This morning we met up with an American co-worker of mine, Laura, and grabbed a train at about 10:30 for a little over an hour south to Lindau, the last German city on the lake before entering Austria. From there we met Jessica, a British landscape architect, before driving another 30 minutes to her house in Lindenberg for a Thanksgiving day of sledding and turkey eating. We grabbed some light food at the train station cafe and since the city’s Christmas market was opening up for its first day, we decided to browse the market for a bit before we left. Since Christmas is a pretty big deal here in Germany and all cities have Christmas markets, it is cool to be able to see them and begin immersing myself into the holidays. I love holidays.

After enjoying some fire roasted sugar covered almonds and doing a little bit of shopping, we headed to Jessica’s place. But on the way, we had to make a much needed stop at her boyfriend Achim’s Mom’s house to pick up the sleds. And we also had a look at the brown cows in the barn all tied up for milking with barely enough room to even lay down. They seemed very excited to have visitors and really wanted to lick us. We had a look at the babies too. They were pretty funny because they were looking for anything to suck on. If you stuck your hand out they would suck on it immediately.

With the sleds in the car, we were on our way. We got to Jessica’s and set about preparing the food while her boyfriend Achim was leaving his work to head to the store. Jessica began preparing the pumpkin pie (made from real pumpkin) while I prepared the orange and raspberry Jello mixture. The Jello was especially cool because Germany doesn’t have it anywhere, so luckily it came in my “thanksgiving in a box” package sent by my Mom from back home.

With the pumpkin pie done, the jello in the fridge with the Country Company Potatoes I had put together the night before (family recipe) and Laura’s southern style greens, it was time to get the turkey in the oven. Jessica had ordered a super good turkey in advance and before we arrived, she had stuffed it and gotten it all prepared for the oven. So in the oven it went and off we were to go sledding! That is, after much discussion of whether it was ok or not to leave the turkey in the oven by itself and wondering if we could see the window from the sledding hill should smoke start billowing out from the kitchen.

They have a great sledding hill just a few minutes walk from their apartment. It had been well-sledded and therefore was compacted to perfection. We had a great time sledding and the hill also had a bunch of kids with plastic sleds that were pretty entertaining to watch. The hill was pretty high, with a good slope and our sleds were fast.

After a good hour or so of sledding and then a nice walk around a beautiful frozen pond that we actually walked a portion ON the pond, we made it back to the apartment to finish up the cooking. The turkey turned out absolutely perfect and tasted great and my family-recipe potatoes were a huge hit. The massive amount that I thought for sure would be too much, disappeared in no time. It was a great day followed by a fabulous meal. Even though we weren’t surrounded by the traditional food and family we were used to, it all turned out perfectly and was really nice to be able to enjoy the holiday with our local friends and share food from our family recipes.

This morning we woke up to a thin blanket of white covering everything outside. Then it snowed throughout the day and looked very wintery outside. Winter is definitely here and it is a great reminder that we only have two weeks left until we will be back home in the states, enjoying the holiday with our families.

We later went walking and the Alps were out and we had one of the most clear afternoons I think we’ve had all year. Standing at this one point in our walk we could see the huge string of Alps from Austria and all through Switzerland over the snow covered farmlands and Lake Constance.

This lovely gate in Venice was found down one of the skinny little alley ways with streaks of sunlight shining through. And like a nest built with found items, some gems are woven through in seemingly random fashion.

This covered walkway for an emergency entrance to a hospital looked like it was made of temporary materials to provide cover but it was so elegantly designed with curving, flowing lines.

images via Lisa Town

It’s been so busy lately between various deadlines and vacations (ah, I love Europe’s vacation allowances!) and now that I’m back in the office it’s time to step away from the computer a little bit and help with the massive model. One of the greatest things about Atelier Dreiseitl is our fabulous workshop. We have the ability to make large models and even do water testing, up to 1:1. While I think of myself as being pretty good in spatial visualization, when dealing with a project that has 30 feet of grade change just within one city block, it’s pretty hard to visualize everything just right.

It is amazing what a model can do to help with really getting a grasp on not only the overall, but in understanding how each individual space feels and reacts with the areas around it. In our model, it’s actually big enough that we can set a camera inside of it and move it around like a person walking through the site. Just that one video conveys more information than a million drawings could in helping the client fully understand the space.

I don’t understand why more firms don’t have model workshops. I realize it’s a big investment, but the amount of drawings that we have NOT done as a result of the model has got to greatly offset the cost of the model. I had seriously underestimated the importance of a model on a project before I came here. In face I even used to think that those firms that did tons of models where actually wasting time. Sure, I did study models in school but hardly ever broke out an exacto in the work place. It is so much easier to be creative and flexible when working with form and being able to tweak things in 3D space. Of course, I don’t mean fancy models but rather just simple models held together with double stick tape for constant tearing apart and putting back together in new configurations. Clay is especially a fabulous medium for really being able to explore form and space.

Especially in complicated urban design projects, I think models are absolutely necessary. Although it’s amazing how time consuming it is to put all those model people in. Someone actually took a picture of me because they thought it was so funny in how I had to really stretch every inch of my body just to try to glue a walking person onto the steps nearly in the middle of the model.

I just love this picture which I took from outside the Tate Modern in London. Not only is the background interesting with the very bright “Temporary Eyesore” fence trying to make fun of something unsightly but the foreground has some very simple yet lovely benches made of recycled tire rubber wrapped concrete.