Crisis on the Homefront

This is one of our first experiences as homeowners/landlords.....

One of the trees that made us love our house so much has totally failed us! As far as we know, this was not the result of any high winds, tornadoes or lightning but rather the tree just deciding to give out and fall over into our neighbors yard taking part of their tree with it - that's the branch you see pinned under our tree. The part that fell is only one of three parts of the tree (as you can sort of see in the second picture) so our newest concern is whether or not the other two parts, particularly the one leaning directly over our house, are going to give out any time soon. I'm feeling like we are already on borrowed time where that is concerned and the whole thing needs to go as soon as possible. We are looking into whether the tree was/is diseased at all or if this is just the result of age and weight. Stay tuned for the latest developments. We are very thankful no one was hurt. I am sad to see it go and can only think how puny a new tree will look in its place. :(

Simple Pleasures

We have stuff! Our shipment arrived Wednesday afternoon and we are slowly getting unpacked. A couple of the things we were most happy to see: our bed & the tea kettle. I know - weird - but we both had iced tea yesterday (complete with ice cubes) for the first time in over three weeks. It's amazing how much pleasure you can derive from such little things. We're very thankful for the advice given to us to bring ice trays with us. Our fridge actually has a couple of ice trays already in it but they are for the little bitty ice cubes - I prefer the larger Texas sized ice cubes personally. :) We have not yet unpacked the "office" boxes but as soon as we do, we will get photos loaded asap!

New Friends

I've met someone. I'm not sure how to spell her name but in my head it is Guterine. She lives across the street from us, is 67 years old and I'm fairly certain has never met a stranger. We first met her in passing on the trail one evening while out walking/jogging (me walking/Steve jogging). I bumped into her again the next day and I guess you could say we've been friends ever since. She goes to the local pool every day during the summer (for actual exercise, not sunbathing) and invited me to join her. We communicate using a hybrid of broken English, VERY broken German, and hand signals. You'd be surprised.....it works quite well. :) She took me into town the other day and gave me a walking tour of Heppenheim, showing me every shop and telling me where to go and where not to go. The best part was that I was able to use her German to brave the place I have been most afraid of.......the butcher shop. We stopped and I fumbled through buying a couple of sausages and pork chops but mostly I was able to scope the place out. Now I know that I need to go in there fully prepared to speak zero English and attempt to order one of the MANY available varieties of schweinefleisch. Is it just me or does that word look a little too much like "swine flesh"? I think "pork" sounds much more appetizing but I'm afraid it won't get me very far.

Bacharach

I can't believe I have been here three weeks! How quickly the time flies....


This weekend we travelled to Bacharach, a little old town on the Rhine River valley. Such a great little town with such history and so much to see - it was perfect for a quick weekend trip. We rented bikes and attempted to ride the path along the river but unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we ended up in a little wooden hut a couple of miles outside of town waiting for the rain to clear. We chatted it up with a guy from Edmonton who was also visiting Bacharach with his family and was also waiting out the rain. After it cleared, we headed back to the town and thought we would ride up to the castle when, once again, the weather had other plans. We ducked into a wonderful little restaurant called Altes Haus for a berry strudel and waited for the rain to clear....again. We decided to give up on the bikes. We walked up through the grape vines that grow along the sides of some very steep hills to a lookout tower for some really spectacular views. Then back down to the street and over a couple blocks to the bottom of the billion steps that lead up to the castle. (I'm convinced that Steve is using all the fun castle tours as part of his evil plan to whip me into shape.) The castle is now a youth hostel - seems kind of a sad fate for the building that once stood proudly as the German capital back in the 1200's. But, it's cool that you can say you stayed in a bona-fide castle for the bargain price of 17 euros per night.

We opted for the bed and breakfast run by Ursula Orth where we enjoyed a gracious host, comfortable beds and a traditional German breakfast. I'm having a hard time buying into the German idea of breakfast. Not that it doesn't taste good.... Our breakfast consisted of a couple slices of Swiss cheese and prosciutto on a roll.... sort of sounds more like lunch to me but I ate it graciously and actually enjoyed it. What I did not enjoy was the soft-boiled egg that I had assumed was hard boiled until I broke into it. Something about it looked a little too much like a baby chicken fetus and left me wanting to run from the table and lose my proverbial lunch.

