I knew our Christmas Roadtrip would be a shopping-oriented vacation, and it did not disappoint! My main goal was to find one or two “family heirlooms” that Sev and I could bring out every Christmas and remember our adventures fondly. I made sure to do a lot of research beforehand to get an idea of which Christmas markets might be the best place to find such things. My favorite purchase is this “Christmas pyramid” from Dresden. Out of view from this photo are the “propellers” that stick out of this structure– when you light the tea lights, the heat rises, forcing the propellers to spin and the whole scene turns. Most of the Christmas pyramids we saw were pretty formulaic and very religious– angels, Jesus in a manger, three kings, etc. I wasn’t opposed to getting a more traditional one, but I preferred to be a little more true to our secular Christmas celebrations. After much scouting, we succeeded in finding this adorable town scene with a big north star, carolers, and a train. It was too large to fit in our suitcases, so we shipped it to Dresden. We dropped it off at Deutschepost on December 4 with a lady who spoke zero English (Apparently, Cyprus is “Zipern” in German, but we must have been pronouncing it wrong). Christmas came and went with no package, and just when I had given up hope it appeared at the Embassy the first week of January. Whew.
I love fancy Christmas ornaments, so I really went wild in Germany. Of all the ornaments we purchased, one of my favorites– it’s a simple white wooden horse from Dresden. I bought in honor of Amay, the horse I am leasing here in Cyprus. I bought this lounging Santa in Nuremberg– not at the market, but at a bricks and mortar store called Kathe Wohlfarht for no other reason then the fact it made me laugh.
This little guy is typical of the ornaments you’d find at the Dresden market, which is near the region he was made. But I bought it in Munich, again, because it made me laugh. He has a bird and a tree in his hand.
Prague’s Christmas markets were disappointing, but I purchased this Krampus ornament after we had sausages & beers with Sev’s friends (which was also the day the streets of Prague happened to be filled with Krampuses and Angels). We walked down the hill from Prague castle and stumbled into a late night Christmas market, where I made a quick purchase and stashed him in my pocket for the rest of the night.
We had a bit of a Christmas tree saga this year. In Christmas 2014, I had planned to buy an artificial Christmas tree at the after-season sales while we were still in DC. I talked myself out of it because we didn’t have any place to keep a tree box for six months in our small apartment, and I held out hope we could find trees in Cyprus. Thanksgiving rolled around, and it became clear it wouldn’t be totally easy to find a real Christmas tree here, so I ordered a 6′ artificial tree on black Friday. It got rejected by diplomatic pouch because the box wasn’t the right dimensions. So I reordered a 4’6″ tree, but it took THREE WEEKS to ship from Illinois to our pouch facility in Virginia. We panicked and investigated whether we could buy a real tree after all– but the local forestry service, which sells the trees, was a 45 minute drive away and only open Monday through Friday with Cyprus government hours (i.e., they open at 9 am and close by 2 pm). Our artificial tree finally showed up in one of the last pouch deliveries before Christmas. Crisis averted! I insisted that we keep it up until after Orthodox Christmas on January 6 so I could enjoy it. As you can see, it is quite laden with ornaments new and old. We put it in a planter to make it seem less lame and also lest Popeye decided he wanted to eat ornaments (again).