Baseball, Sushi, & New Year's


The time between Christmas and New Year's has been relaxing. Fabian has been off work & we got to watch lots of Doctor Who and cook a few meals together, and spend time with his family too.

Armed with our new Christmas presents from Sullivan, Fabi, his brother and I headed out to the local soccer field to practice batting and catching last week! Clemens plays tennis, and I think that gave him an edge. It was a lot of fun & we successfully broke in our new equipment (see before-and-after balls below). A few people stopped to watch us, since baseball isn't a common sport to come across in Germany. Eventually a man and his dog came out to the field and were playing catch as well. We headed home because it was getting dark, and we didn't want to take the risk of confusing the dog and get our new baseballs stolen. But yay for sibling bonding time!

Yesterday we went with Katja and the other Fabian (Joos) to Stuttgart for some post-Christmas sale shopping and to eat "running sushi" - not sure if it's actually called that in English or if that was just their bad translation. The tables in the restaurant are set up around thin, long, rotating track that parades individual plates with pieces of sushi / fried things / desert / vegetables right past your table. You have to be quick enough to grab the bits you want, and if you're not, you have to wait until the plate comes all the way back around - like waiting for your luggage at the airport. The food was very good, considering its long journey to your mouth. From our seat we could see the cooks frantically rolling & chopping the next bits of sushi, carefully placing smoked salmon or caviar on little bundles of rice.
 
The next adventure we're preparing for is New Year's Eve, which we are hosting. We've got 8 people coming. Our theme for the evening is "Black & White, Silver & Gold" - to make it a little fancy. We're also planning on setting up our own makeshift photobooth so that we can record some of the silly happenings of the evening / our wonderful outfits. The only thing left to do is set up the basement & vaccuum. Then we're ready for guests tomorrow!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up the Alps, Down a "Bier"

Image
Hello, Family! So, here we go... the first round of Alps photos! This first one is our view the morning we left. A bus drove us from our hotel in the valley up to about the half-way mark altitude-wise. Lots of shade because the mountains are just so darn huge. This photo overlooks the "Lechtal" - the valley of the Lech River. This is a group photo of the adults we went with. There were 6 of us all together. Fabi and I are not featured in this lovely shot, but you can see Markus and Anja (friends of the family) and Margit and Hansi (the latter being his normal goofy self). Then we have my wonderful Julie Andrews impression. ... and some robustly healthy cows who let us walk right through their grazing space. How the cows made it up to that altitude eludes me, but they were there nontheless, bells a' ringing. Fabian strikes a Tirolan pose at the almost-top. From this point (which is comparable in height to Emerald Lake at the end of on our hike in Colo
Read more

Dirndl Fun

Image
   It's Octoberfest season! What better way to celebrate than to buy myself the traditional garb: a bonafide dirndl. After making a trip to the local NKD department store and bartering with the cashier about a small, fixable mistake with the charm chain on the bodess, I bought this thing for just 30 Euro and rode home proudly with it in my little bike basket. And of course, I needed a better backdrop for you all than my living room, so I had a little fun with Photoshop. Happy Octoberfest! 
Read more