who accomplished the impossible.

And found vla.

Vla is a dessert. It's also almost impossible to describe; it's vanilla, but it's not quite pudding, because it's better. It's much, much better. In Holland, you can buy it buy the carton. You can make vla flips with yogurt and fruit syrup. But. There's one terrible thing about vla. You can't get it outside of Holland.

Or so I thought, until I made an extremely delightful discovery here.

I was on a train with Anna and Wendy  on the way back to Kiel from Hamburg, and Wendy and I started planning out her trip to Amsterdam. I told her that she had to get vla. And Anna told me that you can get it in Kiel too. She told me what supermarket to go to, and where to look.

She was right.

And oh, was my backpack happy. I bought chocolate and vanilla party for a game night we had on Saturday, and toted it back in my faithful pink backpack. Seriously. Faithful - this baby's been around since seventh grade. Yep.

If I were a food photographer, I would have taken breathtaking pictures of our vla to share here; but I'm not. And they would not have done the vla justice. And that would be a sad thing indeed.

And in case this wasn't enough euro-cuisine taunting for you, here are the top ten hits around here (to date,) in no particular order:

1. Rote Grütze (previously mentioned, multiple times, I believe) - stewed sour cherries, red and black currants, raspberries and other red fruits, served with vanilla sauce.
2. Fresh Strawberries. (And not just because they are sold in cute strawberry huts).They're all Deutschland Erdbeeren, tiny and fresh from the fields.
3. Abendbrot - sliced rye bread, served with a smorgasbord of choices, including butter, gouda, camembert, scrambled eggs and chives, tiny shrimp (Krabben), sour cream with chives, herring salad, salami, mustard, and tomato and mozzarella spread. We eat some variation of Abendbrot almost everyday for dinner.
4. Pickled Herring Salad - (see above) it tastes just like it sounds... or at least, I assume it does.
5. Salmon or Halibut in Mustard Dill Sauce, served with vegetables.
6. Plain Yogurt, Honey, and Müsli, with Peaches or Apricots - this is breakfast every weekday. In a really good way. :)
7. Whole Wheat Bread - Apparently, Germany has more kinds of bread than anywhere else. Most are variations on whole wheat.
8. Ritter Sport Chocolate - RS released new flavors this year to celebrate their 100th anniversary. The whole gang loves white chocolate with coconut and crisped rice. Dear Ritter-Sport, that really was a brilliant idea.
9. Ice Cream. Of course.
10.  Rhubarberschorle. Okay, this one deserves its own paragraph. And a picture too.

There are appleschorles, and grapeschorles, and best of all, rhubarbschorle. Schorle is juice mixed with sparkling water, and North Germany is crazy about it. There's schorle at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And really, I can't blame them, because quite honestly, because I'm crazy about it too.

I found rhubarbschorle for the first time in a tiny Turkish shop in Hamburg where we stopped for dinner on Friday. Before I had even opened it, I wanted to take a picture, but was slightly deterred by the sheer number of people in our restaurant. I mean, who pulls out their camera and snaps a photo of their drink? Answer: I do! And I'm so glad that I did.

I was even more excited to find this for the second time, today, when we stopped by a cafe to grab lunch between classes.

I know where I'll be tomorrow before grammar class. :)

met a jellyfish, a girl, a seagull, and a baby on a Sunday at the beach.

This is my beach on the Baltic Sea. Shall I give you a tour? Ahem. This is Falkenstein Strand, perfectly situated on the edge of Kiel Fjord. If you turn your eyes to the other side of the fjord, you will see Laboe, Kiel's resort beach. It is easily picked out, because of its tall (okay, not so tall-looking in this picture) metal tower, which is a WWII memorial. As you can see from the waves and the sails, it was windy today. White sails pop out of the ocean all the way up and down the fjord and out into the sea. The water's only inhabitants (large enough to speak of) are harmless jellyfish that look like buttons (they have four clear dots on their tops) and "catsharks." But they are rarely seen in any case, and are also completely harmless. Phewf, that's enough of that.

I love this beach. Its sands are happiest when decked with picnic blankets, as they often are. Families play beach ping pong (without a table) here, and it has a view of the harbor and the sea. Sailing boats and enormous trading ships pass by, and on windy days like today, (who am I kidding? It's always windy here) you can watch the sailboats and the kite surfers by Laboe. (Perhaps) best of all, it is perfect for cloud-watching. The clouds move and change quickly, and like everywhere in this low country, the sky goes on forever.

