Northern Germany + Hamburg

Lothar and his wife, Anya, had been planning to take us with them to Hamburg before we left Germany on March 15th. With only one weekend left remaining, we planned the trip. It had been beautiful and spring-like including temperatures in the lower 50's for the past week! Until... it snowed Friday night. Three inches and considerably lower temperatures. We made it out of the house and off north regardless. But, my first stop was the ground as I slipped on ice for the 247th time this winter. Bruise, check.

Our first stop was for lunch in a city called Bremen. It's a charming city and we walked through a farmer's market in the marketplace center and down the famous Böttcherstraße. It translates into "Cooper Street" though I'm still not sure what that really means. The city itself was beautiful though.

Left: Town Musicians of Bremen statue (Brother's Grimm Fairy Tales)
Right: Roland statue signifying freedom, civil rights, and independence. Stay tuned for the rest of Roland...

Left: Here's the rest of Roland!
Right: Böttcherstraße famous street of cute shops and restaurants

Just across from our (lunch) restaurant on Böttcherstraße. As we passed by, hundreds of people were standing with cameras out as the bells (upper right) chimed and the rounded wall pillar (center) rotated.

On Saturday afternoon, we arrived in Hamburg. Our first stop was our hotel at Le Royal Meridian and our second stop was the Miniatur Wunderland (miniature wonderland). Here's one photo from our visit:

After a night of driving the town and dining at a great Italian restaurant, we walked the streets the following day. Here are photos of the Rathaus.

Not bad shots for a cheap $80 camera, right?

Lothar, Anya, myself & Ray in front of the Hamburg Rathaus

On our way home, we stopped off in a town called Münster. Something incredibly special about this town is that one of its world sister cities is Fresno, California. Yes... sarcasm at its finest. Wow. How to compare a place with this killer cathedral to Fresno, the armpit of California. I guess it's because they still have a Woolworth?! Woolworth, haven't seen that place since I was a child!

Münster was actually a really nice college town with lots of charm in the old center. We enjoyed our stop there for espresso and America's finest, McDonald's.

I'm almost done journaling! Only one more week...

Mittwoch 03.03.2010 (day 170)
I had some nightmares this morning, which should’ve been a good sign to get out of bed. I decided to sleep some more and “cover up” those nightmares with dreams instead. Okay, so that’s just an excuse for being a girl who loves to sleep in. Oh, and a girl who is lazy. Haha. When I did finally wake up, I made myself a bowl of oatmeal (per usual) and became acquainted with the world and all the news it had in store for me—including California teacher layoffs. As if it wasn’t bad enough last year… now I have friends who are tenured and have taught for 5 years that are now getting the boot. It’s just horrendous. I’m thankful that we are able to live off of one salary, though my dream is obviously to get back into the classroom. But if that cannot happen anytime soon (in Illinois where I’m unsure about jobs), at least we’ll be okay financially. We may not be banking a ton like we were last year with two salaries, but at least we’ll be provided for. I just wish great things for all my lovely teacher friends and those students who will be crammed into classes of 30 (for K-3!!!). I made a random lunch of a bunch of things that surely added variety to our day. I think my favorite addition to our lunch were the peanut butter-covered English muffins. Yum! At work, Ray had a board meeting with the Chicago folks and the board (obviously). I was finally able to watch the Bachelor finale and was disappointed as I expected to be. I blogged about our recent trip to Switzerland and we headed home quite late—around 6:30. At home, we had spaghetti and I finished watching the rest of the Bachelor episodes… and have nothing else to report! Tomorrow we’ll be watching American Idol! Normally we watch it the next day, but the website we usually download episodes from has been slow to upload lately. We also thought that we’d be leaving for the North tomorrow, but I guess we had the dates wrong and we’re actually leaving Saturday. I’m still confused about the whole thing, honestly, but we’ll get there and have a great time.

Donnerstag 04.03.2010 (day 171)
We’re so excited to go back home. While it’s been incredible here and Germany is a lovely place, we’re ready. It’s the same way we felt when we packed up our things just a week or two before leaving California. It’s a bandaid you need to pull off and you’re just waiting for the right day…but you know it’s coming. This morning was uneventful until Ray came home for lunch. We jetted off to work after that and I watched both episodes of American Idol from Tuesday & Wednesday. I usually download them and watch them with Ray, but unfortunately the website only had them available for viewing, not downloading. We can’t watch full episodes at home on our Vodafone sticks because the bandwidth cannot support the content in a video as long as those. I pulled Ray in to watch the good performances, though. We headed out of the office around 5:30 and made plans to be available at 8 a.m. for Lothar & Anya to come pick us up for our trip up north. We won’t be going to Denmark, sadly, but we will have a chance to visit the north near the North Sea! We’re pretty excited about that because it’s just about the only region in Germany we haven’t visited yet. We left work and headed to Iserlohn to hit up our favorite grocery store in all of Deutschland, Kaufland. It’s almost as nice as Toom, but offers better prices. It’s about the same size as a Toom, also. Unfortunately, it’s about 30 kilometers away from our place. Visits are infrequent because of the distance. It was our last time visiting that store before we leave since we’re leaving in 1.5 weeks! We dropped off our crate of bottles we’ve had in our pantry since we moved here and visited our first “Getranke” store. They have separate stores for drinks and food. Because Germany is so “green”, glass bottles are used and stores in crates that are taken back to the store and a deposit is reimbursed to the buyer when they are returned. Glass bottles produce less waste because they are able to be sterilized and reused. Plastic bottles purchased outside of a case are worth .25 Euro cents! It’s definitely worth it to recycle your bottles here and everyone does. This drastically reduces the waste products and contributes to their green mentality. We got back 12.50 Euro and took our voucher with us to shop. We handed the voucher in to the cashier and she deducted that price from our purchase. It’s a pretty good and fast system. We headed back home and cooked dinner. While we waited, I checked my email and found out that the sellers reduced the price of our house by $5,000! Our attorney requested this action (on our behalf) because we needed it to match our appraisal price. Considering the appraisal doesn’t include the interior upgrades and only verifies square footage (ridiculous considering one of the main reasons in purchasing this house was because of the amazing upgrades… but I guess $90,000 in upgrades doesn’t contribute to the value of a home. Silly, right?), we were disappointed that the appraisal came back $10,000 lower than the selling price. We agreed to meet in the middle with the sellers and pay $425,000—what we consider a very reasonable price for the house and all the upgrades in the neighborhood it’s in. That was a huge blessing and we’re so thankful that God keeps blessing us. We cannot wait to move in and sleep in our house!!!

