Tacksgiving*

Germans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so the holiday just passed us by without much ado, except we missed it a little when we heard Thanksgiving wishes from people back home. But we also knew that Jacqueline was planning some kind of meal for us in Stockholm—and we were not disappointed. She and Dado prepared us a spectacular feast, with all the elements of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, plus a few surprises.

Jacqueline showed Gwen Wren how to make cranberry sauce from scratch—no gelatinous can-shaped blob for this meal!

Dado, though Finnish, was no stranger to the ways of the turkey.

Dado put me to work making some bread, with his tutelage.

Our first course was gravlox with Finnish bread—delicious!

Followed by a refreshing salad course.

The third course was the coup de gras, with turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce. It was just like a Thanksgiving meal back home (a particularly good one, mind you)—with the addition of a traditional Finnish Christmas dish. Dado said it was “cabbage root,” which is, according to Wikipedia anyhow, the same thing as rutabaga.

What did Gwendolyn think? We got the idea that she would prefer some milk.

Desert was crème caramel…

…AND pumpkin pie. This picture is a little blurry; by that point, my vision was a little blurry from eating so much food (not to mention the wine and beer).

I knew we had been treated right when Gwendolyn and I fell into the traditional Thanksgiving stupor. Or at least mine was a Thanksgiving stupor. I suppose Gwen Wren’s was just her normal, late-afternoon-nap stupor.

I wish my belly had been as slender as Gwendolyn’s after the meal.

The next morning, Dado and Gwen Wren each reflected on their first Thanksgiving. They both decided it was a delightful tradition worth revisiting for years to come.

*Tack=thanks in Swedish.

Gwen Wren goes to Stockholm

Gwendolyn made her first foray out of Germany yesterday. The journey began with the ultramodern airport in Munich.

She enjoyed the polished metal and glass contours.

She made it through the 1.5 hour Scandinavian Airlines flight with minimal fuss.

On arrival in Stockholm, Gwen Wren admired the swanky interior of the ultramodern Stockholm airport. But better yet, she was delighted to meet Jacqueline and Dado!

A little lounging was immediately in order. Followed by a delicious meal. And then a delicious sleep.

The next morning, we were a little disappointed that the Wren didn't take advantage of the late rising of the sun for a little extra sleep. But she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to enjoy breakfast with Jacqueline.

Surprisingly, Dado refused her offer to take over the dishes. David agreed this was probably for the best.

Business and Pleasure

Last weekend, Eli came to visit us from Ulm, for another manuscript writing session.

The Wren made sure that she was fully involved. Her input was quite welcome, though she did slightly impede my typing efficiency...

…and sometimes distracted us from the task all together.

But all in all, the writing session went very well. We had time for bracing winter walks…

…followed by hearty warm meals…

…in great company.

Life is a Can of Worms

In mid-October, we had an unexpected visitor.

Bert Leigh, a Smithsonian research scientist and old friend from Panama, came through Bavaria, and stopped to see us along the way.

We entertained him in the best way we knew – by taking him to the local monastery/brewery.

After viewing the interior of the Kloster chapel, we settled on monastery’s biergarten patio for an early dinner, overlooking the village of Andechs.

As many of you know, Bert’s wife Lizzie recently passed away. We were happy to spend much of the visit listening to Bert’s stories about when his children were small and how he and Lizzie brought them up in Panama. In the course of the evening, Bert introduced Gwendolyn to one of his favorite expressions: “Life is a can of worms.” And when Gwendolyn began to fuss (or as Bert called it, to “babiate”), Bert surprised us all by inventing baby songs. A very pleasant visit!

Gwen Wren Faces the Cold

The fall in Bavaria has been beautiful so far. Sunny, clear and warm. We had one day of snow on Oct 30, but it was warm again the next day. We knew this couldn’t last. The days have been getting shorter and shorter, night now begins to fall around 4 pm. And then last Friday afternoon, it began to snow. Saturday morning, we woke up to a white wonderland.

We were a little worried that Gwen Wren would have trouble in the sudden cold, but we have been preparing and have found many ways to bundle her up. There’s the technique of zipping the baby into the parka:

Covering the car seat with a fleece and flannel pouch (thank you for loaning this to us, little Tomas!):

And dressing the Wren in all manner of snug, cozy bodysuits:

After a little layering, we were ready for our first family walk in the snow.

