But does it count as a White Christmas?

We've had cold weather for the last couple of weeks: lows around -5 or -6 degrees Celsius (low 20s Fahrenheit) and highs barely above freezing. Because it's so damp here, we have really heavy frosts. And since the sun is so low in the sky, much of that frost never melts; it just sits there and accumulates. we have about half an inch on the shady side of the canal bridge, for example. And then there's the field up the street. No that's not snow. It's frost.

The Pyramid

Being technologically challenged, I couldn't figure out how to post all these pictures in a series in one posting. So scroll down five pictures until you get to our bobo Christmas tree and read up.


The Pyramid is one of my acquisitions from the Cologne Christmas market. It's not exactly what I wanted (I wanted red!!!). I'll keep looking. I have two more Christmas seasons and many markets to go.

The Christmas Crane

A different kind of Christmas tree, around the corner from us at the heavy equipment company.

Bigger and better

Here's the tree at SHAPE. A little bigger than ours, n'est-ce pas?

More Christmas sights

Here's our bobo tree all dressed up.

Christmas sights

This is our bobo Belgian Christmas tree. We went to a local nursery to buy a tree and found that they had two sizes: about 4-foot high and about 12-foot high. Although our ceilings are higher here than at home, we went for the shorter version. Only when they cut the bottom off, they leveled it with the branches. So some of the lower branches had to come off too in order to have enough trunk to fit into our stand. Our tree is now a good deal shorter than we expected. And it had two leaders, so it looked really crooked when we got it set up.

Christmas markets

I still remember the Christkindlmarkt in Munich I went to in 1977 - the hand-made ornaments, the lights, the Gluhwein. Our trip to the Christmas market in Brussels two years ago didn't quite live up to my expectations, so I've been looking forward to visiting the German Christmas markets ever since we got here. This past week I went with a friend from work to the Christmas market in Cologne. The bus dropped us off about 10:00 and we didn't leave until 7:30 that evening, so we had the whole day to investigate the 6 different markets. While I don't remember my first Christmas market, the one in Munich, featuring so many non-Christmasy items, at least some of the vendors in Cologne had the kind of things I'd been hoping to get: small typically German ornaments, a Christmas-patterned Mitteldecke (that small tablecloth that sits catty-cornered in the middle of your dining table), and a Pyramid (one of those wooden things with figures in the middle that spin when you light the candles). The Pyramid wasn't exactly what I was looking for but I figure this is a down payment on the one I have yet to find. Several of the markets had a theme: one was an "antiques" market but looked mostly like a flea market, and another was a medieval market featuring handmade soaps, candles, jewelry, a juggler, and that sort of thing. The picture above is the market on the square outside the famous Cologne cathedral.

Several of the local villages here in our commune are also doing Christmas markets, so yesterday we went to the one on the Grand' Place in Tertre. We almost missed it because the entrance was through a tent that looked like something that wasn't set up yet. But inside there were lots of vendors selling a lot of handmade craft items, lots of handmade chocolate truffles, and several booths where you could get things like long links of sausages or other kinds of meats I don't want to know what they were. We bought white chocolate truffles from a couple and could only guess at what they were saying to us; they had a REALLY different accent.

Next year I may be able to get David to go with me to one of the other German markets. The greasy mass of grated deep fried potatoes I had for lunch may be the lure to get him there.

But did it really count?

This is a catching-up post, since we never mentioned it when it happened.

We drove back from our Romantic Rhine River Weekend (RRRW) on a Sunday morning, so we went to mass at the collégiale in Mons Sunday evening. We got there real early so were among the first to arrive. A lady who seemed to be the ramrod for that service approached and asked if either of us would like to do the Epistle reading. Those of you who know us will not be surprised to hear that Rita responded, "En français? Non non non non non!" and that I said, "I'll do it!" (only in French). Since I'd never read it in French, I did ask for a chance to practice, so Ramrod took me up to the lectern and let me read through it silently twice. I didn't make any really bad mistakes, except maybe with a liaison or two.

Don't tell them I'm not Catholic or everybody may be required to repeat that mass.

Behind already

We found something new (to us) on our trip to Denmark: an Advent candle. It's a little hard to see, even on our big monitor, but if you click on the photo it'll pop up the full-sized photo, and you can see that it's numbered with the days remaining until Christmas. You're supposed to burn it 2 hours a day, and it will count down (melt down?) a day. So far though, we've been burning it morning and night and almost can't keep up. We may have to take some time off work to maintain the pace of Advent.