Freitag 05.03.2010 (day 172)
I went in to work with Ray this morning because we were so excited about signing the latest addendum to our house agreement at $5,000 cheaper! Woo hoo! We arrived and had an overall quiet day. I did my usual thing and was able to watch the American Idol results show while Ray did some real work. It snowed off and on today and at lunch we headed to Netto to pick up some food for lunch, a couple boxes of tea, and a couple jars of pesto. We left a bit early from work today and headed to Kaufpark to pick up some Blood Orange tea we wanted to bring back to the States. We love this tea brand, Milford, and we want to have a stash back in Chicago. We also plan to bring more back to Lovejoy because we already brought 3 different boxes and they loved them. Milford tea is not sold in the U.S. so it was an obvious choice to purchase it before we left. We tried the first Kaufpark in Neuenrade (located on one end of the 2 mile stretch) and they didn’t sell the blood orange variety. We drove behind the houses to the other Kaufpark and were exploring the amazing charm of the area. It really is gorgeous and we’re super lucky to have lived in a charming town that is hundreds and hundreds of years established. We noticed little crests on personal homes and just beautiful intricacies that we never noticed before---because it’s usually dark! Since the days are getting longer, we’re able to explore more and appreciate more with the daylight. Next week we plan to drive through Altena and take some photos of the amazing castle adorned with beautiful German architecture surrounding it. I mean… we lived about 8 miles from a real castle for 6 months! How amazingly cool is that? We headed home after our third market visit of the day and had dinner and packed for our short trip up north with Lothar and Anya. They’re picking us up tomorrow morning at 8. I opened our front door and there’s at least an inch of snow on the ground. Really? Ugh. I totally want spring in a bad way. I was thinking I’d be eased into this whole winter thing… but it’s not going as planned. Ha!

Samstag 06.03.2010 (day 173)
Lothar & Anya came to pick us up in their new SUV and head north at 8 a.m. As soon as I got near the car, I completely slipped on the pile of ice lining the streets! Yeah… it was like a cartoon. At one point I’m standing, and the next I’m slipping with my feet in the air, landing on my side. Ouch. I have a bruise for sure. Bummer. Aside from the minor embarrassment, I survived. Wasn’t I just talking about spring and the snow being completely gone? Well, it’s not. It came back with a vengeance last night and everything is covered with at least 3 inches. We set off and stopped off to get some coffee along the way to Bremen. When we arrived at Bremen, we parked at the Hilton and walked around a famous street, Böttcherstraße, saw some famous statues of a knight and a children’s fairy tale statue, and stopped in for lunch as a small restaurant on the street. I had a curry vegetable meal and the others had pork chops and a fish plate. We headed back into the car and headed further north to Hamburg. On the way, I saw 5 deer and one windmill! That was the first wildlife I’ve seen in all of Germany so far. I guess they all live in the north. When we arrived in Hamburg, we parked at the hotel, rested a bit, then headed back out to an exhibit. The exhibit is called Miniatur Wunderland (Miniature Wonderland) and it features very small exhibits of famous places in the world—bust mostly Europe and the Americas. There was a miniature Las Vegas, Yosemite National Park, Miami Beach, and lots of places in Europe & Germany. It was pretty intense and really engineered well. There were trains going throughout the exhibits making them all cohesive and there were cars that were run by programming and magnetism. Cars & trucks would even stop at certain points, put on their turn signals, wait in traffic, etc. They knew exactly when to make these moves. We saw an exhibit area that is in the process of being built and the amount of programming and intense miniature architecture that goes into each piece was amazing. We left there and drove around Hamburg during dusk and were able to see a lot of the latest buildings and drove by to see a huge cruise shipped docked here. The city is gorgeous. It reminds me of a mixture of San Francisco, New York City, and San Diego all in one. It has San Francisco’s brick loft charm, New York’s big city life with great restaurants and shopping, and San Diego’s water port area with lively nightlife. It doesn’t feel like any other place we’ve visited in Germany. Lothar and Anya love this city and wanted to show us around—which is why we came with them. After the driving, we parked the car at the hotel, relaxed in our rooms for a bit before heading downstairs for drinks before dinner. After drinks, we walked about 3 blocks to an Italian restaurant. Dinner was excellent. We probably spent 3 hours in that place eating so much. We had an antipasti starter and they came out with this amazing platter of all things delicious for us to taste. We could’ve been done with dinner right there! We waited a bit for dinner because we had just eaten so much and had the rest of our dinner arrive later. The chef, waiters, and all the people there were really great. We headed back to Le Meridian and headed to our rooms 30 minutes before midnight. It was a great day and we’re exploring a little more of Hamburg tomorrow before heading back to Neuenrade.

