One of the many pleasant memories that I have of my first trip to Germany as a college student in 1970 & my year in Austria as a teaching assistant in 1979/80 was the Christmas season. The atmosphere was so different from that in the United States. In many ways it was quieter & simpler. There were Christmas lights, but they were all white lights, meant to represent starlight.

Shopping was more about decorations than about presents. The Christmas market in Vienna offered a wide variety of decorations for the tree & house. Gift-giving was of course a part of the season, but it wasn't as commercial as it is in the U.S.

Last year I received the annual Christmas letter from an American friend who had been living in Austria for many years. Her description of the beautiful alpine celebrations renewed my desire to experience again the Christmas season in Germany & Austria. So on December 1st Bob & I flew from Denver to Munich to spend two weeks immersing ourselves in the German/Austrian Christmas spirit.

Our stay in Munich did not get off to a good start. We were naturally rather tired, jet-lagged, & weighed down with luggage in what appeared to be an easy train ride and short walk to our hotel. But getting access to elevators and exits more than doubled the distances, combination of rough concrete & cobblestone in the sidewalks made it really difficult to pull (drag!) our wheeled suitcases.

We were very glad to see our Andi München City Center Comfort Hotel, associated with our favorite U.S. chain. But access to the elevator included climbing about seven steps. And the beds were built so low to the floor that I wasn't sure I could get up again if I were to lie down. Luckily, there was a third single bed in the room, so we solved the problem by simply putting the mattress from the extra bed on top of my bed.

After cleaning up a bit & getting settled in, we decided to go for supper. The area around our hotel had more of a mixed international character, not really German, and most menus looked a bit too spicy for our travel-troubled stomachs. So we ended up at (where else but) McDonald's. Now, in all my trips with students, I managed to avoid American franchises, & would even chastise my students for even thinking of visiting one. But it sure hit the spot for two weary travelers ready for a good night's sleep.

The breakfast at the hotel also hit the spot the next morning & had lots of choices. With map in hand we headed out to see the Neues Rathaus ( New Town Hall) with its famous Glockenspiel (A Town-Hall-Tower sized clock with music and moving figures). It would have been an easy walk from the hotel if I hadn't taken us the wrong direction. But our "detour" gave us a view of a small Christmas market at Jakobsplatz.

After getting our bearings, we found our way to Marienplatz, but too late to view what we thought was its once-a-day playing at 11 AM. So, not realizing it would repeat its full routine at 12 Noon, we went off exploring nearby sites, returning only to discover we'd missed another chance to watch its playing. But we did have a nice lunch at a cafeteria style restaurant, & then toured the very large Christmas market set up between the Town Hall and the Frauenkirche (Our Ladies Church).

The next day we bought a "group day ticket," good for any and all public transportation. With the help of the subway, we made it down to the Marienplatz in time to view the Glockenspiel at 11. Then we headed off to visit the Deutsches Museum, which is like a smaller version of our Smithsonian. We grabbed a bite to eat in their cafeteria, & then explored the hydraulic/bridge section, the music rooms, & Bob's favorite -- the aviation area.

I chose to sit while he explored old German airplanes and other historic memorabilia. While sitting on one of a conveniently located row of airline seats, an elderly gentleman sat beside me. He told me about his war experience, including having to walk over a thousand kilometers down from Norway, back to Germany.

After about 2 hours touring the museum, we felt as if we were running out of energy, & headed back to the hotel. Even with convenient streetcars and subways connecting our stops, there was still a lot of walking to do in between sites and rides.

For supper we headed back downtown for a meal at the Augustener am Dom. It was a small version of a better known German-style gathering place, the Hofbräuhaus. Because we didn't have reservations, we had to promise to eat and be gone by 7, and we also had to share our table with 2 guys. It was really noisy, & the food was not all that good, but it had plenty of "atmosphere." We stopped on our way back to the hotel for some Glühwein in souvenir mugs, & some shopping in a department store. They were playing seasonal background music, & there were lots of the usual soft white Christmas lights.

The next leg of our trip was from Munich to Salzburg, Austria. Leaving our luggage at the hotel, we walked about a mile to pick up our rental car, then drove back to the hotel. Following the hotel manager's directions, we were able to get out of town and onto the autobahn to Salzburg quite easily. It was cloudy and drizzling most of the way, and our car's computer screen kept warning of icy roads.

