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Year-End Review 2004

We wanted to take this opportunity to bring everyone up-to-date on what we’ve been up to this year. We wanted to do this in our Christmas cards, but since they are still lying in the living room, unsigned, we decided to do it the multimedia way instead. Sorry all the pictures of us look more or less the same, but Christoph’s arms aren’t that long, so our self-portraits end up like that, one way or another.

We started 2004 in Berlin, staying in a four-star hotel that we had spontaneously booked in the middle of extremely stressful Christmas shopping in CentrO Oberhausen. We went to the Brandenburg gate with our bottle of champagne at midnight, but it looked a lot like downtown Baghdad, so we sipped out of the bottle, were terrified, and got out of there at about 12:15. The people were shooting fireworks out of their hands, so we huddled with the other petrified foreigners under a hotel’s glass roof so that we could at least make it to midnight and say we’d been there.

The next day, we went out to see the sights with the other shell-shocked tourists, like here at the Reichstag.

On January 1, some other things changed. I became a full employee at Berlitz and Christoph and I officially moved in together in Düsseldorf. Despite the constant travel to and from work in Duisburg, I have to say that I really never regretted moving because we have the most beautiful apartment and I truly love Düsseldorf, snobbiness and all. We didn’t get much out of it this summer because of the bad weather, but I am looking forward to spending a lot of time out on the Rhine next year.

Although Karneval is not really our thing, we got talked into going to a Karnevalssitzung, where we drank so much Hachenburger beer that we are really thankful for this snapshot so that we know that we were really there. We are dressed as a knight and his lady knight (or whatever), but I had lost my cone hat and Christoph his sword and shield before this picture was taken.

That done, we headed to Amsterdam for the real Karneval day Rosenmontag, when Düsseldorf is invaded by people who REALLY know how to party.

Christoph’s 30^th birthday on March 20^th put him into some kind of state with moans of “I’m getting ooooold“ and “Do you think my hairline’s receding?“ but he survived it by inviting his family up from the Westerwald and getting very drunk with them, like any good German would. Here is a picture of his parents, as proof.

When it started getting warm, we decided to start hiking with our trusty companions Matt & Matt. Our first hike lasted about 8 hours up, down, and through the Eifel (through no fault of our own, the map was definitely wrong) and, after swearing not to let Christoph navigate anymore, we had a lot of adventures in the woods throughout the rest of the summer. I also bought the most expensive and ugliest pair of shoes I have ever owned. But for views like this, it’s worth it.

Unfortunately, our friend and hiking companion Matt Skeen decided to move back to Colorado (where apparently the scenery is even better than in the Eiffel) and then there were only three of us hiking. We miss you, Matt...!

As of May 1^st, Christoph was studying full-time for his German C.P.A. exam in October. We are now waiting for the results, so keep your fingers crossed.

We still found time to fly to the US in July, but because of Christoph’s studying, we only had 14 days for both coasts. Luckily, our friends and family found time to see us and didn’t get too mad about our “visit and run” trip. We got to see Nicole & Lyle’s and Julie & Ed’s beautiful new houses and Christoph learned first-hand that people in Jersey don’t use turn signals when following Kristin on the NJ Turnpike. And we bought a wedding dress, although Christoph still had not officially proposed. The heat was on him, but he didn’t let it get to him and took his good old time proposing.

We flew to Los Angeles to visit my Mom and Stephen and had a great 10 days visiting Hollywood, San Diego, L.A., Las Vegas, etc. We had packed our hiking boots, but after being warned about the dangers of mountain lions and rattlesnakes, we decided to just laze around California instead.

Christoph also celebrated his first 4^th of July party, complete with an extravagant firework display, which mainly consisted of kiddie rockets. He made this Cool-Whip cake,

his pride and joy, and then spent half an hour asking me what exactly Cool-Whip is. (In case anyone knows, please e-mail me)

We celebrated our first anniversary at the San Diego zoo, and I kept nudging Christoph to finally REALLY propose, to no avail.

The next day, we spent a magical day in La Jolla, and imagined that we would be able to live with the idea of being transferred there.

We got this close to wedding chapel in Las Vegas at the Paris hotel, but didn’t go for it.

We got back from vacation more worn out than ever and decided to drive our new car (thanks to the old lady who totalled our old one, by the way) over the Alps to South Tyrol, Italy. Obviously, this was not my idea, as I had heard too many of Kristin’s stories of drunk bus drivers careening over European mountains. But Christoph insisted, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

As a special “treat“ Christoph drove over one of the serpentine passes, and when we got to the top, I was a strange color of green and not enjoying it at all. We obviously took a different route back home.

We relaxed, drank wine, ate sausage, and enjoyed the sunshine which we hadn’t gotten to see at all in Düsseldorf. We also did six hours of straight downhill hiking, and I only fell off the side of the mountain once.

Finally, on a sunny day in Bozen, Christoph proposed while we drank some Prosecco in the sunshine. No, he did not get down on one knee, claiming the ground was dirty, but he did kind of lean down, so I said yes anyway. Besides, I already had invited half the guests to the wedding.

We also made it to Verona, Italy, where Romeo and Juliet are said to have been from. We are pretty sure that it’s not true, but it was a nice daytrip anyway.

So the formalities began, with booking the civil ceremony and getting all our paperwork together. At the same time that our friends Jon and Inna are going through the same thing, we have learned that for example that German birth certificates are superior to those of the rest of the world and pondered just how bad “Nicole Gross-Messick” sounds. As we speak, our castle is double booked for May 19, 2005, and eloping is starting to sound really tempting.

Don’t worry, though, because our church wedding on May 21, 2005, is sure to go off without a hitch in this little church in Bad Marienberg, where Christoph’s parents also got married over thirty years ago. All of our plans are finally falling into place, and we are getting more and more excited, especially because my family and friends are coming over to be here with us on our special day.

In the middle of all of this, we found the time to escape to Paris for the weekend, and froze on top of the Eifel Tower.

Sometime in early November, Christoph decided that he wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving American-style with a few friends. One thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were stuffing a turkey that just fit into our German regulation-sized oven and hoping someone knew how to tell when it’s ready to eat. We discoverd that dogs do like pumpkin pie after all and that it’s possible to make your own cranberry sauce. Luckily, we realized the day before our dozen guests came that we only had 6 forks and ran to IKEA to buy more. The turkey that looked so big was just enough and was delicious, and (maybe) a new tradition was born.

December went by in a blur as I tried to teach hopeless Turkish girls English and Christoph struggled to find the millions his client had “lost” and then Christmas was upon us again. So it was back to the Westerwald for decadent food and drink and then back to Düsseldorf to start the last working week of the year.