Spice Gets Married (AGAIN!)

Don’t let the title fool you. Two weddings, same man, under 2 years 🙂 Yup! Thats how life works sometimes when you are in a multi-cultural relationship like ours. I got double the wedding fun! And ever so fitting is that in 10 days we will be celebrating our 2nd year anniversary from our first wedding. A lot of people have asked us which day will we celebrate and the answer is both! Something German for our October 26th anniversary and something American for our August 18th anniversary. We’re lucky enough to have two awesome days to remember…why not celebrate both! 🙂

Hit play on the video below and listen to the song I walked down the aisle too. This song is more of a party song from the 80’s early 90’s but this version lets you actually hear the lyrics. It was beautiful and made a bunch of us cry! Even Toblerone! But how cute is it that a man that has been with me for 6 years, married for 2 would still cry when he sees me walking down the aisle. Beautiful moments all around, people!

During the past two years I have had MANY expats ask me about the wedding planning process from 3,000 miles away. You want my advice? DONT. DO. IT.  Not only did things come out a bit differently than if I had actual time to do things but the amount of stress compressed into the few days before the wedding is just not healthy. Weddings are stressful but imagine seeing your decorations and things you ordered online for the first time one week before the wedding day. If I had a month to go home and organize all wedding things, I would have in a heartbeat. It would have saved us all from combustion!

We held our wedding in a house we rented for the week in Cape Cod, MA. It was the most beautiful setting for our wedding day. It wasn’t on the beach but I didn’t really want that necessarily. We just wanted it to be in our favorite place on earth.

We had over 65 guests and every single person there came from out of state or out of country. Think about that for a minute. 65 people (including kidlets) that came for this moment. This special day. It’s this kind of feeling that just can’t be described but that fact that our destination wedding pulled in that amount of love and friendship was just jaw dropping. We were speechless.

My darling cousin did my hair and makeup and surprise!!!!!!…… My dress is PINK! Wouldn’t want it any other way! We took wedding pictures at the gorgeous Mass Audubon Nature park and wildlife sanctuary. It was a perfect spot. We had the ocean, we had sand, we had forests, we had ponds. So many different cool aspects for a great backdrop. One would even say magical.

It was 78 degress, sunny (hot in a massive dress), slight seabreeze, and little tiny bugs just LOVED getting up in between the layers of pink tulle I was wearing! My groom looked crazy handsome in his blue suit specially bought in Germany. Our wedding party looked fantastic! It all turned out well considering this was all primarily discussed through email before hand. Everyone looked perfect for the part!

The morning of our wedding I woke up around 7am and asked Toblerone to walk with me around the yard to take it all in. That was the one and only moment of “calm” that I felt! lol…but I suppose thats normal! Everything was slowly getting set up and we had lemonade and iced tea set up for our guests as they arrived. They got “fan” programs, noise makers, some got rice butterflies to throw in honor of our grandparents who were looking down on us.

Alot of what I did was DIY. I found a bunch of templates online and the real deal of it is…no one cares about the paper products at a wedding. The name cards, escort cards, programs, all of that gets thrown out or drinks spilled over it. I knew that going in so I did ALL of that myself. Even our invitations. I found a lot of great stuff over at weddingchicks.com. But doing a simple search for “templates” is very helpful! Don’t spend a dime on stuff if you don’t have to!

The ceremony was perfect and personal. Private and intimate. Everything we wanted. AND…done in two languages thanks to our very good friend who did the whole ceremony for us. Just perfect! We had a “stone and time capsule” ceremony.  On each seat we placed gold painted stones that each person was instructed to hold tightly and say a blessing, prayer, wish, and simply put their love and energy in to while Toblerone’s Dad and brother serenaded us with a trumpet duet. These stones were collected and placed into a box with wine and a love letter for us to open on our first anniversary. This was my absolute favorite part of the whole ceremony.

