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the expat’s guide to christmas away from home
i can barely believe that this is already my sixth holiday season away from home. at first, spending christmas in europe was an absolutely fantastic and magical thing and i couldn’t have been happier! the christmas traditions here are beautiful and even more elaborate than i can remember from childhood. however at about year four, i noticed it started getting a little harder; perhaps the sheen had dulled ever so slightly. despite not being home (again) for christmas and being away from my dear family and friends, i am a die-hard forever merry christmas celebrater and i wanted to share with you how you can make this upcoming holiday season…
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those magical days
even though christmas is over, i do love that stretch of days between the holiday and the new year. nobody is really in town yet, everything is running slowly and mostly still, everyone’s playing, everyone’s happy… i am embracing it this year (as i mentioned in the last post) rather than feeling guilty for lack of productivity. if there’s any time to take it easy, it’s now! i hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! we started ours with a walk through krumlov and took ferdie on his first trip (with a bus ride longer than ten minutes). he did okayyyyy, until he upchucked on the floor of the bus! (mental…
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embracing a local christmas
this is now our fifth christmas in europe. i have to say, you’d think it gets easier but that’s not necessarily true. our first christmas, we had only been in europe for a couple of months and it was all the heart eyes as prague pulled out all the stops and there was nothing but perma-smiles. the next year, my mother visited. the following year, we had a picture-perfect austrian christmas at the wolfgangsee. last year we happened to be in berlin, but a funny thing happened. while i was in my personal “happiest place on earth”, i felt a case of “the sads” as we call them, creeping in…
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berlin christmas market rundown!
hey. so i know it’s january, folks are knee-deep in resolutions, self-betterment, and photos to prove you went running. but i have some serious intel about the christmas markets in berlin, seeing as i’d been doing this “research” the week of christmas, that needs to be released on the wild internet or the thought will either wither away in my mind or this post will rot in my drafts folder forever. and technically, the twelve days of christmas are still on ‘til the 6th, yo. so pin it, bookmark it, do whatever it is you gotta do if you want to know the low-down on which berlin christmas markets to visit!…
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berlin christmas
i had my first christmas in the city this year, in berlin. and it was weird… but not in a bad way. (i am not counting the time we lived in prague because we were residents then, not there as tourists) when you’re in the big city for christmas and you don’t live there, especially when you live in a smaller city for the rest of the year, and especially when that city is your FAVORITE city, there is no time for rest. it’s time to do and eat all the things. so, then… is it really christmas? (do they know it’s christmas?) that can make for a very tired…
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melding traditions
the other day, my student asked me in the middle of a class, “so if you celebrate the holidays here, do you participate in czech or american traditions?” (cut to a dream sequence) hmmmm, that’s an interesting one! it’s now my fourth holiday season here (and my first married christmas!) in the czech republic and i do love adapting to different christmas traditions, much like a sponge. (below, large shoe box full of cookies we were famously gifted in 2013) czech christmas cookies? this is an easy one to adapt to! particularly the linecký and the rohlíčky! it is so common in the czech republic for babičkas and maminkas to…
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december/prosinec
hi friends! happy it’s december? you know i am. i’m trying to get a head-start on christmas stuff this year (well, aren’t we all trying to do this every year?) and i decked our halls two days earlier than my usual first of december decoration day. i’m trying out the “after thanksgiving” method, but now that it’s fully december i can play all i want for christmas is you with impunity. oh, don’t try to act like you don’t like that song. christmas trees aren’t available for sale in the czech republic until around halfway through the month, but i’ve been keeping an eye on all the usual places in…
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homey for the holidays
it’s incredible how a couple of songs, like smells, can transport you to a different state of mind. music carries so many memories and it’s always around the holidays that i’m digging out all of my favorite christmas albums from years past, some from genres i would never normally listen to and others from genres i wish i could listen to more! and isn’t it funny that all of the memories attached to our favorite songs were from times that just sort of slipped by? times that you didn’t actually know would later become a cherished memory? i sometimes wonder this as i listen to my new lucie bílá christmas album…
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Salzburg
when my mom bought plane tickets to come visit and i was brainstorming of a great place to go with the three of us, it didn’t take long to think: SALZBURG! a city whose beauty rivals that of paris? palaces, fortresses, and gardens against the backdrop of the alps? yes, yes yes! this is the kind of place that i thought would be perfect right after the holidays. and it only takes three and a half hours to get to from budejovice. 3.5 HRS. people, this is blowing my mind that i can get to somewhere this cool in such a short amount of time. oh, europe! it’s incredible how…
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Christmas + A Big Surprise
veselé vánoce, friends! my second czech christmas is technically still underway (as people traditionally get the 24th-26th off work) and it’s magical. this year my mother has joined us from far away washington state and we’ve been doing a whole lot of wandering the cobblestoney budějovice city streets, last chance advent markets, and of course: eating a TON of food (i may have gone overboard with grocery shopping, perhaps to make up for what is now known as our poor czech christmas last year) and a lot of relaxing before our trip to salzburg tomorrow. and, oh yeah……. i got engaged! alex and i have had a few chats about marriage before, both…
