Letztes Jahr der Weihnachtsmarkt

Yes! It's that time of year again! The Christmas markets are starting to pop up again and my most favorite is the one in Aachen, Germany! I've invaded it every year since we first got stationed here...and it makes me very..very sad that this will be our last one. Of course, I'll invade this particular one a few more times within the next month, but still..2012 is the last year we'll be attending 'em. 

Le Sigh. 

All the stores were decked out with Christmas decor! Everything looked so pretty and magical, especially the bakeries. Then again, I think I'm rather partial to the pastries since I'm a little bit of a glutton...naahhhh....

I was actually pretty surprised that more people weren't there since today was the opening day for the market. But, the weather wasn't very favorable since it was rather chilly and raining throughout our entire visit. I'm sure most people preferred to stay all bundled up at home and snuggled up on the couch. I'm positive Eric would've preferred to do the same thing, but he was a trooper and opted to troll the market with me cause he's awesome like that. Actually, it's because he was bribed with Starbucks...

 Eric was completely smitten with the size of the long wieners that were being grilled throughout the market stalls. Nevermind the fact that we had just gorged ourselves on our favorite sushi joint, lol...he was still willing to inhale one of those bad boys!

The town hall was looking gorgeous as usual:

Eric got this crazy look in his eye and I couldn't figure out what was going on behind me...sure enough...

...one of the market vendors was selling cotton candy. All was lost. So...so very lost...

Once Eric's sugar gremlin was appeased, I went around to my favorite market vendor who sells the German glass ornaments - Inge's Christmas Heirlooms. I actually wrote out a list of the various ornaments I was looking for. Yes, seriously. Ya see, my Christmas tree is like my own little travel / life passport where I get ornaments to symbolize big things that have happened or things that are important to me. For example, I was looking for a passport ornament because of all the traveling I've done since we've been here...or a hot air balloon since we'll be moving to New Mexico. Here's some of the ornaments we were able to snag:

Since Aachen's market is our absolute favorite, it was definitely necessary to buy their official ornament:

Eric has an obsession with Chocopolis in Brussels. So much, in fact, that once we move to New Mexico and when it gets to a cooler time of the year there...he'll be ordering his favorite coffee chocolate from them and having it shipped to us. THAT, my friends, is dedication. 

Eric actually picked this one out for me. It's because I cook so much...and he loves my cooking. It's also because when he attempted to make something once and used a metal utensil in my very nice & very expensive Pampered Chef pans. I *informed* him in a rather panicked tone that you never use metal on metal...always use plastic or wood. So, I find it rather humorous that they actually have a wooden spoon glass ornament available..

The providence we live in is very known for its equestrian talents. There's always some sort of riding event going on somewhere around here , which is actually pretty cool to watch. Not only that, but the area around our house has five gorgeous horses (two of which have been born since we've been here)..and whenever we go for a walk, they run up to the fence line because they've gotten accustomed to the apples & carrots we toss their way. I'm honestly gonna miss those guys! Whenever I pull into the drive way and get out of my truck, two of 'em always rush up to the fence line and greet me with snorts & hoof stomps till I acknowledge them. 

Eric was VERY relieved that those were the only ornaments I picked up, although, none of those were on my original shopping list...so of course I'm still on the hunt for those particular items. As we walked around some more, we came across a vendor whose stall was full of gorgeous little cottages, cathedrals, little churches and all sorts of various things you'd use to make mini towns for a Christmas setting. One piece IMMEDIATELY caught my eye because it looks SO much like the church in the town we live in. After humming and haaing about it, we finally decided to snag it because knowing our luck, if we were to come back at another time to get it, it'd be gone. 

Oh, and lets not forget about Lush. During the winter time, they come out with "Snow Fairy", which I completely fell inlove with last year and have been itching to get a hold of again. Sure enough, we popped in there and they had a bunch of it on the shelf. I stocked up on a few bottles and looked a little too giddy about it...I think the staffed picked up on it cause they were giggling about how excited I was when showing Eric "LOOK! LOOK! THEY GOT IT! EEEEE!!!"

