Christmas in Europe

With a little one on the way, it made sense for us not to travel this Christmas, for financial and practical reasons. We soon realised that this would be our first and last Christmas with just the two of us and we've imagined the fun our future Christmas' hold with children.

To get into the spirit this year, we planned a trip to the Frankfurt am Main Christmas markets. Conveniently our friend Julia was performing 'The Full Monty' there this season, so we arranged to see her perform while we were there. We also arranged a couch surfing host to help with the budget. Karin was a fantastic host; fluent in English, loves to cook, and we talked for hours over the meals we shared with her.




We wandered the bustling German Christmas market over a couple of days, sampling the spiced nuts, apple wine (well, Dan did), cheese fondue (best ever), and perusing the festive ornaments. We also met up with a couple of friends who flew to Frankfurt for a spontaneous visit to the market and enjoyed a traditional German meal with them.


Back home in England we soon began decorating and my pregnancy has inspired me domestically, so I borrowed a friend's sewing machine and sewed some stockings. I also started making cute recycled card ornaments, strung some cranberries, decorated the flat with candles and evergreen boughs, and last weekend we erected and decorated our Norweigian spruce tree.




Christmas morning brought out a couple of family traditions with our own twist including stockings stuffed with a collection of small items (and an orange in the toe) and Christmas Morning Wifesaver (vegetarian version).



We spent an afternoon cooking our first turkey with all the fixings and shared it with our good friends Adam and Caroline who brought the most amazingly decadent chocolate dessert. They got a kick out of my family 'Whatsit?' tradition, and cleverly claimed the prize.


For the next few days we will be relaxing, going for rambles outside (when it stops raining), spending a night in London and hopefully retrieving my misdelivered Christmas present from Dan. Apparently, it's my very own sewing machine (yay!), but mysteriously the delivery man left it at '28a'. We live in flat 1 and our building goes to 18...

We hope that all of you are having a lovely Christmas and we look forward to the good things 2010 will bring for all of us!

With love,
Robin & Dan