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!

Finally there...

The big day to take over our holiday home had arrived. And maybe to face the music; see for ourselves whether the pics on the home swap website lived up to their promises. Having met the German home owners/swap partners the night before, we felt very confidant. They are really nice people who have been to the States before.

We drove the short distance from the hotel to their house to drop off our multitudinous bags and then drop off the rental car in Frankfurt’s fair city. From then on we have the use of their cars.

The house is beautiful and exactly the way I had expected it. A typical German house with blinds outside, electric in this case which is very practical. It’s in a quiet neighborhood, 5 minutes walk to a big supermarket and a quick drive to some little restaurants and the Gelateria I had been hankering for. The house has two terraces; one has sun in the morning, one in the evening.  The garden could have been designed and planted by myself with similar features on our own porch with the predominant color being blue. It has all the mod cons we need like dishwasher, dryer etc. and a gym in the huge basement where we can store our bags. In fact, it has everything, even the same flatscreen tV that we have! But it doesn't have AC which is a real draw-back for my American husband. And no fly-screens. So first thing on our shopping list beside food was a fly swatter and a net to build a fly screen.

On the first day, I cooked my white asparagus that our exchange partners had bought for me, in the afternoon an apple strudel was baking in the oven and the evening was rounded off by one of my favorite TV shows. I’m a sucker for Krimis, i.e. detective stories/thrillers. In the US, I’m taping them on a German website and download them from there onto my PC. Here, lazy and still jet-lagged on a brand-new comfy couch, I nibbled at my favorite liqueur filled chocolates watching it live. Yes, the jet-lag took a bigger toll this time not having slept on the plane.

While the first 2 days it was as hot as in Florida, the weather now has changed. It’s just below 20 degrees Celsius, the umbrella sprang into action already but that saves me watering their garden. The nights are cool;  we sleep with the window open until some noisy birds wake up and us at the same time. I just close the window. I hear the German family is enjoying our pool.