Across the Fence

Do you have a little time on your hands and don’t feel like reading or watching TV? Do something creative and start crafting! You could work on some table decoration for your Christmas dinner. Or you could come up with a new ornament for your tree or evergreen branches. You might even find that there […]

Do you enjoy snow? The very first soft flakes tumbling down from the sky, dancing in all directions, becoming a whirl? Watching them from a warm room – isn’t that one of the coziest things ever? To imagine the cold and wet out there, to observe how the grass gets a thin layer of white, […]

Nothing is more relaxing and creating ties than doing things together – as a family, as friends, as partners in life. One of the coziest is sitting together and telling stories. Whether it is sharing the background of family traditions or talking about an especially funny or tense Christmas, about your favorite things to do […]

Taking a walk is some wonderful exercise, anytime. But during winter, it is something that is a bit taxing as well. We have to layer us against cold and rain (if not snow), and the time window we have is narrow, as the days are so short. But once we are outdoors, it is extremely […]

Have you written all your Christmas mail already? Maybe even received one or the other card yourself and placed it on a sideboard or a mantlepiece? If you haven’t sent out your cards yet, there’s still a little time. Think about the joy a card chosen with care will create with the recipient. Nobody expects […]

Has anybody of you ever been to a European-style Christmas market? One that is built like a small town of cozy huts decorated to the nines and located in a town center, not inside a building? It was one of my annual joys to go see the small-town ones around my native town of Stuttgart, […]

What would Christmas be without music? Without singing? I’m not talking the untimely endless-loops in supermarkets and craft stores that start playing way too early in the year in order to remind us to consume in time for the holidays. I’m talking about taking up an instrument and playing it with friends or family or […]

Everybody loves a hot drink when coming in from the cold. Or when standing outside at a Christmas market booth. The traditional drink in Germany is Glühwein aka mulled wine. Back in thee day, you either bought it at an event or you had to make it from scratch. As in buying sachets that you […]

What do kids do when puddles suddenly grow a skin? They slide on them. My German childhood winters were cold enough to have ponds frozen with a solid skin of ice. Solid enough to last us for sliding to our hearts’ delight and, later, for ice skating. I remember even walking miles to a pond […]