Aachen and Baked Apples

Last weekend was another Rotex Wochenende with all the inbound students in district 1810. This time we went spent it in Aachen. The first night was a big Christmas party with music and dancing. It was after 3am before we finally got some sleep. Then we were cruelly awakened at 6:45 to get ready for a German test. We spent the morning taking a test that consisted of German listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. After the test we went to the Aachener Weihnachts Markt. Aachen has a very well known Christmas market in the center of the city. It's a festive display of food and gift stands. One of the most common German Weihnacht traditions is Gluhwein. Gluhwein is a very sweet wine served hot. Very tasty! Aachen is also well known for the Aachener Dom. This is one of the oldest cathedrals in Germany. Charles the Great began building it in 792. It was consecrated in 805 by Pope Leo III. The Aachener Dom was extremely significant in the early Catholic religion. It was built as a shrine to Mary. It was also the church where coronations of 30 German kings and 12 queens took place between the years 936-1531. When Charles the Great died in 814, he was buried in a vault of the Cathedral. He has been dug up and reburied several times, but his remains are still there. Perhaps the most famous part of the Aachener dom is Shrine of St. Mary. It contains Mary's cloak, John the Baptists beheading cloth, Christ's swaddling clothes, and his loincloth. These are brought out of the shrine and put on display every 7 years. The weekend in Aachen was a lot of fun and NOT a lot of sleep. It was sort of rainy on Sunday when we left Aachen, but Aachen is considerably lower in altitude than Haan. I was welcomed home by about a foot of snow.. slushy, wet, gross snow. It normally wouldn't bother me, but it's much more snow than the people here are used to getting. So it was slightly chaotic.

On Thursday I attended my Rotary club's Christmas party. It took place in an old church in Düsseldorf. We had a personal pipe organ concert and then a VERY nice dinner.

Last night I spent the evening with a group of girls in my class making baked apples. It's a popular Christmas treat here. They were super tasty and I had a great time getting to know the girls. You can check out pictures at www.getjealous.com/cultural.cultivation Don't be alarmed when you see pictures with a handsome little man named Flat Stanley. I'm taking pictures of him around Germany for Mrs. Ulseth's third grade class in Minnesota, and sometimes I forget to take my own pictures without him. =)