Confession: I am a glühwein addict

18 December 2009

Confession: I am a glühwein addict

For the first time ever in my life, I slept for virtually an entire plane ride. I guess I can thank residency for depriving me of enough sleep that even I, the lightest sleeper ever, the “Princess and the Pea” (as my dad has called me), was able to sleep on an airplane! I woke up only for meals and to reposition numb and tingling limbs. I arrived in Frankfurt at 0945 and for once, did not feel like a complete zombie. Anna, my good friend from Sweden, was still in the air en route from Stockholm. I found €15 in my wallet from this spring and made my way directly to a café for a caffeine infusion. After spraying my dirty smelly body with some Duty Free perfume, I was ready to start the day!

Anna arrived right on schedule. We were about to spend our third vacation together in 2009 after earlier visits this year in London and Sweden. As we struggled to figure out how to get to the train to downtown Frankfurt, Anna found a friendly American named Bart from Tennessee to help us out. He entertained us with stories about his travels around Europe and how he rented an Audi to drive 180 mph on the Autobahn. About fifteen minutes later we were at Frankfurt Hauptbanhof and navigating our way to the hotel. We had heard it was in quite a sleazy area. We quickly verified this was true as we walked pass numerous sex shops, doner kebab houses, and strip clubs, one of which was advertising “American tabledances.” I was a little curious what that meant…

We found Hotel Adler quite easily. We were greeted by a friendly German girl who spoke flawless English. The room was simple but clean and more than adequate for €70 per night including breakfast and free wifi! I was happy to be able to change into some new clothes, being sure to bundle up for the damp German winter weather. Anna and I decided we would have a visit with an old friend on our first day in Germany. Frida was another one of our classmates when we lived in England. Frida and Anna had actually gone to the same university in Sweden and of course had been able to see each other much more frequently than Anna and I. Frida moved to Germany four years ago to undertake a PhD in some kind of physics in the town of Giessen, about 45 minutes outside Frankfurt. She has settled down with a nice German man named Alex, and just three weeks ago they had a baby girl, Elise! Anna and I simply could not come all the way to Frankfurt and not see Frida and her new baby.

Frida lives quite close to a historic and beautiful university town called Marburg. The old town of Marburg is filled with half-timbered houses and historic sites. I read it described as, “an unspoilt, spire-dominated, castle-crowned Gothic/Renaissance city on a hill, intact because Marburg was an extreme backwater between 1600 and 1850.” It is known for its medieval churches; the one we saw was called Elisabethkirche. And for those of you infectious disease buffs out there, the Marburg virus was named after this town. Marburg is a hemorrhagic virus much like Ebola and back in 1967 some infected monkey tissue made 31 people ill and killed 7 of them. But I am digressing here…

I enjoyed the ride out of the big city of Frankfurt and into the quiet Hesse countryside. The snow had begun to fall and everything was peacefully covered white…we passed stables with horses, small villages filled with steep roofed homes and smoky chimneys, communal garden plots and pine forests. Our train from Frankfurt was running late and we missed our connection to Marburg which cost us another 30 minutes of time. In the winter in Europe when the sun sets at 1600, time is of the essence as sunlight is in short supply. The sun was just setting when we arrived in Marburg and the temperate was quickly dropping as the snow continued to flurry around us. We easily found our way to the old city (aldtstadt) of Marburg which was full of cobblestone streets lined with colorful timbered houses. There was a bright and festive Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) around the Elisabethkirche. One could have a feeding frenzy in these markets trying candied nuts, marzipan, gingerbread, potato pancakes, bratwurst, crepes, chocolates, waffles, and hot mulled wine! Besides food, there were stalls with ornaments, jewelry, decorations, clothing and so on—from what I had heard about other markets, this was just a tiny one we were experiencing.

We walked further into the hilly town of Marburg. Although it was dark out now, the streets were alight with Christmas lights strung across the narrow cobblestone lanes. The old town could not have been any more magical with the snow falling down unless Santa Klaus himself appeared on a chimney top. We walked on and came to platze (plaza area) with a few more booths selling bratwurst and wine and a snowy slide down which the children could use their toboggans. What a fun childhood winter tradition! Onward we moved, with frequent stops inside of little shops on the way, partly to browse but mainly to attempt to re-warm our freezing appendages.

