Happy Birthday To Me!!

So it seems this year I'm getting totally spoiled and am having a birthday week! The celebrations kicked off last night with a party at Theresa's. It was so fun! Diego made sangria (my favorite!!) and Theresa got me a Carvel ice cream cake (minus the gluten filled crunchies in the middle)! It was awesome! I love ice cream cakes. Remember the days of Baskin Robbins ice cream birthday cakes with little Cabbage Patch Kid figurines in the top. Yep, about age 10 I think. :-)


Frauke, Steve, Shannon, and Mike were so thoughtful, making gluten free dishes to bring to the party and then giving me a box of gluten free goodies - most of which I've never tried before. Believe it or not, the gluten free market is growing and there are now more products out there than I can keep up with. But it is always fun to try new things and I now have a few weeks ahead of me of testing out new cookies, granola, pancake mix, and pasta! Yummy!


My actual birthday falls on bar night this week, which means a Happy Birthday chocolate waffle! Woo hoo! I'm also determined to visit Hello Cupcake, as my birthday is the perfect excuse, and then on Sunday my mom is cooking me a birthday dinner.

No question about it, I'm spoiled. And very lucky to have such awesome friends and family!

Ein Tag mit Pferden

Pferd, as I came to learn this weekend, is the German word for horse, and is actually pronounced "fiat". My German vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds!

Yesterday, I helped Frauke put her bike together, and was told that following the bike assembly would be a "surprise with Frauke & Steve" and to dress "casual but nice" and to bring a camera. I was so intrigued! For the life of me, I could not figure out where we were going, but when I asked if jeans were acceptable, I was told no.

So after mostly putting her bike together, Frauke and Steve put Paula (another of Frauke's friends who attended the wedding in Germany) and I in the car and started driving West. We still had no idea where we were going. Once we turned off the interstate though, we were informed that we were going to watch the Gold Cup in The Plains. Yay! It's been years since I've been to the Gold Cup and it's always a fun time!
Steve got tickets through his company for the VIP section where we had an open bar and lots of good food! It was a gorgeous (though brisk) day with the colorful leaves providing a scenic backdrop for the races. Clearly we should have bet our 401(k)s since we picked several of the winners just based on their cool names, such as "Scuba Steve" and "Bubble Economy". Frauke was desperately routing for the German pferde, but no such luck, they never made it to the winner's circle.



It was a fun day, that included Steve getting asked at the gas station on the way home if he were "interested in new opportunities", by a guy who was chatting him up because he had a German car and Steve had a German wife and clearly they had loads in common! :-)

Off to Europe Once Again!

Determined to use up every last second of vacation time this year, I just returned from a trip to Austria and Germany. My swimming friends Frauke and Steve got married in Quickborn (a suburb of Hamburg) on October 4th, and I decided it was a good excuse for another international trip. (You can never have too many!) Since my friend Emily (also from swimming) moved to Vienna last year, I decided to visit her too. Who knew joining a masters swim team could result in such great friends and fun trips!

Vienna


My first stop was in Vienna. Emily met me at the airport, pumped me full of coffee, and biked/walked me all over the city. It was awesome! Until that part where I severely sprained my ankle (I actually thought I had broken it) on my first full day of a 10 day trip! Ugh! Emily has a great account of my 3 days in Vienna on her blog, so rather than retype everything I will refer you to her site and just include a few pictures!




Note: My only requirement of Emily for this visit was that she take me to an Austrian Masters practice. So fun to learn swimming terms in German! I thought I was being really smart by learning to count to 10 in German before arriving (I practiced daily on my bus rides to and from work). But why did it not occur to me to learn 25, 50, 100, 200, etc.!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid!


My favorite new words (with spelling errors, no doubt):

• Einschwimmen (warm up)
• Abschlag (catch-up drill)
• Schnell (fast)
• Locker (easy)
• Crawl (freestyle)
• Brust (breaststroke)

And that's about the extent of it....still can't get a handle on how to say 25!

Hamburg

Next stop was Hamburg for the wedding. Frauke's father, H-J, nicely picked me up at the airport. Due to my obvious limping, I felt compelled to tell him what happened to my foot. As any good parent would, he suggested that he take me to the hospital, but not wanting to test out the German (or Austrian for that matter) health care system, I politely declined. I figured all they would tell me to do would be to stay off of it, and let's face it, not like that's going to happen when I'm on a tour of European cities. Frauke and her parents did round up an ace bandage, ice packs, some home remedy treatments, and even a set of crutches for me. Who needs doctors when you have the Nitschkes? They were awesome and I am forever grateful.

