Our Last Seiffen Trip

Melissa and Sam picked us up on Friday morning and we were on our way to Seiffen, Germany…  5 hours northeast right on the Czech border.  I’ve been there three other times but Chris had never been there.  Neither had Sam, and we girls were excited to take them.  I knew Chris would love it.  He’s just a Christmas guy and the whole village is nothing but German Christmas stores.  I told him that we would go into 15 stores to look and then do them all over again to buy, and it went exactly like that.  It takes a while to look at everything and get a feel for what you want. 

After unpacking our light luggage in the hotel we headed back to the main street, parked and started at the bottom of the street and worked our way up from about 2:00pm to 5:00pm when all the shops closed.  Bummer.  We thought they’d be open until 6:00 and we hadn’t quite seen them all.  At 5:00 we went over to the German restaurant attached to our favorite hotel and met Heidi and Mark for dinner.  We ate delicious food (mine was tender chicken with a white sauce and creamy herbed potatoes) and talked and laughed for hours.  I love that about a European restaurant.  You have the table for the whole night.  If someone has reserved a table at 8:00 and you come at 6:00 and want to sit, they won’t offer you the table… it’s booked for the night.  Finally at 10:00 we headed back to the hotel. 

The next morning we met Missy and Sam for a German sandwich breakfast down in the hotel restaurant.  Chris LOVES a good German sandwich and  intends to bring it back with him to the States.   By 10:00 we were at the door of a store that Yvonne had told us about but none of us been to before.  Oh my goodness… what a selection of nutcrackers!  Not only was the store pretty great, but their nutcracker woodshop was right down the wide hall and it was fun to see the process and how they were being put together, which I hadn’t seen before.

               

 

          

I knew I would actually by buying more if Chris were with me.  I’d say ‘this one or this one’ and he’s say ‘BOTH’.  It was pretty funny.  We did most of our buying from that first store.   Chris parents and my grandparents had given us some money for Christmas and we were saving it for ‘souvenirs’ from Seiffen.  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

We split up from Missy and Sam and ran around picking out our favorite things.  Then at the end we met back up thinking we were done… until Missy starting picking out the cutest LITTLE wooden family at a German Christmas Market.  Then I wanted one too! They didn’t have enough little girls, though, so Chris and I raced around town trying to remember which stores had these same wooden figurines.  It was pretty funny… but we found them.  I have no idea where I’m going to put them but it was a memorable last half hour rushing around just to make it perfectly match our family at the markets.  Thanks Melissa for the cute idea.   We stopped at the Italian place and ate delicious bruschetta and pasta and then drove the 5 hours home.  Good times with good friends. 

Here are a few of our spoils…

A big ‘chubby’ Santa Nutcracker. 

These 3 might be my favorite.   I’d never seen the night watchman one before and instantly fell in love with him… especially since we’ve been on the Rothenberg’s Night watchman tour so many times.  The blue one on the left I pointed out to Chris mentioning that we had the Red one exactly like it.  He said, “You don’t have the blue?  Oh, you need the blue.”  See what I mean.  He’s a fun shopper.  Now we have entirely too many nutcrackers!

These are more natural wood.  Chris LOVES these ones…

I love these little chubby ones.  Aren’t they so cute?

Chris fell in love with these Santas – which are not German at all, of course.  But since we were in a Christmas city we thought we’d grab them.   Our favorite is the O Holy Night.

When we got home the little boys were asleep and the big kids were excited to see all the fun things we got.  Then we had to watch a dance routine/lip sync.  So nice that we can leave the kids in charge overnight.  (Their second time).  They did great!!