Ain’t No Party Like A Tollwood Party

On January 7, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany9 Comments

I rang in the new year with Hanley and Esther at the awesome 2012 Tollwood Silvester Party. Hanley wrote about it in her own blog, so if you read both of us, this will seem like a bit of a repeat.

The Tollwood Winter Festival takes place at Theresienwiese, a 420,000 square meter (4,500,000 sq ft) space in the city of Munich. This is the same space that holds the world famous Oktoberfest each year. Tollwood is also a summer festival with a tremendous amount of live music- the 2013 Sommerfestival lineup so far includes ZZ Top and the Pet Shop Boys. I’ll probably wind up there at some point.

The Winterfestival wraps up with a giant Silvester party on December 31st. There are four giant tents with bands and DJs. There’s another tent that is nothing but various types of food. The various tents are on the outer edges of a vast open space where people can congregate to view fireworks. We’ll get to that. This is the view in from the front gate.

When I say tent here, I’m not talking about the little things you use to go camping, I’m talking about things that are larger than the building my apartment is in. This is inside the tent for the first band we watched, the Stimulators. You can see the roof of the tent sloping up behind the giant sphere- these things were huge.

We also saw a pretty nifty band called Jamaram in one of the other tents. They’re a pretty large group.

I hadn’t heard of them before this outing, but a few of their songs were catchy enough to remain stuck in my head for several days afterward. “Oh My Gosh,” for example-

We spent the last hour in a tent watching Rockomotion, a classic rock cover band. Pretty much everything they played was recognizable. They even did Hip To Be Square, and the last song they played right before midnight was The Time Warp. If you search for Rockomotion on Youtube, you’ll see lots of clips of them doing well known songs.

The band stopped a few minutes before midnight to allow everyone time to get out of the tents and into the big central open area, and then there were fireworks. Lots of fireworks. The Theresienwiese is in the center of an access road called Bavariaring, and there were fireworks visible for 360 degrees- all along the Bavariaring. The fireworks went on for more than twenty-five minutes. Some of it was official Tollwood fireworks, to be sure, but some of it was just the German people setting off their own fireworks. This was my second New Year’s Eve in Germany, and I realize now that the Germans are kind of insane when it comes to fireworks. They use a lot of them, they don’t much care where they’re pointed, and they don’t seem to worry about their own safety.

It sure makes for a hell of a show, though. Imagine twenty-five uninterrupted minutes of fireworks at the quantity and frequency of what you can see in the video below. (The video is only three seconds long because I thought my phone was set to still pictures, not video.) The Tollwood party was great fun, even if I did get the flu while I was there. Where did the rest of you ring in the new year?

On January 4, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Dining Out, Life At Home

The Beos FitnessSalat. Chicken and veggies with fresh bread at Beos, Regensburg.

Maybe Falkor should have been a Luck Pig.

On December 31, 2012July 25, 2014 By StevenIn Life In Germany8 Comments

I was walking past the bakery late last week, and I noticed a tray of little marzipan piggies with signs that said “Viel Glück!” which translates to “Good Luck!” Sensing the possibility to learn something fascinating and new, I immediately e-mailed this picture to my German Authority, Jenny, with the following missive: “Please explain to me the tradition of the good luck pigs?”

The reason for the little Angry Bird combatant snacks is that Germans regard pigs as lucky. Around the end of the year, the Glücksschweinchen (lucky piglet) turns up in various snack foods, often with a four leaf clover or a horse shoe, which are also considered to be lucky. Sometimes a ladybug, also considered good luck, is present as a red foil wrapped chocolatey treat.

Similarly, but not as sugary, chimney sweeps are said to be repositories of good luck, and on New Year’s Day you should do your best to shake hands with your friendly neighborhood sweep. I wonder if the City worker guys who sweep up trash at the bus stop in the morning would count.

There are a slew of other superstitions and traditions- far, far too many to recount here. As we go into New Year’s Eve, I’ll leave you with one more German superstition to bear in mind- Never toast with water. It’s considered a wish for harm to befall the people you are toasting. Stick to ringing in the new year with fine Bavarian beer. It’s just better for all concerned.

Happy new year, everyone! Alles Gute im Neuen Jahr!

I am only an egg.

On December 28, 2012May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home, Life In Germany, The U.S.21 Comments

This post is tangentially related to the December 27th WordPress Daily Prompt.

“Your personal sculptor is carving a person, thing or event from the last year of your life. What’s the statue of and what makes it so significant?”

I was already thinking about the words that follow, even before I saw the prompt. While I didn’t write this post specifically to answer the personal sculptor question, I am going to talk a great deal about something that has shaped my world the most for the past year.

Back in 1993, there was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Second Chances.” The basic plot is as follows- The Enterprise goes to retrieve some scientific data from a planet which has an impenetrable distortion field around it. Once every eight years, the field is weak enough to beam through it. Eight years previously, a younger Lieutenant Riker was the last man to beam out when his team was forced to abandon the post. When the modern-day Enterprise arrives, Commander Riker leads the away team, and meets- himself.

Although Riker made it up to the Potemkin and continued his career, a transporter phenomenon caused an identical Riker to rematerialize on the planet. This Riker believed that he’d been left behind, and he spent the next eight years living alone.

