Our fields

One more post of fall before the first snow of the season turned everything to winter.     These are the fields we drive through everyday to get anywhere.    …I love Germany.

Girls Trip

6:00am on Thanksgiving morning, seven of us from my ward set off on our girls trip to Poland.  Yes, Poland.  It might sound like an odd ‘Girls Trip’ destination unless you know of the long standing ‘military wife stationed abroad’ tradition… Polish Pottery.  I have seen countless friends who’ve returned from their travels abroad beaming with pride over  their precious dishes…. and although I never thought they were ‘must-haves,’ I’m ALWAYS up for a girls trip… and decided I probably needed a souvenir or two… or three.  

DAY ONE we drove five hours east to Seiffen, Germany, right on the border of the Czech Republic.  We hadn’t had snow in Heidelberg yet, but as we traveled north east we headed right into beautiful wintery forests and white fields.

Seiffen sits in the heart of the Ore Mountains, which are famous for many Christmas traditions. As the silver and tin deposits declined, former miners had to look for new ways to feed their families. In addition to lace making and weaving, the inhabitants went into wood carving. Nutcrackers, "smoking men", "pyramids" (carousels with figures of the Christmas story or from mining) and Schwibbogen (wooden arcs with candles in the windows, symbolizing the opening of a mine) are the most traditional of many Christmas goods made in the Ore Mountains. Seiffen is also a center of the wooden toy industry.  The reason to come here for our German Christmas decorations is that it’s sooo much cheaper than anywhere else in Germany… and they took our VAT forms so we don’t have to pay German taxes.

We arrived at noon ready to shop.  The streets of Seiffen are lined with one Christmas store after another.  Some with mainly Nutcrackers, some with mainly pyramids, but most with a mixture of everything.  We shopped for seven hours straight… with yummy German lunch and lots of talking… visiting each store before we really decided what we wanted, and then heading back through most of them to support each other as we each made our purchases.  That’s what you can do with no husbands and no kids!  I decided I was in the market for a nutcracker and came away with two that I just love.

Jaima, Holly, Brittany, Megan, Emma and I by the outdoor pyramid.  (Heidi taking the picture.)

The ladies with the Santa Smoker.

 

The two I bought are the traditional red jacket one top middle and the light blue jacket bottom left.

The miner and his wife are a popular Christmas decoration, coming from the history of this little town.

When they finally kicked us out of the stores, it was dark and you could see lit Schwibbogen’s in every window throughout the town.  Very festive.

That night we stayed in the ‘Schlosshote Purschenstein’ …a castle in Seiffen which had been converted into a hotel. We enjoyed a late night dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and sat talking and laughing for hours.  Holly and I were roommates and had excellent adventures creeping through the halls in the middle of the night to find the receptionist and ‘act out’ the fact that we were FREEZING in our room.  We don’t speak German, he didn’t speak English… well, we didn’t think he did until he commented on Holly’s nice pjs.  Hee hee.. I can’t even type this without laughing.   It was too funny.  We got a new bigger room which was perfectly warm.

This is the first room… the very cold room.

The castle courtyard in the morning.

The seven of us… Lisa, Jaima, Holly, Heidi, Emma, Megan and Brittany                      

DAY TWO: After breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant we loaded up and drove 2 and a half hours east across the border to Boleslawiec, Poland… THE polish pottery capital.  Big ornamental teapots and cups decorated the streets of Boleslawiec.  We spent the day in and out of about 10 different pottery stores… all with similar pottery pieces, but each store with a variety of patterns.  Heidi was our experienced pottery gal.  She has a giant collection and has been to Boleslawiec more times than she can remember, even knowing one of the store owners and getting us a discount.  Those with pottery shopping experience told us ‘newbies’ that you’d just have to wait for a pattern to jump out at you.  We joked that ‘the pattern would choose us’.   We searched the stores for our patterns.  Megan made us laugh on the way home by recapping each person’s pottery shopping personalities… and she was right on.  Too funny.

 

Heidi, Emma, Megan, Holly, Lisa, Brittany.

Late afternoon while some of the gals were still checking out a store, Brittany, Emma and I wandered off to explore a few churches, a fantastic old wall, some interesting landscapes and a cemetery on the same road.

 

After shopping until the stores closed again we headed to our second hotel… the Blue Beetroot.  A quaint 18th century barn restored with real charm and a fun history.  Emma reserved us this big ‘7 dwarfs’ style room with four single beds and a living area… and two more rooms close by.   We ate a huge three course dinner at the hotel’s restaurant for an amazingly low Polish price…  much cheaper than Germany… and enjoyed another night of relaxing and talking in our room.

DAY THREE: We woke up to Snow in Poland.  Megan and Emma were troopers to be the drivers for most of the trip.  Thanks, girls!  We had Megan’s van and Emma’s car for the seven of us.  Emma, who had been on the same girls trip the previous year, was right to suggest two vehicles.  I had no idea how much stuff we would be bringing home!  Here’s the back of the van (with third row seats down) holding all of our nutcrackers, pyramids, pottery and other fun finds.   Emma’s car truck was full too… and this is even before one more Polish Pottery stop on the way out of town…

This store had been closing the night before when we arrived and they would NOT let us in.  This was the only store that had THIS pattern…  the pattern that Emma had been excited for and that finally JUMPED out at me too… and all of us.  It’s beautiful.  I love my scalloped edge platter and cute pitcher.  Unfortunately it also happens to be one of the more expensive patterns because of the intricate detail and lots of colors.  Each piece is hand stamped and/or hand painted and priced according to the difficulty… in zloty (polish money).  The stores accepted zloty, euros or dollars.  The prices were all in zloty so we just had to divide by three to estimate the American dollar amount.    A 139 zloty bowl was 47.00 dollars… and yes, those were the prices of some of these in this pattern.  I can’t remember how much mine were.  I should have kept track.  The four of us sat on the floor searching through the stacks of pottery for the best pieces wishing we could buy them all.

Next stop, Dresden, Germany.  It was the first weekend of advent… the four week countdown to Christmas… so all the Christmas markets were opening.  We bundled up and spent a few hours wandering around Dresden.  A very cool city… can’t wait to come back with Chris and really check it out.

   

Quite a few of the city streets and courtyards were decorated with lights and wall to wall vendors.  We weaved our way through the crowds of people to try yummy food, drink hot chocolate and take in the sights.  A perfect way to start the Christmas season.