Christmas Card Exchange

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The lovely San has been doing a Christmas card exchange on her blog for the past few years. I thought the idea was great because I love sending and receiving mail – it’s such a nice and rare surprise to find personal mail in the mailbox these days.

Even though I haven’t blogged much this year, I still love it and appreciate the fantastic people I have met through blogging. This year, I decided that I’d do my own Christmas card exchange. I’d love to show my appreciation for all of you by sending you a Christmas card.

If you are a reader of my blog and would like a Christmas card from me this year, please fill out the form below.

P.S. You don’t have to send me one in return, but I do love getting mail as well. ;)

P.P.S. As you may or may not know, I blog under my middle name for privacy reasons, but I will be using my first name for sending out Christmas cards. Tell me if you don’t know it yet.

[Form has been removed.]

On visiting a historical festival for the first time

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Back in July (yes, I am really blogging about something I did nearly four months ago) a historical festival took place in a nearby town. It’s a Renaissance festival that takes place in the historical part of town every other summer on two consecutive weekends. As I just moved to the area in January, it was my first visit. In fact, it was my first visit to a historical festival.

I went on the last day of the festival, planning to spend a couple of hours there, not having any idea what exactly was expecting me. Well, I was blown away. I enjoyed my visit so much, and instantly regretted not having gone earlier so I could have visited twice. There were so many performances and I was only able to see a couple of them.

I also thought it was such a shame I had to go by myself. I had asked a couple of friends to come up from Munich for it, but they didn’t, and in my opinion, they really missed out. If I get a chance to go again to the one in two years (i.e. if I still live here), I definitely will. I think I would even make the trip from Munich for this, it was that fun!

It takes place in a fairly small town but hundreds of people participate in the festival and many thousands come to visit, many of them in historical costumes. It is really a unique experience.

The historical part of town makes for a perfect backdrop, it gives the festival this sense of authenticity – knowing that many of the buildings, and the castle are very old and have really seen the time we as visitors are transported back to at this festival.

I ate some Rahmbrot, cream bread, a specialty of this town that has been ‘exported’ to Christmas markets and festivals all over Germany. For good reason – it was absolutely delicious. In fact, it was so good I had two.

I got to see two performances that are very typical of the festival, and I am so glad I decided to see both. One was a reenactment of medieval games in the historical stables, which was very entertaining, and the other was a classic – the hobbyhorse riders – a performance by children in historical costumes in the courtyard of the castle. Very sweet.

I really loved how so many visitors were dressed in historical costumes – some really elaborate, some very simple. It almost made me wish I had a historical costume to wear. I think most people who live around here do.

It was such a fun day. My expectations hadn’t been that high, but I really loved it. If you’d like, you can watch a video of the festival from 2009 here. I think it does a really good job at conveying the atmosphere.

Have you ever been to a historical festival? Are there any where you live?

It was only a matter of time

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You see, right by my desk, there is a hole in the floor. I have no idea why but I believe it may have originally been for routing cables or something like that. The hole goes all the way through the floor and the ceiling of the floor below.

Ever since I started my job, I was worried about accidentally dropping something into that hole. It’s too small for my iPhone (believe me, I made sure of that) but keys, earrings or other jewelry would be small enough. What’s worse, it could easily get stuck in the nirvana between the floor and the ceiling of the floor below.

My solution? I usually move my trash can over the hole to cover it. That’s an exercise in futility, though, because every time the cleaning lady empties it, she puts it back into the corner.

So it was really only a matter of time until I would drop something into it. Luckily it was not an earring or my keys … I meant to throw some gum (wrapped in paper, phew!) into the trash can – only to watch disbelievingly as it disappeared in the hole. Then I cracked up.

What? It was Friday afternoon and this was probably the most entertaining thing to happen all day! I went downstairs to recover my gum and asked a co-worker if he happens to know where exactly the hole is downstairs – he thought it was hilarious! But turns out there is a shelf right under the hole so I guess the gum will stay there until someone bothers to clean the top shelf. What can I say? It wasn’t me?

Maybe you had to be there for this to be funny, but it really was. And I think I should consider covering that hole a little more permanently now that the inevitable has happened – who knows what it will be next time?