Happy New Year! or Bon Annee!

We made it back in one piece today, and we are chilling out now and trying to remember what we were doing before vacation. It was an amazing trip for many different reasons.
I suppose I will start from the beginning.

We landed in Frankfurt after flying all night on Sat. I did not sleep very much, but what can you do? So Mike and I in our jet lagged state headed out to see his family. His father is from a town called Schweinfurt which is about 2 hours east of Frankfurt. We hit the Autobahn in our car upgrade which was the world's smallest Mercedes. His aunt still lives there, so that is where we were headed. When we landed and looked out the window, all of the trees were white with snow. It is the effect that all of those fake white Christmas trees are trying to get. We headed to Wurzburg which is nearby to check out the Christkindelmarkt. There are many of these markets leading up to the holiday. I split a Gluwine with Mike (traditional hot spiced Christmas wine) since it was so cold, but we did not want to drink much due to our jet lag. Wurzburg is a cool little town with forts, old churches, and old world ambiance. We ate dinner with his family after checking into our little hotel, and crashed for about 13 hours by mistake. We slept a solid 5, both woke up and puttered for 2 hours and crashed until 11 AM.

We missed breakfast, so we had to hustle in order to get something before all of the stores closed (it was Dec 24). We constantly were hearing different church bells sounding throughout the city. My father in law showed us the city wall and other sights in town. We hung out with Mike's Tanta, and then we attended midnight mass. The church was old and cavernous, and it was totally dark when we entered (and silent). The music was really beautiful, but the church was really cold. Mike said the pastor referred to the cold by saying that "you are not meant to sweat here". The people doing readings and the choir were all in ski jackets. They are into saving energy there for sure. I liked hearing the Christmas hymns in German too, and there are slight variations on the notes for the verses. Here are some pics. The random shots are 1. My favorite TV program in Deutchland. 2. Nice street sign with a huge compound word. 3. Schweinfurt at night.