A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year to All of You!

Oliver expertly mixing our aperitif to enjoy with homemade breadsticks.

Catherina is about to taste the fruit of her labour: the main course.

The table is set for Chritmas Eve!

A nutcracker stands guard at a Christmas market in a village in the Erzgebirge - the Ore Mountains.

This is where I sit when I post my blogs and email - all cozy amongst my books.

Well, I did it! I didn’t write a single blog entry for all of December. Please forgive me. December is always full of Christmas parties in Germany – I had three of them begging my attendance. So you go bowling, and you sit and eat and wonder how you will get rid of the extra kilos… haha. Then my mother fell ill again. She had another trip to the ER in the middle of the night, this time the ambulance was the taxi. After about 4 days in hospital the doctor removed about a half gallon – or so almost 2 litres – of fluid out of her right lung. I was considering a last minute vacation to Spain or Greece over Christmas, but after this development, I decided I needed to stay put in Leipzig and be ready in case more bad news concerning my mother came. Fortunately no bad news came, and she continues to improve, but I also had a rather uneventful Christmas and New Year’s here.

I spent Christmas Eve with Oliver and Catharina – a German-French pair here. We had a French Christmas Eve, as the photos show. It was a wonderful time together – we ate from 8 pm. until 1:30 am.! Oliver and Catherina are wonderful hosts.

In Germany Christmas has developed its own agenda separate from any Christian/Bible foundation. Here it is simply a big family reunion with a Christmas tree and gifts. Well, Mary probably did not give birth to Jesus in the night of the 24th to the 25th of December anyway, but the beautiful idea of God’s inviting and self-sacrificing love gets lost here as people are so inward-focused on a ridiculously big meal and family time together that they don’t look to see if some might have nothing to do on Christmas. As I gain more life experience, I tend to want to downsize Christmas and give it a simple elegance, thinking of the puritan hymn “It’s a gift to be simple, it’s a gift to be free…”

On this past Saturday I spent the whole day in Berlin touring and shopping with two friends. We left early by car and returned to Leipzig at 12:30 am. early Sunday. I had a baguette at La Fayette, a famous French department store in the Friedrichstrasse, and had a piece of Gateau Madame at LeNotre in the Kaufhaus des Westen, a huge 8-story department store with a gourmet food section on the top floor. We had lunch in a simple restaurant with over 100 different beers on the menu, took in Potsdamer Platz, saw the Sony Center again, and spent a long time walking down the Kudamm, short for the Kurfürstendamm, a luxury boulevard with shops completely out of my purchasing league.

And New Year’s Eve was in Leipzig, starting in a Brasserie at 7 pm., then going to an Irish pub, and from there to Maga Pon, an East German style bar. Then it was back into the city Augustusplatz for the fireworks at midnight. By 2 am. I was back home and, really, glad that 2008 had finally already started. 2007 was a mixed year for me. I did my best, and while my health couldn’t be better, and the finances are fine, yet I still feel uncertain about whether 2007 was a good year or not. Nevertheless, I am thankful for another year of life and look forward to 2008.

What is your final analysis of 2007? I hope it was a good year for you.