Monday, December 13, 2010

Christmas Markets - Lindau

This past Saturday we went to the Lindau Christmas market.  We had hoped to go skiing, but there were no lessons on Saturday and I'm not quite ready to throw myself down the Alps without any training.  :)  Lindau was a very nice Christmas market!  It was the biggest one we had seen and had some different things that we hadn't seen at the other ones yet.

Before we made it to the market, we had to take some pictures of the mountains because they were gorgeous!




We loved this last picture the best because it looks like there is a big floating mountain in the distance. 

Once we made it to the market, we loved the entrance.  It was definitely the most elaborate one we had seen.



Brian liked the center of the market where they had pedal tractors for kids to ride in a little area.  Too bad he is too big to ride them!



The market had lots of interesting things to see.  One of my favorites was a booth with things made out of tree stumps.  They were carved out, but the bark was still on the outside.  There was also a boat that you could go on and order food, but we stayed in the regular market and had lunch there.



There was no Nativity at this market, but they still had animals!  This time it was goats.



They did have an area that I thought was pretty creepy.  It was made from evergreen branches draped over wood to make a place that you could walk into.  Inside, there were displays of different animals, but they were all stuffed (like taxidermy).  There were signs by them all, but we couldn't read them because they were in German.  There were also other displays with characters from different fairy tales.  I thought these were pretty creepy too, but Brian still took pictures of them.



After having lunch and stopping at a store in the town, we headed back to our car, but had to take some more pictures of the mountains on our way out!




Saturday, December 11, 2010

Advent International

Brian and I had quite a pleasant night out tonight.  We went to the Bodenseehof's Advent International Concert/Service.  The Bodenseehof is a Bible school in English just down the road from us that we attend on Sunday mornings for church.  They have over 100 students this year around college age that study there from September until March with different teachers who come in.  It has been a pleasure to be able to worship with them.

Tonight they put on their annual Advent International concert.  Different groups of students performed different Christmas songs with their voices and instruments.  They were quite good!  The director of the school also gave a sermon, but it was all in German, so we didn't understand any of it. 

It was wonderful to see what the students can do and see the support that the school gets from the community.  The place was packed!  We thankfully got 2 of the last seats available and were able to enjoy the concert.  Most of the people who were there are people from the community.  We do not see most of these people on Sundays because they speak German and the Sunday morning services are in English.

It was wonderful to celebrate Christ's birth in this way!

Friday, December 10, 2010

European Driving Licenses

Yesterday Brian and I did the last thing we have to do yet to get completely into the German system - we applied for European driving licenses!  Our US licenses are only good here for 6 months and we are at about 4 1/2 already.  Since we have a car now, we decided that it was time to finally get this.  We also wanted to wait until it was close to when we were going back to the US because we will also have to get new US licenses.

The Germans don't want you to be able to show your US driving license if you have any problems once you have your European one, so they take away your US license.  Since we need those to drive in the US (which we will be doing over Christmas), we wanted to make sure that they wouldn't take them before we went back home.  It takes a few weeks for the licenses to be ready, so we should be able to keep our US licenses until we get back after Christmas.  We plan to get new US licenses over Christmas and then hand over our old ones to the Germans when we get back.

The next step - I have to learn to drive the car!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Surprise!

Last night we went to bed listening to pouring rain.  This is what we woke up to today!






It is so beautiful!