Sonntag 07.03.2010 (day 174)
We started the day off right. First of all, the shower in this place has to be the best we’ve ever experienced. I’m sure every second wastes about a gallon of water considering the buckets that are poured every second. Magical! Breakfast was fabulous, too. We headed upstairs to the 9th floor and saw a ridiculous view of the water and city. I guess they can actually walk out on the ice during the full winter. At this point in March, it’s starting to melt. We ate from a great breakfast buffet before heading out to walk around the city before heading back in the car for our drive home. We walked down to the Rathaus about 7 blocks from out hotel and walked down many of the streets. This part reminded us of Michigan Avenue in Chicago! There are so many great cities that this area is a mesh of… very nice. We headed back to the hotel after about an hour and packed our things before heading to Muenster. We’d never been there either. We stopped for espressos and walked around the old street (Altstrasse), saw some gorgeous buildings and churches, and stopped in at McDonald’s for a quick bite. They are now selling vegetarian sandwiches in Germany, too! I’m thrilled that they’re offering something for me (finally), but now we’re heading back to the states. It was good. I thought it was better than Burger King’s version at 1/3 the price. We left this college town and headed back home. It was a long day of driving, but we saw at least another 3 dozen deer on the way home! Where have they been our entire visit? Since it was sunny today and snow was covering the farm fields, they stuck out like sore thumbs. I love wildlife. When we arrived home, we made some food for dinner—Hamburger Helper & potato/corn soup. It was a good weekend and we only have 8 more sleeps until we’re home in the U.S. permanently and nearly home owners!!!

Montag 08.03.2010 (day 175)
With this very post, I will make it to my 100th page of journal writing. With one week left, it was certainly more than I bargained for! Originally I planned to only write a few sentences for each day, but then I realized that I’d miss out on the richness of our learning experiences and the culture we’ve been immersed in had I only dedicated a small amount. Ray went to work and I stayed, per usual. This is the last week of that schedule! When I got up, I answered some email and did my usual Internet update before having lunch and making a few items in the kitchen. Since I’m trying to use up all of our food before we leave, I’ve been making some items ahead of time so that it’s convenient just to heat up and serve. Way back when we started, I bought 11 cans of salsa. We’re down to 2 cans and I’m sad to say I may not finish them! If you know my Mexican/salsa obsession, you’d know how big of a deal this is for me. Haha. After lunch, I did some organizing and cleaning. I was putting things back where they were when we first moved into Zweite Strasse 18 in Neuenrade. I was collecting items that needed to be packed so that we wouldn’t forget them. I even brought out the suitcases—but haven’t inserted anything into them yet. That may happen tomorrow. I worked out for about 40 minutes on my own routine of about 15 different actions, showered and did laundry. Today, Ray went with Karston to Ludenscheid to check out a prospective building that RL may consider moving into. Lothar was feeling under the weather yesterday and had intentions to go, but ended up staying home instead. I didn’t go into work with Ray today because I usually like to stay home on Mondays and because he was going to be out and about for the majority of the day and couldn’t come get me. I haven’t had my own car since June 2009. It’s been 9 months since I sold my beloved Honda Civic. I absolutely still miss that car. It was so reliable and very comfortable to drive. Since we are moving into a relatively empty house and have all kinds of things to consider financially now, we are looking into getting me a Honda Accord when we get back into the States. I may actually have my own car again! It was fine here in Europe, but in the States, it’s not going to work. Ray came home at 6:15 and we had leftovers for dinner before entering in to an all-night cookout. We had plans to make lunch for the company (around 40 people) tomorrow and that requires some work! We started chopping all of the veggies I had started earlier in the day—broccoli, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, sundried tomatoes… and I cooked and diced the chicken. We started making the pea soup and it took hours. It normally takes a couple hours to make one batch, but we quadrupled the recipe! A 1-2 hour soups takes over double the time to cook. As I type at 10:20 p.m., the soup is still a-cookin’. The rest of the items are ready for the pasta and all I’ll have to do tomorrow is boil pasta and mix the ingredients all together (pesto, chicken, pasta, lemon juice, parmesean cheese, chili flakes, sundried tomatoes, broccoli bits, salt, pepper, and garlic). The big issue is creating this feast in a small European kitchen. The burners are so small that I have to use two burners to heat one pan! We’re also planning to buy baguettes tomorrow and slice them for the pea soup and pasta luncheon. Normal German pea soup is made with sausages and lots of bacon. So much bacon and sausage that the normal serving size (generally equivalent to one cup) is about 31 grams of fat! Can you even imagine? Since there are a couple veggies other than me, I decided to make the soup veggie by omitting the bacon/sausages, but adding chicken to the pasta (and setting some aside without chicken for the few of us). While I’m sure they would much prefer the sausage and bacon… I just couldn’t bring myself to creating something so unhealthy. I may as well have served cake for lunch. Other than that, there isn’t much else we had time to do tonight!

A little Schweiz & a little Frankreich

We took a trip down to Switzerland to visit one of the companies that has a relationship with LJ. We had a fantastic week of fancy dinners, great food, really nice people, and beautiful scenery. Before we headed home after that week, we drove up into France, explored the French countryside and stopped for lunch in a town called Colmar. It's not well known by the tourists, and the locals (French, Swiss, and German) all love it because of this fact--and its charm. This area has been battled over by the French & Germans and thus has a very French-German flair. Then, we visited our friends, Jen & Andy, at their home in Germany before heading back to Neuenrade.

We love road trips!

The photos start in Switzerland. A few posts ago, I added a few from Zurich when we just arrived. Here are photos from Luzern. It's a beautiful town that is large according to Swiss standards. It has an old, well-known bridge called the Chapel Bridge and picturesque mountains in the background.
 
Left: photo from a town called Aarau (where our hotel was located). That's a real traffic conductor!
Right: Random scenery from Luzern

There are lots of interesting buildings we saw and photographed in Luzern. A few of them are below.

Standing in front of the Chapel Bridge with the Swiss Alps in the background

Here's Pinocchio's restaurant (we didn't eat there)

...and here I am with Pinocchio!

We visited the Dying Lion Monument (originally built by a Danish sculptor) Mark Twain classified this as one of the most "dark" pieces of sculpture in the world.

Here's what the we saw as we walked along the Chapel Bridge. It's really charming and many of these paintings are hundreds of years old. The bridge itself was constructed in 1333 and some of the bridge burned in a fire in 1993. The burned portion has since been reconstructed.

