Week 132: Thanksgiving and Visitors!

It’s Thanksgiving week, so we all had a short week at work and school. It’s a little early, but some of the Christmas markets around Germany opened up this week. Traditionally, they start the first week of Advent, which is next week, but there are a few that open early if you a willing to travel a little further afield.

On Tuesday night, a friend and I drove up to Heilbronn, about an hour north of Stuttgart, to attend the opening of their Christmas market. I’ve never been to Heilbronn before and was surprised to find a semi-large city. The market though, was fairly small and not a lot of actual wares for sale. It did have a Christmas pyramid, carousel, and a decent selection of food stalls so we were able to grab some fest food for dinner (Langos with cheese and garlic) and gluwein, with a Heilbronn mug to add to the collection, before heading back to Stuttgart.

On Wednesday, we did lots of prepping and cleaning for Thanksgiving. This was the first time we would spend Thanksgiving at our home in Germany and to make it extra special, our friends from the US, Burger, Heather, and their three kids were coming for a visit.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we got up and got the food started, then headed to the Stuttgart train station to pick up our visitors. They had a long journey, starting with the long drive to Dulles Airport, then the flight to Frankfurt, where they changed to the train and rode the rest of the way to Stuttgart. They really were troopers and still were in good spirits, although tired, by the time we picked them up.

We returned home and Heather and the kids napped while somehow, Burger stayed up all afternoon, keeping us company while we finished Thanksgiving dinner. By about 5pm, dinner was finally ready and we all dug in. We had SO MUCH food, but somehow only managed to take this really bad picture of the carved up turkey. Just believe us- there was a lot and we were eating leftovers for days.

On Friday, the weather was terrible. It was super cold and rainy so we decided to stay local. We took everyone on a tour of the base and then had lunch at the food court. What a treat to come all the way to Germany and be treated to an American fast food lunch by your friends 😜! Afterwards, we headed the mall in town for some more shopping. We took a short rest at home and then headed out to meet Beth and Austin for dinner. Very coincidentally, they were neighbors with Heather and Burger back in Maryland and their daughter and Burger and Heather’s daughter, Annabel, were friends. We had dinner at the “Italian place by the sports club in Grafenau” (what we call it) and everyone jumped right back into where they left off. We finished the night with an eggnog back at Beth and Austin’s before heading home.

When we woke up Saturday morning, the rain was still coming down. But, we were desperate to get out of the house and do something. We checked the weather across multiple places in Europe and decided to head to Luxembourg, where we had the best chances of good weather. The Luxembourg Christmas Markets have been on my to-do list for a long time and have a lot of rides for the kids so it was a good choice. We packed and loaded up the kids into the cars and made the three hour drive.

We lucked out and scored a great last-minute deal on a hotel that was pet friendly and right in the middle of the city. The weather cleared up and after we were checked in, we headed to the market.

We all had typical market food for dinner; steak sandwiches, pork knuckles, sausages, and chocolate covered fruit. The market had seven or eight different gluwein mugs so Matt and I got to work on getting one of each.

The kids rode several rides and we walked around and did some shopping. Slinky and Daisy came with us and got a ton of attention, especially Daisy, who was being carried around in her new backpack.

After awhile, the kids had had enough so we took them back to the hotel, where Brooklyn babysat so the adults could go back out to the market. This time, we went to a second market on Place Guillaume, where we had even more food and collected more mugs.

Sunday morning, we got up and had a big hotel breakfast before packing up and setting out on a walk around Luxembourg City. We walked around the old town and the Royal Palace before walking down to the corniche, overlooking the valley.

Once we were done with our walking tour, we got back in the car and made the two hour drive to Strasbourg for their Christmas Market. While we arrived in plenty of time, it did take us about an hour to find parking, and then walk a ways into the city. Again, it was opening weekend, so extremely busy.

We walked through the old town, which was decorated to the max with lights, and toys and teddy bears in every window.

For food, we had crepes and waffles and Matt and I even found a gluwein mug (which have mostly gone away at the French markets). Daisy stayed tucked into her new backpack, but Slinky was still on a leash and the poor guy was almost stepped on a few times in the crowd. It made him pretty anxious, and us as well since we are hoping to take them to a few more this year. We saw the famous cathedral and the kids rode the carousel before we headed back to the car and back to Stuttgart.

It was a late night, and of course after eating all day, the kids wanted another dinner once we got home 🤭. We all obliged and then headed to bed early, eager to recuperate for the week ahead.