So it has been some time since our last update. So I will start with a good ol' fashioned mass update beginning with Christmas!

Bavaria, and Munich in particular, really likes the Christmas season. And I mean really likes Christmas. The Christmas markets open towards the end of November and go on through Christmas Eve. The Altstadt (old city) is blanketed in wooden stalls with arts & crafts, the soft glow of strung up lights, and the air smells of the spices of mulled wine (gluhwein). Roasted chestnuts, sausages adorn every row end, and the market is never empty.

The markets not only serve as a commercial outlet for goods, but also as an excuse for socialization. Many nights, people head out to the markets for a glass of gluwein and chit chat under the gigantic tree from a nearvy Bavarian forest erected in the Marienplatz.

Brooke and I went several times throughout the season and were able to nab some great trinkets and get our fill of the mulled wine.As of this writing, the city center has transformed back into it's normal surroundings. Gone are the rows of stalls, the skating rink, and most sadly for me, the roasted cashews and chestnuts.

We were very lucky to be able to return to Texas during the first week of December for a fantastic, albeit short, visit with the family. Somehow it ended up icing over and was ironically colder in Texas than Munich.

New Years Eve (Silvester) came and went with a huge bang. Seriously. The Bavarians do not mess around when it comes to fireworks. The picture above is the only somewhat viable photo that survived our evening on what felt like the western front. We went to the area where Oktoberfest is held and blew up a small bit of earth along with the other folks in town. So many simultaneous fireworks literally smoked out the city skyline to the point where we could barely see past our own arsenal setup. Some residents recommend donning a helmet for New Years. At first we thought they were being overly dramatic, but soon learned the opposite.

Overall, it was a great experience and a lovely way to spend a birthday.

Because apparently they have it here. The weather has begun to change along with the leaves around the city. It is still a little strange for me to see picturesque scenes usually reserved for calendars and magazines along my walk to work. As I continue to adjust to the metric system in general, I still have mini scares when I wake up in the morning to check the weather on my phone and it says "0".
Ahhh! Oh wait, centigrade. Thats just 32F. Ok.

The hustle of Oktoberfest is now a fuzzy memory along with the throngs of tourists, although I may slightly miss the midnight serenades of drunken folks from all around the world. The Russians guys still had the most enthusiastic singing.

Now along the Karlsplatz/Marienhof shopping corridor in downtown, the smell of roasted nuts and mulled wine are beginning to take over. There has already been a very light (and I do mean light) snow flurry. The Germans enjoyed poking fun and my comment that it would be considered a blizzard by Texas standards. I'm sure the enchantment will wear off after the first heavy snow. Or not. Maybe I'll cover the city in snow angels.

The fabled Oktoberfest is officially upon us here in Munich. The 18 day festival of all things Bavarian kicked off last week and will be steadily partying on until October 7th. Each year it is held in Theresienwiese in the center of town, which we live an entire 10 minute walk from. Lucky us?
This festival has been going continuously since 1810 and brings over 6 million visitors each year (thanks Wikipedia). With over 7 million liters of beer served each year, there is an unmistakable festive spirit throughout the city. Also a bit of drunk singing in the wee hours of the night.

We have been lucky to be so close to the Wiesn (short Bavarian name for the festival grounds) as we have been able to stroll though the grounds before the festival even began while much of the area was under construction.
Now as the festival is in full swing, we have been able to go enjoy the festival at least once, with a couple more planned trips in the works.

With everything from a midway full of games, rollercoasters, and crappy haunted houses to rows of food and beer, Oktoberfest gives the Texas State Fair a run for its money in the revelry category.
More updates will come for sure, but for now, please enjoy some photos of the amazing beer tents, crowds, and a little traditional wear.

Brooke's sister Brianna was recently married, and while I was unable to attend the ceremony, I was able to watch via Skype thanks to Brooke and her fancy iPad.
While she was away, I attended the MünchenHoliFest, which is a modernized version of the Holi Festival of colors originating from the Hindu festival Phagwah. While the original Phagwah is steeped in religious significance, this festival simply had Germans, powdered color, and techno music.  While lots of fun, I was washing color out of my ears for several days afterwards.

It has been some time since I have last updated the blog so here is a special two part installment! Get excited.

We have finally fallen into a bit of a rhythm with our day-to-day responsibilities and needs. Developing a new manner of shopping for groceries, using only public transit, and generally trying to learn more from the locals around us has been exciting and difficult simultaneously.

As we do with many times of change or stress, Brooke and I turn to cooking to help us with a sense of ease and normalcy. My beloved grandmother helped us immensely in one of our first culinary experiments here in Munich. After hearing a story from a friend who had spent time in Germany, Granny came upon a recipe for Zwetschgendatschi (plum tart) and immediately forwarded it to us. This tart is made from the Damson plum which grows here in Bavaria, particularly in the summer months, and has a deep, almost black, purple skin. The raw flesh on the other hand is very light in color. However when this plum is baked, some of the color from the skin leeches into the light flesh giving it a beautiful deep pink/orange/yellow color.

This is a really easy recipe and can be done with other plums, but is truly meant for the Damson plum. Either way, recipe is below for anyone wanting to give it a try. The smell this thing produces will make you want to bake one daily just as an air freshener.
(Special thanks to Granny Ennis for this find!)

As we continue to operate on a tight budget, we turn yet again to our tiny kitchen to give ourselves some luxury items without breaking the bank. Brooke produced some fantastic croissants that have been the star of our morning breakfast (frühstück).