Though we visited Mt. Titlis before Luzern, the photos are in the wrong order. Here they are... and this first one is of the world's first revolving gondola. It cost about the equivalent of $60 U.S. dollars to take this to the top. And we didn't even ski!

There are a few of these because I couldn't decide with gorgeous Alps photo to choose!

Here's a typical Swiss countryside photo... it was breathtaking!

On top of Mt. Titlis, there was a glacial cave. I'm not really sure why. There are glaciers on the mountain, but I don't know why they created this feature. It was free to enter (with ticket to the top).

Here are a few photos from the top. It was incredibly sunny + brightness of snow (which is why our eyes look closed).

Here's Ray pointing to Jungfrau (another popular mountain).

I'm standing with Alexandra, our tour guide for the day.

Standing at the top, 10,000 ft above sea level

Getting caught while throwing a snowball!

Dorky cutout photo.

Changing countries now... we're in France (again)! Last time we were in France, we had my parents visiting! I still can't believe they were able to come travel around with us in Europe. This photo (below) is of the Statue of Liberty... obviously we're not in New York. We were driving in Colmar and saw this, so I shot the photo. It turns out, the guy who designed Lady Liberty was from Colmar. Here's the tribute to him, we assume.

I thought it was a cute town and managed to find some beautiful things to shoot...

And the journal... for anyone who still keeps up with this after 169 entries! I'm almost done...

Dienstag 23.02.2010 (day 162)
We woke up and had breakfast downstairs in our hotel. I drove Ray to work while also managing to break a level that pulls the seat in the company car forward and backward. I wasn’t forceful or anything—it just broke. I headed back to the hotel after dropping Ray off at the Swiss company where he learns all about machine logistics and all kinds of (boring) technical things all day. I was able to watch The Bachelor in the comfort of our hotel room. We put a “do not disturb” sign on our hotel door whenever we stay somewhere because we often leave out items we don’t want others having contact with (i.e. jewelry, paperwork). We also feel that it’s a waste for them to replace towels and make our bed when we’re gone the majority of the day. Anyway, yesterday, we came back from dinner to a bag of fresh towels we never requested. Today, though the sign was still on, the housekeeper knocked on our door. They must really want to clean our area! Haha. I headed out for lunch but had a concern that I would spend $20 on a slice of pizza considering my $19 eggroll last night as an appetizer. I went for the obvious—McDonald’s. While I don’t have much to order there except French fries and salads… at least I knew that it would tie me over until dinner and the cost wouldn’t be exorbitant. Well, what costs 1/3 of the price in the U.S. costs 3 times as much here! I had a $1 (in the U.S., here = 3 Swiss Francs), and $3.50 SMALL French fries. Ouch! As unhealthy as it was… I just needed to eat for the sake of it. I headed back to the hotel after a little driving around and sent some emails, researching some teaching ”stuff”, and got ready to head back out to pick Ray up at 4:30. We came back to the hotel and he was able to pseudo fix the seat lever I broke. Really, it’s a wire that must be replaced, but it’s possible to rig it. We were picked up by two people from the finance department for a dinner near a lake. We drove around, up down, and around the Swiss countryside and finally arrived at the lake where we had dinner. They brought out an incredibly large appetizer plate with about 30 mini dishes of choices, bread, salads, and vegetables. After, we had dinner. I ordered what they recommended as a Swiss specialty. Honestly, it looked like 2 inch tall isosceles triangle seasoned and deep fried made of what seemed to be fish skins. I really don’t know, but it wasn’t worth SIXTY Swiss Francs! It was inclusive of the appetizer and dessert---similar to the appetizer being in small dishes of miniature sizes. Our dinner was close to $300 and I ate fish skins! We’re completely shocked by the cost of everything here. They drove us back to our hotel after a bit of an awkward dinner (two finance people = no sales or schmooze background = silence a lot) around 10:10 p.m. We’re ready for some sleep… that’s for sure!

Mittwoch 24.02.2010 (day 163)
I was SO tired today. It was one of those days (maybe it’s just me) that you just cannot keep your eyes open. I was in a funk the entire day, but luckily we actually did have some interesting stuff going on! We met at the company at 8:45 after our hotel breakfast and left with Peter to a company in the same group (they are owned by the same group and use their products, too) that produces rubber. It’s a really cool process and we had a small presentation about the company and background from the managing director before taking a tour of the company production floor. It was really interesting and we really enjoyed it. We saw the machines that they first blend the chemicals to create the rubber, the mixing machines, the melting & rolling machines, the cooling machines… and many more. I imagine a candy factory is similar in their production. We had a great time and since the factory itself is less than two months old, it was brand new as well and quite spacious and clean. After, we drove with Peter near another lake about 15 km from Zurich and had lunch at another hotel restaurant. Hotel restaurants are very popular in Europe because they aren’t chain hotels like all over the U.S., so the food is one-of-a-kind and usually quite gourmet. Of course, this is like my 10th gourmet meal in a row (aside from McDonald’s yesterday)… so we could go for something cheaper at some point pretty soon here. Again though, the food didn’t disappoint. After lunch, we headed back to the company, spoke with someone who is taking us to dinner tonight and the woman who is taking us out for sightseeing tomorrow before heading back to our hotel. We watched last night’s American Idol (yay!) and rested before heading downstairs at 6:45 to be picked up for another fancy dinner. He said we could dress casual, though. It was actually a really nice dinner with a guy, Heinz, and a woman, Iris. We went to a 300-year-old courthouse for dinner that’s obviously a converted restaurant. I had curry again. I had it for lunch and now for dinner. But, I love curry and it was even better for dinner! We had good conversation and the time passed very quickly—though we still ended up back at our hotel at 10:30. Tomorrow I have a feeling I’m going to struggle keeping my eyes open… again. It was a nice day and we had great meals, again. I do believe Papa John’s is calling my name real soon, however.