The reason I’m talking about Star Trek on a blog about life in Germany is because it’s kind of the same thing. Obviously I don’t mean that I was duplicated in a transporter accident, but there is some similarity between that ludicrous scenario and how I feel. What the other Riker went through was, at certain points, textbook culture shock and acculturation.

While I was in the United States a few weeks ago, I was struck by the notion that while I’ve been living my life in Germany, life in the US has been going on without me. This is the truest and deepest cost of being an expatriate. Friends and family kept going on- my youngest niece started walking and talking. Another friend is nearly done with law school. People have gotten engaged. Couples have split up. Some of my friends have had massive shifts in their health, some for the better and some for the worse. There are new pets, new jobs, and new hardships. And while I was in Germany and away from all of this, there was a tiny part of me that went on living in the US, along with my friends and family. There are two Stevens now. They are entirely alien to each other.

I spent most of my first year in Germany feeling like I was on an extended vacation, but one where I just happened to be going to the office a lot. It felt like my life in the US had just been paused- waiting for me to return to it. My apartment has never quite felt like my apartment, and I’ve always been just a little bit of a stranger in a strange land.

It’s been more than a year now, and in the intervening time, I’ve felt less like that US life is mine. The drift has begun- I don’t speak to people in the States as much as I did in the first year. There are some people who I once considered my closest friends and confidants who I speak to now only via electronic means, and only regarding superficial topics. If not for the horrible abomination that is Facebook, I would have lost touch with almost everyone except my closest ring of family members and a few dearly cherished friends.

There is even a physical component to this drift- while I was in the US, I moved my few belongings to a much smaller storage unit. In order to do that, I had to let go of a lot of possessions. Most of my kitchen goods from the US are now gone. Everything I own in this world is either in a 5×5 storage unit in Florida or a 45 square meter apartment here in Regensburg. Considering I used to have an entire condominium full of crap, this is kind of a sobering realization.

I don’t feel like this Bavarian life is mine either. I’ve made friends here, but making friends as an expatriate can be a little tricky- most of us are transient. You never know if someone you’ve met will still be there to talk to or hang out with in six months or a year. I’m even hesitant with the locals, the people who aren’t going anywhere, because I don’t know if I’ll be here in a year or two. My contract is written through the fall of 2014, but there’s nothing in it which says that Mr. Company can’t recall me to the United States sooner. (They probably won’t, but it’s something that I think about.) There’s also the chance that they’ll want to renew my presence here at the end of the contract on a yearly basis. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest. I get asked a lot if I want to stay here at the end of my contract, and my answer is always a little timid: “Ask me again in another year and a half. A lot can happen in a year and a half.”

For night now, I’m stuck in the middle. Beholden to two countries, but not truly feeling at home in either one. I am the two identical Rikers, both fighting to claim the right to be the real one.

Christkindlmarkt Time

On December 24, 2012January 23, 2025 By StevenIn Life In Germany7 Comments

It’s that time of year again. For the month of December, right up until Christmas Eve, the Christkindlmarkt or Christmas Market is open in cities and towns all over Germany and Austria.

Also called Weihnachtsmarkt, the Chrstmas Market is typically held during the four weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas. Nearby Nuremberg has one of the most famous Christmas Markets in the world, although I haven’t been to that one. Perhaps next year. According to The Internets, the Nuremberg and Dresden markets draw about two million people each year; the Stuttgart market attracts more than three million visitors while the Dortmund market can claim to be one of the biggest Christmas markets in Germany with more than three and a half million visitors each year.

Yes, the Christkindlmarkt is a pretty big deal around these parts.

There are three types of stalls in a typical Christmas Market:

The first type is for buying things. There are carved wooden nutcrackers, jewelry, and clothing to be found. I didn’t take many pictures of the crafts themselves, but I thought this candle was pretty.

The second type is food- candied and toasted almonds are a staple item. So is Lebkuchen, a soft form of gingerbread. Chocolate is everywhere.

My favorites tend to be the savory, rather than the sweet. The first item here is a simple Regensburger Bratwurst – it contains pickles, sweet mustard, and a dash of horseradish, served on a semmel, or bread roll. Sehr lecker! The second photo is a half-meter bratwurst. The third is a kind of swirly potato thing that has the consistency of a giant french fry and the flavor of BBQ potato chips.

There are stalls for purchasing crafts, food stalls, and the ever-present Glühwein vendors. I’ve mentioned Glühwein on this blog before; it’s hot mulled wine that turns up during this time of year. There’s a regular red wine flavor, and there are often various fruit flavors mixed. I like Apfel (apple) and Blaubeere (blueberry) Glühwein.

Every Christmas Market has different mugs for their Glühwein. When you get your drink, you pay a Pfand for deposit. Some people collect the mugs instead of returning them to get their Pfand back. The mugs are generally very colorful, and they say a bit about where you got them, so they make excellent souvenirs.

This year, I had the chance to see the Christkindlmarkt in nearby Munich with fellow blogger Hanley. Truth be told, I like the Regensburg market better- the Munich Christkindlmarkt is spread out so that you have to walk for several blocks in each direction to see the entire thing. It’s also significantly more crowded, as cities tend to be.

There’s one more thing- even if you’re just passing through a town and don’t plan on leaving the Bahnhof, you can usually get a taste of that town’s Christkindlmarkt tradition. In Regensburg, they set up a Glühwein stand right in front of the Hauptbahnhof each year. The Glühwein is a little bit rougher there, but it’s still Glühwein. Served in plastic cups. Yeah.