The reception started off with me sobbing basically while I thanked everyone for coming all this way just for little old us. Our Cape Cod Clambake was fantastic and people raved about the meal. It was a lot of food and for a great price. More importantly kind of fun! I literally was cracking a lobster in my wedding gown. I highly recommend it!

As for the music, I did it all myself. I spent WEEKS….no make that MONTHS working on a playlist long enough to keep the crowd going! I used an app on my phone called Wedding DJ which was great through all the testing but suddenly stopped working by cocktail hour. Thankfully I had the playlists on my computer in iTunes and we used that the rest of the night. I never left the dance floor. For some reason I felt like if the bride was on the dance floor…people would always dance. No one wants to leave the bride alone up there! Right?! I also didn’t have a sip of alcohol. I was sober through the COMPLETE thing! It was awesome! 🙂 Nothing classy about a drunk bride!

The party ended around 2am and I ended the night with two of my best friends in my bed talking about the day and life in general while Toblerone hung out with the late-late night crew in the tent. Catching up and just loving the moment. It was the most stressful day of my life and I would NEVER do it again but it was the greatest thing in the world to have everyone we love there (and a few missing!).

So again for all other expats out there planning a wedding from afar…take the time to sort out the big stuff as best as you can and be prepared for nothing and everything to go wrong on your special day. I received one piece of advice from everyone and that was “Just enjoy the day.” But as a perfectionist, that’s impossible and I wish I could have enjoyed it more. Looking back at it now though, I wouldn’t have changed a thing! Wouldn’t be our story if it wasn’t a little bit crazy and out of hand!

Until next time, Readers!!! xoxoxoxoxo

 

Take Me Home, Country Roads

It’s almost time…that time to make the HUGE trip back to the states! So much has been happening and to be honest the blog has suffered. It’s been sitting on the back burner for quite some time now. I’ve completely been enveloped in stress. I’m planning the wedding (which is exactly 27 days away now…OMG!), still working full time, trying to organize what gets packed or trashed in the house…the list goes on! But I won’t bore you with the details!

Slowly I am really starting to get excited about whats to come! As soon as the wedding is done, we will fly back to Deutschland for 3-4 weeks to pack up our house and then ship out at the end of September! There is no time left to do anything! But Toblerone and I share constantly what we are looking forward to. Granted, my wants are very different from his. He wants the total American dream. The house on the water, a boat, fishing license (thats hard to get here in Germany), a big Mercedes, etc.

My wants are something a bit more sentimental. The things I lacked here are the things I am in dire need of. I never realized I wanted these things so badly in my life until I didn’t have them. Thats always how that goes though…isn’t it?

Here is my list of MUST-HAVES as soon as I put my feet on American soil!

1. Library card – A library with ENGLISH books in them. omg…and the smell of libraries. Give me it all! They have libraries here in Germany but I didn’t have any close by that actually looked like a library and/or had English books in them.

2. Flat walls to paint – I’ve talked about this a little bit but this “stucco” idea that they have for the walls (inside and out) is ANNOYING to say the least. It takes AGES to paint walls and I am just beyond excited to paint our new house without having to go over the same spot 800 times. You don’t know how I’ve suffered…..

3. Compassionate doctors – I won’t get into this too much but when my GYN tells me he doesn’t understand why we aren’t pregnant because he never had a problem. How he would just look at his wife and she was pregnant. Yeah…this is just a small taste of what doctors are like here. FULL of compassion and sympathy…am I right?!??!?!

4. Craft stores – Oh dear heaven! I don’t care how many people boycott Hobby Lobby. I will buy out that store!! I miss those stores terribly. The VERY TINY “hobby” stores here are literally the size of my kitchen and have mostly felt. Germans really love getting down and crafty with felt. Which I personally feel should only be used in Kindergarten. But I digress…. Pinterest has turned me into a pretty craft person and thats all I want to do now..make my own stuff!

