A few weeks ago, I said Ori and I were going to be spending Christmas in Germany. Well, we’re back in Oxford now, and I’ve finally finished editing and captioning the photos from the trip. So here’s a little post to sum up our very nice Christmas abroad.

After a very early start (4am – all of our best trips so far seem to have involved early departures), we made our way from Oxford to Heathrow to Frankfurt with no problems. Ori’s aunt Angie and cousin Emily were waiting for us at the airport, and they took us back to Deutschhof, a small farming village in the Rheinland-Pfalz area of Germany.


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We didn’t have much to do, which was the perfect way to really have a vacation, spending time around family and helping around the house and thinking Christmassy thoughts. We did discover, though, that the Heidelberg Christmas market was going on for one more day, so on day 2 we hopped on a train to Heidelberg and enjoyed the day there with Emily, who was the perfect bilingual guide. I enjoyed several bratwursts, and we had a nice hike up to the ruined Schloss Heidelberg, which provided lovely views of the town.

The next day, we went with Angie to Klingenmünster and, while she had her hair done, climbed a big hill to see the local castle, Burg Landeck. It was closed and locked, but after walking around its circumference to enjoy the panoramic views its hilltop position afforded, we found ourselves inside the castle, having stumbled across an open service entrance around the back. We took a quick look around before departing, not wanting to have to explain ourselves to any kind of German authorities.

That evening, we went with the family to the giant Metro in Karlsruhe, where 6 weeks’ worth of shopping were done in one fell swoop. Ori and I bought ourselves (in addition to lots of Haribo gummies and Pocket Coffees) a Ravensburger puzzle depicting the route and scenes from the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, which Ori prompty assembled when we got back to Oxford.

When we arrived in Germany, there was enough snow on the ground to cause delays at the Frankfurt airport and necessitated the use of a mobile staircase to unload the plane. By the end of our trip, however, the snow had entirely melted, revealing the countless fields in the surrounding countryside and making it possible for us to bike to Bad Bergzabern, the nearest city of note.

On our final night, we went to go hear Angie sing in a concert at a medieval church in a nearby town. The concert was a fundraiser to help restore wall paintings in the church, and Ori and I spent some time in the reception afterwards examining the paintings and trying to guess which Bible stories they illustrated.

The trip was just a really nice break from life in Oxford, and while we weren’t home for Christmas with our immediate families, it was wonderful to be able to spend the holidays with relatives who made us feel right at home. We were especially astonished by how well all of Ori’s cousins spoke English. And although we might have been back in Canada, for all of the things that weren’t unfamiliar to us, we still managed to have a few cross-cultural experiences. For instance, we celebrated Christmas with a service at the Deutschhof Mennonite church, we purchased a bottle of “secret recipe” monastic liqueur, and we even drove 170 km/h on the autobahn to Frankfurt!

I had a wonderful time, and I’m very thankful to Angie and her family for having me as their guest this Christmas. If you’d like help visualizing the things we saw on our trip to Germany, you can see photos here