In other news...we visited the Church of Christ in Wiesbaden yesterday morning....something I have been thoroughly looking forward to since I got here. It is a small church consisting entirely of either active military or civilian contractors. Sadly, it is shrinking almost weekly with so many changes in our military presence here. Yesterday they were saying goodbye to a couple that is relocating back to the U.S. this week and there are several others that are waiting to find out what will happen next. One nice thing about going to such a small church is that we were CLEARLY visitors and everyone knew it.....so everyone was eager to introduce themselves and get to know us. We actually had lunch with a family that lives in Arlington (when not living in Germany) and attends a small church in Fort Worth.......small world....

Heat Wave

Ok, recap of the weekend - I know it probably seems like I'm holding out on you - not blogging more often but seriously, I didn't leave the house last week except to go walking/jogging. How sad am I? It was actually sort of nice but I was definitely ready to go out to dinner by the time Friday rolled around. We went to a little place in Heppenheim called Scotland Yard. I think it was supposed to be sort of a London pub type place but the only thing on the menu for dinner was a few variations of schnitzel. It was good schnitzel though so who's complaining. We tried something we've been seeing and hearing alot about - apfelwein. We thought it was going to be sort of like apple juice flavored wine - very refreshing - not so. It was sort of bland and overly carbonated (although we ordered it sparkling, so maybe that was our mistake). Our waitress was very friendly with we think an Irish accent. She seemed more comfortable w/ English than German so I liked her instantly.

Oh I almost forgot - Friday was Couch Day! It arrived none too early at 3:00pm. I was just about to call the place to make sure we were still on their schedule when the doorbell rang. It looks great, fits perfectly and most of all is so comfy. Lovin the couch.

Saturday, Steve wanted to go look for a TV. We drove to Kaiserslautern - about an hour away - because the BX there is supposed to have a large electronics selection. I have to say it's been intresting learning to navigate the various posts and bases here. One has the best commissary, another the best furniture store, another the best electronics selection. I've been to so many already I can't remember where we've seen what. But I'm loving the fact that we have a safe-haven when we don't want to deal with finding things locally. Since the TV is about 98% Steve's decision, he did most of the looking while I tried to stay out of the way - it was very crowded and oh, HOT. I'm not sure what the actual temperature was here but it was definitely in the 90s. I know I won't get much sympathy here, and I'm normally not one to complain about the heat (I save it for the cold), but when there is NO a/c ANYWHERE, 90 degree temps are a whole different ball game. Steve didn't find what he wanted - apparently the selection was not as great as we've been told - but we did buy a rug for the living room so the trip was not a total bust. We stopped in Heidelburg on our way home for the castle illumination. By the way, we didn't do the dinner cruise - guess we waited a little late to get tickets so they were all booked up. But we had a lovely dinner in the square and waited for it to get dark. Then we walked to the other side of the river for a good view of the castle and the bridge where they do the fireworks. It was very reminiscent of Independence Day gatherings. Basically, people everywhere.

Sunday, we went to Limburg with our friends Henry and Lorrie who are here vacationing. There is a cathedral there which we toured and there is also an ice cream shop which is VERY generous with their servings. We had ice cream that was made to look like spaghetti. Why I'm not sure, novelty I suppose. In the heat, finishing it was no problem. Limberg is a quaint little town with a beautiful altstadt (old town) - very quiet on Sunday. Promise to post photos asap - of the cathedral, not the ice cream.

Dealing with the heat with no a/c has been interesting. We have these metal blinds that go outside the window - again photos to come - so basically, you're just supposed to open you're windows in the morning while it's still cool and let as much cool air in as possible. Then you close the windows and lower the blinds to trap the cooler air. I don't know how well it really works, but luckily our house is built into the side of a hill and, the bedrooms which are on the bottom of four floors actually stayed quite cool. The kitchen and dining area which are on the top floor pretty much stayed like a sauna. Today it seems that the heat wave is over and we can get back to normal.

Heidelburg

Sunday we went to Heidelburg for my first castle tour. After climbing about a billion stairs - (why they had to build those things way up in the hills is beyond me!) - we reached the front entrance. I wish I could post photos - which I promise to do eventually - because I'm not sure I can do it justice. I was definitely impressed. For one thing, it was huge - and so intricate - and the views from the grounds out over the city were beautiful. So, here's a little trivia question. As we walked the grounds, we came up on a bust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe simply noting that he liked to hang out here back in the day. Steve and I both knew the name and knew we should know who this guy was, but couldn't for the life of us think of why. So I would be curious if any of you know him off the top of your head. When I came home and looked him up I wasn't quite as embarrassed as I thought I would be. :)



We have tickets Saturday night for a dinner cruise on the Neckar river for the castle illumination. It's supposed to be pretty cool. I'm glad I got to see it up close beforehand.



