Scud Missiles, Fireworks and Exploded Bread

It was sad to watch J. fly off, back to a life in the United States that I was slowly stepping away from. Still, I was looking forward to spending my first Christmas with Running Man (RM) in Goce. 


I usually go all out for Christmas. Before building my big new house in the States, I dreamed of having enough storage space to take down all of my usual decor and replace it with Christmas things. Once I had that house, that's exactly what I did. Artwork, knick-knacks, kitchen and bathroom linens -- everything changed into holiday magic. I had no idea how I was going to bring that spirit into a home where I had virtually none of my personal belongings, but I would try. After all, Christmas is about the spirit of the birth of Christ and not about the trimmings.


I did have a few new things that I would use to decorate a tree. My nieces had given me a Santa ornament cleverly made with a fishing bobber, cotton and felt.One of my best friends had given me a little wooden statue of a snowman holding an American flag. And during my Christmas Market tour, I had purchased several ornaments. Most of them I would give away as gifts, but until it was time to do that, I would use them. My major purchase had been a string of beautiful lights I saw in a department store in Salzburg. I would hang them up somewhere, even if we didn't have a tree.


The day before Christmas, RM came through the door with a piece of a pine tree, beaming as he presented it to me. I say "piece of a pine tree" because that's precisely what it was. A piece. A chunk. A portion I could liken only to Charlie Brown's Christmas tree but with a few more needles. But we lost no time affixing the poor, little misshapen thing into a base made from scraps of wood, covering that base with a towel and setting it up on one of the small tables that had come with the house. I was excited about getting out my new string of lights that were at least three times longer than needed for the Charlie Brown tree.  We wrapped them around and around, then used the rest to run up the wall, over the doorway and back down to an electrical outlet on the other side. It wouldn't win any decorating contests, but I loved seeing the twinkling lights filling the middle room with star-like magic.


Our friends, Edbin and Tatijana, had given us a fresh floral arrangement with roses, holly and a huge red bow. Although the roses were short-lived, I tucked the holly branches into some of the gaping holes between the branches and used the bow and a little crystal angle I had bought in Italy to fashion a tree-topper. I first hung the Santa bobber on the tree, then found a place where the snowman could stand. Then, RM and I carefully unwrapped all of the Christmas Market treasures and hung them on our tiny tree. The spirit of Christmas had found me these thousands of miles from home in Goce.

Our plan had been to spend the holidays quietly and simply. As usual, money was tight. We exchanged a couple of small gifts, and gave a few I had brought back from the States to RM's family. Our financial issues were so dire that I didn't even attempt to find and buy the chocolate and nuts and other ingredients I normally spent hundreds of dollars on for my Christmas baking. That would have to wait until next year. Christmas Eve was what it should be. Tranquil, with a cozy dinner and a moonlit walk to midnight Mass in the village.


On the evening of December 29, just as RM and I sat down to our dinner, his phone rang. It was a voice from his Christmas past; RM's best friend from his high school days at the British boarding school run by the Jesuits in Malta. 


"I can't believe it," RM said with a smile after hanging up. "That was Zoran. He and his wife want to come here for a few days."


"When?" I asked.


"New Year's Eve," RM said.


"What? The day after tomorrow?" I gasped at the thought, my mind filling with the list of everything we'd have to do to get ready in less than 48 hours. When he said, "for a few days, I didn't think he meant, "in a few days." Still, we would welcome one of RM's dearest friends, no matter what.


"Where will we put them? I don't think they'll fit in J.'s little bed," I grinned.


Despite the fact that I'd never met him, I knew that Zoran was a big guy -- height, girth and personality. RM had actually taken J. to Zoran's wedding on Korcula Island last year while they were touring Slovenia and Croatia. I had heard about the larger-than-life Zoran and his petite young wife, Nena, and seen photos of the happy event. I'd also seen photos of him with RM's three kids who were in awe and in love with the larger-than-life Zoran who had taken them sailing on his boat near Korcula during a summer holiday a few years ago.


"Of course not," RM said. "I'll go down to Mance in the morning to talk to the people who advertise rooms." 


"I'm going to have to think about food and groceries and, of course, we'll have to get some wine. And what about our chairs?" I asked with ever-widening eyes. "Will any of these little wooden chairs even hold Zoran?"


RM laughed. 


"Well, I think the one at the desk is the strongest one. We'll make sure that's the one he sits on and even at that, I won't promise him that he won't end up on the floor," he chuckled.


I found it rather amusing that I had to worry about not having a chair sufficiently sturdy to handle a guest. Gosh. Being poor was hell, not to mention dangerous for our visitors.


RM set off the next morning to find a room and I started cleaning. Having such a small house with only a few pieces of furniture and a smattering of tchotchkes and books has its advantages. It used to take me two days to clean my house in the States. This one took only a couple of hours, now that RM and I had done all of the deep cleaning.


That afternoon, we scraped together every Euro we could find and I checked my credit card balance. Grocery shopping would run us down to the wire and I prayed clients would pay on time in January to cover all of the bills that were due before the middle of the month. Well, I'd worry about that another day. After all, Zoran was coming.


RM was ecstatic about seeing his old friend again. He hadn't been able to spend much time with him at the wedding and he really wanted to catch up. He started digging through the boxes we'd brought back from France, looking for photos from his Malta years. He found a few and for the first time, I saw RM as a high school kid, average height, wiry, long blond hair. I knew I would have found him incredibly cute had we met then, just as I had found him handsome all these years later.


