DANKFEST! (Thanksgiving)

DANKFEST! That is a rough translation of Thanksgiving. There is no such thing as Thanksgiving in Germany, for obvious reasons. However, after I told my host family about our traditions for Thanksgiving they decided to have a mock Thanksgiving on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I was really excited for this. It was going to be sad not to be at home for the holiday. 

On actual Thanksgiving day, I had probably the hardest day I’ve had here in Berlin. Trevor’s Mom and sister came for the week, and Malia & Anna had class the rest of the Thursday. After German, I went home and waited to Skype with my parents. I waited and waited, but no one was online. So instead I ended up working on my legal traditions term paper due the next Tuesday. I wrote the paper on the STASI, their prison, and prisoners. It was such a lame, sad day. It was really hard to be at home all myself the whole day and night, knowing that everyone else was with their families.

BUT all was made up for. Corry and I spent all day Friday preparing for our get together on Saturday. We cooked, baked, cleaned, decorated, just about anything you can imagine. Oh and somehow my host family has over 30 wine glasses, 30 prosecco glasses, well over 30 regular cups, plates, utensils, bowls, and small plates. Corry and I made dressing. That was quite interesting. We used a recipe from Corry’s coworker. It was an English recipe translated into German. I’m not sure where it originated from, but it definitely had interesting ingredients. It called for pumpkin, cranberries, nuts, etc. I guess I’m just used to the dressing we make at home, but it seemed strange that it didn’t have any meat. We prepared it on the stove. It smelled really good with the cranberries and all.

Friday night, I had a craving for pizza. So I asked if we could order pizza for supper. Little did I know what their “pizza” is like. It’s paper thin; literally I think I could see through the crust. Oh and if you picked up a piece all the toppings slide off the pizza. It was quite possibly some of the worst pizza I’ve ever had! I can’t wait for some good ole Papa John’s pizza when I get back!

Oh and for the turkey. That’s a story in itself. Andre happened to see a turkey at the store on the past Tuesday, so he snatched it up. Turkeys are not common in Germany at all. So they let the turkey set out the entire day on Tuesday. It actually unthawed. I didn’t want to insult them and tell them that it needs to stay refrigerated, so I just kept my mouth shut – promising myself to not eat any turkey. A few days later I found the turkey on the balcony. I figured it was better than leaving it inside. So today Corry brought the turkey in to unthaw again. When it thawed, we took the packaging off to reveal this hideous looking naked bird. Neither of us wanted to touch it. In all our screaming, I noticed a giant black spot on the turkey. I thought oh no, it’s started rotting. We decided to leave it until Andre got home. It was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen. All of us gathered around this turkey. We were all scared to touch it. Finally Andre took charge and pulled the neck and other items out of the turkey. Still the black spot was there. I was completely grossed out by this. Finally Andre got tired of listening to me and brought out the scissor to cut the spot out of the turkey. It turned out it was actually the bag. Oh, thank goodness we got that out of there. So we ended up leaving the turkey set out the entire day. It was naked, outside the packaging. They wanted to set it outside like that. I talked them into putting it in the refrigerator at least. We covered it with a paper towel and set it in the fridge. I still kept thinking, “No way am I going to eat any of that turkey. It’s probably spoiled already.” When we baked the turkey, we all had different ideas of what we were supposed to do. They wanted to put the dressing inside it and bake it. I finally convinced them that wasn't a good idea. My parents told me to stuff some vegetables inside to keep it moist.  Despite Andre’s shoves we only fit an onion and half a potato inside. That turkey was smathered with so many spices, herbs, butter, bouillon, etc.

Corry also made pumpkin soup, mashed potatoes, gravy, pasta salad, potato salad, cous cous, and tons of desserts. We even bought fruit especially to decorate the tables. When this lady throws a dinner party, she goes all out! All together we had about 30 people invited. Thank goodness not everyone showed up because there definitely was not enough seating for everyone. Trevor, his mom, his sister, Malia, & Anna came. 

The turkey looked amazing when it came out of the oven – golden brown – maybe I would rethink not eating any. None of us knew how to carve a turkey. My host family had this Hollywood image from TV of just putting the turkey on the table and everyone carves themselves a piece. I tried and tried to explain that this wouldn’t work for 30 people. Not to mention our turkey weighed less than 10 pounds. It actually looked like a large chicken. Thank goodness Trevor was there to step. He worked like a champ tearing that turkey apart. Andre and I deboned it. It worked quite well, except there wasn’t very much meat. My host family’s words, “There’s so little meat from such a big animal. Such a waste.” They even wanted to pull the fat off and include that.

The night turned out fabulously. The food was amazing. The dressing was actually better than the dressing I’ve always had. It had a sweet flavor. The turkey, well I just had a small piece, but it tasted good at least. Everyone had a lot of fun. Our first German “Thanksgiving” was a great success.