The Wild Newlywed Yonder: No School November

The rest of November went by pretty quickly. I spent the entire week before Thanksgiving break subbing for eighth grade science, which is my certification, so the teacher actually left me things to teach and I loved it. Sam was busy with the end of the year stuff at work and flying, he had to complete his check ride. Also, November has become known as not only no shave November but also no school November. There was only one complete five day week in the entire month! It was awesome. Thanksgiving break finally arrived, it started on Thanksgiving Day and lasted until the following Sunday, hello four day weekend. Rachel and Josh came up to visit us and spend Thanksgiving with our Air Force family. It was great day, full of delicious food, stuffing ourselves, lots of laughter, and American football, the next best thing to being home for the holidays, they even played phase ten with me, which is why we love our Air Force family. After our Thanksgiving meal we headed back to our house to go to bed as we were leaving early in the morning to go to the German Christmas markets.

The never ending phase 10 game...everyone was a good sport.

The best thing about living overseas is all of traveling opportunities that we have, but since we don’t live on mainland Europe we either have to drive through the Chunnel, take a train or fly. This can add some expense to the journey. We hope that someday the military will provide us the opportunity to live in Germany or Belgium where we can just take off on road trips, which we can still do here but it is much further of a journey. It is a two hour drive from our house to the Chunnel, then you drive your car onto a train cart and wait thirty minutes while you are transported under the channel, and then from the Chunnel in France it was another four hours to our first destination, Aachen, Germany. This was closest Christmas Market to the UK. After an hour long detour in Belgium where we were searching for a place to eat we finally made it the Netherlands where we were staying in a cottage. It was right on the boarder of Germany, so we didn’t have to drive far in order to reach the market. By the time we made it to Aachen it was of course dark, but that seemed to make it more magical. The first thing we did was find a sausage, my first German sausage and it was amazing. Then we got some hot drinks, mulled wine, which is hot wine, in souvenir glasses and walked around the markets. The town of Aachen was beautiful and the market was centered around the cathedral. There were so many stands with beautiful handmade crafts. It was so fun to look at everything they had, but we didn’t purchase anything yet as we had so many more markets to see. We decided to call it a night as we were all tired from the drive so we went to the local supermarket and headed back to our cottage.

Our first sausages

Rach wasn't cool like the rest of us in ordering a sausage

Exploring our first market

The stalls of the market, so magical

Pretty sure he groaned a lot before this picture. He hates pictures

The group at our first market, the boys are still holding strong

Josh and Sam with their big German beers

On Saturday we headed to Düsseldorf which is about an hour away from where we were staying. There were about four or five Christmas markets in this town. Some were pretty small, only like two rows, but it was so fun to walk around the town and hit a new market everywhere we went. The city was pretty big and of course cute like lots of European cities, it had a beautiful church in the town centre as well as a ferris wheel. We walked around looking at everything they had for sale, more beautiful hand crafted items. I found a couple of Christmas ornaments to purchase, one for us and one for our spouse social in December, which included a white elephant gift exchange. Sam and Josh really enjoyed the sausages and pretzels. Rachel and I enjoyed the shopping. We did find some delicious marshmallows that were dipped in chocolate, but the chocolate had flavored liqueur added it was actually tasty. We went to a church here and then rode the ferris wheel before having dinner and making our hour long drive back to the cottage, in which Rachel and I serenaded the boys with beautiful Christmas songs. Oh and the food in Germany is amazing, I don’t recall the name of the restaurant we ate at but it was delicious.

Rachel and I are ready for our next shopping day

One of the Aachen Christmas markets lots of stalls

Oh Christmas tree

For all my friends who are HP nerds...I mean fans

Love this. A traditional German advent candle in life size form

Ah yeah random German lady...I mean crepes!

There were lots of people

The Rhine river

Actually I take that back this might not be the Rhine....but cool bridge

The boys resting from all the shopping

HUGE Christmas tree

Our Asian friends who spoke German and little English took a great group picture for us

Now this is the Rhine river

The ferris wheel we rode

Beautiful church in the town centre

The sun made a brief appearance

The town at night from the ferris wheel

Bright flash...ridding the ferris wheel...which freaks Sam out and I find that funny since he flies a plane

On Sunday we packed up the car and headed to Monschau, Germany. This was an absolutely beautiful town. The first mention of this city was in 1198, there was even a castle which dates back to the 13^th century. When we were researching which Christmas Markets to attend the Monschau city came up as being “Europe’s best kept secret” and I think it lived up to its name. We walked around the market, completing some shopping and stumbled upon a cute shop which sold mustard that they made in the city. It was delicious and we bought two containers of it, even using some on our Christmas goose this year. After a couple of hours it was time to embark on our six hour journey back home. It was such a fun weekend and we loved exploring the Christmas markets. We came home late on Sunday night, which made for a long week back to work where I felt behind on the holiday season since we normally decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. Plus, with Thanksgiving being so late in November it was already well into December when we decorated, but we made up for it by leaving them up (not by choice) until mid-January, but we will save that story for another blog post!