There were also photos of Zoran who was the opposite of RM. He was very tall, wore big glasses and had an afro-like head of dark, curly hair. Based on the stories RM had told me, what they shared was a sense of curiosity equal only to their sense of mischief. And they all had nicknames for each other. Zoran called RM "Fritz" because he looked like a little blond German. There was a friend from Pakistan they called, rather unimaginatively, "Paki." And Zoran? They called him "Lipsy," due to his rather pronounced lips he had undoubtedly gotten from his part-Montenegrin lineage. Boys will be boys.


I was excited about meeting Zoran and Nena. After all, Zoran had done what I had originally wanted to do when I headed off to college; he'd been a foreign correspondent. I had wanted to work for the print media, but Zoran had been in television and had reported from places like the first Desert Storm. Images of Wolf Blitzer reporting from Iraq ran through my mind. And who could forget Arthur Kent, the "Scud Stud," dodging to and fro, microphone in hand, as missiles exploded around him? Zoran had been reporting from there as well.


Nena, who now worked for the Serbian government in Belgrade, had met Zoran while working as a reporter at the television station he had started and managed in Serbia after the dissolution of the Yugoslav Republic. Fortunately for me, Zoran and Nena spoke English. That would certainly make their visit more enjoyable for me and for RM, who wouldn't have to constantly translate for me.


RM waited anxiously. Zoran was supposed to call when he reached Vipava so RM could give him directions and meet him down in Mance. They could drop off their luggage and ride up to Goce with RM. When the call finally came, RM dashed out the door and I was left alone to finish prepping our New Year's Eve meal. We'd busted out the raclette grill we'd bought in Spain and splurged on this pungent cheese that smelled lousy but tasted great, melted on potatoes, grilled onions and proscuito. I guess it's the French version of potato skins. All I cared about was that it was easy to place a large platter of fixins' on each end of the table, put the grill in the center, and let everyone customize his or her own fare. We'd bought liters and liters of red and white wine and even a bottle of champagne to toast the big event. All we needed now were our special guests.


When I heard voices at the gate, I walked out of the house to greet Zoran and Nena. As they emerged from the darkness an into the light radiating from the front door, RM and Nena looked small next to the man the lanky, curly-haired kid in the photos had become. He was a big guy who had more or less grown into his lips. But immediately, it was his huge personality I liked.


"You must be Michelle," he said, his voice booming and resonant with a surprisingly strong British accent. Funny. I had assumed he would sound like RM when he spoke English. Instead, he sounded like a member of the British Parliament.


"Yes, I am, and welcome to Goce," I replied with a smile. 


Zoran, Nena and I did the customary kiss-the-air-next-to-one-cheek-and-then-the-other greeting, and we walked into the house.


After the two-minute tour, we sat down, RM directing Zoran to his designated chair, to eat and enjoy some local wine while RM and I kept the fire in the old stove burning.


Instantly, I discovered that Nena and I wouldn't get to talk much. Of course, I knew that RM was a talker; perhaps because of his profession as a tour guide. But Zoran made RM look like a quiet guy. Not only could he talk a lot about a lot of things, he could make a story last for hours. For most of the evening, the guys talked about their school days -- teachers, friends and foes. For hours the wine flowed as did what has become my favorite "Zoran story," which took Zoran more than 45 minutes to tell from start to finish. It wasn't that the story itself was so long, but despite the number and length of interruptions during his telling of it, he continued to string us along with his tale. 


It seems that Zoran wanted to be a good athlete, like RM, but never really had that gene. Nonetheless, he kept trying one sport after another to see if he could do marginally well at any of them. At last, he found one. Cricket. Now, all I know about cricket is that it's quasi-baseball-like and played with a ball and a bat that looks like a 1" x 4" piece of lumber. Apparently, Zoran was good enough at the sport to start getting some significant playing time which, of course, left some other boys on the bench.


"So one morning," Zoran spoke with his sharp British accent, "Paki approached me, looking quite nervous and extremely serious," he continued.



"Zorrran," Zoran said with a clipped Pakistani accent, rolling his "r"s and speaking in the stereotypical rhythm of someone from Pakistan. "Zorrran. Weee must talk."


"Okay. Later," Zoran replied to Paki, reverting back to his own voice.


"No, Zorrran. Wee must talk now!" Zoran imitated his school chum again. "You haave beeeeen playing crrreeekeet."


"Yes," Zoran replied as Zoran. "I like cricket and I'm not too bad at it."


"Daht ees dee prrrooblem. Crrreeekeet ees zee only shporrrt wee subconteeeneentals arrrrr goood aht. You haave udder shporrrts you yurrropeeeons kahn plaaay. Beisball, bahsketball. Kahnt you leeev crrreeekeeet for us subconteeeneentals!"


Of course, RM, Nena and I were laughing so hard that we had tears running from our eyes. Zoran's story might have been funny on its own, but his accents and expressions made it absolutely hilarious. It seems that Zoran did quit playing cricket and had actually spoken to Paki a few years ago. Apparently, his heart was big as well.


As we were recovering from our laughter, Nena, beautiful, petite and lively, asked RM a question in her Serbian-accented English.


"Why did you call Zoran, 'Lipsy'?" she asked with complete and utter innocence.


The other three of us burst into laughter again.


"Darling," Zoran drawled a bit as he took her hand. "Perhaps it would have something to do with the size of my lips," he said, looking at his wife with an adoring smile then pursing his lips at her in a feigned kiss.


Nena cocked her head to the side slightly for instant, looking at him, then her face and eyes lit up with the brightness of understanding.


"Oh, my Lipsy!" she said, getting up to kiss him as RM and I laughed. Despite the fact that Zoran was seated and she was standing, she barely had to lean to plant a kiss on his famous lips and giggle. For the rest of their visit and probably for the rest of their lives, Nena would adoringly call her husband, "Lipsy."