Just moments after we plopped our bags and beach towels onto the sand, we rushed to the water to stand in the waves. It was actually chilly today (rainy all morning,) but we wanted to stand in the Baltic anyway. That, and we had high hopes of seeing some button jellyfish. They are really cute (for jellyfish).

We didn't wait long. In fact, we didn't wait at all. I put my toes in the water, and quickly spotted this fellow:

His name is Norbert.

He is very nice, and doesn't bite.

When we got back from Sylt, I felt kind of brave for catching myself a jellyfish. I told my guest parents all about it. They were delighted that I had discovered Northern Germany's greatest child's toy. They told me all about how their little kids used to slop them up and squish them
through their fingers. Um.... I'm not quite that brave. Okay, who knows. Maybe I am. But I was too attached to Norbert to put him through that, so after we snapped these photos, I quickly put him back where he belonged, but not before a fellow jellyfish lover spotted me and ran across the sand and through the waves to meet me. She splashed up just as I was settling Norbert back into his home.

This is her:

She's the little one. The grown-up is Losa.

She ran right into the water, repeating, "Qualle, Qualle, Qualle!" (Jellyfish, jellyfish, jellyfish!). I turned to her and asked, "Suchst du auch die Qualle?" (Are you looking for the jellyfish too?)

Okay, pause. German children are adorable. Especially when they speak German (I know, of course, German children speak German. But really).

"I have a jellyfish right here," she said, "but I can't pick him up."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because my mommy said not to."

"That's a good reason. I didn't pick up jellyfish either when I was really little."

"Oh." She said, a little relieved. She stood there for a minute, staring at her jellyfish, then splashed in a circle around it thoughtfully."And how long ago were you really little?"

"Just a little while ago." I answered. She'll be catching jellyfish in no time.

"Okay then!" she chirped with a twinkly smile and skipped up the beach to her mom and sisters.

I went back to my blanket too, and collapsed happily into the sand. Jellyfish Jane and her sister were building a sand mountain, while couples walked with their dogs past them. Meanwhile, their baby sister made a friend just a few feet away from us.

Jane was back several times within the next half hour. She ran at me with sand buckets filled with water and jellyfish.

"Take him, take him!" She would say.

"You want me to pick him up? Out of his water?" I'd ask.

"Yes, yes, pick him up so I can see! But just quickly, so he doesn't die."

"Okay," I said, taking out a particularly large jelly. "Here he is. Look, this one's blue!"

"Doesn't matter. He only looks blue. It's the water that does that," she said knowingly.

"Ah," I answered. "Now quick! Back in the water!"

And off she ran with her pail full of jellyfish.

"Thank you for the jellyfish!" I called to her as she plopped him back into the water. She waved back at me and called back in her tiny voice, "You're welcome!"

who lived among windmills and clouds.

This was a wonderful day. As always, the sun was in and out, fighting it out with a North German rainstorm. Today at Molfsee, we fine-tuned the art of rainy outdoormuseuming. When the sun came out, we dashed along, looking at buildings and pastures. When the rain started, we ducked inside the nearest barn (oh! Did we just enter a eighteenth century novel?!) and waited it out. We looked at the furniture, read about the houses, and worked on the German scavenger hunt packet we were given on entering.

Our second stop was in a bricked house with a thatched roof, housing the toy museum. There were wooden model trains, and rocking horses, and the best rocking animal I have ever seen in my life: a rocking squirrel. Tragically, the picture is blurry, but I'm sharing it here anyway, because, well, you have to see it to fully appreciate its awesomeness.

Right? Onward to happiness... riding a squirrel.

We were skipping along through the farmhouse, when suddenly...