No date day is complete without Starbucks....since I was still very stuffed from the sushi, Eric opted to get himself his usual. In the process of getting his drink, he inquired about them selling their large "in house" mugs because we KNOW they used to sell 'em, but always came at a bad time, or they just didn't have enough in stock. Well, this time, they had 'em. So of course, he bought 'em and went on his merry way to meet up with me since I was off taking pictures of stuffs. I got a chance to check 'em out once we got home and I was surprised that they changed the mugs! They used to have the green siren logo on the front...and now it's just a recessed image in the mug (which shape has also been changed). Either way, I was happy with 'em!

Sounds dorky, but I thought it was pretty cool that they have a "V" on the handle to represent "Venti"..it's the little things, right? :)

So, there ya have it. That was our day...pillaging the Christmas market, did some people watching, did some shopping and ended up coming home to defrost since it was rather chilly / soggy over in beautiful Germany. On that note, off to enjoy some nice hot tea that Eric made :) 

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Bad Ju Ju

Ever have one of those days where everything seems to be against you? Ya know, as if "fate" isn't wanting to allow you to carry out some plans that you had in mind for the day?

Well, that was a good chunk of today, lol.

Barb and I had decided last night that we were going to hit up Aachen, Germany today since she was wanting to go there for some Starbucks mugs she needed to pick up for some friends. While we were there, I was just going to pick up some bath bombs for Eric since he got hooked on the sea salt ones for his back in addition to some other goodies..

The following are the series of events that happened:

* First thing.. I rolled out of bed and when I was opening the bedroom door, I jammed my big toe on the edge of the door. Hurt like hell..who needs coffee after that? Not me!

* While I'm showering, I hit a slick spot and almost biffed it through the glass. Instead, I smacked my head on the wall. Awesome!

* Right before I leave the house, I usually let my fur babies out for one last "hoo-rah" in the grass before I lock 'em up. Well, it's like they know I wanted to go somewhere, so they took their time. Normally, they don't do that. They run out, drop trow then scamper back inside cause they love sleeping on their pillows..not today, of course. I had to track Macie down since she decided to run down the driveway towards the front of the house to play with the mail man (she never does that). Izzy and Cali actually behaved and went inside without any problems... Cole, on the other hand, laid down behind one of the tires of my truck and refused to move. It's like he gained 50lbs cause I couldnt get him to budge, and he insisted on not moving!! Thanks, fatass! Once I finally got him out from under the tire, he ran off in an entirely different direction of where he was supposed to go..he kept running away! Lil turd did everything in his power to make me run late.

* Once all the dogs were accounted for, I locked up the house and hopped in my truck. Turned the ignition on and ....nothing. My truck wouldn't start. Seriously? I sat there for a minute and lovingly told my Xterra, "Baby, I love you. Please, don't let me down"....turned the ignition again and she fired right up. YESSSSS!!

* Got stuck behind 4 different tractors. Thanks, Belgium.

* I end up taking a side road, which happens to be fairly narrow. While I'm motorin', there's an oncoming motorcyclist who is kinda leaning into my lane. So, I move over to the right a lil bit since I don't want to risk hitting him. Well, instead of hitting the guy, my side mirror smacks a side mirror of a van that was parked awkwardly on the side of the road. I..umm...think his mirror was ok. I just kept trucking. It's a Belgian thing...I know my mirror was fine...eeekkk....

Once I make it to Barbs house, she met me out in the drive way and she said she was having the same kinda morning I was having..as if we werent supposed to go anywhere. The whole "bad vibes" type of thing. SHUSH! lol. We hopped in her van and made our way up to Germany. Nothing bad happened on the way there (thank god), although we noticed that once we reached the Netherlands / Germany border and there was tons of backed up traffic on the other side of the highway. Didn't really think anything about it since we weren't stuck in traffic...therefor, didn't apply to us.