At midnight, RM popped the cork on the champagne and the four of us, old friends and new, toasted to a healthy, happy new year. We all shared a couple of fat cigars Zoran had brought with him and talked until the wee hours of the morning before RM took them back down the hill to their room.


We didn't hear from them until about noon the next day. We drove down to fetch them, then further down to Vipava to pick up some provisions at the grocery store. We spent the afternoon and early evening seeing the house interior and exterior in the daylight, touring Goce, eating, talking and, of course, enjoying more local wine. Zoran, whose native tongue is Serbo-Croat, was fascinated by the "Gocan" dialect, so he and RM took to the streets in the early evening to meet some of the neighbors. Nena and I stayed behind and without the two talkers in the room, found we had much in common, despite our differences of native language, religion and cultural heritage. She gave me one of her business cards, writing her personal email and surface mail addresses on the back. Her card was in both English and Serbian in the Cyrillic alphabet. I discovered her first name is actually "Sneznena" which, when translated into English is charmingly "Snow White." We visited until the guys returned, bursting through the door and telling us to put on our coats and come with them. Goce was having a fireworks show to celebrate the new year.


We walked through winding streets and down a gravel path to join several other Village People who had gathered in their cars and along a fence to watch the spectacle. Some of them smiled and greeted me with the "Novo leto" I had learned was the customary "Happy New Year" greeting. Zoran snapped photos with his camera with the long telephoto lens, another cigar stuck between his teeth. I heard "Americanka" a couple of times and smiled, knowing they were talking about me, not with malice but out of curiosity. It was the first time I had seen some of these villagers. We all stood there -- Zoran, Nena and I the foreigners in the midst of the village -- and listened to the boom, rumble and zzzz of the fireworks exploding above this ancient place.


"Remind you of scud missiles over Iraq?" I asked Zoran.


"No," he said with a wry smile. "It's warmer here."


The next day, Zoran and Nena wanted to visit Postojna to tour one of Europe's most magnificent network of caves. It was an easy 20-minute drive to the caves. We bought our tickets and decided we had time for coffee before our tour. We walked into a little cafe there that served drinks, sandwiches and sausages (of course) from behind a counter. It was there that I saw, for the first time, the warm, spinning, stainless steel rod upon which the server impaled a baguette-looking loaf of bread, then inserted into it any one of a variety of sausages.


"Do you call that a hot dog here?" I asked RM while continuing to watch this alien food-preparation process. "You actually put a hole down through the bread then shove the sausage into it?" I continued.


"What we do is nothing like you do in the States," RM replied with more than a hint of superiority and disdain in his voice." "We don't put hot dogs in exploded bread," he said.


"Exploded bread? What are you talking about?" I asked while chuckling at his choice of words.


"You know, that bread that is just running away from the sausage," RM said.


"The bread is 'running away'?" I was laughing now. "It might be exploded bread, but at least it's a heckuvalot easier to load up that dog with mustard, onion, pickle relish and sauerkraut that way!"


RM just shook his head and asked me to make up my mind. I ordered an espresso. 


Being with a group of multilingual people, I noticed all of the words used for "cave." The caves attract an international crowd so signage appeared in several languages besides English. In Slovene, it's "jama," pronounced like "yah-mah." In Italian, "grotto." Any my favorite, the always-efficient, tell-it-like-it-is German, "hohle." Yep. Like "hole."


This was the second time I had visited the caves and found them just as fascinating as the first time. The caverns of stalagmites and stalagtites shaped like gnomes and angels and churches and city buildings, the bridge built by the Russian prisoners of World War I, the huge cavern where full orchestras perform, taking advantage of phenomenal natural acoustics, and the aquarium that holds another phenomenon -- the "human fish" that lives in complete darkness without any obvious source of food for hundreds of years. Postojna Caves are really remarkable. And like so many other sites, so close to this place I have chosen to live.


Postojna was also having its own little Christmas Market. And while the shopping wasn't an attraction for me now, the gluwhein, or kuhano vino as it's called here, was just what we all needed when we emerged from the cave. We walked back to the little mall of shops and restaurants tucked beneath the massive hotel, built during the Yugoslav years in the boring, blocky and totally unremarkable Socialist architectural style, and now sadly sitting largely empty and deteriorating. 


We shared warm mugs of the mulled wine before heading back to Goce for a last evening meal together. Zoran and Nena would be leaving tomorrow to take a scenic route back to Belgrade. Three days together and I felt as if I'd know them for years. As for RM, he felt the joy and peace of reconnecting with his dear friend. As much as he missed his kids in France, he had never felt a connection to that country. Coming back to Slovenia had allowed him to start reconnecting with family and friends, like Zoran, while I was missing my family and friends in a bittersweet way. Together, though, we were making new friends and pulling our separate lives closer to each other, despite our many differences. 


Maybe it was better to just drill a hole down the center of the bread rather than blow it apart, leaving only one side delicately hinged in a valiant effort to hold the sausage in place. 


"Nah," I thought. "It's no good without all of the stuff you put on the dog. I'll take my bread exploded and running away."

Homeward Bound

The Christmas Market in Traunstein was our second and last stop in Germany. Running Man (RM) had discovered this quaint little Bavarian village last summer on his trip from Slovenia back to France. It was a chance discovery; his car had broken down at the German-Austrian border and the nearest garage and hotel was in Traunstein. He was pleasantly stuck there for three days while his car was repaired and thought it was one place J. and I should see.


