I hope everyone had wonderful, happy Thanksgiving! Ours was great. Well, mine was and part of Kyle's was. Our friend Erin that used to live in Paris moved to Dusseldorf, Germany a few months ago and invited us over for the holiday weekend. Erin's parents, Barry and Brenda, are currently living there as well and were gracious enough to let five of us (Kyle and me, Julie, her friend Lee who was visiting from Texas and our friend Jessica) take over their home for a few days. They were the sweetest, most hospitable hosts!
Things started off perfect...
Sightseeing, experiencing the German culture, beer halls and bratwursts, Christmas markets, gluhwein, great company. Jessica wasn't able to fly in until Friday, so we postponed the Thanksgiving festivities until the weekend. Our actual Thanksgiving was a tad unconventional. We had sushi for dinner, German food (which basically means lots of potatoes) for lunch, and stopped in for German beers at the local beer halls. The night did end with a pumpkin pie and football, so we can still proudly call ourselves Americans.
Here you see Julie and Lee displaying some of the other German food groups: meat, gravy and flammkuchen (German flatbread, pizza-ish thing)
First beer hall stop = happy Kyle
Notice the waiter in back, seething with jealousy that Kyle is at a table with four girls when the rest of the place was practically packed with dudes.
He wasn't shy... he grabbed my camera and politely demanded we take a photo together :)
You have to put a coaster on top of your empty beer if you don't want another. Otherwise, they just keep walking around replacing all empties with filled, frothy new ones. Dangerous! Good thing they are less than 2 euro a pop. Are you listening, Paris? ONLY 2 EURO!
Mmmmmm warm, delicious gluhwein
Gross, but cute, gingerbread cookies
These are the last photos of a smiling Kyle on record...
Some of the loot. Julie and I were dragged out of the ornament shops, kicking a screaming.
The most persistent food poisoning I've ever heard of. The germs in Germany don't mess around. No clue where it came from, could have been a number of suspect things Kyle ingested... black pudding, mussels, bratwursts. Perhaps even the one raw vegetable I forced him to eat, a bell pepper from a local farmers market. Who knows. What we know is that it lasted for over 80 hours and landed Kyle in the Keiserswerth ER. Poor guy didn't even get to eat his Thanksgiving dinner :(
Doesn't he looked thrilled that I'm taking pictures of it all though?
I must say, if you have to make a trip to the ER, this was the best experience you could hope for. We walked in, told the staff what was wrong, paid and were taken back to a room immediately. Within ten minutes of walking in the front door Kyle was in his own room, had an IV in and they'd already taken blood samples. The nurses and doctors were smiling, accommodating, efficient and, as a bonus, spoke perfect English. If you find yourself in need of urgent care at a "Notfallversorgung" near Dusseldorf, don't worry, you're in good hands!
Our lovely Thanksgiving dinner with Erin and her parents
Maygan
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