Food, Glorious Food!

Back in my home country, I immediately started indulging myself with the things I missed out on for almost a year: Brőtchen (bread rolls) 

 Gelateria  had to wait until my stomach was ready for more food. Yoghurt ice cream with fresh fruit is my favorite while hubby always chooses chocolate and nothing but chocolate ice cream preferably with some chocolate sauce on top. Good thing that almost every German town has an Italian ice cream parlor and definitely a good selection of bakeries.

topped with sunflower or pumpkin seeds and loaded them with Parma ham or dry salami. Scrumptious fruit tarts were bought but had to wait for a later consumption. There was room, however, for a few Rumkugeln, (a type of chocolate that is rum flavored). 

This experience on our first day was almost compensation enough already for all the preparations we had to do in weeks coming up to this trip. And a home swap does require a lot of organization and preparation in advance. Having people come to stay in our home, our home owner’s pride takes over and makes us spruce up the house, even clean corners that otherwise stay untouched for months. If you go away for a while, you need to prep your garden or at least organize somebody to do it in your absence.

Since we have multiple swaps back to back there is even more organization involved: have the house cleaned in between visitors and make sure how they get access to your home. On the other side of the pond we needed to arrange for car rentals and hotels to bridge over between the individual swaps.

Sitting outside in a Biergarten (beer garden)

in the evening sun and eating the first Pfifferlinge (Chanterelles)

of the season, makes it all worth its while and quickly forget the stress we had lately when power washing the porch and doing paint touch-up jobs all around the house.

PS. Tomorrow my son is bringing the long awaited Spargel(white asparagus).No, the green one Does Not compare!