The drive turned out to be somewhat more than the ninety miles our Google directions promised. We had to stop for lunch, and to buy a short-term pass permitting us to use the Austrian autobahns. And we decided to visit the "Silent Night" Chapel in Oberndorf before heading to our hotel in Salzburg.

We had a bit of trouble finding the village, missing the exit & having to come back to it. And once in the village, it was also a bit difficult to find the chapel. We finally found a parking spot nearby & walked into the center. I was disappointed in that it was overly touristy & they were playing American Christmas songs instead of German carols. The chapel is built over the spot where the original church burnt down.

We headed back to Salzburg & found our hotel without too much trouble. After getting our car parked in the hotel's underground garage & checking in, we contacted my missionary friend, Martha Jongewaard. She informed us that our hotel was not in the best part of town. But it was all we had found available in our price range on a busy holiday weekend.

The day we arrived there were events centered around "Krampus," who is St. Nicholas' opposite. Martha warned us not to go downtown because of the heavy drinking that would be going on during this time. So we decided to have supper at the Wiener Wald right next to our hotel. It's a chain restaurant specializing in chicken dishes.

I saw a poster advertising a concert to raise money for a "warming house" in the area, & it was close to our hotel. It turned out to be an interesting affair with a small group from the Cultural Ministry performing Christmas songs. Those who preformed were from many different ethnic backgrounds, including an American.

The next day after doing some shopping, we headed to the town center to meet Martha & to shop at the Christmas market. It was crowded with tourists from Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, & other nearby countries. Despite the numbers of people, we were able to meet up with Martha at Mozart's Birth House. There were lots of very exclusive shops & also a unique display of nativity scenes.

We took the tram up to the city fortress to enjoy the view & found more Christmas market booths. They weren't as numerous or as good as the ones down below. We ended the afternoon at a little coffee shop with a wonderful torte & hot chocolate & then parted ways. Bob & I were too tired to stay for the St. Nicholas festivities that night & so we decided to just have supper back at the Wiener Wald again.

This time we were entertained by a local duo called "Evergreen" doing "oldies," including American tunes from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. They even cleared and waxed the floor for dancing.

The next morning we accompanied Martha to a Brethren Church & met her friends. Afterward, she took us to a nice restaurant where I had venison stew. Once again we visited a small village Christmas market nearby, & then headed to Martha's apartment for an afternoon coffee & sweets.

Our next adventure took us back into Germany, past Munich, and into Ulm. But along the way we thought we'd stop in Augsburg and see the historical site where the Augsburg Confessions were adopted. We weren't able to find any reference to that event, but we did find another Christmas market to visit. We drove on to Ulm in a fog, with visibility perhaps a quarter mile at best. Because we had two different maps and because we couldn't really look around much, we didn't realize that the road we were looking crossed the autobahn in two different places. There were two exits 10 miles or so apart & we took the first one, which was the wrong one.

After driving a roundabout route through the city and back out the other side, we eventually found our way in the dark to the Hotel Engle, but it sure took some doing. The Engle was much nicer than the hotel in Salzburg, & I was able to get a "schwabische Maultasche," similar to ravioli but with no tomato sauce.

I was excited the next day to be headed back to the area where my college group came the first time I traveled to Germany some 38 years before. We had stayed in a little town called Bad Boll & had private instructors come in to teach us about art, history & culture. I was hoping to find the boarding house where we stayed but there was no address for it & the town had grown some. But we did manage to find the place, & it had expanded. I also got to use the thermal bath pools for which the area is famous & have lunch at the Gasthaus Löwen where we had dined once or twice a week.

We drove back to Ulm Minster so we could see the town before it got dark. We had plenty of time to see its Minster, with the tallest spire in Europe (about 500 feet), the Christmas market (of course) & even a tour of a Bread Museum (with political posters and unique nativity displays.) Returning to the Minster, we were able to participate in an evening devotional & finally got to hear a short organ concert along with it.

The next leg of our journey took us to Sasbach to visit with my colleagues from our high school exchanges with the Heimschule Lender. The drive to Sasbach was our only encounter with any significant amount of snow. It did not really accumulate, but did make for a wet drive. The countryside was beautiful along the way.

It was good to see the Kellers again. They always make us feel so very much at home. We had such picturesque views from our windows, looking out on scenes at the edge of a Black Forest village, dusted with a light snow over orchards and vineyards and meadows surprisingly green for December.

