neighborhood

Walking around in the cold sunny weather yesterday, I got a nice reminder of how much I like my neighborhood.

the isle of sand and snow II

   

   





I spent just over a week, from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day, in my favorite beach town on Earth, Stone Harbor, New Jersey. The sand-on-snow reminded me a lot of Sylt, but thankfully there was a whole lot more sunlight to be had on the Mid-Atlantic coast than there was on the North Sea last winter -- in spite of 18 inches of snow the day after Christmas! Happily, after the blizzard the sky turned blue and stayed blue, so we got in plenty of walking on the beach, and even bike-riding toward the end of the week, once the streets were pretty clear. We also had the best (eco-friendliest!) Christmas tree yet, which was in fact our deck umbrella. Classy!

feuerzangbowle and fondue

This year's been more of a Feuerzangbowle kind of year than a Glühwein kind of year. The Feuerzangbowle stand is winning out over Glühwein through having the best mugs and being located right by the creche, which has become my friends' usual meeting place ("See you at the Baby Jesus at eight!"). I tramped around the Weihnachtsmarkt in the snow this evening in search of Christmas presents and cupped a steaming mug of Feuerzangbowle in my hands to warm up for a few minutes. Another new Weihnachtsmarkt favorite: the fondue place just past the fountain where you can order an individual-sized pot of cheese fondue with bread for dipping. My officemate Anna and I tried it recently, and it was excellent.

snow

I'm a summer person, no question, but I have to say, there's something immensely beautiful about fresh snow on trees against a blue morning sky.

the two german seasons

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I recently read and slightly misremembered this blog post as saying that there are two seasons in Germany: winter and dreading the winter. In the middle of the whopping four weeks of summer, I was already in "dreading the winter" mode -- and after a long and rather magnificent fall, we are decidedly in winter again.

But things aren't bad! I've remembered how much I like wearing tall boots, for one thing (shopping for tall boots is a different story, though I'm a big fan of DUO, who sell boots in many, many calf sizes). For another thing, the Christmas market is back, and there is no bad there. For a third, it's only a few weeks until I fly back to the U.S. for my family's first-ever Stone Harbor Christmas, and I'm hoping Sunny the 14-year-old Labrador is going to hang in there and be around for it.

In the meantime, I'm working lots and haven't seen a ton of anyone outside of my coworkers lately, so it's a good thing I work with a whole bunch of lovely people. And in a week or so things should calm down, just in time for me to squeeze in as much Glühwein and Weihnachtsmarkt food as possible before flying out on Christmas Eve.

***

I sounded pretty lukewarm about living in Frankfurt in my last post, I realize, which isn't an accurate depiction of how I feel about FFM at all. I really like living here now, actually. It's a surprisingly excellent place to be. It's a hard place to commit to, though, particularly when you hang out with mostly ex-pats, as I do, because most everyone I know in the ex-pat community is living here with an end date in the back of their heads, some idea that they are going to be leaving. And right now I don't have anything of the sort. I don't actually wish I were anywhere else at the moment -- which was a kind of startling thought to have, even more so when I voiced it to a couple of my friends recently and they pointed out that there are not a heck of a lot better reasons why people stay places than that.

one year

   


   





As of last Thursday, November 4th, I've been in Frankfurt for a full calendar year. In that time, I've been to Bangladesh, India, Paris (twice), Salzburg (twice), Spain, Sylt, Switzerland, and all over Germany; I've also gone home for one week, and to my other home for two. Moving to Frankfurt in November was not the most fun thing I've ever done, and leaving NYC was a little rough at first, but I've really ended up liking FFM. And wow, did that year go by quickly.

o suns and skies

Frankfurt might have had a pitiful four-week summer, but it's made up for that a tiny bit by having a long and excellent fall.

an hour in the eighth

   



Work ate me a little over the past week or so, and I've only just now gotten around to uploading the pictures from when I went on a one-day business trip to Paris two Wednesdays ago. My coworker Anna and I were lucky enough to sneak in an hour of wandering around the 8th arrondissment after we were done with meetings: down the Champs-Élysées and over to the Seine, with views of the Eiffel Tower. Not bad, not bad.