Deutschland!

So! 

After a rather trying flight from Montreal to Frankfurt, I'm finally in Wuerzberg where Michael and Jochen live. (The flight involved children, who, when they were not sleeping, spent their time on competitive screaming and kicking my chair. Not pleasant.) But I'm in Europe now and that's what matters. 

Michi picked me up at the airport at Terminal 1, which was damn decent of him because he turned down millions of parties the night before so that he could get up and drive in the dark to pick me. The German Autobahn is fantastic. You can go at whatever the heck speed you want - there is no speed limit, so that was crazy. 

Since he had his parents car, we drove up to the castle in Wurzberg on a hill surrounded by vineyards. It's pretty much a fortress to protect paranoid bishops against invaders or from the people in the city (depending on who was mad at them at that point in time), according to Micheal. It's got high walls and slitty windows and holey things for canons and fantastic medieval cobblestones. Tunnels leading to the gates have holes in the ceiling for men to pour hot oil/tar/shit down on the invaders. There are a million doors and a zillion windows, and i'm pretty sure secret passage ways. There was a chapel in the middle (incidentally right across from a tower containing a torture chamber) with ornate altars and things, very fascinating to look at. There on the ground, were carvings of the bishops on the stone of the floor. I almost swore out loud in the chapel when Michael told me they were the graves of the bishops. We also looked down an extremely deep well that i thought was kind of impractical seeing as it would have taken a half hour to get a bucket of water. 

I rather liked that castle really. It's got old world charm and all that. The rest of the city does too, even though the buildings were pretty much all rebuilt after the war. Must be the cobblestones.

The Christmas Market is right by Michael's flat. We went last night and got roasted almonds and gluhwein (hot, spiced wine) with rum. The rum makes it a hundred times stronger than normal gluhwein, which is fun. And it was goooood! There's a longer more tongue-twistery name that i don't remember. I got a bit tipsy at the end but it was good for the cold. The Christmas Market sells lots of overpriced, pretty Christmas things for people who are drunk on gluhwein to buy. I wanted to get in on the action but M and J looked at me like a was nuts so i'm gonna when they aren't looking. 

Oh damn. I might have wrecked Michael's blinds. They won't go up anymore. And it's not like they're skinny aluminum ones you can tie up. They're metal industrial monster ones that Singapore shops roll over their doors after they close. Shit. Ganz, ganz scheisse. 

BABIES!!!

MarcMarc.

After being in contact with Bean's two little relatives, Marc and Ezekiel, I'm having serious maternity pangs. Hugging small, soft, powdery smelling bundles of little person makes me crave for little persons of my own. I want so much to hold one, kiss one and teach one like Mummy and Papa hugged, kissed and taught me. That's talking about a huge, huge amount of love, and I want to show my children what it's like to be on the receiving end of that. I won't ever stop kissing them, i will smother them with ten thousand lifetimes of kisses! And i will teach them to be God-fearing, good mannered, intelligent, broad-minded, non-whiny, well-adjusted members of family and society.

I'm so excited! BABIES!!!

New favourite things: brown rice with butter and rosemary, and tomato coulis. 

Mmmmm. 

Oh wait. Actually it's still steak. Yeah. Steak.

Next up, Bangers and Mash.