technically in Milroy??). I love our trips over there. We always make delightful discoveries, and I almost always find some additions for my collection of vintage Christmas postcards. Between Big Valley, Dairyland, and Apple Hill Antiques in State College, I ended up with some new goodies again this time. I’ve promised Kim that I’ll do a post about my collection, so stay tuned.

Sunday we went over to Lewistown to see the aunts and uncles and cousins. Hope wore an adorable dress Kim and Glenn bought her on their trip to Italy and was just generally entertaining and cute as always.


Hope with Nana at Aunt Kay’s house

My Aunt Kay and Uncle Larry had been taking care of a sweet kitty and her five baby kittens, and we got to see them. They were SO ADORABLE. How I wished I could have taken one or two of them, but with Suki and Edie it just didn’t seem like the best idea. I seriously considered it, though! They were the sweetest!

Since we celebrated with the families on Sunday, we spent all of Christmas Day at home in State College. I stretched my toes by the fire and had lots of time to gaze at my new Garbo book, eat holiday M&Ms, and play with the point and shoot camera Ez gave me. Hope made out like a bandit, of course. She spent a little time enjoying her new maracas before becoming enraptured by her new Play-Doh set. Ez and I had lots of fun with her and the Play-Doh.

We had to scurry back to Massachusetts the day after Christmas, which felt a bit weird and rushed, but we made the most of it. Then it was two days at home with the cats and packing before cabbing it to the airport for Eurotrip 2007-2008!

A quick update

Posted on January 9, 2008
Filed Under Blather, christmas, family, photography, wide world of vacation | 3 Comments

It’s been a wildly busy and wonderful couple of weeks in the lives of Terri and Ezra. Christmas was very nice, as always, and flew past too quickly–as always. After a short jaunt back home to see the kitties, we set off for Berlin. We spent several days there, with a day trip to Leipzig on New Year’s Day, and then flew down to Nice on the 3rd. Ezra’s sister April married Manu (a native of France) in a civil cermony on the 7th and a church wedding on the 8th. We fly back to Boston via London today. I have about a million pictures to weed through (only a slight exaggeration). I’ll share many soon.

xo

The Christmas season begins

Posted on November 30, 2007
Filed Under Blather, christmas | 2 Comments

With everything going on right now, progress on Christmas decorating is a little slow… BUT I have lined many of our moldings with my collection of antique Christmas postcards and our tree is up and decorated.


The top of the tree with a number of new (to me) ornaments and my postcards in the background



All lit up

En route, we stopped in New York

Posted on November 30, 2007
Filed Under Blather, christmas, daytripping | 1 Comment

Ez did some work in New York on Tuesday en route to Pennsylvania, and I got a chance to see a bit of the holiday decorations down there as well as the preparations for the big Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.


The decorations at Lord & Taylor were so beautiful that they lured me inside. It was like a glistening wonderland in there! The Macy’s decorations were less impressive (though still very nice), but their windows were quite fabulous. On one side of the building all of the windows depicted scenes from the film Miracle on 34th Street.

Radio Rudolph

Posted on November 26, 2007
Filed Under Blather, christmas, music | Leave a Comment

Hee hee!

I’ve been tagged! The Name Game

Posted on September 7, 2007
Filed Under Blather, christmas, family, friends, me and my brain | 4 Comments

Kimby tagged me! OK, I’ll play.

The rules: Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My middle name is Nicole (I guess my folks had a thing for French middle names).

N: Nora. Most of you reading this already know about Nora. We’ve been friends since 6th grade and I can’t underestimate the effect our friendship has had on my life. Nora, if you’re reading this, I know we don’t keep in touch as much as we should, but I think about you all the time.

I: Imagination. When I was a kid people were always telling me what an active imagination I had. I hope I still do. Imagination is where pretty much all creativity comes from. It’s how I solve problems, dream, act, and make a life for myself. For people who don’t understand the part of me that feels the need to plan–for me, planning is linked up with imagining. It’s one of the ways that I try to make what I imagine real. I’ve just realized something, too. When I graduated from college, my parents gave me a framed quote–”Go confidently in the direction of your dreams… Live the life you have imagined.”* I now see how appropriate that was.

C: Christmas. I love Christmas! The year basically revolves around Christmas for me. I swear to you, the best thing for me about July is that when it hits we’ve turned the corner–we’re more than half way to Christmas. I’ve been like this forever. I love the pictures of me and Kim as little kids with these looks of total innocent magic on our faces at Christmastime.

O: Overload. There are too many words that start with O, too many places I want to go, too many books I want to read, too many people I want to visit. There are too many classes I want to take, too many restaurants I like and cannot choose from when we want to go out. The Sugarcubes’ first album is called Life’s Too Good, and I think I subscribe to that philosophy. The thing to figure out is that it’s a wonderful thing. I hope that I drink up as much of it as I can. Even doing nothing is one of the tasty options to choose from.

L: Language… well, the English language. I write, I read, I love pens, I love books. I am a word person and play Boggle all the time for fun. I make up words. I’m an editor.

E: Ezra. Do I need to explain this one?

I normally feel kind of funny tagging people, but this is actually an interesting thing to do once you get into it, soo… I taggeth Ezra and Nora (well, they were already name-checked in this post, so!). If anyone else reading this is moved to do it, I’d love to read your results.

*Henry David Thoreau

Advent Calendar

Posted on December 20, 2006
Filed Under Blather, christmas | Leave a Comment

For anyone who has been following our advent calendar, we know that days 19 and 20 are broken. We’re working on it and hope to have them up and running later today.

Another holiday treat from the bunnies

Posted on December 14, 2006
Filed Under Blather, art, christmas, films | Leave a Comment

A Christmas Story in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies.

xmas story bunnies

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Japandroids-The House That Heaven Built 

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