Donnerstag 25.02.2010 (day 164)
Today was our day dedicated to sightseeing. We were looking forward to seeing the Swiss mountains (well, I was. Ray’s already seen them and gone canyoning in them!). We met with Alexandria downstairs after breakfast at half past 8 (halb nuen in German). Did I mention how completely exhausting this fancy dinner eating, being entertained thing is? I mean… if you’re reading this, you probably don’t feel sorry for the two of us: expensive food, wine, sightseeing when many are slaving over desk jobs and counting the minutes until go time. Well, I can honestly say that being “on” at all times is something very difficult to do. It’s more exhausting, in my opinion, than doing the entertaining. When you are doing the entertaining, you at least have adrenaline to fuel you through. It’s like you live off the adrenaline and crash later. In this case, we’re crashing every single night (and admittedly, I crash in the car sometimes…) and waking up still totally asleep. This day was no different, despite the sightseeing. We drove to Mt. Titlis and joined the many skiers and snowboarders (sans boards and skis) on the various gondolas to the very top. We began around 1,000 ft., and arrived at 10,000 ft. at the top. The last gondola we took was a rotating one—going over 360 degrees while moving up/down. They boast it being the first in the world. Since I’ve never seen or been to another one, it was the only one as far as I was concerned. The view at the top was gorgeous, of course. It was around -12 Celsius with a wind chill and blowing snow. We took photos, walked around a bit, explored a totally random glacial cave they carved at the top of the mountain for you to walk through (like a small scale cave), and sat down for another expensive meal. We had a spectacular view of the mountains below and that was really great. After a 2 hour lunch of strictly entrees and a soda, we headed back down on the gondola. We shared a cable car with 4 children and their ski instructor on the way down. They were the cutest kids and what we saw them do made my day. They were playing “rock, paper, scissors” in their native language of Swiss German. They were saying “schere, stein, papier” (scissors, stone, paper—see the resemblances?) as they were counting before the reveal of their choice. They were cracking themselves up, and we were also cracking ourselves up just watching them! We reached the bottom of the mountain and hopped in the car with Alexandra towards the city of Luzern. We entered the gorgeous city that of course had a river running through it and parked at the main train station (Hofbahnhof). There are 4 bridges in the city and we went on the most famous one—the Chapel bridge. It’s made of all wood and was built in the 1300’s. There are other charming bridges around and they have really old paintings above your head as you walk along. It’s a covered bridge, so it’s nice to shield from the elements, too. It has a water tower in the center of the bridge where it bends and it has at one point or another served as an archive, treasury, and prison. Part of this bridge also burnt down in 1993 and some of it has been reconstructed. On the other side of the bridge, we walked around shops and took lots of photos of delicately painted buildings. The country has so much charm. We walked in some stores, bought our Switzerland boot ornament (we did a tiny bit of hiking on the top of Mt. Titlis, so we get a little credit!), and walked toward a “Dying Lion Monument” created by a Danish sculptor and finished in 1792. I think Alexandra told us that Mark Twain called it one of the “darkest” sculptures in the world. We headed home around 5:00 and arrived to our hotel around 6:30. It rained the entire car ride back, so we’re happy we got a lot in during the day hours. We were so tired of fancy dinners and knew we didn’t have dinner plans with anyone tonight, so we found a pizza takeout place (gotta love those Turks with their pizza/kebab places) and bought our food. Overpriced, but nothing ridiculous by European standards. We brought it back to our hotel and ate. It was excellent and we were so happy to be able to relax and arrive home way earlier than 10:30 p.m. We watched an episode of American Idol and learned more about our housing situation. The house appraised for $10,000 less than we agreed to pay. While this doesn’t worry us, it changes the contingencies put on us by USAA who is funding out loan. In addition to the appraiser registering it as “too expensive in a declining market”, we also knew this was the perfect house for us that we could live in for 30 years and be content given size, open space, looks, location… everything. And, it’s not a declining market. It’s slowly working its way up, but of course it’s the end of a recession and banks are afraid. Luckily, we still have the money, but we’re still dealing with two things: we are buying a house for over its value and we’re hoping the *cheapskate* sellers will drop the price (doubtful), and the mold situation. Keep in mind, it’s a super clean house, but we’re just paranoids. Any slight “off” smell and I’m placing 20 questions. As I should be, thank you! They actually did find a lose tile in the basement bathroom and water was leaking under the stairs. They have a ton of stuff down there, and as I suspected, there was damage to their boxes and mildew on some of the fabric and items they had stored down there. Take heed, people—if you own too much junk and have to store it in weird and crowded places where you can’t access your pipes or check for issues, it’s time for a visit to the Salvation Army. I mean, really. They offered us $100 to fix the problem ourselves. Our attorney thinks they are just trying to shut us up and skate out without having to do too much. The mold test itself cost us $300 and they are only willing to front $100 for us to figure it all out ourselves? Obviously, they’re cheap and don’t want to deal with this. We counteracted with a statement that we expect them to fix the problem, or compensate more for us to fix it. $100 can barely buy a phonecall with a professional. And… if their stuff wasn’t under the stair storage area anyway, our inspector (which we paid) could have accessed it and seen the damage and saved us the $300 mold investigation. Our inspector thinks this may be the cause and consulted their inspector to take a tape sample and test it for the mold. If that’s the cause, we can easily fix the problem and clean the air. Again, this costs money. While we’re fine with money, we don’t think it’s our duty to have to fix a problem when they advertised 3.5 bath but we cannot use one of them because it needs to be repaired. In addition, we will need to put a new roof on the house this summer/fall and that will be a cost out of our pockets—paying $10,000 more is really more like $20,000. But, we want this house. It is perfect for us, despite the wear we’ll need to address. We’re just not two people who have an interest in going to the cleaners over it.


