Wednesday, February 04, 2009

A Bavarian Birthday - Zorneding Style



"IMG_2324-1" by Seaan on Flickr

Just a half an hour East of the Bavarian metropolis of Munich lies the sleepy hamlet of Zorneding. It's an odd little place, where strangers stop to greet eachother, even pausing to talk about the weather. For anyone who's spent any amount of time in Germany, this may sound like taboo, but it happened.

We have friends in Zorneding, and the story of our chance meeting is a fun one. As fate would have it, we were in the same pregnancy-prep classes back in Orlando (in 2005), the teacher directed us to pair up with them, and their son was born just a week after ours. The world just gets smaller and smaller.

This trip to Bavaria was to celebrate our sons' birthdays together, and though it was brief, it was good. The "Schnillparty", "Schnee Grill", or Snow Grill, was a sort of indoors-outdoors gathering, centered around an afternoon of homemade cakes and flame-cooked sausages. Yum.

The boys were happy to see eachother again, but Lukas was distracted by a slight cold, and Gregor was equally distracted by his friends, new toys, and birthday cake. :-) Who can blame him?

The next morning, as we were preparing to leave, Christiane bundled Lukas up in a big jacket and pulled him around the neighborhood, past the sledding slope and playground and back again, on her son's red "Porsche" tractor. Although we had one heck of a time getting him to leave that tractor behind, I'd bet that the fresh Bavarian air did him good.

Then it was back to Franconia for some quality time with Tobi's family, a good-night's sleep in our very own bed, and one last walk through the picturesque Kleinsendelbach countryside.

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