Ok, so it's kind of late, but here are a few pictures of our Christmas.

We started by dropping Lilly off at Bob and Gwenn Hucksteps and you can see she is really broken up about it. They were so very good to her and she had the time of her life
We landed in Stuttgart where we spent a few days visiting with friends and favorite places. This was our house.
This is outside the International School. It was fun for us to walk it's halls. Here Aubrey is flanked by her dear friends Maya and Michael. They were important people to Aubrey in our years in Germany and it was a real treat to spend some time with them. Maya's sister Jill was one of Laurels best friends only she came down with the flu while we were there. Bummer!

This picture was significant because as an 8 year old Catholic boy, Michael wanted to come to Aubrey's baptism and he did. Right before we left to drive to Berlin he came to church with us again and we snapped this to matched a picture taken 9 years ago, although when he was 8, I don't think he stood quite that close

We met up with Allyse in Berlin who was ending a 4 month study abroad program there.


Berlin is full of so much history and I will only touch on a little but "the wall" was so interesting because it was history we had seen happen in our own life.

When the wall came down the reaction was of course to destroy it all, only someone stopped to think long enough to realize they would want some of it up as a memorial and so there is a small section of the original wall and a number of small pieces of the wall that stand more like artwork. You can still follow where the original wall was because brass bricks mark the foundation as seen in the picture with our feet.

Here you can see the original wall looking at it from the east side. This part of the wall was of particular interest because the wall was so close to buildings which were government buildings for the east. Mostly the wall was placed well within the eastern side so that once you got over the wall you still may have as much as 1/4 of a mile to traverse before you made it to the west. That area was called the "deadman zone" You can see then why this little section of wall would have looked so good to defectors. However they allowed only the most trusted communist loyalists to work in them but a man still managed to escaped from the top of the roof over the wall.
It was never hard to know which side the wall was from just by looking at it because on the west side they painted it often making human rights statements or such as seen here. Sections of the west wall paintings here are known as the "Eastside Gallery"

The girls and I are standing in front of a memorial. You look down into a small room that is all white and lined from floor to ceiling with empty bookshelves. It was on this spot that Hitler had all the books gathers and burned.

Ok so the museums were amazing and there were many. This is a Greek alter piece from Pergamo. A German archiologist dug it up and brought it to Berlin in the 1800's. Greece is now thinking they want it back, talk about the "little red Hen" who did all the work,.. I really think that possession is 9/10th of the law on this one.

I've always known that Karl looked like a Greek God!

This is the Gate of Babylon. It was so cool.

It needs to mentioned that Allyse ate more chocolate in 4 months than any of us can imagine and she still lost weight; a testament to just how much walking Berliners do. Here she is breaking out a chocolate bar on the train.

We counted on her to always have some chocolate on hand in her bag.
The best part of this trip was not having to plan anything. We showed up and Allyse showed us "her city". She had tickets to a Ballet and a Bach Christmas concert played on all original istruments. The picture to the left is that concert hall and this was during intermission I am sure when all Germans go out to drink!

We also stopped in the middle of one day to hear a string quartet at the Philharmonic. Every Tues they have free concerts in their lobby, and every Tues Allyse would be there sitting next to this little old man that became her friend. He was always there in the same spot sitting on his walker. He brought his own drink and would bring Allyse a juice box and a chocolate bar. About two weeks after getting home a chocolate bar arrived in the mail for Allyse with a Christmas card from him.

Our looks are somber here because we are at the front of Sachsenhausen prison camp. It is just outside of Berlin and it was where Hitler sent all of his political prisoners along with many others select groups like gays and anyone he didn't like. It was really the first concentration camp and the headquarters of the evil minds that came up with such horrific ideas like the ovens and Auswitz. After WWII it then became a Soviet Prison and so the faces changed but awful things still went on. Anyway, I don't know if you can tell, but it was freezing and our hearts just broke as we thought of these half naked people that lived here because as bundled up as we were we still were freezing as we walked around. This would be the second concentration camp I have been to, Dachau being the first, and they feel very much like sacred ground.

After getting back to Berlin we stopped by one of Allyse's favorite haunts for hot bowls of soup. We were so cold and hungry that nothing could have tasted any better. It inspired me to come home and look for some new soup recipes. For anyone that is interested I have included the links to the recipe, we have loved all of them. On the Lentil soup I make it with Turkey Sausage and it tastes great without all the fat.
http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/winter-vegetable-soup-coconut-milk-pear.aspx?ac=fp

http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/mediterranean-kale-white-bean-soup-sausage.aspx?ac=fp

http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/recipes/butternut-squash-soup-cumin-coriander.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Moroccan-Lentil-Soup/Detail.aspx

Ok well you can see we are winding down. This was a familiar scene on the train on our way home after a long day.
This was just one my favorite picture of the Domed Church on the right with a Museum on the left at night. So I will just end with this.

Ok so I lied. I would have ended but I thought we should end with a little German.