Geburtstag (Birthday) in Germany

The strawberry looks
like a gummi bear :-D

I turned 23 yesterday and I got to get a little taste of how Germans celebrate birthdays. Back home, I'm used to celebrating birthdays on whichever day is convenient for the family to get together. That could mean we celebrate the weekend before or after the actual date. Sometimes our family even plans the birthday celebration for months before or even after because that's when everyone can be together. In Germany, that doesn't happen. A birthday is not celebrated before or after the birth date. It's considered bad luck to even wish someone a "Happy Birthday" before their birthday.

Ben asked me before my birthday, "So, are we celebrating your birthday the German style or the American style?" We ended up doing kind of a mixture. (Surprising, huh?)

Strawberry lemon cake
My favorite kind of cake. Reminds me of home.
<3
(3 year streak now. Grandma
made my first one, then Mom made it last year
and now I make it.)

I got to Skype my family Sunday night before my birthday and it was so great to be able to see my mom, Shan, (and Flash). It's during family get-together times like birthdays (& graduations) that make me homesick. I also got to eat the yummy birthday cake. No worries, we didn't eat the whole thing ourselves. We're sharing with some friends. But I have to say, that's definitely another benefit of having family around--don't have to go hunting for people to help you eat cake. :-D

He's goofy. Think he was pretty
excited too.

I had German class Monday morning. I just love the people I learn German with~ so much diversity and we're just plain goofy sometimes. On my birthday, we learned how to sing "Happy Birthday" in German. Seems there are two versions of it. It was sweet to listen to everyone sing a bit off-key with their morning voices.

The fun really began after class. Ben surprised me with tickets to see an orchestra concert at the famous Gewandhaus in Leipzig. We had talked about it when we first visited Leipzig, but I kind of forgot about looking into tickets. Can I just say that I was excited? REALLY excited :-D

We took the train in the afternoon. We've discovered that we can get day train tickets for 15 Euros each with which we can ride anywhere within Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. It was only an hour train ride. We arrived early and checked out an Asian market in town. Why doesn't Jena have an Asian market that awesome? Then we wandered around to find a place for dinner.

We found an Indian restaurant. I wonder if maybe I should've gone with something more traditional German, but I was really feeling Indian. Plus it reminded me of the good Indian restaurant we often ate at together with my cousins. Such a different dining atmosphere!

And the concert...I can't even express how amazing I thought it was. I don't know much about orchestral instruments and I've always thought that they must be so hard to play. I was so in awe. My mouth was open for most of the 2 hours...Ben confirms that. And I think I may have drooled.

It was a wonderful day. I missed being with family, but that's the only thing that would've made the day any better. :-D

Until my next post!