Compromising on Tradition, But Loving The Cookies

During the summer, I mentioned how the memories my children have of summer are so different to my own childhood memories. Today an article of mine was published on The Irish Times website. It looks at how The Bavarian and I have tried to bring the traditions we grew up with into our children's lives.

As with many aspects of marriage and family life, establishing traditions involves compromise. Whose family dinner was better and should be passed on? Should we start our own tradition as a family? In our case, the main difficulty I had was bringing in something Irish to the German traditions that surround us here and which The Bavarian grew up with.

You can read the article here but if you just want to cookie recipes, then click here.

Hitting The Christmas Markets

It may be a bit quiet here on the blog for the next week or so. The Christmas markets have started and as a result we will have a steady stream of visitors over from home to visit them.  

Soon I'll be sharing photos and tips for any of you who may want to plan a trip for next year. Germany's Christmas markets really are a highlight and one of the best ways to get into the festive mood. 

Getting all your Christmas shopping done while surrounded by twinkly lights, the scent of cinnamon and vanilla in the air, a mug of mulled wine in one hand and a bratwurst in the other - for me the magic hasn't faded yet. I hope it never will. 

Summer So Strange

It is not quite 7am and the display on the main street reads 23 degrees as I stroll past on my way back from the bakery with a baguette in my hand. Still sleepy from the muggy nighttime heat, I try my best not to scratch the mosquito bites that tingle on my neck and the back of my leg. I'm getting good at it, finally. You see, I am not on holiday. This is my life, this summer so strange to me.

Oppressive heat, intense humidity, thunderstorms, eating meals outside, afternoons at the ice-cream parlour, mosquito bites, the school closing because it is too hot to teach / be taught, day trips to water parks and lakes for swimming - these are the memories my children will have of summer. A summer so strange to me.

The local pool

After school on a Wednesday

My childhood summers were filled with playing in the garden, trips to the beach on the sunnier days, believing that if the temperature rose to 20°C you could fry an egg on the footpath, eating Choc Ices, the pain of sunburn and the excitement when the tar would melt on the road from the heat.

My children are growing up as the kind of children I only ever encountered at campsites in France - the kind that have a slight tan year round, the kind that speak two languages and run round in the nip without a thought as to why they should wear swimming togs. The kind that eat foods we'd never seen then and who aren't at all bothered by temperatures above 25 degrees. 

Whereas as a child I looked forward to two weeks of outdoor swimming pools, water slides, the smell of suncream and to eating scoops of ice-cream in exotic flavours like pistachio or mango, their lives are like that every day of summer from May to September. 

Yet still they look forward for months to their couple of weeks in Ireland. They plan trips to the beach in their wellies and raincoats, hoping to see horses gallop in the waves. They want to visit Lough Conn, after which one of them is named. They beg to be allowed go back to the Viking exhibition in Dublin and want to go to Tayto Park again. They want to munch cheese and onion crisps and lick 99s "like last time", to play with their cousins, go swimming with Grandad and eat Nana's meatballs. "How many sleeps Mammy?", they ask every evening, longing for their Irish summer, so strange to them. Strange and wonderful.

I'm linking this post up to Twinkly Tuesay and The Truth About.

A Family Camping Holiday in Frankonia, Germany

We recently returned from our second family camping holiday. It was our first with all three of the boys and it was a great success.

The Bavarian was responsible for the choice of location since 

a) we were going camping with Bavarian friends in Bavaria, and 

b) he wanted to do some fishing while we were there.

In the end he chose See* Camping Langlau, a campsite directly on the Small Brombach Lake in the Frankonian Lake District, not too far from Nuremberg, approximately a 2 hour drive from Munich and 3 hours from Karlsruhe.

*See is the German word for lake.

On Friday afternoon as soon as school finished up, we headed off, having loaded up the car in the morning. Thankfully traffic was reasonably good and the children too excited about the prospect of sleeping in a tent to argue much. We stopped for  a break after a couple of hours, the heat having got to us all a bit. 

Everything but the kitchen sink, as they say.

Our view as we devoured chips and stretched our legs before continuing our journey.