Not to be deterred by a twice its normal size and all shades of purple foot, I went with the rest of the American contingent (about a dozen of us, consisting of swimming friends, Steve's family, and a few other friends of Frauke) for a tour of downtown Hamburg led by H-J. It was so nice to have such insider knowledge of the city. H-J had a career in the shipping industry and knew the harbor like the back of his hand. Thankfully the sun shined for most of the afternoon (or almost shined - it wasn't raining so we were thankful!), meaning we could do most of our tour on foot. Note: cobblestones are really not fun with a messed up foot!



Polterabend


Friday, the day before the wedding, was the "Polterabend." This is traditional German wedding-eve party that is characterized by guests smashing porcelain into the ground in front of the entrance to the building to bring the couple good luck (and so that they can prove they can clean up together).

SO MUCH FUN!! The party had an American theme to it with burgers, fries, etc. Frauke and Steve had to participate in a few games (for which I was a judge) to determine if they were compatible for marriage and thankfully they were!


Frauke's laptop music library was hooked up to the speakers for dancing, and we were happy alternating with her German friends back and forth between playing American and German songs. This was my first opportunity to meet many of Frauke's German friends - most of whom she swam with in Germany. Right away that gave us something in common to talk about (thankfully they could speak English because my German is non-existent). It seems in Germany, swimming for life saving is a sport and some of her friends compete.


Wedding Day

Saturday was the big day. I think Frauke and Steve broke all the rules. :-) First of all, they technically got married in VA on 8/8/08 at the Arlington County courthouse. Second, Steve had already seen Frauke's dress because she emailed him pictures of it when she was trying to decide which one to buy. And third, in the middle of the ceremony - before the minister said "you may now kiss the bride" (which he never did end up saying) they kissed each other!


It was a beautiful ceremony. It is German tradition that the bride and groom walk down the aisle together to enter the church. There was also a part in the middle of the service where friends and family went to the front of the church and offered their wishes for Frauke and Steve to have a happy marriage, which was a nice touch (even if I didn't understand most of what was being said). The ceremony was in both German and English. Frauke has asked me to read the english translation of the sermon, which I gladly did, and I think the only word I messed up on was Marienkirche - the name of the church. My pronunciation was not the best.

The bride and groom arrived at the reception site in the back of a horse trailer. Seriously! It was the funniest thing! Nice, upholstered chairs from Frauke's parents living room were placed in the trailer for them to sit in for the ride. Apparently this was rather risky, as they could have gotten a ticket if they'd gotten caught and potentially not even have made it to the reception, but clearly getting married the first time on 8/8/08 brought them luck and they arrived just fine.

The reception was held in a beautiful dining room and the food was delicious (and gluten free, and dairy free, and vegan, and soy free, and oil free....they had a quite a list to accommodate all their guests like me with crazy diet restrictions!). I've come to realize that wedding receptions in the U.S. are in fast forward! German weddings go until 5am, so the courses of food and speeches are spread throughout the night. Tradition is that the cake is brought out at midnight - and this one came out with sparklers attached to it so it made quite an entrance! It was a tiered ice cream cake, made by Frauke's sister, and was therefore the first wedding cake I've been able to eat in over 5 years! Yay! And the bride and groom on top of the cake each had swimming goggles on, which was totally cute!


I lasted until about 2:30am, and even managed a little dancing on my sore foot. Thankfully I had thrown some flat shoes into my suitcase, as heels were out of the question!

Berlin

After a recovery day, H-J took us to Berlin to show us around. He had lived there many years ago and Frauke had gone to law school in Berlin. It was a very interesting city and I wish I'd had a little more time there. It was great to hear insights from H-J and Frauke on what it was like before the wall came down and of the challenges associated with reunification. For example, how do you treat people that committed violent acts that were not considered crimes under a communist regime, but are considered crimes in a democratic society?


I guess because I didn't have a map (I had two fantastic tour guides!) I had a hard time visualizing what was once once West Berlin and what was once East Berlin. It seems the river was always the dividing line, but as a part of the reconstruction efforts, they have diverted the river, which therefore had me totally confused. I was surprised that all of the beautiful architecture and historic sights were in East Berlin.


My swimming friends remained in Berlin to continue the rest of their vacations, but no such luck for me. Out of vacation time, I returned to Hamburg for one last evening in the hotel bar with new friends Paula and Jeff and returned home the next day. It was fun to play "Monday Morning Quarterback" on the plane with Frauke and Steve, assessing what went well and what could have been better with all the wedding festivities. My assessment - it was perfect. I had a great time!

8am the following morning I visited the doctor, who x-rayed my foot from 6 different angles but found no breaks. Good news I suppose, but I hear sprains often take longer to heal than breaks. No turkey trots or jingle bell runs for me this year. Not that that is anything new I suppose! At least I can still bike and have been enjoying the perfect fall (almost summerlike) weather while it lasts.

Click here for the full set of pictures.