We get to Aachen, parked and made our way over to the shopping centrum. I assaulted the Lush store and then we headed on over to Starbucks since Barb was needing to pick some mugs up for some fellow collectors back in the states. Once she finished paying for the mugs, we were making our way to the sliding glass door where we saw two lil kids..I'd say around 3 years old... hanging out. They were literally pressing themselves up against the glass and what not. Well, when we got near the door, they automatically opened ..the little boy had his hand pressed against the glass (which slid to the side) and his hand got smushed / stuck between the moving glass and the standing piece. At first, it didn't register what happened until the kid saw Barbs face (which looked like OH MY GOSH!) then he began freaking out and screaming. The little girl got startled and began to scream as well, even though her hand wasnt smushed like her partner...Barb went over and tried moving the door back, which caused the kid to freak out even further! His mother finally realized "Oh hey, that's my kid screaming", got up and unsmushed his hand and snatched him away. The other mother of the little girl picked her up and calmed her down.. all the while, people are staring at us / them like "How dare you ruin our coffee". LOL. After all that excitement, we figured it'd be best that we headed on home since we were tempting fate.

Remember the traffic I mentioned a lil bit ago? The traffic we saw on the border? Well. It was still there. In fact, it was a border control check. Normally, we wouldn't be concerned, but Barb happened to not have her International Drivers License, nor did I have my Belgian ID. So, as we're sitting in traffic and getting more and more stressed about "Oh god. We're in trouble. Oh god, they're gonna search us. OH GOD". As we got to the check point where a Police officer was directing traffic, he pointed us in the direction where there were even more cops, strip points and such... we were freaking out, to be honest. We followed the other cars that had been pointed towards the same area ... just when we thought they were gonna have us pull into a parking spot to question us, they ended up dismissing us so we could hop back onto the highway to head home. THAAAANK GOD!! Huge sigh of relief!!!


After all was said and done, we made it back safely to Barbs house...no accidents, nothing missing (except some sanity), and we pretty much swore we'll listen to our inner "warnings" about a potentially bad day. LOL

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Tapis de fleurs 2010

**** If you click on any of the photos, you can actually ZOOM in and see 'em in an unedited size (large) ****

This past weekend, Eric and I made our way over to Brussels since the famous "flower carpet" was happening. Sure, it doesn't sound all that impressive or anything, but that event happens once every two years. At least we can say we actually saw something like that, ya know?

We ended up leaving from Neerpelt around 8:30am since the train takes about two hours to get to Brussels. Luckily, some of our friends happened to be heading to the same place... So we had some entertainment for the majority of the ride.Once we reached Brussels Central, we all scattered to the winds since everyone has their own agenda. All Eric & I really wanted to do was check out the carpet, take the typical tourist pics, have lunch at a Chinese joint we found last time we were there, then roll out to Antwerp.

We made our way over to the carpet and the crowd really wasn't all thy bad. I guess I was expecting a total madhouse or something, but it seemed pretty mellow since we got there early enough.

We went over to the Grand Palace Hotel since they allowed people to use their balcony for the cost of 3€, which was pretty cheap, if you ask me. At first, the line looked insanely long, but it only took Bout 20 minutes from the back of the line to the actual balcony. Here's some pics from while we were waiting:

The statues along the building were AMAZING! I loved the detail on the womens dresses / corsets :

 Some surrounding shots of the Grace Palace courtyard..tons of cafe's, lil restraunts and chocolate shops:

Pool statue for the inner courtyard:

I was really diggin' the ironwork for the courtyard:

 Figured this would be kinda artistic looking:

LOOK! An actual picture of the current King & Queen of Belgium!

It was pretty cool since you walked past several different rooms that had to have been from the 1700's or so. Old furniture, carvings in the walls to hold light fixtures , damask tapestry for wallpaper...very elegant stuff! I wish I couldve gotten some pictures of it, but the security in the building wasn't allowing pictures (lame). So, once we got to the balcony area, I was able to find an opening and took some pictures without battling too many people. I was just getting slightly annoyed because some people were literally shoving me from behind to try to move me out of the way... I paid, you paid, we all paid to get here. Chill, people!

