Monday morning I had a skype call with my family for Christmas eve, before heading off to the trains, arriving in a small town Manja’s family is from around noon. We caught up with her family who welcomed me heartily, before heading off to her Aunts place for Christmas eve. It was odd for me to celebrate Christmas Eve without my family for the first time in my life, but Manja’s family made a great effort at involving me which was super nice. We spent the night at Manja’s mums place.
The next morning Manja’s mum was nice enough to loan us her car, so Manja showed me around the town a bit and some of the places where she grew up. In the evening we caught up with Manja’s mum and had a roast Christmas dinner at a nice farm.
The next day we started slowly and chatted with Manja’s mum for a while and watched “Aschenbrödel” the East-German film version of the Cinderella fairy tale: Magical Acorns included. I got to say I was impressed with the effects – quite well done for its day and age!
In the afternoon we headed over to Manja’s grandparents place for a Christmas day celebration – traditional German Christmas food included. In the evening Manja’s little brother was kind enough to drive us to the train station for our train back to Berlin.
Thursday it was back into German bureaucracy, for second round meetings and more applications. As a reward we also bought me a bicycle, trading in a very old one Manja still had around 😁
Friday we had a mission straight from the parental headquarters: Get a car for the day, pick up some 60thBirthday balloons and cake and drive to Klaus’ place. He, along with his twin brother in Tasmania, were celebrating their birthday today. As they are friends of my father, he had arranged a surprise. My parents would be in Tasmania at midnight, and we would be in Germany at the same time. We even managed to arrange the same birthday balloons in both locations.
One problem: We did not know if they were going to be home. None the less we got on the way, even spotting a fox running along as we passed a park 
But the risk paid off, both were home and totally unprepared for visitors. We had a nice group-chat on skype for a bit and had some really great cake before we had to head off and bring the car-sharing car back into the approved radius.
In the evening we headed back into town – this time by public transport – to a nice Balinese restaurant where we met for dinner with some of Manjas friends and had a fantastic night out. This was the view on the way home:
The weekend we left to relax – it had been a pretty massive few weeks and we really needed some time to recover 😀
Monday night was New Year’s Eve. Katrin was throwing a party, so we joined them in the evening. A Few hours before we did a Skype call to family to wish everyone a happy new year in Australia 😀
The party was great fun and included some nice old traditions like lead-pouring (which is done with a zinc compound nowadays). Basically, you melt some lead, pour it into water and the resulting shape will foretell your fortune for the year. I’m guessing you really have to use lead, because the shapes didn’t lend themselves to clear interpretation 😉
Midnight the city exploded in traditional German Silvester – Everyone here can, and does, buy fireworks. We went to the streets and you really saw it explode all around! Below is a whole bunch of fireworks videos from the street. Tuesday we slept in, recovered and prepared for the work-week which would be starting tomorrow. Day one at my new Job!
Leave a Reply