Freitag 26.02.2010 (day 165)
Blessings today. We’re thankful and still nervous. But mostly thankful. I woke up with Ray to have breakfast downstairs. Breakfast hours are 6:00-10:00. Pretty standard… except, at 8:40 a.m., we received a call to our hotel room from the reception asking if we are planning to come down for breakfast. Have we been here that long that they’re learning our normal hours of eating? I mean, we still had a full hour and 20 minutes to eat before it technically closed for the day. We arrived downstairs and there was only was table besides us. But, does that mean they call all the rooms to check if anyone plans to eat before shutting down early? It’s not that small of a hotel. I believe it has 5 or 6 floors. Weirdness. Another weird thing is that every day we place the “do not disturb” sign on our door, we are given a new bag of towels. Not soap, but towels, yes. Another strange thing. Ray went off to work and learned more about the company’s logistics and products in greater detail, and presented some ideas for them and their web development. I stayed in and nerded myself out on the Internet and stared at new houses just in case ours falls through. We’ve been on a wave of emotions the last couple days thinking we could afford it, then the mold, then the mold was resolved, or maybe it wasn’t, the appraisal was too low, they were requiring more money down above our funds, calls, emails, and more communication between attorneys, the sellers, our agent, inspector, and us. Ah. What a long and draining process. But, we pray. God knows what we need and if this isn’t it, he will work it out. It’s just crazy to think that we have 20% for a house we can totally afford and it’s still difficult to purchase it! Financially, we are fine… but it’s just so weird coming out of a recession and searching for a house because everyone is being cautious, including us. Ray got home for lunch and told me we were having lunch at the “Golf restaurant” next door—but my hair was still wet from a shower. So, I hurriedly half blow-dryed my hair and received a call telling us our lunch guests had arrived. We walked about 30 feet to the restaurant and had some Indian dishes for lunch. I could seriously eat Indian as often as Mexican food. I love it and I intend to have as much as possible when we are out for meals—which has been all week (did I mention how done we are with that?). After our lunch, we had some ice cream/sorbet. I tried the grapefruit and Ray had the Pistachio ice cream. They were both amazing. Ray also tried a small tart-looking dessert that was made of maroni (those nuts that gave me food poisoning in Austria back in October I never want to see again) and we tried a small fruit from Asia that looked like a small yellow cherry tomato but tasted like a strawberry. Really interesting and tasty. We got some good news after lunch from our lender, USAA, that the amount they want us to place down is inclusive of closing costs… taking us back where we started. I’m telling you, this whole home-buying process is a crazy one! I think it’s magnified even more being overseas. We headed out around 5:45 for Peter’s house to have some traditional Swiss food. He and his wife prepared a traditional Raclette grill for us. We had some Prosecco Italian champagne, then wine, and grappa, also. Needless to say, I’ve had plenty to drink this evening! The grappa was chocolate flavored and was very strong. The Raclette was amazing. It’s basically a heated plate and you take a variety of vegetables and seasoned uncooked meats and grill them on the plate. You take pre-cooked potatoes and cute them into bite-sized pieces on your plate and place a piece of thick white cheese under the grill to melt while the meat/veggies cook. When the meat/veggies, and cheese are melted, you pour the entire amount on the cut potatoes. It’s incredible. It’s not fondue, but I surely get excited about purchasing one (eventually after this whole house thing!) and having Raclette dinner with a chocolate/peanut butter fondue for dessert. Doesn’t that sound lovely? You’ll have to come visit us for some of that! We headed back to our hotel at 10:15 and are about to head to bed at 12:15, exhausted once again. We had a great dinner and nice company and we’re looking forward to seeing Peter and his wife, Olga, again sometime in the future.

Samstag 27.02.2010 (day 166)
What a great day we had! We slept in (yay!) and packed the car before heading to our free breakfast… then off to the grocery store, S.P.A.R. before leaving Switzerland. We had about 5.5 Swiss Francs left that we wanted to use up, so we bought a few Cola lights, a Rivella (Swiss sweet drink that looks like soda but is actually a 30% milk derivative and so weird), and some cookies. Though, we later found out we had one more Swiss Franc left and now have nowhere to spend it—it happens to nearly all countries we visit! Anyway, we headed on the highway toward France to visit a town everyone was boasting about, Colmar. It’s a cute French town that has been battled over between Germany and France for many, many moons. It looked like exactly that—it had quaint German looking buildings and French was spoken exclusively there. We walked around, enjoyed a few shops, bought a postcard, explored around a few beautiful churches and some canals, and purchased some Wok food from a small take-out restaurant for 8 Euro! We couldn’t believe how cheap our lunch was compared to all the meals we’ve been eating the past week. We bought a postcard in a store across from the Wok place and gave him a 2 Euro coin. The postcard was .35 Euro cents. He gave us back change as though we paid with a 1 Euro coin—but we were positive we paid with the 2 Euro coin. Anyway, Ray mentioned that he had just been ripped off and I went in and explained in English/German (to a French guy) that I gave him a 2 Euro coin and wanted my correct change. He obliged, though not believing me. Interesting…but don’t try to rip this girl off! We headed on the highway through France, paid more tolls to the French in the form of 7.90 Euro, and saw a gorgeous amount of countryside. We drove from Colmar through land that had one castle after the other. It was just spectacular. We ended up driving through Strasbourg and saw a gorgeous church (from the Autobahn) and headed on into Germany. We actually headed back into Germany the same way we entered/exited when we drove through France to Paris and Versailles with my parents back in early January. It was a case of déjà vu, but many things are around these parts since we’ve been around here awhile now. It’s amazing how much more comfortable we are with speaking, making purchases, and exploring. There’s almost nowhere we’re uncomfortable to be. It’s not the exact same level or feeling as being in the U.S., but we feel like we belong here. I’m not sure when that finally kicked in. After entering Germany, we drove through the German vineyard region along the Mosel River and we love it every time. It is absolutely spectacular and the river is just so serene and calm. Aside from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, this might be my favorite area in Germany to drive around in. Rather than enter through Bitburg to Ehlenz, we drove another way this time through a town I think was called Bickerdorf. We ended up at Andy & Jen’s house around 5 p.m. and had an excellent dinner with them. Andy made homemade lentil soup and bruschetta. It was delightful and we talked from the moment we walked in until nearly midnight. We played a few fun games: Jacks & 5’s and another game that’s similar to Balderdash but it’s called Malarcky. We say it every time… but it’s so nice having friends who we can just enjoy a simple meal with, laugh, share, talk, and just be ourselves with. That’s something that excites us a ton about heading back to the States in 16 days. Though it’s rough trying to connect, once you have found good friends, you just cannot replace that bond and the great times. We talked for 7 hours and didn’t waver a bit. We had a blast. Today was just an overall fantastic day that we were happy to have shared with friends and one another. Also, it doesn’t hurt that it was about 14 degrees Celsius the entire day: spring is in the air! There’s certainly something about green grass, sunshine, and warm temperatures that can cure any funk and make your mood a little brighter. Now, time for bed…