On another note, our couch is scheduled to be delivered on Friday. I can't tell you how we both long for Friday. We have actually found ourselves daydreaming about our couch - how we'll sit on it and read, or sit on it and look out the window, or sit on it and eat (since we won't have a dining table for another couple of weeks). Steve asked me last night if we had any plans for Friday night - I told him we were going to sit on our new couch. And was sort of serious. I don't think you realize how essential the "essentials" can be until you are living without them!

Greetings from Across the Pond

Well, things are finally settling down over here. We finally have an internet connection and we have bought enough furniture to start feeling like we aren't camping out in our own house. We ordered a couch today and I can't tell you how glad I will be when it gets here. I never thought about how frustrating it can be not having anywhere to sit down and relax. The only major purchases we have left is a new TV and a car. I have had to install light fixtures in almost every room of the house. I'm thinking I can moonlight as an electrician before long. I've only been shocked once which is pretty good in my book.

We had lunch today in downtown Mannheim. The weather was great and it was nice sitting near the town square. I am planning on taking Jami over to Heidelberg tomorrow to tour the castle. Heidelberg is a cool town with a really nice castle that dates back to the 1400s. It is only 30 minutes from our house in Heppenheim-Kirschhausen which is nice. There is a Army post there too where we can buy groceries, shop at the PX, etc.

Our stuff is scheduled to get here on the 19th, but after my recent experiences with a semi-socialistic country like Germany, which operates like a union, I half expect the workers to be on strike that week and not get our stuff for 3 extra weeks. Long story, but that is why it took so long to get our internet connection. Speaking of strike, my commute this week was terrible, for no reason that I could tell. It turns out that the transportation workers were on strike, so everyone decided to drive. Driving 10 mph on the Autobahn is not my idea of thrilling. I guess that is all for now. Hope everyone is doing well. Tschues!

More Shopping

Yesterday was another busy day of shopping. We made our first trip to IKEA - yikes! We felt like we spent an eternity there - I don't know how long it actually was - but it was kind of a beating. We have a long list of things we need and we just didn't really know where to begin. We managed to buy a desk for me - so I officially have "office space" which is nice. We also bought a schrank which is basically a free-standing closet since none of the bedrooms have closets. This was a tough decision since this is something that we know we will use for two years and then dispose of before returning to our beloved built in closet space back home. Our options ranged anywhere from $70 to around $1,000 - more if you're so inclined. We went the less expensive route since this is definitely not a piece of furniture we want to make a huge investment in. We bought lots of little things - dishes, glasses, kitchen towels, laundry hamper, etc. etc.

Then, we made my first trip to a commissary. I'm a happy girl!!! I literally was like a kid in a candy store walking in - gitty over the things I could buy! I knew I would have access to some of the comforts of home via the commissary but I don't think I realized how happy it would make me. We stocked the kitchen and it felt great. The number one best thing I found - avocados - yes, my friends, there will be guacamole in Germany. We were also able to buy stuff to make tacos. So, while Uncle Julio's and El Fenix and Christina's may be far far away, a little Tex-Mex is only going to be as far away as our kitchen counter.

We finished off the evening with dinner at this little place in downtown Heppenheim. This was my first time at an actual restaurant so I was a little unsure about what to expect. When our waitress approached us and Steve started speaking to her in German, I guess she detected that this was not his native language and very quickly swapped our menus with English versions. She was super friendly and was happy to let him practice his German and switch back and forth to English when necessary. I should have taken advantage of the opportunity. I have studied this stuff - maybe not as diligently as I should have, but I do know SOME. I totally froze. I was going to order my dinner in German which would have consisted of about 6 words. I got stage fright, panicked, and reverted to English! Apparently I am not going to embrace this new language until I am forced against my will - at some point I am going to find myself out somewhere, needing something, without Steve to lean on and with no English to be had and I will HAVE to communicate.

Hill Country

Ok, so I just logged in to start this post - only to discover that my blogger dashboard has switched to German. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that. At least the word "new post" is similar so I was able to get this far.

One thing I forgot to mention - Monday after Steve got home from work and I logged off for the evening - we decided to go for a walk on the trail just down the street from us. Actually, "walk" doesn't do it justice. It was a nice little "hike" that definitely had me panting and left my calves sore the next day. It was really beautiful though. I love that we can basically walk out our back door and go hiking in the woods. I will post photos at some point but it will have to wait for my home computer to arrive since it has the software for my camera. Sorry! Just words for the next couple of weeks.

