2nd only to Oktoberfest!

October in America = sexy Halloween costumes like the ones in this picture

Oktober in Deutschland = largest fest in Germany complete with steins of Beir, long picnic tables, and millions of people dancing on those tables with their Bier steins

August in Deutschland = 2nd largest fest in Germany, with millions of people in the aforementioned costumes, also dancing on tables with one-liter steins of Bier!

Unless you have lived in Germany, you probably did not know that people actually wear the Lederhosen (aka little German boy) or Dirndl (aka sexy German beer waitress) outfits. Also, you have probably never heard of the 2nd largest fest in Germany, Gäubodenvolksfest. I know Patrick and I didn't know about either before moving here!
Unlike the infamous Oktoberfest in Munich, all signs were in German only at Gäubodenvolksfest, which lacked the enormous tourist population of Oktoberfest. It was also possible to get a table and a Bier without a reservation. Even so, without a doubt my favorite part was the traditional Bavarian outfits like Kyle's below. Clearly buying our own outfits is high on our to-do list!

P.S. The icing on the cake? Readers pick between:
a) pre-gaming the fest with a couple cold ones on the train
b) dancing on the tables and singing along at the end of the night
c) Patrick buying me the first fro-yo we have seen in Deutschland thus far

I heart Croatia

This little girl said it best - I heart Croatia.  Last weekend, along with visiting her fabulous home country of Slovenia, our dear friend Ana took us to the island of Krk in Croatia. We had an amazing time - and the only way to describe it is in the pictures below: 

The food: 

Ana's friend Matevž is an amazing chef. He bought fresh mussels, shrimp scampi, and fish at the market and created gourmet meals with vegetables he grew in his garden. Risotto del mar? Check. Nutelle crepes? Check. Traditional Slovenian fish? Check. Needless to say we were very well fed.

The Adriatic Sea:
If you look close enough in the left picture, you can see Patrick enjoying a snorkel in the northern arm of the Mediterranean. The sea was amazing - gorgeous clear water, perfect temperature, and salinity high enough to make treading water unnecessary. The harbors looked like postcards, but without the herds of August tourists.

The company:
Clearly we were thrilled to hang out with an old friend and meet a new one, but we were also excited about our fellow European sunbathers. I expected to see topless women and naked women, but was caught off guard by the number of naked men. Sadly, I was not quick enough to snap a shot of the pack of men with buns that had never seen the shelter of a swimsuit. I did catch this PG one of our neighbors enjoying the sun!

The town of Krk:
We toured the town of Krk on a Sunday night, but the place was hopping. There were sidewalk performers, tons of restaurants, and boat tours. The Baklava was so good, Patrick even licked his plate. Ana also took us to a fabulous art gallery where we purchased this beautiful painting of a Croatian olive tree. We're thrilled to have a souvenir that will help cover the bare walls! 

The Croatian night sky: 

Patrick and I had forgotten how amazing the stars are, mostly because it is difficult to escape city lights anywhere in America or Germany. We thought it was our lucky night when we counted almost 50 shooting stars over the course of an hour, but actually we had happened upon the Perseid meteor shower! This only topped off a trip that we will never forget!!

sLOVEnia

Seven years ago, when I arrived at Wake Forest, my across-the-hall neighbor was a fabulous tennis player named Ana. She wasn't your ordinary Wake Forest student - she was, in fact, the only student at Wake from Slovenia. Though at the time Patrick and I knew very little about her home country, we were lucky enough this weekend to get a personal, private tour of the fabulous country of Slovenia!

Patrick and Ana in front of Slovenia's most famous poet, France Prešeren  

Just a week before the USA celebrated our 236th July 4th, Slovenia celebrated its 21st year of independence. Before becoming its own 2MM+ person country, Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia along with Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo. Thankfully, the Slovenian Independence War lasted only 10 days, which is a big reason why this country is still so beautiful. It is really sobering to hear people our age talking about bomb drills in elementary school, but that was their reality as Slovenia separated from the socialist Yugoslavia into their own democratic country. They speak their own language, Slovene, and are predominately Catholic as evidenced by some beautiful huts on the side of the road with Catholic statues inside. We even spotted one in Ana's back yard with the Virgin Mary inside! Aside from the modern history, there is some true human history running through the land - while building a parking garage, they discovered a whole ancient city that was buried beneath what is now the capital of Slovenia!

