scottish breakfast tea. [new year until now.]

As promised, I now sit in front of my parent's computer, cup of tea sitting faithfully next to me, and I will attempt to relate to you the last ten or so days of our jaunt in Germany. After I last wrote, my Dutch sister, Fabienne (or Faye), came to visit us for New Year's and a few days before and after. It was great seeing her again, I hadn't seen her since my wedding--and even then I didn't really have the time to really hang out with her between the stress of the wedding week, not to mention the wedding day stresstivities (yep, I just said that.) So Faye and I were able to spend some time together playing tennis on the wii, joking around, and being silly--the latter two being what we do best together. New Year's Eve my parent, Faye, Jeremy and I went out to eat at the Greek restaurant that is a five minute walk from my parents home in Velburg. I've never had Greek food that amazing; we had warm pita bread with tzaziki to start, and I ordered a baked gyro dish with melted cheese on top and permeated throughout the rest of the ingredients of peppers, beef, and other delicious goodness. (We actually went back to the restaurant last night, and I ordered the same thing. Yum.)
While Faye was still here we all went to Rothenberg for a day as well. Rothenberg is about an hour and a half away from my parents town, and the old city is still surrounded by the original stalwart wall that has surrounded it now for hundreds of years. It is the last walled city left in Germany. The city within the wall is also ancient and beautifully aged as the wall is, every turn revealing another faded pale blue, cracked yellow, or heather red building that has more stories within its frame than an old crone sitting around the fire telling a story for every wrinkle on her withered face. Walking around the city, though it was frigid beyond belief, I couldn't help but let my imagination run away with me as I considered who walked this path before me, what they were concerned with, where they were going, what they were wearing--did a young lover one night walk these steps to his heart's window, rap lightly, and whisper words of admiration and boundless love. Like I said, I let my imagination run away with me--but one can't help in some of these places in Europe. While in Rothenberg, we also found a Scottish shop where we purchased the lovely tea I am enjoying as I write. We also found Jeremy an amazing awesome gray wool flat cap, with red plaid stripes. He looks incredibly debonair and handsome in it.
The next aspect of our trip was the vacation away from our vacation in Heidelberg with Meghan and the girls. We got there on Sunday afternoon, and in Germany everything is closed on Sundays, we ended up watching The Fall, which I highly recommend. So Megh made a vegetable soup, I assisted her in chopping the veggies, and we enjoyed some award-winning French wine that she can get at a French grocery store for a ridiculous price of about two euro. So we enjoyed dinner, continued enjoying wine, then participated in a traditional New Year custom of the Germans. The melting of the Bleigiessen, which is a little lead figure that you melt over a candle in a spoon, then you quickly drop it into a glass of water. It immediately cools and you fish it out with your spoon, the shape that molds into is supposed to be representative of something that will happen in the new year for you. It's actually really interesting, and fun to see what it molds into. It's all so subjective, you can says that the shape is anything. You also hold the molded lead up between a wall and a candle, sometimes the shadow is more conducive to see what the shape might be. Megh had done it at her New Year's Eve party and had some left over, so we each did it three times. Jeremy came up with some really cool ones. We stayed up talking and playing a couple games until almost 4am, it was a great time.
The next day Jeremy and I walked down the the Hauptstrasse to finish some shopping for people, and do a little for ourselves. We walked around all day, again reveling in the beauty of the old city as a light snow fell upon our meandering journey through the Altstadt. We ate a an Irish pub, we always tend to find the Irish places in German cities--our favorite pub in Regensburg is an Irish one. On Tuesday, Jeremy and I walked up the the castle on the hill above Heidelberg, we took a guided tour, which we enjoyed very much, especially Jeremy--he loves history. I allowed my imagination to work its magic again, within the walls of that ruined fortress. Like I said, it's almost impossible not to do it in places like that.
We came home last night, and we leave for home in less than a week--and I am so ready to be home. We have one more jaunt on our trip, on Saturday we go to Prague, which I am very excited about. I'll write again after that trip, I'm sure I'll have more silly imaginings to write about.

Caitlin