Oh, the horror, THE HORROR!!!! The mutant dolls appeared! They gathered on shelves, bodiless and terrifying, plotting to attack the more loved toys around them. And to be honest, we weren't so sure about our safety either. So... we ran away. We saw baby goats, sheep, and cows, big barns, small barns, all thatched and painted beautifully inside. Some of it looked very much like home, especially this window. : ) 

Lovely, no? My favorite house of all was a long brick house with apple trees and a picket fence. Inside, the walls were painted with dancing townsfolk, ships, and flowers. We read a child's study plan (for homeschool) on one of the desks, and his schedule sounded dreamy (and made me feel like a slacker!). He studied German, English, French, Danish, and Latin. Ever Wednesday, he studied Wagner in French and English translation, and he often practiced penmanship (which explained why the writing was so beautiful on the schedule). Maybe I could switch my majors and start up on his study patterns? Although I don't know if I'd be up for quite so much Wagner... I was up and ready to move in, and bring my family with me, of course. : )

My name's on the china cabinet! My name's on the china cabinet!

We finished the adventures with hot chocolate at the dairy and ridiculously large pieces of cherry cake that we could hardly dent.

 

who found her dream house.

Here it is. The only problem with living here is that... well, I would have to be a whale hunter. Actually, I would have to marry a whale hunter.

That would not be cool.

But the house sure is; it's a museum now. The builder put his initials in iron over the front door, and then his sons after him did the same. It's almost on a cliff, and when you look through the white windows, past red geraniums, this is what you see...

All the women would stay in this house while the men went out to catch whales. They sat at the windows, and looked out at the North Sea, and waited. While they waited, they baked, and cleaned, and knitted and made lace and ribbon. There were lace stockings and knitted sweaters and children's nightgowns hung up in the alcove beds. They were just the color of the sheep we passed on the way there. The front entryway had a dutch door, but in Plaat Deutsch, the Dutch-esque dialect that was once spoken here, it's called a chatting door.

This (above) is the dowry chest, in the special party room, where weddings and christenings were celebrated. The light streaming through the window is reflecting off of the sea and shining through with extra brightness, almost like a prism. 

The tiles were all hand-painted here and fired in the oven. Any surface not covered in blue and white tile is painted, like this door, which went from the kitchen into the living room. It's all blue and red and white... like home. : )

After the tour, we spread out across the grass to picnic. We ate Leibniz butter crackers and cheese sandwiches and watched the sky change above our heads. 

who hiked a muddy hike and rode a bike along a dyke.

On Saturday, we woke up early to go on a hike through the Wattenmeer. The Wattenmeer is an endless expanse of mud, which clears up when the tide goes out. Some of it is sandy mud, that you only sink into a bit, but other parts are patches of slurpy mud that you can sink all the way into. You have to go wattwandering with a guide, because sometimes people have to be rescued from the Wattenmeer by helicopters. The guides keep a pretty close watch on you. Ours was 18, and his name was Luke. He walked us through the sand and mud, showing us the worms and crabs that were swimming and sloppering all around us. Then we came to the Schliklauch, where a few of us ventured to get really, really muddy. The Schliklauch is actually quite a bit like the fire swamp, minus R.O.U.S.es and fire. But right before you get sucked in almost up to your hips, the mud pops around you. It's not enough of a warning to skeedaddle through glomps of glunky mud, but it prepares you a bit. German movie stars actually get covered in this muddy stuff when they come on vacation to Sylt; the microorganisms do wondrous things for your skin (or so Luke told us).

Sunday, we biked 13 kilometers along this dyke, with water on both sides, to an old Friesian house. The dyke curved in a smooth arch, but somehow we it seemed that we were always pedaling directly against the sea wind. It made for a hard bike ride, but the sea air was crisp and cool, with just a taste of salt in it. Bleating sheep lined our parade route, lazing about munching on grass and sometimes sprawling out across the bike path. 

who went to Westerland auf Sylt.

On Friday morning, we met at the train station in Kiel to head to the Island of Sylt, a wisp of an island in the North Sea. It is thinly connected to the mainland of Schlieswig-Holstein by a dam, which we zipped across in the train. We sped through kilometers and kilometers of green fields of corn, yellow flowers, and of course, cow pastures. Atop a long bridge, I could see into matchbox gardens belonging to red-tiled houses, and with each minute, the sky got bigger.

I snapped at least ten photos that look a lot like this one. If you look really carefully, you can see the sea   up where the ground meets the sky. It was grey, but that seemed fitting; we passed through Husum, where Theodor Strom, the author and poet, lived. He wrote a poem about his hometown, which all Schlieswig-Holsteiners quote by heart, "Die Stadt." The last line of the poem is "die graue Stadt am Meer" ("the grey city on the see"). So we didn't mind the grayness a bit.