Pink church in downtown Ljubljana

There are many cities in Europe that people say "I wouldn't go back, but you should at least see it once." Slovenia's capital, Ljubljana (pronounced Loob-lee-ah-nah), is a place people should see way more than once. The main city is pedestrian only, clean, and packed with gorgeous historical buildings with unique architecture and bright colors (see picture below of the fabulous pink church in the center of downtown!). The buildings are very well maintained, and there is an equally well groomed canal running through the city center. Ljubljana was like a cleaner Venice without the canal smell, but with hundreds of mouth-watering restaurants all spread outside like Parisian cafes (we tried Bosnian food, but they had ALL types of variety on the main strip!). Add in some truly great drink specials and Italian gelato stands everywhere and you can imagine how packed it was on a Friday night. Apparently it is quite the hot-spot for British bachelor parties, but we also saw a great deal of Germans and Austrians enjoying the city with the locals. We stood and watched an American sidewalk musician sing "Honky Tonk Woman," grabbed some gelato (they even have a stand that has gluten-free!), and soaked it all up.

More to come on the rest of our fabulous trip, but right now I am trying to see when we can spend some serious time in Ljubljana over the next three years. For those of you planning a Mediterranean trip in the summer, I would highly recommend adding Slovenia to your itinerary - you will thank me later for getting a fabulous European experience while maintaining your personal space, unlike most of the comparable places across Europe!

Heidelberg

As you may have heard, the military is closing several installations over the next few years. This weekend, Patrick took me to some of the closing celebrations for one of the larger Army bases in Germany and the birthplace of my brother-in-law, Heidelberg.

Upon arriving at the city, all I could say is "wow." Perhaps I have become accustomed to the farmland of Bavaria, but when the guidebooks described Heidelberg as a "small town," I was not expecting an expansive city of gorgeous red roofs with the Rhine river running straight through the middle. Add in the largest university in Germany and you have the perfect mix of history, funk, and nightlife that is Heidelberg. 

Depending on if you are the sight-seeing type or the soak-up-the-city type, you will want to spend the majority of your time at either the Schloß or the Hauptstraße. Thankfully we had enough time to do both:

Schloß: Though there are castles in almost every town in Germany, the Heidelberg Schloß ('castle' in German) is well worth the trip. There is a 100+ old cable car that takes you up the mountain to spectacular views from the castle. There were families playing on the well manicured lawns, and for 3 Euros we explored the courtyard which houses a few small treasures. The Apotheken-Museum walks through the history of pharmacies and medicine - who knew they used to dry up lizards and maggots for medicine? Our personal highlight of the Schloß was the Große Fass ('large barrel' in German). We walked in and took a picture next to what we thought was the world's largest wine cask, only to find that it dwarfed the real thing. In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain said it was "as big as a cottage" and he was definitely right. My only wish was that we could climb inside. Maybe it will be open for exploring next trip...

What we thought was the Große Fass

Real world's largest wine cask - too big for the picture!

Hauptstraße: I thought the 10-15 block pedestrian-only shopping street in Amberg was a very cool anomaly of our home city. It seemed much less so after walking down Heidelberg's 1.5 km + 'Main Street' complete with fabulous shopping, Parisian-style restaurants, and a market in the center. Patrick and I enjoyed a leisurely dunch (dinner + lunch) at an outside table - the people watching was phenomenal and the food wasn't bad either. At night, jog over just one street to the main bar drag. Whether you are looking for the boom-chika-boom night club or an Irish pub, you will find many options filled with students, tourists, some of our own servicemen and women, and very fairly priced drinks. Later that night, you can even grab some "Mexikan" food from one of the many restaurants that close off the back and make late-night food windows available to those who worked up an appetite on the dance floor, or those looking for hangover prevention. I had to teach the Turkish owners of the "Mexikan" stand we went to that a "Kasse Tortilla" is actually called a quesadilla. I'm sure they will change the menu shortly??

Road Trippin'

This weekend I learned that for some reason, road trippin' across Europe is far more interesting than that across the US. This is not only because everything is new and foreign, but also because every small town you pass has so much history, and at least in Germany, includes an unbelievable castle in the city center. As Patrick and I drove west, we saw no abandoned buildings or run-down neighborhoods, but instead pristine German villages just as you would imagine. 

Patrick and I made our way to Heidelberg (more on that fabulous city to come), then checked out Ramstein Air Base on the way home. The highlights of our road trip (excluding Heidelberg!) included:

1) Learning that on the German radio station, you can hear the seven-dirty-words loud and clear in all songs. We found it wildly entertaining to hear the F-word loud and clear over our radio.

2) Attending a true matinee movie on Sunday. Apparently the Air Force actually springs for a real movie theaters unlike the Army, which uses the auditorium awkwardly to screen films at 7:00 pm only. 

3) Eating at Macaroni Grill... embarrassing as that might be. We forgot how much we missed getting free ice water when we sat down at a restaurant. 

4) Discovering that Germany reads my blog as well and they responded to my last post with a breathtaking full double rainbow, far more gorgeous than the last one I saw back in Texas.