After a stop at the local fishing shop to top up on tackle and find out what works best when for which fish (or if you are me, after a 35-minute aimless wander round a fishing shop trying to entertain three children and keep them from breaking expensive sunglasses and binoculars), we finally reached the campsite, checked in and began to set up camp. This is when we realised that a canoe makes an excellent playpen.

We are by no means seasoned campers. Our tent has only had three outings, the first of which was in our garden. But we have good intentions and our levels of skill and organisation have increased from trip to trip. This time round, we had the tent up quite quickly. As the Bavarian and our friend set it up, the boys and I got to work unloading the roll-table, the fold-up chairs, the rucksacks and cool boxes.

I had put quite a bit of thought into the food for the weekend. With camping I am torn between cooking food outdoors and bringing food that just needs heating up or can be eaten cold. Both have their ups and downs. In the end we opted for a combination. We brought ready cooked pulled pork for Friday night and we had a barbecue on Saturday night (buying the meat locally on Saturday, the fishing expedition having proved unsuccessful in terms of catching). I made a couple of cakes (a banana-chocolate chip tray bake and an iced lemon loaf) that would do us just as well for breakfast as they would for with a coffee later in the day for a snack for the children. Both the cakes and the pulled pork went down a treat. The campsite shop sold fresh bread rolls in the mornings and we made coffee on our one-ring electric cooker (a bit of a cheat but the fishing shop had run out of gas canisters for the gas cooker).

Banana chocolate chip tray bake,squeezed into a lunch box.

My slow cooked pork joint, reheating in the marinade, ready for pulling and scoffing.

After we had set up camp and eaten our fill of pulled pork, salad and rolls, we set off at the onset of twilight to explore the lake shore. On booking we had requested tent spots near the lake and the ones we got were prefect. In less than a minute's walk we were at the small sandy beach of the lake. The four older children headed straight for the water and busied themselves with building a dam. The silouette of their playing was magical to watch and certainly put me in a holiday mood.

Our walk over, we put the children to bed. Within minutes all five were sound asleep. My concerns about Number Three not settling vanished when I saw how comfy he was in my sleeping bag with this brothers in theirs on either side of him. The adults returned to the camping chairs and made plans the following morning - fishing (the men) and beach (women and children).

A quick bit of exploring in the tent before falling sound asleep.

The rest of the weekend was an incredibly enjoyable, relaxed affair with plenty of sun, splashing, fresh air, good food, and a fair bit of fishing. We didn't have to leave the campsite all weekend and barely used the fantasic playground, so busy were we with the beach, the canoe and the fishing.

Sailboats on the lake on Saturday morning.

Suncream on the lens created this dreamy look of my boys playing on the beach.

For our two-night stay, each family paid approx. €60. That covered the two nights' tent spot, the car, two adults and two children over 3 each.  The campsite was clean and quiet, the washrooms regularly serviced with no need to queue for showers or toilets and the shop sold everything we needed. In addition to the playground, there is a surf-school and a reasonably-priced Italian restaurant on site. We ate at the restaurant on Sunday afternoon before heading for home and were quite impressed with the food. 

By the end of the weekend, I was left with a feeling of "why don't we do this more often?" and I have a feeling that now we will. 

My First Byline!

One of my all time biggest dreams came true today when an article I wrote about life in Germany was published in The Irish Times, one of Ireland's main national papers and the paper I have always read. OK, so it was only in the online edition, but I am still pretty proud of myself. You can find my article here. 

I've written my perspective on how it feels to be an emigrant. The article came about as a result of the huge bout of emigration from Ireland since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger in 2008. At that stage I had been out of Ireland for five years. With all the focus on those who had emigrated in the bad times, whether pre or post economic boom, it began to seem to me that anyone who emigrated during the good times was not really considered an emigrant at all. Added to that was the fact that reporting seemed to concentrate on those who emigrated to English-speaking countries. So I wrote about my experience - emigrating when Ireland was at the top of her game, jobs galore, to a country in recession, where I had a good knowledge of the language but it was still far from perfect. 

This month I am in Germany twelve years. Spoiler alert...there's a happy end.