And that is a very good thing, because it is rainy in North Germany. The second day I was here, I got caught in a rainstorm on my way home from the bus stop. I was wet through in two seconds and hopped down our street on one foot, chasing my rubber ballet flat down the gutter. The rain is crazy this season, but as long as you don't mind getting a bit wet, it doesn't matter a bit. 

After we dropped our bags off at the hostel, we went to the aquarium in Westerland. Look who I saw there...Flotsam and Jetsam! They really looked like they were chatting creepily. I promise seeing Ursula's evil cronies was not the most momentous experience on this trip. 

Westerland though.... that's another story. It's a resort town. This balcony looked over the beech, where bratwurst (aha! This must be Germany!) stands ice cream stands lined the pier. Inside the white tents in the distance, a really strange band was playing Obladi Oblada (I thought of Josh!), except they somehow managed to make it sound like the Greek Festival. That's got to take some kind of talent. There was also an accordion player playing in the main street, who accompanied our ice cream stop at the local chocolate shop. (Incidentally... the chocolate isn't dangerous... but the ice cream and strawberries are!). We sat on a flower planter and ate vanilla ice cream with rote grütze (fruit compote) on top. The ice cream was wrapped up in freshly baked waffles that were smelled like cinnamon. The people watching was top notch, and the accordion music wrapped up the scene perfectly. It was a lucky, perfect Europe moment. Simon said he ordered it; even if he had, it couldn't have been better. Until, of course, this cute little boy stood over my shoulder, on the planter and said,"Hallo, entschuldigung!" (Hello, excuse me.)

"I walked all the way from there [pointing to the other side of the planter], and want to go all the way around. See how far I walked?" I hopped right up and asked if I could take a picture, and he posed for me most obligingly. That was unbeatably adorable. 

Not unlike this seagull. His name is Gustav.

who sailed and walked along a fjord...

The fjord starts open and wide, out in the Baltic Sea, and gets narrower and narrower, past the center of the city, and into the harbor. Some ships go all the way in to dock, and others turn west at the canal on the way to the North Sea. There are ships everywhere, cruisers, tiny dinghies, shipping ships, and ferries.

After waiting at the dock for a bit, our ferry arrived, and we zigzagged across the fjord. We watched as one coast slipped away and we sailed toward the other edge towards old windmills and new hotels. We came back to the other side, covered in forest and beach, then went back, to new windmills and old thatched-roof houses.

When we docked, we walked along the beach at Shilksee while waiting to go to dinner at the restaurant on the pier for a welcome celebration. It was early evening, but already cool, so we walked along the beach with our bare feet in the warm sand to stay warm.

Despite the chill, we were crazy enough to stop for gelato (and smart enough to not pass up the best ice cream stop yet)! The sign advertised "16 super delicious flavors!" and it told the truth. I chose cherries and cream, which was slightly sweetened cream ice cream with sour cherries. Heaven in a cone. :)

I also (kind of) ate my first whole fish today. Kind of, because well, the eyes weren't there (thank goodness), and it was huge, and fish bones can be stealthy foes at dinner parties. Beware, and remember that flounder is not the wisest choice on formal occasions!

who went to a church...

This is Saint Nikolai Kirke. It's very tall (hence the crooked photo without the bottom half of the church), and very old. It's the oldest standing building in Kiel, as most of the city was bombed by the allies near the end of WWII. As Hermann, one of the German students helping us out said on the tour, happily "not many people died, just the buildings." It was just a statement.

In fact, sometimes it seems that the only shadow left from the war is the missing buildings, which have been replaced by "wonderful 60s architecture," or so they joke. Instead, it's like the people's hearts have been filled with love for each other and for the future. They are endlessly hopeful and accepting. In fact, this once Catholic church is now open to anyone who wants to worship - it's called an "open church," and there are meetings and concerts here.

The stained glass windows, which were bombed out, have been replaced by modern expressionist pieces, to draw the youth in. They are blue and aqua-toned, reflecting the world here, which is all sky and sea.

And if you need proof that these people are forgiving and accepting, just check out what is in this once-very-Catholic church....

It's a GUTENBERG PRESS reproduction. My inner bookworm did a jig when it saw this. I love Martin Luther, and Gutenberg! :) Thank you, your awesomenesses.