5. To watch Ellen DeGeneres –  When I was really homesick I would watch small snippets of the Ellen show. For some reason I could just get lost in this and not feel sadness anymore. It’s weird, I get that. But you wouldn’t understand unless you were in my shoes! BRING ON THE ELLEN!!!!

6. Plethora of food options and fad diets to try – Stores here are very standard. The foods in every grocery store are mostly the same. Same brands, etc. I used to think the Germans lived in a sort of Utopia. Everything the same. When I go home we have Wegmans (if you don’t know what that is, your life is not complete until you step inside one of those!) and there is also Whole Foods and a bunch of other ones too but each one is different to me. Each one offers something another one doesn’t. I can’t wait to just spend a day walking around and getting familiar with cereals again. Lucky Charms…oh how I’ve missed you!!  Plus all these new fad diets people get into. That’s always fun to try out and then quit after a couple days. Thats my style 🙂

What do you think? Is my list totally awkward and weird? I hope it is! Because these are the things I just NEED in my life.

America here I come!!!!!!! AND THE HOME OF THE BRAAAAAAAVVVVVVE!!!!

Until next time, Readers!!! xoxoxoxoxoxo

 

American Week in Aldi Süd

Aldi (grocery store), which is in the US and many other countries but was founded here in Germany, has “American Week.” They sell items that are “American” the week before July 4th. It’s funny because most of the Germans have no idea what that is. I saw on one German blog that they assumed it was American Week in Aldi because President Obama was recently in town. News Flash. You’re wrong.

**** INSERT GIANT GAME SHOW BUZZER SOUND****

Most of this stuff isn’t that special. It isn’t really anything you can’t get in Germany, however it’s packaging has an obnoxious American flag all over it and they write the product in English. Whoopty Doo. There are some things that are pretty gross and as an American, I am upset that they would make us look even more ridiculous and fat with false advertising.

Step right up to the freak show! They seriously have no clue!

American Sauces –

Ladies and Gents, Prepare your eyes for the sore of a lifetime! I give you the razzle dazzle of sauces…the splish splashy excitement offfffffff……..The 2 in 1! Sounds like a bad porn but the thing is, it’s mustard and ketchup in a single tube OR…(the excitement doesn’t end there) ketchup and mayo in a single tube! DISGUSTING! I’ve heard of the peanut butter jelly in a jar thing, which I will NEVER EVER try but this is just taking it too far. Really really gross.

Next up in the Sauces department is the catastrophe of Sandwich Sauce (or you may have seen the “Hamburger Sauce” I posted on the facebook page. Either way, what is it? And why would they assume we always have sauces on our sandwiches?! Mustard sometimes, mayo sometimes, but no special kind of sauce. Get with the program, Germs! As for the hamburger sauce…I make my own but it certainly doesn’t look like chunky mustardy curry mess. Just a side note.

Moving on with the program we come to the sweets:

I don’t even know what to do with this. What the heck is peanuts and flakes, anyways? And chocolate covered peanuts? Not something we Americans indulge in on the regular, unless of course they are in M&M packages. If even says on the carton, “from an original American Recipe.” This is bad. Real bad. And if it’s chocolate covered corn flakes you’re trying to put by me…well, I got news for you people. Thats just weird.

This bothers me to the core. I have nothing against the Brits, in fact, my dad lived there for several years and some of my fondest memories are from there. However, DO NOT MIX US UP!! We are not the same culture, we don’t even speak the same bloody language. So, why on earth would they suggest that the Americans like sweet popcorn?!?! (Note: the word “Süß” on the bucket means its coated with sugar.) I know the brits do this after my first time going to the movies and ordering popcorn in England. A mistake I’ll never make again. Just so ya’ll know…we like ours with butter and salt. Amen.

