German Christmas And Olivier Salad

Hello! My name is Kseniya and I’ve been studying German since childhood. The person I’m in love with has been studying Russian since he was a child too. We would visit these two countries not knowing about each other and now we have a bilingual family.

I want to share with you this Christmas, December, 24th. We celebrated it in a small but very old town L. which was first mentioned in a 1220 document. It is so small that almost all residents of this town know each other. It has a very convenient location (it will take you just 40 minutes to get to Düsseldorf from here and an hour to get to Cologne). You can find here both, nature and action but Christmas is a holiday meant for family and relaxation.

We woke up late as usual.

It looks more like fall than Christmas. However, there are certain advantages in this kind of weather too. It’s warm, light and flies don’t bite you.

There are just a couple of snowflakes left after yesterday’s ‘snowfall’.

I love sticking out the window in the morning because morning air is always bracing.

I check out the presents I’ve prepared for Christmas.

Now it’s time to take a shower, have breakfast and do other things all people do in the morning.

I didn’t take photos of breakfast because I don’t have a third arm, unfortunately (I had to eat and finish my greeting cards).

Heading to a farmer’s market.

This beautiful fir tree belongs to our neighbor.

Another man living next to us is an artist…

I love this house and always enjoy looking at it when I pass it by. In one of the windows, there is a lamp made of pieces of colorful glass and it looks so cozy when it’s on!

People decorate their homes with lights.

Often, the ground floor of the house is remade into a store. Many of them contain a lot of history.

There is a small river here in L. 1825 is the date when the house was built.

We are a bit late. Usually, the farmer’s market is open until 1 p.m. but it’s Christmas and people leave earlier because all of them have a lot of work to do. We could go to a grocery store but we prefer farmer’s markets because here they sell organic products.

We have no choice but going to a store.

It’s full of buyers because we are not the only couple who needs food for Christmas. Near the store they sell flowers and this time it’s kalanchoe.

We bought a yogurt, mustard, green peas but forgot about green apples.

I see the sun rays!

Local art.

Wow! This house is even older than Saint Petersburg!

This sculpture is under reconstruction. As for the banana, I don’t know what it means but I saw a couple of them in different cities of Germany.

All kinds of stores (it is the main street of L.)

A bookstore.

Sale in an antique store.

Retro tea sets by Villeroy&Boch.

In this biostore, I buy organic buckwheat.

A bakery. They had to dress the bear in a bright vest so drivers could see him from the distance. By the way, they plan to make this street available for pedestrians only because it’s narrow and crooked.

Almost home!

It’s time to make Christmas dinner.

Someone’s staring into the window.

Our fridge. All these magnets appeared just recently.

I’ve promised to make an Olivier salad for Christmas so I have to keep my word (and try not to poison everybody with it).

Green apples will make it taste very piquant.

I didn’t put mayonnaise there but made a yogurt sauce instead.

We had lunch and the clock showed…

We wrote numbers on the candies to not eat them all at once.

Then we remembered that we had some fried almonds from a Christmas market.

Being full from candies, we got down to drink tea. We like it with tangerines…

And homemade biscuits! We had to taste each kind, otherwise one of our relatives would feel hurt.

After our tea ceremony, we headed to a farm accompanied with our friends to catch the spirit of Christmas.

Each year, a group of farmers holds plays right in the cattleshed! Usually, these are stories about Jesus and how he was born. Over 200 people have come to the play!

When we came home, we saw that our neighbor left a present for us. So kind of her!

It was time for Christmas dinner and we started with my Olivier salad.

Then we moved to the Christmas tree in search for presents. It was the best part of the evening.

I was so excited that forgot about taking photographs.

This is what we gave to my Darling’s sister. It’s a map with countries covered with special layer which you are to scratch off after you visit a country. Does she have to scratch off the whole Russian Federation if she’s been to Saint Petersburg only?