Traunstein is a well-preserved traditional Bavarian village with lovely little shops in the center, lining cobbled streets. Its biggest claim to fame is that the Pope attended seminary there before leaving for the university in Munich. The weather was damp but warm as we wandered from booth to booth at our second Christmas Market on our holiday tour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traunstein

It didn't take us long to make our way to every booth at this market, including those serving gluwhein, of course. But J. and I also went into several of the regular shops, amazed by the fact that such a small village could have so many busy shops filled with beautiful clothing, home decor, dishes, crystal, jewelry and more. Mainstreet still thrives here. And as dusk started to fall, we had to stop for one last steaming mug of gluwhein and listen to the community ompah-pah band playing on a tiny wooden stage.

We weren't spending the night in Traunstein. RM had booked us into an inn near Lake Chiemsee a few kilometers away. When we awoke the next morning, snow blanketed the countryside, making it feel more like the Christmas season and putting us in the mood for more markets.

Today, we were headed for the alpine city of Mozart and The Sound of Music, Salzburg. From Lake Chiemsee, we had less than 20 miles to drive to Salzburg, just beyond the Austrian border. After a few rounds of singing "Eidelweiss," we were there, searching for our hotel in the city. RM had found one next to the year-round outdoor market and a few blocks from one of the bridges over the Salzach River, leading to the city center.

J. and I knew a bigger city meant a bigger Christmas Market and more booths. We couldn't wait to get going, so we checked into the hotel and dressed up for the cold. Alpine Salzburg was frigid and damp so we had to bring out our heaviest artillery. For me, that included a hat that tied around my chin and covered my ears. I'd bought it years ago when I'd been sent to Chicago for three months to work at my direct marketing agency's satellite office there. RM made a little fun of me when I put it on. J. told me to put some sort of pin on it to make it look better, and since I had brought some of my jewelry along on this trip to Sloevenia, I found a large vintage rhinestone brooch that I attached to it. As for J., she had a pointy suede hat lined with sheepskin. No wonder she didn't laugh too hard at my hat. We didn't care, as long as we were warm while trekking through Salzburg.

We  set off down the busy street, first wandering through the farmer's market filled with fresh produce, meat, fish, even flowers. Suddenly, we all spied a booth filled with vegetables, including strange, large, pointed cabbages that stood like statues on the in the bins. We burst out laughing. It was a photo opp we couldn't pass up, and other people in the market couldn't help but at least smile.

 The cabbage patch doll and I posed for one more picture, hats and all, before we crossed the bridge to the beautiful city center.

Salzburg's market was large and festive. We wandered through booths set up in courtyards and plazas, decked out with white lights and filled with music, food and, yes, gluwhein. We spent most of that day and all of the next day exploring the city center and finding a lot of treasures to buy -- things we hadn't seen at the other two markets. And as we'd done in Traunstein, J. and I wandered into some of the regular shops, drawn in by window displays of Christmas lights and decorations, Austrian crystal and magnificent traditional Bavarian clothing.

It wasn't cheap to dress in these traditional clothes. In fact, they were incredibly expensive. But since J. and I neither one thought we would ever have the appropriate opportunity to wear such an outfit, we were content with just admiring them.

RM had to do some rearranging in the car after our Salzburg stop. J. and I had accumulated several bags by now and we'd sort them out once we were back in Slovenia. We had two more stops to make, in Villach and Klagenfurt, Austria, just before we would cross the border into Slovenia. The last two markets were small but nice; however, by this time, we were seeing more of the same stuff for sale and I was just about gluwheined out. It was time to go home.

As we drove down through the alps, headed toward Goce, I became excited about being back home but a little nervous about our first house guest. The house had sat empty for days in the cold with no fire in the smoking stove and no electric heaters on. Nonetheless, I couldn't wait to show it off to J. 

We stopped for groceries in Vipava before heading up to the village. It was dark when we arrived. I can't say that J. was impressed with the place, but once she'd warmed up next to the stove, which tended to belch smoke from time to time, she started to settle in to the middle room. RM had purchased a new twin bed while I was gone and had screwed wooden planks to the two walls around the bed to help warm up the cold stucco. That's where J. would sleep. The house warmed up, although RM kept having to replace fuses in the ancient box that kept blowing under the weight of having so many electrical appliances running at the same time.

What I didn't know was that J.'s expectations for the house were incredibly low. Of course, I'd been honest with her, telling her that other than cleaning it up, we hadn't done much to it. Her comment was straight and to the point: "It isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it's kind of cozy."

We took a day to drive to Trieste. J. had been there before but we wanted to see if they had a Christmas Market. We never found one, but loved spending time in all of the shops in the city center. In fact, J. bought a beautiful and trendy red coat, her favorite color. We walked by it, displayed in the window of a small shop, a couple of times before my urging sent her through the door to try it on. Sold. I only wondered how she was going to get home with the lovely traditional Bavarian hat she'd purchased in Munich,a new coat and all of the Christmas Market treasures she'd bought along the way. Oh, and there were the dozen packages of gluwhein mix we'd discovered in Slovenia where it's called "kuhano vino." Just pour it into simmering wine, stir and enjoy! 

We celebrated J.'s birthday with dinner at home as she worked to pack and repack, somehow making everything fit except for a stainless steel covered pan she'd bought in Slovenia. I wasn't surprised. J.'s a consummate traveler and extremely organized. As for the pan, I'd bring that back with me on my next trip. 

It was time to leave for Venice. We parked the car in a garage and boarded the Tronchetto for the water ride into Venice. It was cold and gray and damp. And while we were shivering in St. Mark's Square, huge white flakes started to fall. It rarely snows in Venice. We were witnessing a bit of a miracle. It was my first time in the city built on stilts of Roman pine trees and I was in awe. Venice was magic under the snow.

