White Christmas

The Christmas Eve in Kyhtai was absolutely magical. We skied until the school finished - one very very steep slope so that I doubted I'd ever get down there. And then on the other side we met the boys with their teacher - they had gone up the high Kaiserbahn and were on their way down the red nr 1 slope. So proud! They finally made it to the "high mountain". All kids were disappointed when we had to give our ski gear back to the rental shop.
The village skischools and hotels had arranged a Christmas party outside for that afternoon with "Glyhwein", Kinderpunsch, Christmas bisquits and music. When it started to get dark they gave out torches and lit some on the sides of a ski slope in village center. Everyone was waiting for the "Weihnachtsmann" - finally he came skiing down the hill followed by 4 beautiful white angels. It was a fantastic atmosphere and all the kids so excited. Father Christmas gave presents to all kids - bag of nuts and sweets. And the best - on the way down hill Father Christmas had made a short stop in our room and left some presents!
Back at the hotel there was another cocktail reception with live brass performance of Christmas songs, a real proper Christmas tree with live candles and even sparklers just as we used to have as kids. Dinner was spectacular as we were getting used to by then - 8 courses, truffles and all! We had a nice evening - boys played with the young son of the owner who had dinner at the table next to us. Had a nice chat with him as well. it turned out he spoke Swedish as he had had a Swedish girlfriend in the seventies! But he looked confusingly young - his son being about 4 or 5.
Christmas day morning we had to leave Kyhtai and only then found out how lucky we had been - the next village down the valley had green grass! 2000 meters had been snow border for the last few days and we were just above that.
Back to Munich and we went to see Helene, Alfons and their children who had come to spend Christmas with their families. 10 years and 6 children later we all look just the same - incredible! We had a lovely afternoon - boys had a playmate their age and Beatrice had 2 girls just 1 and 2 years older than her to play with. They all spoke well English after having spent a year in Oxford (dad is economics professor).
Then later wandered through downtown Munich and went for a proper Bavarian dinner in the Weisse Brauhaus. It's been 10 years since I last was there and really it took a while to remember all the places and streets. Had a bit of a shock as the waitresses were extremely grumpy. According to Helene that is part of the experience! And we were quite spoiled by our Hungarian waiters at hotel Tyrol - all very friendly, very good sense of humour, able to predict our wishes from the second day. In Munich they made customers feel like real trouble. But food was great and beer top class.
Used the valuable trick learned from corina and Pat to smuggle one child into a hotel room instead of booking two rooms and managed to stay all in one tiny room in the Holiday Inn at the airport. Good value.
Then back to Tallinn on the 26th. Almost straight from the airport we headed to my sister's for a family Christmas. Father Christmas had left presents here as well and we were forced to give quite a performance of song and dance numbers in order to get these.
Since then we have been furniture and car shopping. Really a fantastic season for buying a car - have been wading in deep snow and trying to dig cars out in order to see what type they are at all. Finally we bought an UFO today! The decision was between a reliable boring Volvo and a totally freaked out Citroen Picasso that speaks French and has a brain like a human. And we went for the latter - only problem - will need a dictionary to drive it! (Well hopefully will managed to hunt down the disk and change the language of the computer at some point.)
Meanwhile it has been snowing every day and it is quite cold now - by the time we headed home it was about -7C, now surely even more.
We have not managed to make any plans for tonight with the car hunt and everything. The kids went to the movies this morning with my sister and have been spending time with my parents most days. If the weather is not too crazy, we will try to drive to Rakvere tomorrow to save some of our wines from freezing in the house and to see my cousin and her family. Provided of course that the driveway out of the garage is still passable - it is already full of snow, not cleaned today and not likely to be cleaned tomorrow. Then Robert will go back to Croatia on the 2nd and I will wait for our 107 boxes to arrive from Singapore.