Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

Last night, I got to be part of a Harting tradition! Harting is a little village outside of Regensburg where my friend Andrea lives (together with her husband “The Finkster” and and their boy Benjamin). Their town does something called “Advents Fenster” (Advents window) for each night from December 1st until Christmas. Instead of the little calendar one buys for Advents with a little treat each night, the neighbors in Harting volunteer to offer a treat for their community one of the nights. An offered to do “American” Christmas caroling. Sarah can sing all fancy, she got roped into being our leader. Given that we only had one rehearsal where only 4 of the 10 carolers could make it, I think she did a fantastic job of getting us in shape! It must have been tough for her as she is a professional, and An and I, for example kept referring to the sheet music as ‘the words’ because those little squiggles on the paper were meaningless to us - we could only sing how Sarah told us to sing because the squiggles told us nothing.

Most of us were over at An’s early enough to have a bit of a warm up and run through the songs once. We sang “Joy to the World”, “We Three Kings” (my new favorite Christmas song), Oh Christmas Tree (with a verse in German), and “Jingle bells.”

A crowd showed up outside of An’s building, and as we walked out, I had a flash back of doing visitor nights at the UCI observatory back in the day. There were a bunch of families standing in the dark waiting for a show. Sarah conducted us, which was good for me because I could just try to sing along with her strong voice.

In the end, I think we did a great job, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. In fact, they liked it so much, they wanted an Encore! Afterward, I was wondering why no one was heading over for the Gluwein and goodies that An had prepared for the guests. One of the German friends of An leaned over and said, “They want an encore.” Sarah, our fearless leader, looked at us and said “Anyone got anything?” I, personally thought that Sarah should have done a solo of “Oh Holy Night” because it was awesome when she sang it for us once, but we did a little huddle to try to remember a song that we all knew. Heather came up with “Rudolph the red nosed Reindeer” - that was the only song most of us could do without preparation. We could even throw out the little extra lyrics, like “Like a Light bulb”, without skipping a beat - oh how kindergarten prepares us for life. I offered “Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg…” but no one went for it. Our encore went off without a hitch, and our audience let us go. Note to self - for next year, rehearse more and prepare and extra song.

Here are a couple of photos from the night. I don’t have any of us singing yet, but hopefully I can get a few from the Finkster.

Our fearless leader, little St. Nickolas and me (man I need a hair cut). What you don’t see in this photo are Clair’s Rockin’ boots. She is wearing a pair of go-go boots from my Aunt Louise. They are black with a fake fur trim in pink. Next time she does this outfit, I’ll post a photo.

Christina and Oliver, freshly back from the US and amazingly awake. Oliver kind of stole the show by hamming it up doing back bends off of mom and smiling at the crowd upside down. He even struck a pose for this photo. Notice the matching jackets, quite fancy.

Matt (the only guy willing to sing with us), Heather and Sophia hanging out on the doorstep afterward.