Happy holidays from Wunderbarland

I must apologize as my holiday greetings are a bit belated! I had a very busy few days between returning from Spain and prepping for Christmas! Regardless, I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas, or frohe Weihnachten as they say in Deutschland.

My first Christmas in Germany was lovely. In the days leading up to Christmas, I was beginning to feel quite anxious and sad about spending Christmas away from my family for the first time. However when Christmas eve finally rolled around I found I was quite relaxed and felt happy to be spending the holidays with my boyfriend and his family. I certainly missed my family and all of the traditions I have grown so accustomed to - stockings, Terry's chocolate oranges, waffles with strawberries for breakfast, turkey and potatoes romanof for dinner - but I was happy to adopt a few new traditions into my Christmas routine. Especially duck. Duck is always a good thing.

Here's one thing I do not understand about Christmas in Germany, all the presents are opened on Christmas Eve. I realize this is a pretty common tradition but here's where I take issue: if I was a little kid, I would throw a great big fit if I had to wait all day to open my presents. Since I'm 20 now, I'm pretty mature so I only had a small midday tantrum - kidding, kind of... There was a fair bit of whining going on. Anyways I held it together and waited until after dinner to open my prezzies but I don't plan on making a habit of this presents on Christmas Eve business. I'll stick to tearing open gifts at 7 AM before I've even brushed my teeth thank you very much!

Since Christmas, I have developed a cold which is quite awful so things have been pretty low key. I am in the best of hands though! Yesterday, Max's mom made me home made chicken noodle soup! And I have been loading up on tea, apple juice, and various medicines that could be tic tacs for all I know as the labels are all in German. Oh well, I am actually feeling a bit better today and plan to rest for the remainder of the week in hopes my cold will retreat by New Years Eve. Luckily for me, Max bought himself a projector for Christmas and it has been great to watch movies on while I'm sniffling away. When I am sick I always want to watch movies I have already seen about a hundred times and know that I love (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Lost in Translation, and The Devil Wears Prada to be more specific), however Max does not share my enjoyment of watching the same ten movies over and over again so I have seen a few new ones this week. I will now share my favourites with you! Because there are few things nicer than curling up on your couch with hot chocolate and popcorn to watch a good film while it's snowing away outside.

So here are a few of my favourite films I've watched this week. Ahem...

1. Black Swan: This movie is spectacular, it is a dark and sometimes frightening story of a ballerina who is losing her mind. When this movie ended I almost cried because I wished it would go on for another two hours. I believe it is in theatres right now so go and see this movie!

2. Mary and Max: An animated film about Mary, a young girl in Australia who becomes pen pals with Max, a 44 year old man in New York. Based on a true story, quite sad at times but overall a lovely film.

3. Annie Hall: I am so glad to have finally seen this film. It's very much a Woody Allen movie so if you don't like him you won't enjoy but I happen to be a fan and found this movie delightful! I also adored the styling of Diane Keaton's character Annie and am thinking of buying a hat.

4. Somewhere: The new film by Sofia Coppola about a depressed movie star spending a week with his eleven year old daughter. Quite slow but I really enjoyed it. It's a nice, quiet film - good movie to watch if you are feeling blue.

Well look at me go I'm like a regular movie critic aren't I. Perhaps I will make this a weekly feature on my blog or something... Now that I think about it, you probably will be hearing a lot more about movies lately as Oscar season is fast approaching and I tend to get really into the Oscars (However I have tentative plans to boycott if Inception gets a best picture nom - am I the only one who thought that movie was garbage!?). Anyways, it's actually due to my mother and her love of the Oscars, so if I start writing full on movie reviews on here in a months time just take it up with her.

Keep an eye out for my next post where I will list the reasons why Inception sucked! I'm only joking of course I will try and keep things travel-y as planned but it is always nice to watch movies over the holidays.

Anyways it appears I have gotten way off topic and can't really remember what I had planned for this post to be about. Oh yes, Christmas. Well I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and are gearing up for an even better New Years!

This post seems rather text heavy so here is a photo of some Christmas goodies I took in Spain. Tschüss!

Also sorry the comments weren't working. I have switched the settings around a little bit so you should be able to post your loving and kind remarks now! If not, take it up with Google.