Here's some shots I was able to get from the balcony:

 

I went to the official site for this event (www.flowercarpet.be) and found some pretty interesting stuff this whole event. The following stuff is quoted from the site:

A Brief History

Officially, the first Floral Carpet as its present-day form was created in 1971 on the Grand-Place by the landscape architect E. Stautemans, but, in fact, it was the culmination of a whole series created in various towns in Flanders.

E. Stautemans, who was born in Zottegem, and graduated from the Ghent Horticultural College, had been experimenting since the early 50's making simple small carpets, more like rugs, mainly consisting of begonias (in Knokke, Oudenaarde, Sint-Niklaas, Lille…).

He very quickly realised that floral carpets would be an excellent vehicle for the promotion of his beloved begonias which he had always worked with, both technically, economically and aesthetically. After years of attempts and calculations, this architect, who was inventive and imaginative, and knew how to make the most of the numerous resources of begonias, became an expert in the creation of superb floral carpets with sophisticated colors and complicated designs.

His fame spread and he was asked to make carpets not only in Belgium (Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Ypres, Courtrai, Hasselt, Tongres, Mons, Durbuy, …) but worldwide (Cologne, Hamburg, Luxemburg, Paris, London, Breda, Amsterdam, The Hague, Vienna, Valencia, and as far afield as Buenos Aires and Colombus, Ohio).

Some of these carpets were bigger than the ones created in Brussels (77 x 24 m), like the 1973 masterpiece at Sint-Pietersplein, Ghent that reached a gigantic 164 x 42 m. However, as E. Stautemas himself says, "Nowhere is the carpet more beautiful and distinguished than in the unique, ancient surroundings of the Grand-Place in Brussels".

Making a Carpet

The actual making of the Carpet is based on a plan worked out in advance, consisting of several stages. Everything starts, often a year in advance, with projects and scale models, illustrating a commissioned theme (such as the commemoration of great events, or the arms and shield of a town, and sometimes the proposals of local horticultural associations).

Once the theme has been produced in representation and symbol, the number of flowers and color combinations calculated and the outlines finally drawn on the ground, then the work starts.The skilful, dedicated work of a hundred experienced gardeners and their enthusiasm enables them to put together this giant floral jigsaw in under four hours.

The day before, the spaces between the floral patterns will already have been filled with rolled turf.  Did you know - that the flowers are packed together one by one, 300 to every square meter of the ground, (+/- 750.000 flowers!) so tightly (no soil is used at all) that they won't be blown away by the first puff of wind, and create their own microclimate? In heat waves, the turf has to be watered to prevent it from shrinking, but if the weather is too wet, the grass can grow 4 to 5 centimeters in 3 days? The wonders of nature!

 Here's some pictures of past carpets:

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

Educational, hunh? :)

Once we were done checking out the floral carpet, we headed on over to a Chinese restraunt we found back in December when we visited Brussels for their Christmas tree display.

 We chowed down on some awesome food and made our way back over to the train station. When we first got into the courtyard where the flowers were, we spotted some local artists working on some paintings of the area. Eric ended up getting a pretty cool piece that's done in pen and I got a piece that the guy was finishing up of the actual courtyard (I had to wait a few minutes for the paint to dry before he rolled it up for me):

Eric's picture:

Mine: 

We're wanting to get them professionally framed, but since it'd be too expensive to have done here.. we'll most likely wait till we're back stateside. Most of our other pictures have been framed through Aaron Brothers in Monterey, so odds are, they'll end up doing these for us.

All in all, we had a great day between Brussels and Antwerp (all we did in Antwerp was hit up Starbucks and hit up LUSH again). Even though I'm sure some people say "It's just a ton of flowers. What's the big deal?"...well, it's actually pretty awesome to see in person. Not only that, but it's a show of artistic ability to create something like that on such a grand level. 

* Two thumbs up! *

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