I would have to come back when the weather was warmer to explore Venice. And since I now lived less than an hour away from it, that wouldn't be difficult.

We spent the night in a B&B outside Venice, near the airport. J.'s flight was early so we were up before dawn to end an incredible trip and resume our normal lives. I wondered what was normal for me now, living in this tiny Slovenian village so far away from Missouri. Perhaps "normal" would be synonymous with "adventure" for me from now, on. Everything, it seemed, was new.

Christkindlmarkt and Chukulumochakulum: Part Zwei

The Marienplatz in the center of Munich was filled with festive sights, sounds and smells. We stopped at the first gluhwein booth we spotted. After our rather unsettled start with Mrs. Chukulumochakulum, we were all three ready for a drink -- and definitely not Turkish coffee.


Gluhwein is a warm, spiced wine, usually red. At the Christmas Markets in Germany and Austria, you would buy a steaming mug of it, paying a deposit on the mug itself. If you return the mug, you get back your deposit. If you don't, you take it as a souvenir. J., RM and I cradled our warm mugs between our gloved hands and talked about our strategy. By the time we had arrived at the Marienplatz, it was late in the afternoon. We had all day tomorrow to explore the market so for now, we'd scout it out to get our bearings; like a reconnaissance mission before an attack. 

The Christmas Markets in Europe aren't filled with the commerciality of American shopping malls. Their lack of that is precisely their charm. "Christkindlmarkt," in German, literally translates to "Christ child market." They're held outside, despite frigid temperatures, wind, rain or snow. Rows and rows of little huts -- carnival booth-like structures but more rustic -- fill plazas and streets. From them, vendors display and sell their wares. Instead of inflatable santas, Barbie dolls and this year's hottest video game, people sell nativity figurines, blown-glass ornaments and small, original paintings of winter scenes. Sure, you occasionally see a Santa cap for sale, or maybe something Hello Kitty, but wooden toys, handmade pottery and hand-knitted hats and scarves are much more common. And everywhere you smell food -- bratwurst, ginger cookies, fresh bread and, of course, gluhwein.

The Marienplatz was filled with the sound of traditional Christmas carols, sometimes recordings blown through loudspeakers, but more often performed by a steady stream of local choirs and bands. Their melodies mingled with the sounds of countless languages and abundant laughter. The result was much more magic than a mall. While the whole idea of the market was still retail, the spirit of it all seemed so much more pure, with far more emphasis on the religious -- the "true" meaning of Christmas.


Since we had RM with us, J. and I had a crash course in German so we would know how to ask how much something cost, numbers we could barter with and, of course, how to say "please," "thank you," and "I'm just looking," even though most of the vendors could speak at least a little English And when the gray day grew dark and twinkling  white lights, strung across the plaza illuminated the sky, the Marienplatz was absolute magic.

We took a few hours and a few mugs of gluhwein to get the lay of the land. Then, we headed back on the bus those few blocks to our apartment to get ready for dinner. Our plan was to find a neighborhood restaurant. So after a brief stop to freshen up, we headed down the street on foot, going in the opposite direction of the Marienplatz. After about three blocks, we found a little Italian place with a decent wine selection and a moderately priced menu. The three of us and one person sitting at the small bar were the only customers. Not surprising since we were far off the beaten path of the capacity-filled hotels in the city center. After a brief exchange in German with the proprietor, RM said we could all speak English. Good news after two long, tiring days of travel for J. and me. Even better news for RM who could relax and not spend his evening translating.


Bellies full, we headed back, stopping at a little neighborhood store to buy a bottle of wine and a plate of fresh-baked cookies. At the apartment, we sipped glasses of wine and sampled some of the cookie assortment, talking as close friends do. I had gone back to the bedroom to put on a pair of sweatpants when I heard another voice in the kitchen. I walked in to find Mrs. Chukulumochakulum (Mrs. C.) talking to RM and J. who both looked a bit stunned and not at all pleased. Mrs. C. was smiling and kept asking if everything was okay as she started walking back down the stairs that ran from the hallway into the lingerie laundry below. Her tone changed as RM said something to her in German, rather sternly, following her down the stairs and shutting the door behind her.


"I told her she should not just walk in here like that," RM said, shaking his head. 


"I can't believe she did," J. said. "We could have been in the middle of doing who knows what here which would be none of her business!"


"She just walked up here?" I asked. 


"Yes!" RM and J. said together, emphatically.


I'd assumed that she'd knocked on the door and my roommates had invited her in. Apparently, that wasn't the case. She'd just walked in and up the stairs like she owned the place. Well, perhaps she did, but when you're renting it out to make a few bucks, you relinquish that privilege. We all agreed that her intrusive appearance was strange and rather disconcerting.


At around 4 a.m., I was awakened by shouting and a muffled noise that sounded like someone hitting something. It took me a few seconds in my groggy state to remember where I was and to recall the fact that I don't understand German. The man upstairs (and I'm not referring to God) was yelling, pleading and hitting and scraping something across the floor. He'd awakened all three of us. 


"Is he hitting someone?" I asked RM. "Should we call the police?"


Even as that question left my lips, I started thinking about the bureaucratic mess that would make this first night of our Christmas Market tour. Still, I wasn't going to let some guy assault someone else.


RM lifted an ear toward the ceiling above, straining to hear what the man was saying. After a few seconds, he drew back and shook his head.


"No need," RM said. "He's yelling at a dog or cat or something that has shat upon the floor."