Some of you have already seen/heard me talking about the abundance of Romanesco broccoli here in Munich. This cauliflower/broccoli flower was first documented in Italy sometime in the 16th century and grows in natural fractals. While not only looking like you are eating something found at a Grateful Dead concert, it is quite healthy being high in vitamin C, K, dietary fiber, and carotenoids. It is quite abundant and cheap here which means it finds its way into our meals frequently.

Enough food porn for one post. Now on to more news!

This week we spent plenty of time putting the finishing touches on employment paperwork and doing some apartment hunting. We also decided to take some time to relax from our stressful job hunting to go to the zoo. The Munich zoo is special for several resaons; Firstly it is 100 years old this year and was the first zoo to categorize animals into regions and match their habitats to their natural surroundings, and second, you can bring your dog. So Olive got her first visit to the zoo. Enjoy her photos below! More updates soon!

This week has been full of government office visits, long talks with cell phone companies, and annoying some chefs into giving me work. We have made some headway, but still have plenty to do.

But of course we must still find time to enjoy our fantastic surroundings and in doing so, found a nice group of English speaking ex-pats that have a weekly Friday night meetup at a chosen biergarten. This week, they meet at the Englischer Gartens which is a park situated in the middle of Munich and is larger than New York's Central Park. The bier garten we visited was adjacent to the Chinese Tower ( Chinesischer Turm) which is modeled after the pagoda in the royal botanical gardens in England. Something happened in the '40s causing it to burn (😐) and its was restored in the '50s. The bier garten there is the second largest in the city and sits around 7,000 people.

We met a friendly group of Brits and soon weeded out a couple of Americans to chat with. Had a great time and look forward to seeing the group again, but for now back to the grind.

-Mike

With only a day and a half left in Italy, we decided it was time to visit the beach. But not just any of the myriad of pleasant, albeit overrun areas up the coast. We headed to a preserve on the Adriatic sea called Riserva Statale Torre Guaceto. This area is technically a wildlife preserve, but areas on either side just adjacent to the park are open to the public and freakishly pristine. After a short drive, we found a nice area to park (no thanks to our awful TomTom GPS from the car rental company), and proceeded down to the coast. Of course, we forgot sunscreen. Dammit. But thankfully we spotted some red-headed children with their family who were, of course, British and we were able to borrow some from them. (They even ended up giving us a small bottle when they left!)

After all the swimming and spying on tiny crabs in the rocks, we had worked up quite a hunger and headed further south in the boot-heel to Lecce. This larger college town had apparently shut-down for their afternoon nap so finding food was slightly difficult but we managed and bailed out of town shortly thereafter. Lecce seems to be a nice town, but a little to large for our quaint tour of Puglia. However, we couldn't leave before checking out the ruins of a Roman amphitheater were many folks were snacked on by lions.

We decided to drive to the very end of the Italian boot heel to Otaronto, a small port city that is home to the original Tree of Life mosaic. Inside the church that houses the mosaic, a small service was being held, so we tip-toed around staring at the floor until we noticed the altar made entirely of human bones and skulls. These were evidently the remains of many devout Catholic martyrs who had refused to renounce Catholicism at the hands of an invading army. They were all beheaded and the returning Christians decided to eternally honor them by putting their remains in an altar. Oh, and they kept the beheading stone as well. Neat.

Otaronto was possibly my favorite town as the people there were quite pleasant and the ocean views magnificent. We stayed a little longer for a sea-side glass of wine, but soon had to leave.

Before leaving puglia entirely, we had to stop by Polignano A Mare, a city famous only for it's gelato. And being the way we are, we found the most renowned gelateria and had a cone. Alright, I had two. Seriously good stuff.

At the time of this post, we are safely back in Munich, getting back in the swing of establishing ourselves here. It's rainy and cold, but the end of the week promises to warm up a bit. This next week will be a busy one, however a bit mundane so posts may be slightly more infrequent as most of our time is going to be spent waiting in government offices filling out paperwork and then proceeding to the next office. And then the next. Germany loves it's documentation.

More soon!

-Mike & Brooke

Today was Brooke's birthday and we had quite a fantastic time exploring more of Puglia. We ventured to Alberobello and their network of traditional Trulli houses which consist mainly of stacked stones and thatched roofs. This area is mainly known for it's regional pasta called Orecchiette shaped like little ears.

We were also able to visit Grotte di Castellana and it's network of caves! The visible opening to this network was thought to be the opening to hell up until the early 1930's and they even recreate Dante's Inferno as a play each year. Besides a myriad of beautiful caverns, this cave system is home to one of the most pristine calcite deposits that make a stunningly white underground cavern that is widely considered to be one of the more gorgeous caverns (according to the geologist).

In the nearby city of Polignano A Mare, we had dinner in a beautiful seaside cave restaurant. Yeah, a restaurant in a damn cave. Fantastic views and great food. Hopefully it lived up to Brooke's birthday expectations! We return to Deutschland on Thursday so we plan to soak up all the warm sun as possible tomorrow.

-Mike

We are in Puglia, Italy for a few days to relax after our stressful move! It also happens to be Brooke's birthday so all the more reason to celebrate!

Today is fairly slow paced as we are enjoying the village of Ostuni near our hotel. Tomorrow I have a few tricks up my sleeve for Brooke's bday.