It is common knowledge among American Exchange Students that Thanksgiving can be an emotionally difficult time. The end of November is often when the novelty wears off, the exhaustion sets in, the “oh shit I have been here for almost four months and I am still not fluent” hits you… Many alumni I have talked to said that Thanksgiving week was the most homesick they felt during their exchange.
Wednesday 7 Days Till Thanksgiving:
I decided instead of sitting around and waiting to be homesick I would have my own Thanksgiving party, so I reached out to Jasmine, another CBYX student who lives about an hour from me.
We decide our party would be the day before Thanksgiving because Wednesday is a Feiertag, meaning no school, meaning plenty of time to cook. Those of you who know me know I have very limited experience in the Kitchen, those of you who know Jasmine know she is Vegan… we quickly decide not to make a Turkey. Making Thanksgiving completely vegetarian and mostly vegan makes things easier, and also drastically decreases the probability of accidentally poisoning our guests.
At this point our little party seems quite manageable.
Saturday: 5 Days Till Thanksgiving
I visit Jasmine in Bamberg to hike, meet her host family, and to plan for our party. Bamberg is gorgeous, but that can be expected. Everything here is gorgeous.
When I get home Saturday night I find our easily manageable guest list has grown to TWENTY people, including another CBYXer, Noah.
At this point excitement is growing but so is our to do list... I figure if I make the stuffing, the Cranberry Jello and the white sauce for the potatoes Tuesday night we should be fine.
Jasmine and I have an AFS meeting in Nuremberg on Monday, we can meet up early in the city and buy anything we can’t get in our local shops.
Monday: 3 Days Till Thanksgiving
After school my Host Mom and I go to the grocery store one village over. We stock up on six kilos of potatoes, loads of sliced bread, brussel sprouts, dairy products, beans, broth and various other oddities. I am warned that fresh Cranberries might be impossible to come by. Cranberries are essential to more than one dish and dried won’t work… my stress levels begin to rise.
In Nuremberg Jasmine and I hit two grocery stores. We leave the first with three squashes, a pumpkin, bananas, almond milk, and various other things I have long since forgotten. We leave the second with pasta, cheese, Jello (Gotterspeise), chestnuts, spices etc.
My stress levels diminish greatly once we find and buy 12 cartons of fresh Cranberries. We buy so much food the cashier gifts us pocket UNO. Thank you Cashier.
Shit really hits the fan as we try to transport all these groceries across the city to our meeting. Somehow the bananas end up underneath the squashes and start leaking through the bags. Jasmine and I end up in fits of laughter on the floor of the Nuremberg U Bahn sorting groceries and scraping squashed bananas off of the other produce. We arrive at our meeting twenty minutes late out of breath and draped in Rewe and Lidl bags.
We are cooking at my house so I take everything home in order to get started early. Slowed down by all the bags I am in real danger of missing my train back home and have to waddle run through Nuremberg in the dark leaving a Hansel and Gretel cranberry trail behind me.
I make the train at the last possible second and … it’s the wrong train going to a city in the very wrong direction. A very helpful woman explains that I can easily switch to a correct train if I get off at the next stop.
I rush to get off the train (because they don’t stop for very long at smaller stations but more on that later) and in my haste I drop a bag of groceries on the steps. The conductor holds the door for me as I scramble around on the floor throwing my groceries out and onto the platform… I get almost everything, but I have to get to my other train, and he’s yelling at me that this train has to leave so a carton of cranberries and all of our cheese gets left behind … I would like to take this moment to sincerely apologize to the DB conductor who had to deal with my cranberries and my cheese.
I rush to get off the train (because they don’t stop for very long at smaller stations but more on that later) and in my haste I drop a bag of groceries on the steps. The conductor holds the door for me as I scramble around on the floor throwing my groceries out and onto the platform… I get almost everything, but I have to get to my other train, and he’s yelling at me that this train has to leave so a carton of cranberries and all of our cheese gets left behind … I would like to take this moment to sincerely apologize to the DB conductor who had to deal with my cranberries and my cheese.
