Christmas and New Years in Deutschland

Derek, Adam and Marius

Our Christmas holiday was spent with our German family in their hometown of Oberstenfeld and Gronau. After arriving back to Zwingenberg from traveling to Berlin and Hamburg, we unpacked our bags and repacked with clean clothes and gifts, and then headed to Oberstenfeld for a shortened holiday week. We spent the first few days relaxing around the house and even went to the cinema near Stuttgart to see The Hobbit in 3-D. We ate dinner with Derek's Aunt Lori and cousin Kristin from the U.S. before they headed north to Denmark, and Derek and I even took a short run through the bare vineyards.

On Christmas Eve, we walked a short ten minutes down the road to a quaint Evangelical church in Gronau where we watched a Christmas story reenactment performed by children.  In the past, I have only been to a Catholic church on Christmas Eve, so an Evangelical service was definitely a different experience, but pleasant. After church we headed back to the Müllers and gathered around the table for fondue. When I first heard that fondue was on the menu, I thought of cheese and chocolate (and yum!).  However, we had three different fondue pans on the table, two containing vegetable oil for frying and one of vegetable broth, a healthier option. With a variety of choices, we filled our fondue sticks with cauliflower, mushrooms, broccoli, zucchini, steak, turkey, etc. It was delicious, and a new favorite tradition that Derek and I want to take home. 

Dinner took a while since we actually cooked our food in front of us, and therefore we had more time to just enjoy the Christmas dinner. After dinner, it's German tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve from your immediate family. Earlier in the week, Derek, Adam and I had gone shopping at the U.S. Military Commissary in Wiesbaden and were excited for the Müllers to open their gift of our favorite American foods. We filled an American-sized gift bag of pancake mix with maple syrup, microwave popcorn, chips and salsa, Reese's, beef jerky  and more.  (Somehow, it ended up all being junk food!) 

Table set for fondue

Our American gift of favorite foods

On Christmas Day, we had a relaxing morning and then went to Hilde's for the Nestel family Christmas. It was very similar to my family's Christmas back home, with everyone squeezed into their seats at an extended table covered in so much food! We enjoyed chestnut soup, pork with spätzle, vegetables and salad. And the food didn't stop coming. Throughout the evening we had sheet cake with a white wine sauce, an assortment of kuchen, breakfast pastries, mini sandwiches and chocolates. I suppose that’s how most get-togethers are in a bakery-owning family. Later in the evening, Werner shared his fish that he had personally spiced and salted. It was tasty and reminded me of a delicate, delicious sushi. At one point, everyone received a sheet of music with popular German Christmas carols. We all sang a practice round before calling Derek's Grandpa, Opa, in Minnesota to say Merry Christmas and sing a carol. This has been a long-standing tradition at the Nestel Christmas.  

Derek and I 

Hilde looking over the family tree with Derek

German Christmas carol

After dinner was cleared, another German tradition made its debut. The Feuerzangenbowle is created by placing an extremely large sugar cube over a pot of glühwein. The mixologist then takes a serving spoon filled with rum, lights the rum on fire, and proceeds to pour it over the sugar cube. It’s a very interesting, and somewhat dangerous way to make a drink, but tastes scrumptious!

Feuerzangenbowle

After two pots of Feuerzangenbowle, the men in the group decided to take a trip to Werner's keller in the old town of Oberstenfeld. The story goes that at one time several years ago, Derek and Adam's dad, along with Günter, Wolfgang, and Werner (all of the German dads), were locked in this keller by the women of the family. Therefore, they had nothing to do but try different wines. They left one bottle from that time, back in the early '90s, turned opposite of all the others and our goal of this Christmas evening was to find that bottle. While in the keller, we tried wine from 1983, 1985, and 1987. To everyone's surprise, all tasted delicious. The best wine I've ever tasted, and oldest. And yes, they did find the odd-turned bottle that was placed there in the early 1990's.

Derek, Günter and Adam in the wine keller

The women in the keller

Wine from 1985

Our wine selection of the evening

In Germany, Christmas is celebrated on December 24, 25 and 26. For the second Christmas Day, we went to Günter's brother’s house for Christmas with his side of the family after taking a nice walk through the countryside. Here, we indulged in another European tradition called raclette. Originally from Switzerland, this dining option is popular at German Christmas and New Year's. With a hot skillet oven in front of us, we took turns filling our mini skillets with potatoes, eggs, peppers, etc. and then topped the dish with a piece of raclette cheese. After about seven minutes of baking in the skillet oven, the delicious mixture was ready for devouring.

For this Christmas, everyone also participated in a gift exchange and we enjoyed watching everyone open their gifts. It was a lovely evening and a great German Christmas experience!

Raclette time!

Doro and Marius

Second Christmas dinner

For New Year's Eve, Derek, Adam and I were invited to our friends' house - Nadine and Denis - where we enjoyed another evening of raclette, German board games, fireworks and champagne. It was the perfect way to spend the evening, with good friends, food and laughter. Thanks to Derek and Adam's mom, we even had a festive New Year's party kit. Since Germany doesn't celebrate the Fourth of July or a similar holiday with so many fireworks, fireworks are a large component of the German New Year's. Here's a few photos of the night:

New Year's Eve dinner

Happy New Year!