Sonntag 28.02.2010 (day 167)
After a great breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes at the Burghdorf’s house, we set out on the road back to Neuenrade. It’s about a 3-hour drive from our houses so we arrived around 2:30 p.m. We only stopped off to refuel at an Aral station and were rushed with intense winds. They were out of control today! The temperatures are well above 10 degrees Celsius and just about all the snow has melted and the fall leaves are being blown around again. We took a new way home that we don’t think we’ve ever taken and it was pretty nice. When we got home, it had started to rain a decent amount and we rushed inside to get out of the wind/rain. Just to see greenish-brown grass on the way back up to our German house was refreshing. If yesterday didn’t fill us with excitement, driving home today and seeing the area that’s been completely white since October covered with green, we were for sure excited. We were super lucky this week/end to have every day we acted as tourists (Thursday on Mt. Titlis in Switzerland and yesterday driving through into Colmar, France) sunny and beautiful out. Now that I’ve experienced my first year of 4 seasons, I am thrilled for the springtime to come, the birds to sing, and the flowers to grow. It sounds cheesy, but I’m ready. We unpacked a bit, did some laundry, had dinner and watched the US v. Canada Olympic Hockey game. Actually, make that watching the game. No report on who has won yet being just before halftime. Ray spent some time creating work presentations and I spent a large part of the afternoon/evening researching furniture, appliances, etc. While we won’t have the money to purchase lots of furniture in the beginning stages of our home ownership, we will eventually and I was scoping out some possibilities and styles we might consider. We do need to purchase a fridge immediately and I found some models we can look at and possibly purchase. I’ve recently discovered the following items online: Canopy furniture & Sears Outlet. I’m a huge fan of both and we will most likely be using them for some purchases. Sears Outlet sells mostly refurbished home items and store models up to 75% off list price. I found some serious deals on there, but they’re only as good as the stores that carry them. Because they are outlet items, they vary by location and require some travel or flexibility. Okay, now I’m off to finish the last load of laundry, watch the rest of this game, and head to bed. Tomorrow, I vow to work out for 30 minutes. Typing it better be a motivation. Ha!


Montag 01.03.2010 (day 168)
It was a lazy, yet somewhat productive day for me. While I didn’t get out of bed until an unmentionable hour, I did manage to fulfill my entire list of tasks today. I wanted to sort through and name the photos from Switzerland, France, and house pictures I took on inspection day. I also went through our food stash and calculated how many and what meals we can make with our current stock, and what I need to buy at the grocery store. It seems like this task is done so often in our recent history. Before we left Redondo Beach, I did this. Before we left Chicago for the first time, I did this. And, now, for the third time I’m making this list. For the last time, hopefully. Stability is calling our names. I made us lunch and Ray came home to eat with me. The day was so bright and sunny (though started out rainy and drizzling) that we figured we’d better get our behinds moving since spring is around the corner and go out for a run. So we did. We ran up and around the route we took on our walk back when the weather was super snowy and this time, not a lick of snow on the ground. It’s amazing since I’m so used to seeing and dodging the white stuff everywhere I turn and watching the ground to make sure I don’t accidentally slip on the ice lining the streets. We have a big blue water barrel outside our door and it’s been frozen solid since early December… or even earlier, I can’t remember. It’s about 25% thawed out now! After our run, we walked down to buy a stamp, but realized we didn’t have the correct change (such a weird machine: requires exact change, or multiple coins to create exact without going over 5 coins… so no pennies!), so we walked back home. We had TJ’s Indian for dinner with rice and veggies and carried on with our nightly routine of technology geekfest on the couch. Hah.

Dienstag 02.03.2010 (day 169)
On this day two weeks from now, we’ll be arriving in our new town for a permanent move. It’s surreal to think SIX months have gone by. After Ray left for work, I got to business. I did just about nothing for the first 1.5 hours except email, reading CNN stories, and catching up on the world that went on while I was asleep. Being 6-9 hours ahead of all US time zones can lead to missing a lot of what’s going on in my neck of the woods. After, I went for a run in the 41 degree (Fahrenheit) weather because the sun was shining. Nevermind that I was the only one running or wearing shorts. I came back home after nearly dying on a 2-3 mile run (pathetic, really), got ready, and fixed lunch for us before Ray got home just before 12:30. We’ve been eating a hodgepodge of meals because we’re trying to use up the supply before we are off in 13 days back home to the states. After lunch, we headed back to work. As soon as I opened the door, we saw SNOW! I couldn’t believe it. We were hoping that the snow was over for the season. I mean, after all, the Germans told us that we wouldn’t be seeing very much snow at all because they just don’t get that much—haha! Well, we had a lot of snow and apparently it’s not over. Though, by the time we arrived at work, it was a mild drizzle-snow. The sun came and went for the rest of the day, trying to pretend like spring is in fact just around the corner. Oh, how I cannot wait. Buying a new house, moving, decorating and all that during the spring! Nevermind again that Chicago can get snow until nearly May. Well, when we got off work, it was lightly snowing again. Bummer! We headed to the market for a few items and then back home for dinner and to watch the past 3 episodes of Amazing Race that I taped today during my fit as I sat and waited for the season finale of The Bachelor to be uploaded. As I sit here at 11:20 p.m., it still hasn’t been uploaded from yesterday! I guess I should be lucky that I can even watch episodes of shows all the way here in Deutschland. But man am I excited to watch things in real time. We had a pretty relaxing evening and nothing else really to report.

