Christmas

Agnes and Santa

Matt buying Gluhwine

This year for Christmas I got an excellent present. Agnes was coming over to visit from December 24th to January 4th. The morning of December 24th might as well have been Christmas morning for me, because I basically couldn’t sleep the night before and woke up really early in anticipation of her arrival.

I picked her up at the airport (in my car, which is still running!) around 11.30am Luxembourg time and it was so nice to see her and be able to talk to her in person! We loaded up the trunk with her two suitcases. It should be noted that one of those two suitcases (the bigger one) held nothing but things she was bringing over for me. She was confused because as she walked through customs, no one was there to stamp her passport. So she just walked. I was a little worried that they might not let her back out, but we decided to table that concern for the time being.

We went back to my apartment, dropped everything off, and immediately headed to the city centre to stroll the Christmas markets. I wanted to show her the downtown area because it really was a nice, Christmassy setting. Kind of like King’s Island during the holidays. We walked around, ate some brats, did some window shopping, and drank some Gluhwine (spiced, hot red wine…I think there’s some rum in there too).

Afterwards, we headed back to my apartment and I gave her the grand tour of the place. Then we opened all of my “gifts,” which include some new kicks from big Ferd and Andre, my new iPod (see previous blog), my new Bose dock for my new iPod, a great gift from Agnes’ parents - maps of certain European cities that I’ve been wanting to visit - and some gifts from Agnes.

After all of that excitement, we decided to chill out, watch some TV (which works now….see upcoming blog), drink some wine and eat some cheese. The next thing we knew, we were asleep on the couch!

Christmas morning we woke up and went to mass downtown at the Notre Dame Cathedral. The mass was given in a mix of French, German and Luxembourgish. I was pumped because I was able to decipher when they were switching. I don’t think Agnes had a clue. After mass she asked me “What were they speaking?” and when I told her the three languages, she said “All three? All I heard was blah, blah, blah.”

We came home had a big breakfast of omelets, coffee, bread and fruit. Then we went for a walk in the forest near my apartment. We came home later that night and made Christmas dinner. Agnes cooked up a serious bird. And we totally winged it. The oven was in Celsius, we had no stuffing, and generally no clue how long to cook it. But Agnes worked wonders and it turned out great. We paired it up with some mashed sweet potatoes (with raisins and walnuts mixed in), peas and carrots, and bread. And of course some wine. After dinner, we had some apple crisp (homemade) and vanilla ice cream. Then it was some more wine and off to bed.

The next day we got up and went for a run in the woods. About 10 minutes into our run, a massive snow storm brewed up and we were literally running while snow was accumulating on our clothes. That lasted about 10 more minutes, and then just stopped as quickly as it started. It was really funny. After the run, we got all showered up and decided to head downtown for a walk and to see what, if anything, was going on.

As it turned out, nothing was really open, except for the bars. So we went drinkin.’ We hit up about three or four bars and then just headed home to get ready for the next day’s adventures….we were heading to Rome!