Tuesday: 1 Day Till Thanksgiving
German Jello is NOT like American Jello… also making Stuffing from sliced bread isn’t even that hard and totally worth it. What is not worth it is hand shelling walnuts…
N.B If your mother says the white sauce will stop thickening after a certain point and that’s when you should stop whisking… it is a lie… if you whisk it for a solid hour before giving up it will never stop thickening and will congeal into a semi-solid clump when you leave it in the cold overnight.
Wednesday: THANKSGIVING!!!
The idea is for Jasmine to arrive at 10.00 and for dinner to be served at six. Jasmine’s phone stopped working a few days ago so after she leaves the FREE WLAN BAHNHOF we don’t have contact until I meet her at the train “station” in Etzelwang.
Except her train comes… and then her train leaves… no Jasmine.
There are many options… she could be on the wrong train and is headed to Bayreuth, she could have missed it all together and show up on the next one in an hour… maybe she won’t come at all and I have to cook everything myself… which means I have no time to really try finding her and head home to get back to work and beg Noah to come early to help.
Except her train comes… and then her train leaves… no Jasmine.
There are many options… she could be on the wrong train and is headed to Bayreuth, she could have missed it all together and show up on the next one in an hour… maybe she won’t come at all and I have to cook everything myself… which means I have no time to really try finding her and head home to get back to work and beg Noah to come early to help.
As it turns out Jasmine WAS on the right train but missed the stop (remember that whole thing about the trains not really stopping at the stations) and ended up 6 km away without any way of contacting me and no experience with the difficult dialect of my area. After taking another the next train back to Etzelwang and wandering around the village asking strangers if they knew me for an hour… she found the house.
Noah arrives at one and dinner is completed on schedule by six.
Cooking for twenty people, in a new kitchen, with ingredients in a language you only kind of know, using a woodburning oven/stove, and not really working with recepies in the first place certainly an experience be it turned out to be a great success and a great deal of fun. The entire time we were running around like headless chickens, working on five dishes at once, and speaking a comical mix of English, German, and Denglish ("Your Aldi card is like leer." "That's literally a Nachtisch!" and "It's really klein.")
Cooking for twenty people, in a new kitchen, with ingredients in a language you only kind of know, using a woodburning oven/stove, and not really working with recepies in the first place certainly an experience be it turned out to be a great success and a great deal of fun. The entire time we were running around like headless chickens, working on five dishes at once, and speaking a comical mix of English, German, and Denglish ("Your Aldi card is like leer." "That's literally a Nachtisch!" and "It's really klein.")
Our Menu included:
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes (Kartoffelbrei)
Scalloped Potatoes (Kartoffelauflauf)
Brussel Sprouts (Rosenkohl)
Roasted Cauliflower (Blumenkohl)
Pumpkin/Squash Soup (Kurbissuppe)
Green Beans (Grüne Bohnen)
Cranberry Sauce
Cranberry Jello
Mushroom Gravy (Piltz Sauce)
Veggie Roast (Gemüsebraten)
Sweet Potato Salad (Süßkartoffel Salat)
Pumpkin Bread (Kurbis Brot [Courtesy of Jasmine’s host family who unfortunately weren’t able to make It])
Despite the graceless buildup to our meal it turned out to be a major success. Nothing was burnt, nothing was cold, no one was poisoned, and we ended up with enough food for at least thirty people.
Everyone was completely fascinated by the Stuffing, which really doesn’t exist in Germany, and what really surprised me... no one had ever seen fresh cranberries before. I brought out the extra ones and passed them around for everyone to examine and try raw. Actually for several days after the dinner every time someone new came to the house, my host mother would show them the cranberries. I think that my Thanksgiving and the days leading up to it, are a very good example of the life of an exchange student. Not everything or every day is a beautiful, blog worthy vacation... but even the little things, like grocery shopping, usually turn out to be an adventure.