Theres a bunch of other things I’m not too fond of but I think I’ll let it go for now. I will, however, give them MASSIVE points for getting peanut butter right. This stuff is the closest I can find to Skippy or Jiff. I’m more of a skippy girl myself but you get the drift. It doesn’t taste like cardboard. Unfortunately, it only comes around once a year so I have to stock up. I threw 8 of these babies in my cart and Toblerone had to stop me from taking them all. I go a little bit overboard. But the jars are small! I mean, come on!

Regardless, beggars can’t be choosers in the world so I take what I can get. Or just wait until I go home and take everything I can get there! If you’d like to dig deeper and take a look at what Germans think of our eating habits,
you can see the rest of the items here.

If someone asks you what is American food, what do you say? What is our food?

My answer is normally, we are culturally diverse so its a mix of a hundred different cultures. But I’m interested to see what you think is “American” food.

Until next time, Readers!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

(All pictures belong to http://www.aldi-sued.de)

I Live In A Place That…(Part Two)

As promised there is definitely a part two of the “I live in a place that…” posts. Just too much to share in one post! If you missed Part One please click here. Let’s get this party started!

I Live In A Place That…

…Snorts tobacco up their noses.
Snuff tobacco is huge here. This isn’t like chewing tobacco which is stringy. Snuff is a very fine powder, usually with a menthol smell to it. You take this stuff and snort it up your nose. You can take it in between your fingers and shove it up your nose as you sniff it up or you can put it on your hand and run your nose across your hand while snorting.
Here in Germany it’s whatever but when Toblerone takes a sniff of the stuff when we’re in the US it looks like he’s doing cocaine in public places! I’m always a little embarrassed and rush him to finish it up, lol. I mean, it’s not every day you see someone snorting something up their nose! There are actual snuff-sniffing competitions in Germany. The contest is similar to eating hot dogs but they are giving 60 seconds and a 5 gram snuff container. Whoever consumes the most and has the cleanest nose wins! Fantastic! You can see more pictures from this competition here.

…Christmas time traditions include singing with your family around a Charlie Brown tree.
Charlie brown trees are really the only ones they have. There are no full trees like we have in the US which was a GIANT punch in the throat when I had my first Christmas here. Almost shipped myself back home!

This was the shock shown round the world…

And Christmas morning. Did as best as I could decorating that thing!

I can’t speak for all German families but for Toblerone’s they gather at his Omi’s house and light the candles that are placed around the tree (charlie brown tree is good for this massive fire hazzard) and sing German Christmas songs. It’s actually really sweet and the tradition itself brings you the true spirit of the holidays: Family. I love my family’s traditions as well but they are just totally different. Let’s not forget that they only get one or two small presents from their parents. Like a bottle of whiskey and maybe some money. Leaving out the excitement of gifts, it brings you back to the simplest of times. Spirit of family and love. It’s a beautiful thing! But I’m not going to lie…I LOVE presents on Christmas morning!!

…Don’t sit around the tv in silence.
Only when you’re home with your spouse do you do this in German culture that I have seen. For example, when we go over to visit anyone we sit around a table, tv is off, and we talk for hours. Eat, drink, and be conversationalists. I actually like the most when we go to Toblerone’s parents house and we have dinner and then we move to the living room and his Dad is on wine duty. He’s always going down to the basement to get more beers or bottles of wine. The thing that is the most amazing is the actual ability to keep the conversation going. Toblerone talks to his parents every night usually just to check in and see how they are doing. So, when we go for dinner on the weekends sometimes, what is there to talk about?! How do they find so much to say? It’s like magic. But I love it.

…Wearing house shoes is a must.
Every house I’ve been in people have house shoes to wear. German houses are different in general, there are doors to every room rather than open doorways. This is to keep it warm in each room that you have the fire place on or the radiator on. Where in the US we have large rooms with no doors and the whole house is heated. Our house here has floor heating in the living room so we put that on and shut the doors and let the fire place do its thing. It stays nice and cozy warm where we are for the majority of the time. But the rest of the house can be cold or at least the floors are. German houses don’t have carpet flooring. It’s usually only tile or linoleum from all the houses I’ve been in. So, everyone wears socks and puts on their cute little house shoes. Not to mention, most homes have extra “guest slippers” for visitors. We have them too!

