This is what happens ...

... when you mix egg dyeing tradition with sweet, Ferry Boat (Bainbridge!) wine:

It starts out somewhat normal ...


Then the creative (engineering?) juices begin to take on some extra shine ...


The political nerdiness rears its (ugly?) face ("Look, ma, I just voted in Afghanistan!") ...

Then the national pride kicks in...


... and it all goes down the drain. Egg-stastic.

Twelve days of Christmas ... in photos

The 2009 annual three-day-weekend-German-Christmas-market-extravaganza took us to ... (da da da dum) Munich--where people, brats (as in bratwursts) and lights abound.

Gluwein. Litres and litres of gluwein. Nothing says Christmas in Europe more than that hot, mulled cinnamon wine. The North Americans still don't know just what they are missing.

Rahmfleckl. The best of the Christmas markets ... like a personal sour cream pizza, only better. Far better. Would love to show a picture of what the things actually are, but a certain co-eater wouldn't let me ... "But it'll get cooolllddd!"

Christmas tree ornaments. The proud result of three hours of friendly negotiation, and one wall climb for the last remaining box hidden on the top shelf. (He wanted tinsel; I said no way. I wanted multicolors; he said no way. I wanted silver; he wanted gold ...)
The lights. After the dollar store mishap (neon white and flashing), warm, peaceful white lights. Except that they came in a "loop". Which meant putting them on and taking them off not once, but twice ... amid ample debate on the "proper" way to hang lights.
Warm reminders of Christmas-market-extravaganza 2008: Hamburg, Germany. Last year, we bought the ornament, but had no tree. This year, it found its place, just where it was meant to be.

Prized stars from Munich ... "to hang in the windows just like Mama does".

The tree. Topped with our Munich mistletoe "bulb" and beautiful as ever.

The stockings are hung by the entry with care, in the hopes that all'll notice Marcel's door-swag hanging near ...

Christmas cards. Made with love and a (couple) glasses of wine. Coming soon to a mailbox near you.

And the love of all loves, packaged and sent with care--the Christmas wreath made with treasured childhood ornaments collected over the years ...

Christmas tree 2008. We've come a long way.

There's no place like home for the holidays

As the "world" (aka the Pacific NW) goes mad from being forced to slow down under a foot of powdry white stuff in cities and towns that are not "snow removal equipped", I can't help but be thankful A) that I was fortunate to have my travels plans beat Mother Nature home, B) that my shopping was done long ago, C) that I have an even more legitimate excuse to stay home and "do nothing" with the family. Which leads me to a few of my favorite things about being home for the holidays (in no particular order ...)

1. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS - you know, the ones that have been around ever since you were a kid and which therefore incite all kinds of warm holiday fuzzies.

2. MY PARENTS' COUCH - The newly acquired one, which therefore holds little to no sentimental value at all, but which wraps you in it's fabricated softness nonetheless and reminds you that "there's no place like home, there's no place like home ..."

3. SLEDDING with the family at the first sight of snow ... and down hills that can hardly be considered more than slight inclinations, but loving every minute nonetheless.

4. BAKING and COOKING with the Mom and the rest of the crew, and chatting with anyone and everyone else hanging around aimlessly in the kitchen.

5. MY BED. If my bed in Geneva is the most comfortable bed in the world, my bed here at home must be the most comfortable bed in the universe. Especially with the amazing new sheets Mom supplied.

6. RUNNING INTO FAMILIAR FACES. I've been reminded that if ever anyone were feeling even the slightest bit lonely, all one need do is take a wander through good 'ol Central Market to see more friendly faces from "times gone by" than you ever remember knowing.

7. MORNING PANCAKE BREAKFASTS with the family. Or perhaps French Toast. No further explanation needed.

8. The excitement of getting HOLIDAY GREETINGS IN THE MAIL, staring in amazement at "how big everyone's gotten" and enjoying hearing what friends and family have been up to through "old fashion blogs" ... aka good 'ol traditional Christmas letters.

9. The annual RYAN CHRISTMAS BASH, gathering the whole gigantic crew around six different dining tables spread over two houses for a feast of food and laughter before being entertained by all the little ones' various talent performances, Christmas carols and Santa's arrival for the sharing of gifts beside the tree.

10. BASKING IN THE COMPANY OF FAMILY - rambunctious dogs, marshmallow fights, viscious Wii battles, movie nights, last minute shopping, sledding, gingerbread man assembly and board games included.

Indeed, there's no place like home for the holidays.

While visions of gluwein danced in their heads

OK, so this is my THIRD attempt at this blog ... it started with an entirely too cheesy description of the weekend put to the lyrics of "the Twelve Days of Christmas", then got converted into a haiku collection of random words describing the trip that no one but us would surely ever understand ... and now all my creative energy is spent. Why is it that the truly exciting life moments are far more difficult to blog about than the mundane sillies?

I guess we'll just have to put it this way ... after more than three and a half years together and averaging, between the two of us, nearly 100 flights per year, we FINALLY checked-in, went through customs and immigration and boarded a plane TOGETHER for a birthday/Christmas weekend away in Hamburg, Germany. What a concept.

As proud new owners of two hilarious books - The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans and The Xenophobe's Guide to the Swiss (HIGHLY recommended to anyone with a good sense of humour and a decent sense of potentially self-critical reality ... and/or anyone considering getting into a bi-national relationship ...), we cracked them open as soon as the aircraft doors were closed and did nothing but laugh at each other til landing ...

Checked into a super cool art deco hotel with different color rooms and wall mounted toilet plungers (as coat hangers) and rodent traps (magazine holders), we quickly scuttled out into the cold to attack the Christmas markets ... doing little other than be carried along by the crowds through stall after stall of good food and handicrafts. Four curry wursts, twenty plus gluwein with rum/amaretto, BBQ meat sticks, flamenkuchen and half a dozen delicious delicacies later, we oohed and ahhed over the truly amazing carved wood nativity scenes, pouted that we couldn't afford the one we wanted (600CHF!!) and settled on a really beautiful Christmas tree ornament instead before sneaking over for just one more gluwein (after all, we had to complete our set of Santa boot mugs!)

Finish the weekend out with an early Sunday morning rise to meander through the infamous 300 year-old Hamburg fish market with the other 70,000 morning marketeers, a mid-morning harbour tour, a night out to see the broadway musical of The Lion King from some killer seats (an AMAZING show if you ever get the chance to see it ...) and a last minute visit to the excellent Emigration City migration museum... and the return to "reality" couldn't be less appealing.

As the stockings are over over the television with care

Perhaps it's one of those things best understood by college students and expats ... that regrettable "inability" to go all out with Christmas decorations and especially a Christmas tree, not least because you are running low on cash to do so, but even much more so because you leave home halfway through December, only to return halfway into January, leaving hardly enough time to enjoy the smell of fresh pine.

That said, Christmas would certainly not be Christmas without some inkling of tradition, and I came home the other day to find our palm tree cousin all decked out in Christmas bling. Slightly disappointed that the "branches" (read palms) were too weak to bear traditional tree ornaments, Marcel reverted to tinsel ... and of course, as no Swiss tree could possibly be complete without foil wrapped chocolate ornaments, he somehow managed to get a few of those on there as well. The rest were then craftily planted in the dirt, while the stocking were hung, not over the fireplace, but over the television ...

Schedules being what they are, we were also "forced" to celebrate Christmas a bit early this year, taking on a new tradition by celebrating St. Nicolas Day together. And amid news stories from US media about the holiday shopping flurry and tales from friends and family of waiting lists and desperate searches for those "gotta have 'em" trendiest gifts, I have to admit how much I treasure the European approach.

While stores in the States are open nearly 24/7 this time of year, there's a huge to-do when a handful of stores in the centre of town here open on one single Sunday in December. And those unfortunate souls at a select couple of stores who have to work late - until 21h - the three days before Christmas? They are all given cute little handmade holiday corsets that say "thank you for working late tonight".

And while Christmas markets in the States means crowded craft fairs jammed inside school gyms and fair pavillions, Christmas markets here are outisde, where it's cold and wet, but where there's space to move, wonderful smells of hot mulled wine with schnapps and roasted chestnuts to warm you up, and Christmas carolers and musicians strolling along between. Gone are crowded malls filled with half-useless things and grumpy people with a half dozen plastic bags at their sides ... Christmas here means strolling amid the quaint market stalls filled with beautiful handmade jewelry, pottery, woodwork, soaps, wines, cheeses, sausages, candles, laughing in the company of close friends and loved ones ... before heading off to make a fool of yourself at the ice skating rink.

I am SO excited to see my wonderful family over the holidays and be able to bask in the wonder of Christmas with them, but I have to say, I'm not at all looking forward to walking back into the shock of the holiday consumerism craze. What would happen if, just once, we returned, not to gifts of the latest and greatest electronics made in some far off land and destined to crash in two years time, but to crafts that demonstrate the talent and beauty of human creativity; to photographs that allow us to capture life's greatest memories for eternity; to events, outings and priceless time with the people we love; to experiences, classes and travels that will encourage us to stretch our horizons ... to the practical "things" that we seem to somehow now give such a lesser importance. If it were anything like the Christmas markets, that would indeed be a very merry, very peaceful, very inspiring Christmas.

Any way you slice it

If ever there were something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, it would most definitely be Marcel getting home from his most recent job in Hong Kong a full week earlier than expected ... in the name of his own health perhaps as much as anything else.

In a nutshell, he was blessed with the experience of sucking on more parts of poultry over the course of the last month than most people would care to suck on over a life time, including, for example, the chicken feet (see above), which, in his words, you simply ate by going "scchhlllooooooooooopp" ... delicate toe by delicate toe (though it seems they were kind enough to remove the claws beforehand).

Having thus overcome any potential poultry fears, the "let us give thanks that you've made it home with all your inner gastric tracks in order" celebration was necessarily carried out in accordance with traditional American Thanksgiving requirements, namely a bird - a very large bird. Having succeeded in Thanksgiving challenge #1: locating a turkey in Switzerland and being the gourmet chefs that we are, we successfully roasted up the best 7lb rosemary, basil and thyme bird you ever done had ... (don't mind the bite taken out of the top, that would be courtesy of the western-food-starved traveler).

There were, of course, the obligatory side dish mashed potatoes and stuffing as well, but we threw all apple and pumpkin pie traditions out the window ... all we were really concerned about were the not-so-traditional chewy American chocolate chip cookies -perfectly done ... a real rarity seeing as American brown sugar is not an easy bit to come by and without it they just don't turn out quite the same. Three cheers for a great boss who was generous enough to think to bring some back from his latest trip Stateside.

The real essence of the annual American gorge-and-give-thanks-you-only-have-to-eat-this-much-once-a-year-fest, however, is most certainly in the leftovers. While it took searching in no less than four grocery stores to find the one and only turkey available (meaning we wouldn't have cared WHAT size the thing was ... all in the name of Thanksgiving tradition!!), we really didn't mind that it happened to be a 7 pound beast for the two of us. I mean, really, we all know that Thanksgiving is hardly worth it without the turkey-swiss sandwiches for days on end afterwards. And thus, along with several packs of ever-so-meltable raclette cheese for open-faced sandwiches, we also made one of our all-time fav recipes, Thai pull-apart stirfry ... the only recipe that is distinctly better when made with leftovers.

Chicken feet, roasted bird, stirfried mix-mash ... any way you slice it, give thanks!