After cooing a bit in pleasure (could she like that icy wind against her cheeks?), the Wren did what she usually does about five minutes into a walk…

She fell into a deep, satisfying sleep.

A Visit to Ulm

Tue and Wed of last week, Gwendolyn took a trip to the city of Ulm. Located nearly two hours away in the state of Baden-Württenberg, this was Gwen Wren’s first foray out of her home state of Bavaria. Here she met Elisabeth Kalko. Or re-met. The two had first been introduced when Rachel was 6 months pregnant, on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Eli was delighted to see Gwendolyn ex-utero.

While Eli and Rachel worked on a manuscript together, David and the Wren took in the sights. Or tried to take them in. It’s actually remarkably hard to capture a baby in her björn, a tall church steeple, and one’s own face all in the same camera frame. Here’s trying:

The next day, we toured Ulm all together. First stop, the Münster, a cathedral with the tallest steeple in the world:

Inside, while the gothic archways pulled David’s thoughts toward the heavens, Gwen Wren contemplated the sogginess of her drool-soaked mittens.

In addition to its tall church steeple, Ulm has a second claim to fame. It is the birthplace of Albert Einstein.

Or translated: “Here stands the house in which on the 14th of March, 1879, Albert Einstein came into this world” – or something like that. Our German language skills are slowly improving!


David particularly appreciated this stained glass window in the Münster. The bottom left shows Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein. The upper right has the equations E = mc^2 (Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence) and s = (1/2)gt^2 (Galileo’s free-fall equation). The middle depicts the big bang. Not bad for a church! A Lutheran church, mind you.

We took in a few more sights:

Ulm’s beautifully painted town hall.

A Jungian department store.

And a statue commemorating the exchange of a large pretzel.

At the end of a long day, we were ready to join old friends for dinner.

Eli treated us all to dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, which was delicious! We hadn’t realized how much we had been missing food with spice. (And eating one-handed with one’s fingers is definitely the way to go when balancing a sleeping baby.) Before falling asleep, Gwen Wren enjoyed the company of several old friends from the Panama bat research crowd.

Christoph Meyer…

…Kirsten Jung…

And our host, Eli Kalko.

Putting the Alp in Alpine

On clear days, we get an enticing view of the Bavarian Alps from the balcony of our farmhouse flat.

After a couple of weekends checking out the local area, we could resist the yodel of the wild no longer. We needed an alpine day trip. “Alpine,” I thought. “I’ve seen plenty of alpine in my time—alpine meadows, alpine tundra—yet always in the New World. But these are The Alps, the Alpiest of alpine places!”

It’s about an hour drive south to the nearest Alpine access point. Gwen Wren wasn’t too psyched about the long car ride, but she found some entertainment in grabbing at the map while we tried to figure out where we were going. Along the way, we decided to stop for a bathroom break. It turned out to be quite a rest area.

I sat out on the lawn to study the map while Rachel went inside with the Wren. I saw a man walk by dressed in a brown burlap robe. “A monk,” I thought. “That’s odd. Wait! This must be a monastery!” And indeed it was: the Kloster Ettal.

Inside, Wren couldn’t take her eyes off the flashy religious iconography.

Short of shutting one's eyes, it was impossible to avoid the iconography—it was everywhere, including the ceiling.

Although the inside was pretty spectacular, the Alps were still beckoning…

…until we passed the kloster’s restaurant and biergarten on the way out. We stopped for a late lunch. Our standard Bavarian restaurant order now: spätzle and salad for Rachel, schnitzel and a weissbier for me. I must say, German monks make some GOOD beer! OK, now we were REALLY ready for some Alp action.

As it turns out, the preferred method for getting up a mountain around here—especially for someone with a baby strapped on her chest, and who has just had a filling meal, and whose husband has just had a large glass of beer—is to take a cable car. This one went up Mt. Laber, outside the town of Oberammergau.

At the top there was—believe it or not—yet another bustling eatery. This was quite a bit more civilized than the alpine landscapes I had seen back home. We were still full from lunch, though, so we passed on the cakes and coffee (and even on the beer).

Gwendolyn, on the other hand, was happy to stop for a snack.

Then we took a hike along the ridge…

…swapping the Wren back and forth between us as we went. She is getting heavy!

We returned to the summit to find the café closed. Probably for the best. We watched as some adventurous guys leapt from the summit to paraglide back down to Oberammergau. We decided to take the cable car down instead. :-)