Taj Loves Christmas In München

Taj - The Festive

This is for Courtney. Get ready for the holidays!

Love & Hate #3

This is a London edition, I spend my weekdays in the land of cheese & onion pasties and Cadbury Flake while Donkey toughs it out with the Germans. He just started school this week, which sounds really excited and nerdy.... I now present:

Hate by Donkey
1) Neighbours upstairs that are raising baby elephants...crying, screaming, jumping elephants. I believe the phrase "drop kick a baby" was used several times.
2) The lack of affordable gyms.
3) Being bikeless.
4) Economics.

Love by Me
1) Not getting shanked at the scary as fuck basement flat my company put me in this week.
2) Marks & Spencers buckets of chocolate dipped cornflakes.... I really want to try the flapjacks flavour but I am scared.
3) Seeing John Lennon's image being used to advertise a £240 Mont Blanc pen... somehow I don't think this would jive with his philosophy.
4) Seeing benches that are older than the country I was born in.
5) Brick Lane curries, as a matter of fact, the casual integration of Indian food everywhere.
6) Coronation Street.

Love and Hate #2

Today the Love and Hate list will go through a little change since there are things that I actually hate. Say what?!?

HATE by the DuMonsters
1) Getting a work visa when no one seems to want to help me get a visa. I just want to start working and the more I think about it the more anxious I get. I just want to get the first 2 days under my belt. My visa is stalled because a form was not submitted 2 weeks ago. It has resulted in tears and nausea for the last day and a half.
2) Drunken Italians on the train almost had the Donkey in a fight on the train with a drunk Oktoberfester that kept asking me if I was from "Napoli"You might think it is racist that I singled out the Italians, but Italian men are the only ones bold enough to flirt with a married woman. Some might call that swagger charming....but definitely not Donkey.
3) Shoes are REALLY expensive. Even Adidas which are made here!
4) Cell phones are cool, but it is so complicated trying to get a phone to use in Germany AND in London. Each country might require a separate plan or paying a huge roaming plan. iPhones are in short supply, a 4 week waiting list. The guy at T-Mobile told us that Apple doesn't supply enough phones for Germany.

LOVE by the DuMonsters
1) Seeing the Glockenspiel again after 6 years. Memories. The only differences were that there were more fruit sellers this time and I couldn't see the huge vendor tent for schnitzel (some of the best I had the last time I was here!) and there weren't any firemen demonstrations like last time, I remembered them pretty clearly from the last visit.
2) Shopping for a new wardrobe technically should go on the hate list because it is stressful to replace things that I know I have at home in a box, but its shopping for fresh new things so I have to say this is lovely. (Also stressful is not knowing if I will have work, if this visa doesn't come through). H&M and Zara are always great for filling out my closet, I couldn't stomach dropping lots of Euros for things that I might have to ditch in a few years.
3) Donkey bought slimmer jeans, finally. I have been married to him for 2 years and have known him for 6 years. I have been nagging him for years to buy new jeans and it took exactly 20 minutes for a gay German at Zara to tell him "I love the sweater, it is perfect but the thing that is killing me are your jeans". (D bought another pair of slimmer jeans from H&M, should I be insulted OR should I use this as fodder for future arguments about why he should just listen to me?)
4) Pretzels here are sick.
5) Dogs are allowed EVERYWHERE! In department stores, on the train, restaurants (for the most part).
6) Public transportation is fast and incredibly clean.
7) On escalators everyone follows the rule of stand right, walk left.
8) The sound of wind through trees, I haven't heard that on a regular basis in 4 years. Donkey and I were having dinner with the window open and he asked me what the noise was... I forget the sound of traffic from the I90/I94 in Chicago.
9) Random beers have been consumed one by one everyday, I pick my beer the same way I pick my wine...the coolness of the label.
















Lots of love today! We shopped all day for drip coffeemakers (which is quite difficult because Germans love french press or coffee pod type coffee), alarm clocks, speakers for the kitchen so I can listen to "This American Life" when I cook.

Love and Hate

I joked with Donkey about creating a blog about all the things I love and all the things he hates about this new EU leg of our adventure. He is a bit of a Negative Nancy or a Cranky Craig, but that is a part of his charm. Here is the list and a brief description of our first 2 days in Munich/M¨nchen.

LOVE, by Me
1) cobblestone streets.
2) creme fraiche in tiny yogurt containers at the grocery store.
3) seeing so many slutty drindls.

HATE, by Donkey
1) old people tourist groups on the plane, the lack of circulation means they have to loiter in the aisles and they are constantly sick, he almost got attacked by projectile vomit. ew.
2) reading labels in grocery stores, we spent 2 hours guessing what most things mean.
3) facebook. 2 weeks later he is STILL trying to get an account.

We landed on Wed morning and our landlord picked us up from the airport. She is unbelieveably nice, the apartment was stocked with almost everything one would need to live except for food and shampoo etc. Every few minutes we find something new that she bought and left for us and we say a common mantra of "she is the nicest landlord ever". The last one was finding a milk frother for cappucinos in a utensil drawer. After passing out from the exhaustion of running errands for my brothers wedding we hit our little town and found a mini supermarket that makes pretzel bread which was pretty mindblowing. Yes, my mind was blown by doughy goodness. We went to the grocery store and it took us forever to understand what we were buying. Cereal, bread, shampoo, lotion and dog treats took the longest time to understand and buy and we were probably in the shop for 2 hours and only bought a handful of things. It was fun and there were so many things that I wanted to buy.... milk chocolate spread! tiramisu ice cream! creme fraiche! There are lots of mattress stores here, which is odd and lots of gyro/falafel shops, probably because of the high Turkish population.

Speaking of dog treats, Taj is slowly getting used to her surroundings but she is definitely depressed. It is a strange new place that smells funny and sometimes when we leave her at home and run errands we can hear her whimpering down the stairs. It makes me feel like a crummy dog owner. She did see a big sheep dog that played with her for a bit and the owner told us about a dog park nearby.

Today we opened up a bank account at DeutscheBank and we just got back from taking T for a walk and getting the best gelato I have had in a long time.... cookies and cream and white chocolate gelato for dessert. Giddy up!

Happy Mothers' Day!