The Prodigal Blogger...

HAS RETURNED! No fear folks. I was not swallowed into some lazy-a**, blog-forbidding vortex...I just got home from a 2.5 week vacation this afternoon. And I was so busy the last 17 days that I think I might need another vacation to recover. :)



Well, I tried to keep a little bit of a "journal" while I was gone so I'm just gonna post it over the next few days. Entitled "Adventures with mom, Andee, and Brenda: Canadians invading southern Germany". Enjoy!

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February 8, 2009



So I’ve decided to keep a bit of a journal on my laptop and then I’ll slowly post stuff once I get back to a less primordial internet connection. :)

Warning: this entry contains many many food references. May cause severe hunger pangs, spontaneous drooling, and the urge to max out credit card to join us in our European food frenzy.


So ya…MOM, ANDEE, AND BRENDA are here!!!!! It was a terrific reunion, accented with gifts of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups….many many Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups….giant bags of ketchup chips that all popped before they even hit German ground due to the cabin pressure in the airplane…Papermate ball-point pens…cuz I haven’t found a decent ballpoint pen since I got here…and of course hugs all around. Oh and I nearly forgot all the Captain Black cigars that Andee brought from the duty-free shop at the airport. In this lovely +8 degree weather we’ve been having here, going out for a smoke every evening has been a fun little ritual for the two of us. It’s been so … indescribably nice to have long conversations with someone who knows me well – I don’t have to first go through the endless “get to know me” process. Plus the whole getting to speak in English again is a BIG bonus. And we can talk about all the people we know in Canada … it’s gossip catch up time for me. Lol. It’s funny cuz I’ve only known Andee for…uh…how long have Tim and Andee been together…2 years? But she totally has become one of my sisters. I can’t imagine our family without her anymore!




So what have we been up to? Well, on Friday we kept it a relaxing day. Let me just start out with … we pretty much eat non-stop here at my aunt and uncle’s. I’m gonna be a fat frigging cow by the time these holidays are over. See this is how my aunt's mind works... ‘What’s that? Your plate’s empty? The world as we know it will come to a tragic and final demise if we don’t remedy the situation.’ Food is then immediately repiled onto my plate and my jaws are simply too weak and exhausted from chewing to argue.




*Note to self: grow a backbone -> if not successful attempt to find and purchase said backbone somewhere…

Um, ya, anyways, after lunch on Friday mom, Brenda, Andee and I decided to go for a walk in an effort to work off at least a hundredth of the recently ingested calories. We stopped at the local grocery store before heading home to purchase anything chocolate related that you can only get in Germany, for Andee and Brenda to try, as well as a bottle of each German beer we could find in this little store. Upon our return home bowls of ice cream were plopped in front of our faces and … well … you get the picture.




Then we went for another walk with my aunt, uncle, and Jasmin (my cousin) to my uncle’s vineyard. (to at least alleviate the ice-cream-induced guilty conscience…) Needless to say a supper of insane amounts of bread, meat, cheese, and wine was consumed shortly after, followed by more wine, schnaps, and a beer tasting session where mom, Brenda, Andee, and I shared 6 bottles of beer and rated them. Honestly can’t remember what our favourite was. I think the final consensus was the Beck’s beer, but don’t quote me on that. The Warsteiner was pretty good too.




And yesterday we all drove to Heidelberg to look at the famous castle and go shopping. Unfortunately it rained all day, but you can’t keep a girl down when she’s got shoppin’ on her mind. Plus that’s what God invented umbrellas for. Lunch was the typical German schnitzel and French fries in some sweet medieval looking restaurant. Followed by more sight-seeing, Starbucks, and many German bakery purchases. My uncle turned into a real bear with all the waiting outside stores til our shopping urges had been satisfied…until we spotted another cool boutique…so we eventually told him to go home with mom and Tante Edda (we had two cars in Heidelberg) after which we (aka. me, jasmin, andee, and brenda) could more thoroughly enjoy the ching-ching of cash register drawers and the friendly “sank yo fo kumming”s after each purchase. Heidelberg has one of the largest American army bases in Germany so you honestly hear more English there than German and every salesperson and waitress has to speak it nearly perfectly. Made Brenda and Andee’s lives more easier, that’s for sure. :)
Just to clarify, though, I only bought a t-shirt from Esprit that I’ve been eying for the past 3 months but was waiting to find on sale…which I did yesterday. Zoe has booked our flights to Egypt and Rome in June, so I gotta send the moolah back to Canada with my mom. J It means resisting temptation on the endless shopping tours, but somehow I’ll manage. :P
And then on the way home from Heidelberg we stopped at another grocery store and picked up 10 more different beers for further alcoholic endeavours.
After another massive supper, a cigar break, and the slaughter/consumption of various baked goods we drank the traditional 10pm champage … which took an hour … and went to bed.

Um. Ya. That’s all I’ve got. It’s been a chaotic two days of constant translation and hand gesturing to make sure everyone is understood … and there have been hundreds of hilarious moments that I am simply incapable of recounting. Seriously, we have been laughing for 2 days straight. But I don’t think the worldwide web has enough room for all this craziness. Never mind the fact that it would bore ya’ll half to death. So anyways, my other cousin and her husband just got here. Now everyone around me is visiting. Very loudly. Cuz they’re Germans. And SWABIAN Germans on top of that. And I can’t even hear myself think anymore, so I’m just gonna join in the volume. One of my many hidden talents. Then again "hidden" might not be the most appropriate word there...