We were all relieved but a little distressed nonetheless. J. and I are both big pet lovers, and we heard nothing more from the man or the pet -- whatever it was. Our first night in Munich had gone from strange to stranger. 


Despite our jet lag and the disturbance in the wee hours of the morning, we were up early, taking our turns in the shower and girding up to spend an entire day at the Marienplatz. J. and I had some serious shopping to do. We discussed Mrs. C.'s Turkish invasion over our coffee, tea and leftover cookies and decided our money might be safer with us than left here in our luggage. We headed out the door to a crisp day, caught our bus and took the short ride to the plaza, already bustling with people. At first, we stuck fairly close together, usually maintaining sight of each other while straying from booth to booth on our own. J. and I had seen a few interesting things the night before. But J., the experienced international consumer, had warned me that we should wait until today to decide what we wanted to buy. After all, this was only our first Christmas Market out of at least five.


At noon, the Rathaus glockenspiel started to peal. Everyone stopped and turned to watch the spectacle. High above the plaza, atop the Munich Town Hall, figures depicting Duke Wilhelm and  his bride, Lorraine, emerged from the tower to hold court above knights jousting on their rearing steeds, rotating slowly beneath them. One level below the knights, the coopers appeared. It's said that the coopers danced in the streets of Munich to raise the spirits of the people during the plague. The coopers whirled and twirled and spun around and around in various states of "jig". For at least 10 minutes, the people on the Marienplatz were quiet, entranced by the sight, until three tiny gold birds at the very top of the glockenspiel chirped to signal the end, rendering the mechanical wonder silent again. Just another element of Bavarian magic.


We grabbed bratwurst and beer for lunch at one of the booths before setting a time and place to meet, then going our separate ways to shop. By now, we had sampled most of the gluhwein vendors and all agreed on our favorite, which became a convenient meeting spot. After all, if you arrived early, you sipped on the warm beverage, waiting for your compatriots to gather. We stayed into the evening, ending the day with a mug of gluhwein, treasures in hand, listening to a local band play while a children's choir sang. We took our commemorative Christkindlmarkt mugs with us and headed back to the bus stop.


Back at the apartment, we dropped off our purchases and did a quick sweep of our luggage to see whether or not it had been tampered with. We didn't think so, but figured Mrs. C., could be just really crafty. We set off again for dinner, this time passing the Italian restaurant to the next block, then right a couple of blocks where we found a Vietnamese place. Funny how we were in Germany but other than our brat for lunch, weren't eating German fare. Vietnamese was certainly an interesting choice, but the food was excellent and our server, a young Vietnamese woman who was attending college here, was full of questions about the United States. She was extremely pleased with her tip. As Americans, J. and I are big tippers and RM always chides us for that. In Europe, servers are actually paid at least minimum wage, unlike in the States where they are typically required to make tips to make at least minimum wage. But having guided Americans for years, RM at least understands our mentality, even if he doesn't really agree with it.


We planned to stop at the same little grocery on the way back, but it was closed. RM asked a local for directions to another store and we walked a few more blocks out of our way to find it. Although small, it was much larger than the other one, and J. and I both love to wander up and down the aisles of grocery stores in faraway lands to see what the natives buy. 


Back in the apartment, we wanted to drink our wine and show each other the treasures we'd bought that day. What we didn't want was Mrs. C. just walking in on us again. So we moved some random items at the bottom of the stairs to barricade the door. It opened into the apartment so we could stick enough things there to keep someone from barging right in. They'd have to push their way in.


The second Turkish invasion didn't occur that night. She waited until morning. 


I was just finishing my turn in the shower when I heard the shouting begin. It was Mrs. C., and it didn't take a translator to understand that she was yelling about the barrier behind the door. Her anger did nothing but incite the ire of her three tenants. We'd had enough. RM's attempt to be instructive about our privacy hadn't made a dent in her attitude. 


I opened the door, partially dressed and with wet hair, as RM walked out of the bedroom, yelling back at Mrs. C., in German, as J., emerged from the kitchen, raised voice asking Mrs. C. what she thought she was doing, just walking in here. As Mrs. C. was struggling with the obstruction, the three of us stood at the top of the stairs like soldiers defending the entrance to the fort.


RM walked down the stairs and moved the obstacles just enough for Mrs. C. to shoot through the door. She continued to shout in German, some English with what I'm guessing was a little Turkish thrown in for good measure. I'm also guessing that expletives were involved.


"What you mean, keeping me out?" Mrs. C. yelled. "You no right!" 


The three of us responded at the same time, words tumbling over words, creating a chorus of comments, like, "You have no right to just walk in here when you want," and "What did you expect when you just walk in on us," and "You're the one who's invading our privacy," and "We have a right to keep you out!" "Who do you think you are!"


"You leave!" Mrs. C. shouted, moving up the stairs.


"We are!" we shouted back in unison, each of us walking back to where we'd been and what we'd been doing before she started her break-in.


"You leave now!" she volleyed. I came back out of the bathroom.


"You get out of here now so we can!" I shouted. I might have even stomped by bare foot on the floor for emphasis.


As Mrs. C. turned to walk back down the stairs, the three of us has assembled again on the landing above. She was still stomping and shouting a mixture of languages, but I'm sure said something about not blocking the door again.


As the door slammed behind her, RM, J. and I talked over one other about our amazement and disbelief. We were really angry now that we'd relented and paid Mrs. C. on that first night. It would have been so much nicer to pack up and leave without paying; however, we were thankful we'd paid in cash and hadn't given her a credit or debit card number, that's for certain.


