What a festival of a weekend. I don’t think I have ever celebrated my birthday so much. And that statement means a lot coming from me.

I had a few people over on Friday night. They showed up with a homemade German cheesecake and pear schnapps. After drinks and munchies, we headed down to the river where Frankfurt was illuminated by the rides for the weekend’s Mainfest.

I was planning on taking it easy on Saturday, but a few of us ended up biking to a few markets for wine spritzers, refreshing lemonade drinks and antipasti. And the wine continued into the night. One of my new friends is Hungarian and I really enjoyed our conversations about Hungary and the surrounding area, which I know nothing about.

Summer!

Today, I hosted a cookout with a small group of colleagues from work. I either work with these people on projects or have met them on the train coming and going to Frankfurt (most people who work in Darmstadt don’t live in Frankfurt, so there is a small group of us that take the train and connect that way). It was a party of haircare gurus–stylists, R&D formula developers, a fragrance developer…and me!

The group was really diverse: Koreans, a Brit, a Russian and a French woman. I love that I am meeting people from so many different places who have all been shaped by different experiences. I could talk to them for hours about where they’re from, what they love about their home countries, and what they miss. And I loved the homemade mirabelle tart brought by my French friend.

My neighbors let me use their tables and small grill, which was quite a feat to get started. And we spent the first half of the party getting smoked out.

I made homemade “American-style” banana bread (not a food they were familiar with) and served drinks in solo cups. We had a huge discussion about this. One of my guests asked if I brought the cups from America because they don’t have them here. I had heard that Europeans think solo cups are very American. Glad I could help to confirm the stereotype.

So. A very full weekend. I’m tired. But it’s a good tired. I got lots of birthday love from the states, which made me happy. And I got lots of love here. As I was making the banana bread this morning, I stopped to reflect on how blessed I am. I had a weekend of laughter and friends and food. When my friends commented on how much they liked my apartment, my response was that an apartment is nothing if it is not filled with friends and people you love. And this weekend, it was.