Raclette & Roshambo

This past week, we've been having such a good time. We visited Switzerland where we had some excellent food and for the first time, tried Raclette. Here's a description: hot plate on top where you cook veggies/meat. Underneath the hot plate are cheese holders. The cheese melts, the veggies/meat cook, and you place all of this goodness atop some cooked potatoes and dig in. I have full intentions of buying one of these super grills for future entertaining. Who will be coming to visit us?

Okay, now for the second topic of the post, Roshambo. You know, rock-paper-scissors. This game is well known by every single child or adult as far as I know. Well, until now, I was only able to confirm this existed in America. Now, living across the Atlantic in a little country (haha) called Germany for six months and now traveling down to the south in Switzerland (where they speak Swiss German... so kinda still German, right? Though, Swiss German is a whole different ballgame to speak and understand IMO), we have seen people from other cultures.

We were taking a gondola down from Mt. Titlis and shared a gondola with 4 children and their ski instructor. It was super quiet until these awesome kids realized that they needed to spice things up a bit. I was looking out the window but had to look back as I heard two children laughing hysterically while saying three words over-and-over. Those three words sounded a bit familiar to my ears... being somewhat trained in children's games, simple German vocabulary, and the fact that most people don't think saying three words over and over again is that entertaining.

What were these kids saying? You guessed it:

Schere-Stein-Papier. 

Much like our words, they are recognizable. Schere are scissors. Because, scissors sheer things, after all. Then, on to Stein. Unlike most people think (and we mistakenly thought during our first month pre-Oktoberfest in Germany though this is well known throughout the world as "stoneware" including those beer mugs), a Stein is not a beer mug. It actually translates in German as stone. And finally, Papier. It even looks like paper.

So, breaking this down further, the kids in Germany say, "scissors, stone, paper" in that order and with those terms.

I just love watching kids have fun, interact, and teach me things! After this, of course I wondered where on earth this game originated, why kids across the world find this so amusing, and how they interpret it for themselves.

Oh, and rule change, Swiss-style. Rather than the scissors being smashed by the rock, the scissors are squeezed into the top of the stone (picture it as your fingers being pushed into the top of your opponents fist if you were the scissors and your opponent, the stone).

In case you care, there are court cases, rules, and tournaments to read about here about this lovely and simple game...

A Few of MY Favorite Websites

I read A LOT of blogs. Ever since we moved to Germany for 6 months (that time flew by!), I have been reading a lot of blogs to stay connected to the world, learn how other expats cope, etc. I found a lot of really great people with really interesting stories. Some of those people are listed on the right of this page. Others, I follow in blogger just to get their updates. I am following a cool teacher in Germany, teachers in Illinois, people in our new neighborhood, and all kinds of good stuff--in addition to my real-life friends. It's honestly more interesting than television. There are also crazy coupon cutter (most stay at home moms) ladies who teach me a whole lot about saving money. Since we're in the process of {trying to} buy a house, it's nice to be in-the-know. Though, I don't think I can ever be as devoted as these ladies.

Aside from learning a ton about saving money--something I'm already fairly good at--I learned about some new websites that I now used daily or as time allows. Here are a couple of those:

ShopAtHome - This site is awesome. I buy stuff online ALL the time and actually prefer it to shopping in stores. I usually get free shipping codes and things end up being cheaper. I have recently gone to this website and typed in the store I want (recent purchases made from The Body Shop, Macy's, Godiva, Barnes & Noble) and they give you a percentage back from your purchase. For example, we bought chocolate for my wonderful sister-in-law and got $1.92 back. I am up to $14.04 just for using the link to any website on Shop at Home. It takes zero minutes extra and it's totally great.

Swagbucks - This one is more work and I'm still not sure it's worth it... but since I just earned a $10 Amazon card just for using their search engine (which is a little annoying, but if you use it once a day, you'll have about a $10 gift card ready for redemption in a maximum of 3 months since usually it will award you 10 free "bucks" per day). I like that I'm getting a free $10 Amazon card, though, I'm not going to lie. Some people get really into it and have purchased like a Wii and other expensive items just on free Amazon cards... so if you're dedicated, you can make some dough. I'm just a lazy user... so it took me a couple months.

Redfin - What a great website for home buyers who are prepared. If you are on a time crunch, want to save money, want to make your own decisions, or just plain hate the idea of a real estate agent running your home-buying show, this site is the best for you. I am not advertising or getting any compensation. We are buying through them and they've been incredible, quick, accomodating (buying a house and dealing with logistics while 7 hours ahead and a big ocean in between is tough!), and professional. If you think of buying a house now or even in the future, it's nice to watch the market and the options for awhile. We did this for over a year before placing our offer and I am happy to say we are pleased with all of the people who have helped us in the process.Though, I think Redfin only works in big cities, for now.

Swagbucks & ShopAtHome give you a kickback if you promote them and your friends use them. I hate spamming friends on facebook, twitter, or email... so I figured if you cared, you'd read this blog post. And, since I actually use them and like them, I don't mind promoting them anyway. I won't post it again... but this are some things I've learned lately about stretching a buck (aside from my uber-excellent economics teacher in high school who taught me to use a credit card for every purchase, but pay it off in full every month). Of course, with that, we also get cash back and free flights, pay no interest, and have a list of all our spending to boot!