…Deodorant comes in a spray or roll-on form.
Ok, I’m a solid deodorant kind of gal and there is literally sometimes only one option at the stores for that. People love the spray on stuff which I HATE! I mean, where am I living?!?! People…let’s get some options going. So it’s always funny for me when I go home and buy deodorant, I stand there for hours going through all my options and all the different smells. Then here in Germany, I literally walk down the aisle, put my arm out, and grab the only option there is. It’s the same smell as all the others: Powder or whatever it is. Bleh. Not ok.
I think I may be living in a 3rd world country. (This just screams: First world problems..yikes!) And the other worst part, you’re paying an arm and a leg for half the size. Like, hello people…I have a routine. I put deodorant on twice a day. That’s two armpits, 5 strokes each, twice a day. I go through this stuff like mad. I’d say I buy a new one every two weeks whereas in the US it was maybe every month and a half to two months. Europe is expensive because they try to live like they are the size of ants.

Until next time, Readers!!! xoxoxoxo

I Joined A Nudist Colony and Didn’t Know It

Toblerone and I recently signed up for a new gym which is totally awesome. Every kind of class you can think of (currently sore from BodyPump), squash, and machines galore. I love it there and I think Toblerone found his new hobby too! Of course it comes complete with a sauna so that’s why he really loves it. And then…there is the women’s locker room. Full body nudity is gratuitously displayed.

This isn’t a newsflash since I’ve talked about this before, the whole nudity thing here is beyond what I can explain. Last night I think I went into a state of shock from being violated by a 250lbs (or more) ass looking me straight in the face as I tried to tie my shoe.  My head was bobbing from side to side trying to avoid being another casualty in the fight against body weapons.

So here’s the situation that I just can’t grasp and I know this is a cultural thing. For example, there were two girls just chatting away about Christmas and shopping, the usual chatter in a women’s locker room I would suppose but then there they went…both naked and continuing talking about what not and heading towards the communal showers together. Now, I have lots of close friends…and some of them I could handle being naked in front of, however, with a room full of strangers around us…I think not.

In the US, we all know the men’s locker room looks similar to this situation. The women’s locker room was always a bit nicer and more reserved because we are ladies and classy.  In the US we even have changing rooms which I used often. In this locker room here, there are no changing rooms at all. No individual stalls for you to get dressed or undressed in privacy. I could technically use the bathroom but that’s just gross and made for an ant.

Will I ever get over seeing nakedness? Probably not. Walking in and seeing a 75 year old woman standing there naked then bending every which way to get her things gathered is NOT a pleasant sight. Just sayin. The floor has never looked so good.

This is where the confusion comes in though. The Germans are very reserved people. You don’t see them strutting there stuff in mini skirts or low cut tops. They don’t sit around and talk about inappropriate things (like I do..lol) or boast about their sex life. It’s simply just not talked about.

The Americans, however are crude and much more relaxed about everything. We talk until we turn blue about things that are inappropriate but yet, we can’t just get naked. We’re much to reserved in that area. What is that about? I will definitely NOT partake in the Sauna experience at this gym. Co-ed nakedness is too much like a nudist colony for me! Good lord people! I did not sign up for this! I am not paying 50 Euro a month to see that! That’s what strip clubs are for!

The actual communal shower at the gym

Either way, I don’t judge them for doing what they do…it just makes me WAY uncomfortable and my working out experience has now been changed forever!The images….omg…they.will.never.leave.my.head!!! Now I’m really noticing how I was raised and the difference of how other countries raise their children.

In other news, my family will be here in 13 days and I could really use some American time over here! 🙂 NO NUDISTS ALLOWED! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook!!!

Until next time, Readers! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo