Christmas in Norway & Munich

This blog entry has been sitting in my drafts folder since early December.  Never got around to finishing it, but might as well post what I have...

Stepler and I attended the Marathon Christmas party a couple of weekends ago.  It was held in an old fishing warehouse.  For dinner there was a buffet of traditional Norwegian Christmas foods, a julebord.  Lots of meat on a julebord -- pinnekjott (salted lamb), ribbe (fatty pork), sausage, a meatball (no sauce) and I think some other meats that I didn't even try.  That was more meat than I normally eat in a week.  There was also a good bit of seafood on the buffet - shrimp, crab, scallops, fish - all of which I enjoyed a great deal more than the meat.  Not much in the way of vegetables on a julebord.

Last weekend we went to Munich for the Christmas Markets.  Stepler and I had talked about it before we moved to Europe and since we're not sure how long we'll be here, we wanted to go this year to make sure we got to go.  We arrived on Thursday afternoon and after a bit of quiet time in our room we headed down to the main Christmas Market.  We just wandered through the market and then found a restaurant.  The food was very good (schnitzel! and potatoes!) and so was the beer.  After supper we went back through the market and to our hotel.

First things first, Friday morning we went to a bakery for breakfast and I went to Starbucks (there are no Starbucks in Norway) for a latte.  It was raining, as we expected it would be, so we took the subway to the Duetche Museum.  We thought we'd take Rory to the Children's Museum there and then maybe see a bit of the museum.  When we arrived there was a sign that the Children's section was closed until 12:30.  Bummer.  So we had some time to kill in the museum before eating lunch and then finally getting into the children's museum.  We saw the transportation area, - with helicopters, airplanes and cars - the oil and gas area, metals and toured the coal and salt mines.  By then it was lunch time so we ate in the Museum's cafe.  Sausage! and potatoes!  Finally the children's museum was open so we went there.

As we walked in I had a ping of longing for the Children's Museum of Houston.  I miss it.  Not so much working there, but visiting it.  This was a very nice area of the museum, but nothing quite compares to CMH.  Rory loved the water area, there were locks, wheels, plastic boats and plenty of opportunity for getting wet.  There was a fire truck for climbing on and pretending to drive.  There was also a music area that Rory enjoyed, drums, an xylophone, a piano (without its front so you could view the inner workings) and a very large guitar that Rory and Stepler were able to climb into.  Rory also visited the ropes and pulleys, but was too small to really do that.  There was a light room, but Rory did not go in there.  The water area was so popular that Rory had to do it a second time before we left.