Nadine and I

Raclette dinner

Group photo!

Additional Notes:

• German Christmas was very similar to how we celebrate in my family in the United States. I think the excitement of a German Christmas originates from the hundreds of Christmas markets leading up to the actual holiday - another tradition we loved exploring this year!
• Thanks to all of our German family for making us feel so welcome! And thanks to Nadine and Denis for being such great hosts!
• If you want to read more about German holidays and traditions, you can read this blog post that I wrote for DFSR.

Working in Germany: Derek's Perspective

Derek has written a post that shares his life in the German workplace. Enjoy! 

Derek outside of his office in the Odenwald

While I was finishing my engineering degree last fall in Indianapolis, Courtney and I began talking about some of the opportunities that I should look into for after graduation. One thing we discussed is how cool it would be if I could get a job that would take us overseas for a year or two before returning to the States. I don’t think it was more than a couple weeks after that when I received an email from a recruiter who was looking for candidates that were willing to spend a year in Germany in a Product Design Engineering position before returning to the States. It couldn't have worked out more perfect. Four interviews and a month later, I was hired and we had to begin thinking about how we were going to pull this off.

The reason that Courtney and I were able to move to Germany was because my company, Freudenberg, is working to unify the knowledge and experience between the lead-center in Reichelsheim, Germany, and the competency center in Morristown, Indiana. I will learn what I can during the one year that I am here, and then bring that knowledge back to the United States to the plant in Morristown, along with the connections that I have made with the other product development engineers in Germany.

View from Derek's office window

Now I’ll jump forward to my first day. I first met with Dr.Thiel, the boss of the lead-center and he told me that the first important decision that I will have to make each day is what meal I would like to eat for lunch. I will get more into lunches, as well as meals in general later. We then proceeded to the office where he began by gathering everyone around, perhaps 30-40 people, and introducing me to the office, in German and English. Germans love shaking hands, not unlike Americans, and so the next half hour or so was spent walking around a shaking hands with people in my office. I discovered that unlike my office in Indiana that only has one window, which is on the door leading to the production area, my desk in Germany offers a view of a castle perched atop a small mountain on the other side of the small town. I don’t remember much more of the first day except eating at the Kantine, and then having my first experience with the after lunch routine. Every day after lunch, by custom, you must go outside and have the option of either walking a lap around the plant, or standing and talking with your co-workers. This lasts for typically between ten and fifteen minutes.

As far as the office environment goes, it is very relaxed. People are not stressed, they go to work, work, and then go home and enjoy their lives. At my work, overtime is not permitted for salary workers. In March, my boss even went so far as to send an email out to all of the salary employees, telling us that already this year there have been 17 instances of people working overtime, and that working more than ten hours in a day is not allowed; and if he discovers people working overtime again, there will be repercussions. This is something I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble getting used to. In America, it is typical to talk about work outside of work, such as with friends, family, etc., but in Germany this is almost never the case, and it fits well with their work hard, play harder attitude, where work and normal life seem to be very separate things. Germans also get at a minimum 24 days of vacation each year, and so companies that work with German companies are accustomed to having their contact go on vacation for sometimes three weeks at a time, during which work on the project pretty much stops.

Derek's Office Space

Lunches at the workplace are subsidized in Germany, and so for €3.25 I get to eat a warm meal for lunch every day. Now, if you are German, you will only eat one warm meal a day. This means that if you plan to cook dinner with your husband or wife that night, that you cannot eat anything above room temperature for lunch or breakfast, and Germans follow this rule to a T. I believe that part of their reasoning is that they believe eating warm meals (especially more than one in a day) is the way that you gain weight.  I did not know this at first, and so when my co-workers found out that I was eating two warm meals a day they were surprised, and joked about how I better make sure to workout hard or I would gain a lot of weight. Also, you must completely finish all of your food on your plate, unless the meal is unsatisfactory of course. I don’t know if this is because of a desire not to be wasteful, or just culture,  but it is different from the U.S. where it is perfectly normal for a person to not be able to finish all of the food they have on their plate. The one exception to this rule is the soup. If you think the soup is too salty, you must simply make a comment to your co-workers about it and then remove it from your tray.

Another interesting thing is the greetings and farewells here in Deutschland. Every morning begins with Morgen, Moin, Moin Moin, or something that sounds like Moisure. All are simple, and pretty much  just mean "good morning." Starting at 11:00 am (or 11:50 at my work since most people eat at noon) you will almost only hear people using Mahlzeit as the greeting, which literally means “meal time” and is used anytime you meet someone or pass someone during this time. This lasts until about 1:00 pm, but can stretch as far as 2:00 pm sometimes. When it is time to leave work for the day, there are some normal goodbyes like Schön Abend (have a nice evening), Bis Später (see you later), or simply Tschüss (goodbye, see-ya), but my favorite one is Schön Feierabend, which was translated to me as essentially "happy quitting time."

And on that note, I will leave you with Schön Feierabend and return with part Two of Working in Germany soon enough. Tschüss! - Derek