The next day we took a train ride into Karlsruhe for a half day of shopping, lunch at a vegetarian restaurant and just enjoying the atmosphere of a German Christmas in the streets, markets, and department stores. That evening we were invited out to an early Christmas dinner with another couple, the Roths, plus their son, Simon. There was plenty of good food, and conversation about all sorts of topics.

Our next outing was to Caracalla, a spa in Baden Baden. We didn't have a good map of the town, so we ended up parking too far to walk & decided to try the bus system. It was more complicated than it looked, with many routes not run in their entirety at all times. But, with the aid of directions in the town center, we eventually found our way to the spa. I enjoyed all the warm water pools both indoors & out. We also had lunch at the Italian restaurant on the premises.

When we returned to Sasbach in the afternoon, we celebrated Caroline Keller's successful passing of her driving test. In Germany you can't have a full license until you are 18, but you can have a provisional one at 17 as long as an approved adult is with you, which is what Caroline got. It was every bit as big a deal as it is for a teenager here.

That evening we attended the Heimschule Lender's Christmas concert. Musical groups ranged from 5th grade beginners to upper level high school students. It was followed by a faculty dinner where we were able to talk to almost all of the teachers that had been involved in our exchanges since 1990. It was a happy occasion, but a bit sad as one of the faculty had recently passed away.

The next day started off with a big breakfast, a short trip to Achern for shopping & then a longer trip to Gegn'bach to see their unusual advent calendar. They had decorated the many windows on the front of the town hall, each one depicting a fairytale as well as a day, so they could be illuminated one by one during the month of December. We missed the opening of that day's window because we had to get to another concert in Offenburg. But while we there we could not resist, yes, another Christmas market, where Bob bought me a special birthstone ring. Ulrike Keller decided to buy some mistletoe, & we were surprised to see that she got a large bush, not just the small sprigs that we are used to.

Our friend Manfred Keller had recently taken over as director of a large public high school in Offenburg. His school's concert was presented in one of the town's cathedrals. The acoustics were great for the orchestra, but it was difficult to hear the singers who were situated behind the instruments. Part of the program was a Bach Christmas Oratorio, done as well as any professional orchestra could do. The program ended with the same carol that we heard in Ulm & at the Heimschule concert, "Mach hoch die Tür." We went home via Achern, stopping for a "Flammkuchen" supper, similar to pizza but without the tomato base. It was an enjoyable evening with our good friends, good music & good food.

Our last day in the area started off with morning services at the Johannes Lutheran church in Bühl with our friend Lothar Huber. It was a unique service with a pre-school advent skit and several baptisms, including a mother and her two children, with the father assisting the pastor in administering the blessings. We noticed also that there was a wide range of ages in attendance. After church we went back Lothar's place for a wonderful lunch & conversations with him & his wife Olöf, who is originally from Iceland. Lothar showed us his new wood pellet heating system for the house which is surprisingly economical & ecologically friendly.

In the late afternoon we returned for coffee/tea with two more friends from the Heimschule as well as the Kellers, & ended our last day in Sasbach with another delicious meal. We have always been well fed when visiting with our friends in this region. Bob says he usually gains about a pound per week when we travel in the states. But in Germany it's more like a kilogram (a little over 2 pounds) a week. Must be something about how we convert food in the metric system. Oh, sure. That must be it.

The next morning we departed for Munich in a bit of fog, but it wasn't really thick, and we were in sunshine by the time we got to Stuttgart. As we approached Munich, we decided that, before going to our hotel, we'd go out to the airport and do a dry run of the route so we would have our bearings for making the flight the next morning. That evening we did some last minute shopping, dining out in a somewhat more upscale establishment than two weeks earlier, & then going to an internet café to get checked in for our flight.

It was a good thing we had done that dry run of the airport route, because the next morning was really foggy. Traffic was heavy going out of the city, and it was hard to see the signs in time to make the right exits. But at least we knew what we had to be looking for, beyond what maps alone could tell us. We stopped to top off the tank and return the rental car just as we had planned, and made our flight with a lot less stress than what we had on arrival.

We had a very busy, very eventful, very enjoyable time for two weeks in a very picturesque part of the world, visited many friends, and had a lot of fun. But, after all that, it's always nice to be home.