For Valentine's Day Shanna & I decided to stay local and cook at home. She had to work that day, of course, so I ran all over Stuttgart finding things for dinner. First I went to a Blumen (flower) shop near our house and bought some Orchids. I left that in the car and hopped a train to the center of town. There's an indoor year round Market Hall where vendors from all over Europe and Asia come to sell food. You can get anything there, and it's amazingly fresh. They have butchers, dairy farmers, seafood, you name it. It's not cheap, but you can't beat the quality and taste of their food. We don't shop there often because of the cost, but for special occasions (like this) it was worth it. I picked up some Filet Mignon and cheese stuffed peppers. Next I headed to Conditorei and picked up some chocolates. And finally, when I went to pick Shanna up from work that day, I got a few bottles of wine. That night the menu consisted of bacon wrapped Filet Mignon, baked peppers stuffed with cheese, and some veggies.
Dinner turned out great, although there was a momentary hiccup when we couldn't figure out how to set our oven to "broil". There's no words, only images, on our oven and no instruction manual. With the assistance of Google, though, we figured it out. That was it for Valentine's Day...we kept it pretty low-key this year.
This past weekend a lot got done. On Saturday morning I had to take the car in to get an oil change, then I picked some people up from the hotel on base. Shanna's been tasked with being a sponsor to a new employee, and with how bad our sponsor was, we didn't want someone else to have to go through what we did. Her name is Arlynda, and her and her husband and 2 kids are great people. It's interesting see how wide eyed they are at everything. I didn't realize how comfortable Shanna & I had become speaking & reading German, navigating around Europe, and just living here in general until you interact with people who just got here. We empathize though...we were exactly like they were 10 months ago.
After I picked them up, I drove them back to the Marienplatz near our house and parked the car. Shanna had done a lot of work over the past week taking them to get their kids enrolled in school and showing Arlynda the ropes of the job, but in those two weeks they'd been here, there hadn't been time for them to really see things off base. After we parked, we headed over to the U-Bahn station and showed them how to use the trains, how to read the map, and everything they'd need to know in the short term about the U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and Deutsche Bahn. We took the train down to the Rathaus and showed them the Market Place I mentioned earlier in the post, as well as the Schlossplatz, the Hauptbahnhof, and various other places in the downtown area. We even ran into a massive group of people protesting Stuttgart 21, the initiative to overhaul the main train station.
The picture I took above was on the outskirts of the protest...the last thing I wanted to do was pull my phone out and snap pictures in the center of the mass of people. We also took them to Zum Paulaner, which is the restaurant we always take people here for the first time to. They have English and German menus, their staff speak perfect English, but most important, their food and beer are excellent. As the afternoon drew to a close, we hopped on a train and took it back to the Marienplatz, and I drove them home. They had a great time, and I told them not to worry about feeling overwhelmed now. We felt the same way 10 months ago, and look where we are now.
Sunday we had tickets to a Wine expo in Strasbourg, France. It was actually a really good deal, for 30 Euros a person you got a bus ride back & forth, breakfast & lunch, and entrance to the Wine Expo. We'd found out about it from our friend Jenny. She and another friend of ours, Michelle, as well as a few of Michelle's co-workers, were all going, so we figured why not. The bus hit the road around 9am, and we were in Strasbourg by 10:30. The wine expo, as you can see from the picture below, was HUGE.
Once the bus was parked, we headed into the Expo center, got our tasting glass, and started walking up & down the rows. They not only had wine, but also champagne and cognac. Some of the XO Cognac was amazing, and dirt cheap compared to a bottle purchased in the US. Of all the Cognac we tasted, one in particular really jumped out at us. It was from an independent family owned business, but the taste and smoothness was outstanding.
Since the bottle above is not mass-produced, it wasn't possible to make a direct comparison of cost in the US to cost here, but I got a rough idea by comparing the bottle size and quality to a similar bottle sold in the US. The above bottle would go for about $150 in the US, and we got it here for 45 Euros. With the current exchange rate, that's about $65-$70.
One stand we stopped at had great wine. The style caught my eye, Grand Cru, because that's also a beer style I like. It was a red wine, and Grand Cru was all they sold. The only difference between the bottles they sold was the year. We decided on a 2005 bottle that tasted fantastic. Below is the vineyard's name.
They also had chocolate vendors, and all kinds of stands set up selling French cheeses, bread, etc.. It was a lot of fun, but the most interesting vendor by far was the last one we visited. Things were winding down, and he was in a talkative mood. He asked us about where we lived in America, and we told him the cities we had moved here from. We don't like to tell people we live in Europe because it invites questions and it's not a good idea to mention you work for the US Military or Gov. Someone in our group asked if he sold his wine in the US, and we got an interesting look into why none of the smaller vineyards at the expo sell in the US...it's all because of the distribution system in place for alcohol. Our current system makes it cost prohibitive for all but the largest brewers, vineyards, and distillers to sell their product in the US. He gave an example, if he sold his wine for 1 Euro to an exporter, by the time it reached store shelves and everyone along the way had taken their cut, the final cost to the consumer would be about 5 Euros. Then you factor in the exchange rate, and it jumps to about 8 dollars. Of course the wine wouldn't be sold for 1 Euro, it'd be more, so you'd have to multiply the cost he'd sell it at by 5, then adjust for the exchange rate. Large corporations can sell for cheap rates in bulk so that it's not too expensive in the US, but the smaller guys can't. It was really interesting, we ended up talking with this guy for a good half hour.
Once the expo closed, we all got on the bus and headed home. Sunday night it snowed here, so Monday was just a lazy day of shoveling (there wasn't too much) and relaxing around the house.
There weren't too many pictures taken, so click on any of the above images to see a larger, higher resolution, version.
So that's it for the past week...Shanna has a German cooking class Saturday, then next week we're dog sitting for some friends and in two weeks from today, we'll be on a flight home to DC. It's hard to believe it'll have been just about a year since we moved here. We're both really looking forward to seeing family and friends again.
See you all soon!
