We had our first "married couple" Valentines Day yesterday and it was a good one! Some hiccup's and some sweet little memories were made.
The day before Valentine's Day, Matt, well, tried to sweetly surprise me with some flowers. He came home from a short day at work and walked into the house, I had just spent the morning cleaning the house so, when he got home I still hadn't really gotten ready for the day. After he arrived I jumped in to the shower, to start getting ready.
I guess he didn't realize this and he went back outside to grab the flowers and card he got for me. Something that needs to be mentioned here is that most front doors in Germany have an automatic lock when you close them. So basically he was locked out. He didn't see any problem, he had planned to ring the bell and when I opened the door he had flowers for me. Since he didn't realize I'd jumped into the shower, it didn't quite turn out the way he planned...
I was upstairs in my own little world and didn't hear the bell ring with the water running. When I finally did finish I heard the doorbell, grabbed my robe, and ran down to get it (I knew it must be him, since no one else would be ringing our bell). I opened the door to my sad, snow covered husband (it was really cold and snowy), and a beautiful arrangement of Gerber Daisies (my favorite). He had been locked out for a good 20 minutes. Poor guy.
On Valentine's morning I made some chocolate chip pancakes as a special little treat for us. I initially planned on just making the pancakes with a little whip cream heart on top of them to commemorate the occasion. I started getting a little more into as I went though. I remembered we had some chocolate syrup in the fridge, and then I noticed some red candles left over from christmas, along with our red placemats and napkin holders, which I forgot we had. So I ended up turning it into quite the spread. Flower arrangement center piece, lit candles, formally set table with all our good silver and glassware. I used the whip cream, chocolate sauce, and some powdered sugar to create a fancy little set up on the plate for the pancakes... it ended up being a lot of fun! Maybe we will do that again next year...it could turn in to a tradition, we will have to see.
We spent a couple hours at home, then headed out to Wurzburg (the city I used to live in when I was here doing ministry a couple of years back). It was fun to walk around and window shop. We walked up to the fortress and had a great time just exploring. We of course had planned to go to my favorite little restaurant, I lovingly call the place "Schuphnudlen" (I nicknamed it for my favorite side dish they serve there...); it is actually called "Till Eulenspiegel". Anyways, we sat down excited about indulging in all our favorites. We had planned on a big pretzel and camembert for our appetizer, the Altbierbowle (a beer filled with fruit, so very good), Bratwurst, and of course... Schuphnudlen. Unfortunately when the waitress arrived she said that the kitchen was going through remodeling and they only had a limited menu. When we looked at what they now were serving we found only the pretzel, since we were pretty hungry (I had been saving my calories most of the day for this dinner...) we decided to have the pretzel as a snack and head out to another restaurant we liked in the area.
When we arrived at the other spot, a greek restaurant which was another favorite, we were quickly reminded of attempting to go out to dinner on Valentine's Day in the States. It was a madhouse, and that is very weird for dining out in Germany. It was actually kind of humorous to watch the waiter's and waitress's running around, eye's wide in shock and surprise with how busy it was. After a wait (also very weird in Germany) we were led to our table, ordered some of our favorites, and proceeded to wait an hour for our food... very much like eating out in the states on Valentine's day. Luckily it continued to remain humorous watching all the activity around us, spilled drinks from the waiters running into each other were abundant, customers were being pushed and herded to tables before the former patrons were even up, causing major traffic jams...hilarious.
So that was our Valentine's Day! How was yours?