As we worked our way higher up the hill through Marburg, we came to another larger platze. This one was more decorated. There was a sign in lights strung across the square that read, “Frohe Weinachten” or “Merry Christmas.” There was also a small Ferris wheel for small children set against an old stone building whose perimeter was lined with more lights. The bratwürst stall had a crowd at least two deep waiting for the hot sausage fresh from the grill. Children were purchasing handful of candied almonds. The real hot spot was the glühwein booth. There were at least fifty people congregated under umbrellas and heating lamps holding colorful steaming mugs of glühwein and apfelwein which are hot spiced red wine and apple wine. At this point, it was about 10°F and my toes were completely numb. I was willing to try anything to warm up so I ordered a mug of apfelwein and for €3 I got my hot wine, a gingerbread cookie, and you get to keep the commemorative mug as a souvenir of the Marburg Weihnachtsmarkt 2009! It is clearly obvious why the hot alcoholic beverages are so popular at this time of year as they truly do warm a person up on a cold damp night. It was lovely to see so many people outdoors socializing with their wine even in sub-zero temperatures. Leave it to the Europeans to be out of their homes socializing in the town center in any condition! I think Americans could use this as an example to turn off the television, get off the couch and be outdoors with neighbors.

I enjoyed my apfelwein so much, that I stopped at the Elisabethkirche weihnachtsmarkt for another round. This time I got the glühwein which was equally as delicious and completely responsible for saving my right pinkie toe from frostbite.

After we thoroughly were frozen to the bone, and I was tipsy on glühwein, we decided it was high time we boarded the next train for Giessen to see Frida for dinner. As I sat on the train, I was really starting to regret the last mug of glühwein as my bladder was quickly becoming very uncomfortably full! With 10 minutes left until we arrived in Giessen, I couldn’t take it any longer and went walking through the train to find the WC. Luckily there was one just in the next car, but I unfortunately found the aisle to be completely blocked with the luggage of half a dozen people. I motioned to them that I needed to get through, tried to start walking but I realized there was no way I was getting through they were all ignoring me anyway. Those last ten minutes were painfully slow. Anna laughed at my as I squirmed around in my seat, unbuttoning my jeans to allow my bladder more room to stretch out. We got to the Giessen station and I walked as fast as my bulging bladder would allow me, forked over the best spent €0.50 to use the toiletten! Ah, sweet release.

We had sent Frida a text with our arrival time when we were on the train but after waiting for twenty minutes without seeing her in the station, we began to worry. Neither Anna nor I had purchased SIM cards for our foreign mobile phones and thus were very hesitant to make a phone call and spend a load of money. But after now 45 minutes had passed, we decided we’d better call and make sure nothing had happened. We knew Frida would not forget us, but we figured she must be very busy with a newborn baby. After one hour, and trying to phone her, we decided we’d just walk around Giessen and find some dinner on our own and hopefully hear from Frida later on. We made it about one block from the station when Frida called back and apologized that she was on her way to meet us. The new mom had been preparing dinner for us, this was the first meal she had cooked in the three weeks after having her baby via c-section, all the while having to stop to breastfeed her baby, Elise, every 1-2 hours. I could understand why she missed her phone ringing!

It was about a 15 minute walk from the station to Frida and Alex’s apartment. Their’s was in a modern new building, a cozy two bedroom. Alex was holding the baby when we arrived who was already crying for more milk. Frida rushed her over to the couch to feed her. After that, I got to hold the little girl, tiny at just three weeks of age and all cozy inside her pink fleece jumper. After catching up for a little while, we sat down to a lovely meal with Alex and Frida. They even had made hors d’oeuvres for us: a thin bread with prawns. For dinner we had ostrich steak, pasta with Bolognese sauce, and some veggies, tomatoes and mozzarella. Dessert was even better, but maybe my sweet tooth makes me biased. Alex made an apple cake with a cream top. I had asked Alex earlier if there were any special regional foods he suggested we eat while here. He mentioned a sweet pancake with apples. I said that sounded delicious, and so right then and there he got up and also made that for us and served it up with some stewed plums. It was delicious!! I am not used to seeing men make the desserts in the US so it was great to see Alex in the kitchen baking. It was so nice to see Frida again after all these years and meet her new family, share a home-cooked meal, but the jetlag was setting in now so we said our goodbyes. Hopefully it would not be six and a half years until we met again!!