The three of us went back to work. We couldn't get our bags packed, car loaded and out of there fast enough. And that's exactly what we did. We drove out of Munich on a cold, sunny December morning, headed away from the crazy Turkish woman and toward the next stop on our Christmas Marketing tour, Traunstein.


Sometimes, RM uses English a bit differently than J. and I do. Maybe it's because he learned it from the British. Or maybe something just gets lost in translation. But she and I have both corrected him many times for what we perceive as an overuse/misuse of the word, "bizarre." J. and I think that word should be reserved for something or someone truly odd or out of the ordinary. RM tends to use it all the time, like when the car doesn't start the first time and he says, "That's bizarre." Or when he meets someone who says something a bit unusual and says that person, "is bizarre." As we continued toward our next destination, Emily was warming up with a new set of directions and we talked about the events of the past couple of days -- particularly Mrs. C. and neighbor with an errant beast, still shaking our heads in disbelief. 


"Do you know how J. and I are always telling you you aren't using the word, "bizarre," in the right situations?" I asked RM, who was at the helm of our fleeing ship. "Well, now is a wholly appropriate time to use it -- for the situation and that crazy woman," I said as we all three burst into laughter. "Bizarre" was perfect.


What we knew was that we wouldn't let a strange and crazy Turkish woman or the man upstairs ruin our stop in Munich. Instead, we decided they'd just made our experience far more memorable. But most of all, we wondered how the gluhwein would be in Traunstein.

Christkindlmarkt and Chukulumochakulum

All too soon, it was time for me to return to the States. I wasn't ready to leave the house. I had just started to explore it, finding little ancient treasures here and there, left behind by the previous owners. I'm sure they considered everything left behind as trash and much of it was. Running Man (RM) and I started sorting, hauling items to the household trash and recycling dumpsters at the edge of Goce. We were preparing for our very first guest -- our friend who had introduced us just one year before. So much can happen in a single year.

Our friend, J., had always wanted to visit the Christmas Markets in Europe. One morning during my previous stay in the States, we were discussing my travel plans. I wanted to be back to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family but would go back to Slovenia to spend my first Christmas in Goce.

"Sometime, I'm going to go to the Christmas Markets in Germany, J. said. 

She was flipping through one of the university alumni travel brochures she received every couple of weeks. This one featured a river cruise in Germany during Christkindlmarkt.

"Well, there you go," I said gesturing toward the brochure. "You can cruise down the Danube and through the Christmas Markets."

"I'm not interested in a cruise," J. said. "You spend too much time on the boat and not enough time shopping." 

"So, why don't you fly back to Europe with me in December? We'll fly into Munich and have RM meet us there. Then, we'll work our way down to Slovenia, stopping and shopping at Christmas Markets in Germany and Austria," I said.

J.'s eyes lit up. They always twinkled when she had a trip to plan....

I was back in the USA for less than three weeks. I never seemed to have enough time on either side of the pond to accomplish everything I needed to. And now that I owned a home in Slovenia, I needed to work on the application process for a resident permit. Until I had one, I'd have to leave Europe every 90 days and that would become incredibly expensive. The process wasn't overly complicated, but the timing required was tricky. I knew I'd be measuring my time in Slovenia in three-month increments for awhile.

Those short three weeks were a blur of client meetings, lunches with friends and the Thanksgiving weekend with my family. I was excited about visiting the Christmas Markets and looked forward to flying back to Europe with a friend for the first time. I figured companionship would make the long trip more enjoyable. Of course, I was ready to see RM again, waiting once more at the airport arrival gate in a foreign land.

The travel time did, indeed, seem to go much faster than usual. During the past year, J. and I had spent enough time together to know that while it was fun to do things with someone else instead of always on your own, as single women often do, we both need our own space. If we went shopping together, for example, we preferred to just agree on a time and place to meet up again, then went our separate ways. Traveling together would be just the same. We could enjoy each other's company while still giving one another plenty of personal space. And since J. is a very petite woman, I knew I wouldn't have to worry about spending the long flight leaning sideways to avoid contact with some large person in the seat next to me. 

After landing in Munich on schedule, we made our way through the process that was now becoming quite familiar to me -- baggage area, customs and passport control, where I'd get another stamp in my passport. J. and I had come prepared. In the spirit of Christmas, we'd each donned a set of those felt-covered, novelty reindeer antlers, complete with tiny bells. Our festive headwear did nothing to brighten the dour face of the German control official, seated in his little booth. He still commanded to each of us, "And vhat is your business in Germany?" before stamping our passports. But our antlers did put a smile on RM's handsome face as he shook his head and told us we were "obviously Americans." Apparently, travelers from other countries don't have such a sense of humor.

J. and I were tired from our long flight, but ready to hit our first Christmas Market. RM had stayed at a hotel near the airport the night before and since our flight arrived at 9:30 a.m., we had time to go to his room to shower, change our clothes and be back in the car before check-out time. We had roughly a 45-minute drive into Munich and it was snowing.

As our professional guide, RM had made arrangements for our accommodations and plotted our path from Germany, through Austria, down to Slovenia and then to Venice for a couple of days before J. flew back home. The voice on RM's GPS guided us into Munich. He had the language set on English and the female voice spoke with a distinct British accent. We dubbed her "Emily." RM had found an apartment for our two nights in Munich, which was more affordable than a traditional hotel. I was definitely on a tight budget and while J. wasn't, she was a seasoned, smart and thrifty traveler. During events like Christkindlmarkt in cities such as Munich, residents would pack their bags and stay with friends or family while renting out their apartments through tourist agencies. Personally, I can't imagine having a bunch of complete and utter strangers cook in my kitchen, use my toilet and sleep in my bed, but no doubt the money could pay your rent for a few months.

