Wuppertal is a city that guidebooks ignore.  It’s one of those places we never would’ve heard about, let alone considered visiting, had I not had family there.

But when they learned we would be in Germany, they graciously invited us to spend Christmas Eve with them.  We discovered that Christmas Eve in Germany is like our Christmas Day in America — the celebratory day when families gather in formal attire, eat a traditional meal, and open presents.

On the hour-and-a-half train ride from Frankfurt to Wuppertal, I thought about the time my cousins journeyed to California ten years ago. Their one and only visit happened to coincide with the one and only time Rammstein was ever popular in the U.S.  Talking about that controversial German band was one of the few times we were able to break through the language barrier.

So naturally I was nervous about spending the entire day with them.  After all, the extent of my German vocabulary spans a whopping two words – “scheisse” (shit) and “danke schön” (thank you) — and those are two words that generally don’t pair well together in the same sentence.

But the butterflies quickly fluttered away when they greeted us at the train station.  Their command of the English language was superior to the people at my school who inundated term papers with the word “like” but never actually articulated what they liked.

And, like, you know, that was, like, relieving, you know?

From there, we were taken on a tour of Wuppertal.  It was clear from the get-go that my family was proud of their city.

They were well-versed in its history and eager to show us what outsiders had been missing.  My cousin even referred to his hometown as Germany’s “forgotten city,” overshadowed by nearby Dusseldorf and Cologne despite all the attractions that Wuppertal has to offer.

We started at the Schwebebahn, the oldest operating monorail in the world.  But this isn’t your typical monorail.  The trains hang from a rail 35-feet over the Wupper river, giving riders the sense of floating and gliding through the city.

My dad said it was the one thing I had to do when in Wuppertal.  Of course, it was the first time in the monorail’s 108-year history that it was closed for an extended time for repairs.

To emphasize my terrible timing, nearly everything worth seeing in downtown Wuppertal was closed for the holiday.

The Von der Heydt Museum, with its temporary Monet showcase.  The historic city hall.  The Museum of Early Industrialization.  Even the Christmas market.  All closed.

But what I really wanted to see was something that isn’t advertised… the house my grandmom grew up in.

I heard so many unbelievable stories about this house that I thought my grandmom was stealing scenes from movies and attributing them to her life.

As I heard it, the Allies starting bombing Wuppertal in 1943 because they figured if they bombed every German city that had Nazi ties, they would eventually defeat Hitler.

Unfortunately, Wuppertal did have Nazi ties. The pharmaceutical company Bayer was being forced to make chemicals that were used to kill Jews in concentration camps.  The company had invented aspirin in Wuppertal 80 years prior, but after WWI its assets were split up and a company the funded Nazis, IG Farben, took over a large share of Bayer and made them manufacture chemicals for gas chambers.

When Allied bombing escalated, my grandmom and her family had to abandon their home.  They later returned to find over 80% of the city in rubble.

Their entire street had been decimated by bombs… except their house and the houses on either side, which only sustained some damage.

When they entered the house to inspect the damage, they found a bomb lodged in the ceiling.

Despite the house being in a dangerously unstable state, Allied troops occupied the premises and temporarily used it as a communications center until the bomb could be removed.

When the war ended, my grandmom’s father rebuilt the house… a house he had built with his bare hands over 30 years prior.

Today, the house is exactly 100 years old and looking just as bright, just as strong, and just as elegant as the child who once lived there.

From there we went to a neighboring city called Solingen.  My cousin said the city was often labeled “The City Of Blades” due to its famed sword- and knife-making shops.  They said that swords had been made their since Medieval times, and 90% of the knives made in Germany today come from Solingen.

The town center was silent but fortunately a brew house was still open for lunch.  I heard a lot about a German culinary creation called currywurst, so when I saw it on the menu I had to try it.

After one bite, I asked, “is it wrong that I love this?”  It tastes like an Indian hot dog.  A bratwurst is covered in a sauce similar to BBQ sauce, then sprinkled with curry powder.

We also shared two omelet-like concoctions made of eggs and cream.  The sweet one had sliced apples and cinnamon, and the savory one had cheese and ham.

Before it got dark, we visited a park that sits below the Mungsten Bridge, the highest railroad bridge in Germany.  The sun was sinking behind the skeletal trees and the water from the Wupper river was dancing over the rocks, but the relaxing sights and sounds of nature were spoiled by Jackie and I stomping in the snow like kids on a Snow Day.

Putting two Californians in snow is like putting two rowdy kids in a ball pit.

When we arrived at my cousin’s house, I was greeted by other family members I had only ever seen in pictures.  They were more shy about speaking English since they hadn’t done so in many years, but the oh’s and ah’s of opening presents transcends any language.

After the kids were done tearing open their presents, we sat down for a traditional German Christmas dinner.  The main dish was a beef roulade, a thin layer of beef covered in bacon, onion and a gherkin relish (similar to pickles), then rolled up like burrito.  It was served with potatoes and sauerkraut spiced with holiday seasonings like cinnamon and clove.

The meal was so good that I told my cousins I could eat it twice a week.  They said they would too, but it was so difficult to make that they only have time to make it once a year.

Our favorite moment at dinner was when one of my cousin’s kids, a 14-year-old girl, innocently asked us if we had a “real American dollar.”

We don’t offer carry around fake ones, so Jackie gave her a dollar to keep.  The look on her face was priceless; you could have given her a million dollars and she would have reacted the same way.

She inspected every detail of the bill as if she worked for the FBI, rubbing the bill between her fingers, reading every letter.  The bill was passed around the table like a family photograph.  When it reached her father, he wanted one as well, and he gave Jackie €5 for a single American dollar.

I looked at my cousin with confusion and asked, “they know that the euro is worth way more than the dollar, right?”

He replied without hesitation, “everybody’s obsessed with the greenback.”

Conversations at the dinner table moved slowly so we could figure out what the other was trying to say, but the festivities came to end faster than we expected.  We drank our last glasses of wine and said our good-byes.

On the train back to Frankfurt, I was already thinking about when I could return to Wuppertal.  My cousins talked about riding the Schwebebahn across the city, walking along the Wupper, and hiking an hour-and-a-half to a nearby castle.  But the real joy would come from spending more time with them.  Now I just have to figure out how to say more than “shit” and “thank you” in German.