Speaking of which, we are scheduled to get the stuff that we shipped on the 19th which is much sooner than we had anticipated - so that was good news. I will be glad to get some of the cold weather clothes that I shipped instead of packed because I thought for sure I wouldn't need them just yet. I need them. I have worn the same hoodie almost every day since I got here - I'm sure Steve's tired of looking at it.

Happy 4th of July everybody! I hope it stops raining in Dallas long enough to see a few fireworks.

Catch Up

Whew - where to begin....I already feel so behind on keeping you up to date! I am going to try to get you up to speed on the last three days and then I promise to stay more on top of this thing.

I arrived in Germany at 7:00am Saturday morning (midnight central time) where Steve picked me up and drove me home. We came home to drop off my bags and so I could see the new place that up til now, I had only seen in pictures. It's larger than I had imagined and SO cute! I love our view out the living room window. I love the floors - wood in living/dining - carpet in the bedrooms and a nice NEUTRAL tile in the kitchen. If you've seen the tile in our house in Plano, you know this was a welcome change of pace. We will definitely be getting new floors when we get back.

Steve had a pretty serious agenda for us when I arrived - since he has been living in a 100% empty and about 80% dark house for the last two weeks. I guess another part of the renting culture in Europe, in addition to installing your own kitchen, is installing your own light fixtures. There was the occasional lightbulb hanging naked from the ceiling but other than that, no light. Poor Steve. He has also had cars on the brain since even before he got here - so our first stop was Pentagon Auto Sales in Heidelberg where we did a little browsing. Then we went to Bauhaus which is sort of like a smaller version of Home Depot - we bought a couple of light fixtures for the entry hall.

We stopped for a little lunch in the Altstadt (or Old Town) and had quite the parking trauma. We were driving down this particular street because we saw cars parked along it - got to the end without finding an empty spot - only to find ourselves dead-ending at a pedestrian mall type place - a street CLEARLY for pedestrians only. There's a car behind us (apparently he didn't know what he was doing either) so we just sat there, wondering what in the world we were supposed to do! This nice older lady stopped us and told us to just drive slowly through the people and turn around - Okay! We didn't have any better ideas so that's wat we did.

We headed back towards home, stopped in Heppenheim for some more shopping. We went to the Media Mkt where we bought all things electrical - hair dryer, printer, toaster, coffee maker, etc, etc. Then a couple of other stops for other small essentials and to get an idea what to expect at places called Toom or Praktiker. Yes, I'm missing Super Target right about now. But that's okay - open mind.

We came home and I tried to make myself halfway presentable for us to go to dinner. What I haven't mentioned is that at this point, I have been up for about 28 hours. I thought I was dying. The bags under my eyes were hideous! But Steve swore that it was for the best and I would be glad that I stayed up. So I did - we went to Heppenheim where they were in the last couple of days of a week-long wine festival. We ate brats and drank wine and met some people around our age. Their English was MUCH better than our German - although I have to give Steve credit - he can manage a pretty decent conversation in German these days.

Then FINALLY - I got to go home and get some sleep.

***

I woke up Sunday feeling like a new person - at least at first. We made breakfast and relaxed a little bit. Then we were off for more shopping. Since nothing local is open on Sundays, we took that opportunity to drive to the post in Mainz. We did some looking - just to see what our options were. We bought a bike for me - random purchase - don't laugh - I WILL use it. It was a really good deal and I knew I wanted one. Can't have Steve biking off into the hills without me. Ha! We also bought a desk chair for me (no desk yet) and a trash can for the kitchen. On our way home the rental car started having issues - a couple of lights popped on on the dash and we were losing acceleration. Luckily it didn't die on us and we were close to Frankfurt where we could take it back in. So we swapped our silver Audi station wagon for a black one and we were back in business.

We went back to the Heppenheim wine festival for dinner - since it was the last night and we just wanted something quick - we knew we could get a good brat there. :)

I was still feeling the time difference and was pretty tired - but feeling 100 times better than I did Saturday.

***

Monday was my first day to work here. I took advantage of the opportunity to catch up on my sleep since I don't start working til 12:30. Since I don't have a desk yet, I sat out on our balcony - where there is at least a table (and my new desk chair). It was a gorgeous day - a little chilly in the morning but still pleasant. The weather was so weird - sunny and warm - then cooler and raining a bit - then back to sunny and warm - then back to rainy. Nothing too thrilling but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my first official day of telecommuting. The best part - I didn't go home angry after sitting on Central Expressway for an hour!