RM had plugged into the GPS the address of our destination, but the building Emily took us to looked dark and empty. He pulled out some paperwork from his briefcase and made a phone call, speaking German to someone on the other end.

"Well, this was supposed to be the place but now it isn't," RM said. "Apparently, they have a different apartment for us. We're supposed to meet Mrs......."

The name that rolled off RM's tongue was the strangest-sounding name I had ever heard. It sounded like "Chukulumochakulum."  J. and I started laughing.

"What kind of name is that?" I asked, confident it wasn't German. 

"Well, that's what I'm calling her because she has some Turkish name," RM stated. 

His knowledge of languages also makes him a very good judge of the origin of surnames. Funny how you think that people who live in Germany are German, not Turkish German or Norwegian German or Irish German. Just German. Sure, Americans have last names that originate from every corner of the world. We are, after all, the ultimate melting pot of modern civilization. I laughed at myself for having the notion that other countries had somehow avoided the whole immigrant thing.

RM plugged a new address into Emily and we were off again. J. and I were hoping we could drop off our luggage and find a bus back to the Marienplatz where all sorts of wonderful sights, sounds and steaming mugs of gluhwein awaited our arrival.

By the time we reached the next stop, it had stopped snowing. So, we all three piled out of the car and stood near a storefront where, it seemed, women could bring their lingerie to be laundered. How odd to think that in Munich there were actually enough women who wanted someone else to wash their under things to support a business. Hmm.

A few minutes later, a woman stopped where we standing. She and RM greeted one another and we all introduced ourselves using a little English and a little German. She was a petite woman, although not as small as J., with dark skin, eyes and hair, probably in her 50s. She unlocked the door next to the lingerie launderette, flipped a light switch and motioned for us to follow her up the stairs. When we reached the top, she asked us to remove our shoes and put on some obviously previously worn slippers there. We entered the apartment in our used slippers and found ourselves standing in a tiny kitchen with a rather large table and chairs. I felt like I was touring a house for sale rather than my prospective hotel room.

Mrs. Chukulumochakulum never stopped smiling and talking, mostly in German but sometimes in broken English. It seemed she was trying very diligently to convince us that this was a great place to stay.

"Es nyze, ya?" she kept repeating over and over again.

She also kept asking us if we wanted her to make us coffee.

"You want co-fee? Ay make you Turkish co-fee," she repeated despite our polite refusals in every language, including Turkish, I think.

She opened the refrigerator door, revealing some bottled water and sundry jars and containers. Translating, RM told us that we could help ourselves to anything in there. I seriously doubted any of us would. Who knows what danger lurks in the darkness of a stranger's refrigerator in a strange land?

Although I couldn't understand all of the dialogue between RM and the Turkish woman, I could tell that he was skeptical about her and this place. He couldn't get a straight answer out of her when he asked her why we weren't staying in the apartment the agency had reserved for us. 

The kitchen opened to a central hallway with a bathroom across the hall, a living room and bedroom on the left, and to the right, an open set of stairs that appeared to lead down to the lingerie laundry. We found this odd but upon questioning her, RM said the door was locked and no one could enter from there.

The bathroom was long and narrow with the typical equipment and a washer and dryer. The living room was large and had a huge sectional sofa in one corner. The bedroom was small and dark with a massive built-in cupboard along one wall, a small sofa opposite and a low, full-size bed stuck in the back corner. There were clothes in the closet and personal items everywhere -- signs that whoever lived here had vacated temporarily to make some extra money.

RM was speaking in German again, then translating for J. and me. He said he still wasn't sure why Mrs. Chukulumochakulum had brought us to this place. She seemed to be trying very hard to justify the change but I don't think her explanation satisfied RM who, after all, has spent years in tourism, checking to make sure the accommodations of his guests were as they should be. 

"Our apartment was supposed to have two bedrooms," he told her in German. 

"Yes, but that one was smaller and didn't have the other room where someone can sleep," the Turkish woman replied.

"But we were supposed to pay this amount for a two-bedroom apartment and this is not," RM countered.

They continued to discuss in German. Then, he took J. and me aside to explain the situation. Frankly, we were both tired and just wanted to stop wasting our first day here. The apartment, such as it was, looked fairly clean. We weren't going to spend much time here anyway.

One issue solved, Mrs. Chukulumochakulum created another problem. She wanted to be paid, in cash, right now. I hadn't had time to get to an ATM or currency exchange office so I had only about 20 Euros in my pocket. Fortunately, J., a seasoned traveler who always brought home currency of the countries she intended to return to, had enough to pay. But RM was not happy. The agency had told him we could settle the bill when we left. J. and I just wanted the woman to leave. Euros in hand, Mrs. Chukulumochakulum gave RM the keys and told him he had to move the car from where it was parked in front of the apartment. She told him to move it across the street and if he put five Euros in the meter, he could leave it there all night.

RM carried all of our luggage up the stairs which had become slick from feet wet with snow. Then, he took the car down and block, turned around and couldn't find a parking place that didn't involve driving into a drift of snow piled there by the most recent street clearing. Finally, the three of us set off down the street, headed to the buss that would take us just a few blocks to the city center. 

I was the only one who hadn't been to Munich before. J. and RM had both been here and had both been to Oktoberfest. J. had actually spent time here with her Bavarian cousins. But none of us had been here for Christkindlmarkt. We found our bus and headed for the Marienplatz in Munchen (as it's called in German) -- the central plaza and the magical setting for the first stop on our holiday adventure.