Christmas in Germany!

Hi everybody!

I can't believe Christmas is almost here! The house is just about ready for my parents and brother to visit. I will be spending a few days in Paris with them and then we will all be in Germany for Christmas. Very exciting!

I have to say that I loooooove Christmastime in Germany. The approach to the holidays is vastly different than in the US. There's no black Friday. No crazy sales and pressure to buy buy buy. It's much more low key. Christmas here means Christmas markets which are these rows of vendors set-up in towns and cities. People visit them during the week and especially on the weekends, in which they meander their way around the vendors, eat delicious fair food and drink Ghulwein (delicious spiced, hot wine). It is the perfect way to find unique gifts and enjoy the company of your family and friends. Here are pictures from some of the local markets:

The market in Wiesbaden (closest large city to us). We went to the opening ceremony where they turned the lights on. These were the angels who danced around and turned on the lights.

So pretty with the lights on. The symbol for the city is lilies so that's why they are all over the market.

 

After the lights came on, Mike and  witnessed the craziest performances ever. On stage is a large bubble. Inside - a woman playing the saxophone. After a few minutes someone ran on stage and popped the balloon.

Crazy saxophone lady after balloon was popped.

The market is just so pretty a night.

 

This is Rudesheim, the small, traditional German town near us. So pretty with the snow and Christmas Market.

 

This is a must-visit town for anyone who comes to see us!

 

In other news:

 

We are ready for winter!

Got all dressed up for the work holiday party! A fun night!

And, carried home our Christmas tree from the market a few blocks away. Mike wouldn't let me help :)

 

 

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season! It will be nice to have family here to celebrate! Much love to you all! See you in the new year!

 

~Katie and Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Misty is here!

Guten Tag!

I know, I know, you have all been anxiously awaiting an update from us. Sorry! I have been putting this update off because my computer died, but I have a new Surface tablet and it has been super awesome to upload this blog on! There hasn't been too much excitement here. The big news is that Misty is finally here. Her arrival was delayed due to Sandy's destruction, but we are glad she is here with us now. Speaking of Sandy - our hearts go out to all our friends and family who were affected by the storm. I have talked to many of you, I know it was awful and hope for a speedy recovery.

So, Misty is here. She was not fond of the airplane and spend a decent amount of the flight scratching her belly (we know this based on the blood and irritation on her belly). She was pretty distressed, but survived. Also, we found out Misty is not fond of time zones - she was pretty much knocked out for two days straight! She has recovered now and her belly healed quickly.

Back to her favorite sleeping spot

Having Misty here has forced me to use some of the German I am learning. On our daily walk around the vineyards in our backyard, I have met many Germans and their dogs. Germans are vey eager to have their dogs meet so that means I stand there awkwardly hoping they don't say anything and if they do I respond mostly with the phrase "Enshuldegung, Mein Duetsch ist nicht so gut" (Sorry, my German is not that good.) This gets two responses - 1. The German immediately switches to English and we have a small, quick conversation, or 2. I am ignored. Luckily #2 does not happen too often, but it is very interesting when it does.

Part of our daily walk....beautiful even on a cloudy, cold day.

Misty loves our walks because she loves meeting the other dogs. Most dogs here are off-leash, which Misty is not trustworthy enough to do with her (its the hound in her). This causes a lot of questions from the Germans and I finally decided to try and train Misty to be off leash and respond to the "here" command which we use to make her come to us. We started this week practicing, I usually wait until we get to a field where I can see if people or wildlife are coming. She is pretty good, especially when motivated by treats!

Mike and I met a group of Germans and their dogs in this field yesterday on our walk and we let Misty off leash to play with the other dogs. She had so much fun! And sort of listened to us -haha. We were invited to join the group every afternoon for the dogs to play which is great for Misty and a great way for me to practice my German!

Other than getting Misty getting accustomed to Germany, we have been working hard to get the house set up. We took a trip to Ikea, spend a good amount of money, and almost couldn't drive the car home. This trip was extremely needed, because we now have places to store things! Yay!

Not recommended to drive this way on the autobahn :)

What I have learned from the unpacking process is that Mike and I have significantly different strategies. I unpack one box at a time, put it all away or in the pile of like items that need something in order to put away and then move on to the next. Mike unwraps all the items in 20 boxes, puts the items in piles or back in boxes, and then figures out what to do with all the stuff. Needless to say I have had my work cut out for me. This is what I accomplished yesterday:

This is one of our basement rooms - yikes!

After - not completely finished yet, but at least we can find things now :)

We finally decided to try some of the local vineyards. Wine tasting in Germany is not the same as in the states, although we haven't figured out how it really works. So we went to the two castles behind us - Schloss Johannisberg and Schloss Vollrads. The outcome of our tasting was that it is really hard to find a bad Riesling here, and when you are in the home of the Riesling grape, I guess that is expected.

Schloss Johannisberg - the one you can see from our house and the oldest Riesling vineyard in Germany!

If you walk down this path our house would be to the left.

Schloss Vollrads - also a very old vineyard, approximately 5 minutes from our house.

So old and beautiful!

Well, that's all we have here. Sorry for the poor quality pictures - I am waiting for my iphone case and still have the protector over the camera lense - haha.

We will be spending Thanksgiving with a group of friends which should be nice. The only thing that will be missing is the football (stupid time difference)! But the parade will be on during dinner, yay!

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Tchuss!

Katie and Mike

Greetings from Germany!

 It has been another busy week as all of our stuff arrived last week and I have been unpacking and trying to organize everything with the limited storage we have. The issue is that Germans don’t have closets so there nowhere to put things until I buy some sort of organization system. We know how I love to organize so I’m excited to see what I can put together in the next few weeks.

 

 

Before our stuff arrived Mike and I travelled to Berchtesgaden which is in Southern Germany(Bavaria), very close to Austria and surrounded by the Alps. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and we definitely need to go back! Oh, and to prove we traveled into Austria I made Mike stop the car so I could take a picture:

 

On Saturday we went to the Kelsteinhaus which was named the Eagle’s Nest in English. This is a house that was given to Hitler during WWII to use as a retreat and tea house to entertain diplomats and important guests. It is literally on top of a mountain with tiny roads that needs specially geared buses to get to the top. The day we visited there was some cloud cover so we were literally above the clouds and as the clouds would come in and out we would lose visibility for a few minutes – it was breathtaking. The house itself is not overly ornate or large, but it does have some impressive views on a clear day and a beautiful wooden beam ceiling in the main room which is now a restaurant. The house was taken over by American forces during the war and used as a lookout and base. After the war the mayor of the town had to fight to prevent the building from being destroyed. It is definitely weird to walk through the tunnel to the original elevator which takes you up to the house and know that you are standing exactly where Hilter did at one point! Anyway, here are some pictures:

The walkway leading to the elevator to go up to the house.....and Mike showing off his heel clicking skills :)

The original elevator, the inside is entirely brass!

 As the clouds were clearing you could get a view of the house.

 

 

On top of the mountain with the alps in the background.

 

Saturday evening we explored the town and ate some very yummy southern German food. The interesting thing about Southern Germany is that they are their own little world with a different dialect of German called Bayrish, so its hard to understand what they are saying even if you are fluent in German. Its similar to the deep south in the United States, they are sometimes in their own little world. And both Northern and Southern Germans feel that they are superior to the other – it is quite funny to hear them talk about each other. I will admit I might be preferential to Southern Germany seeing all the Alps and potential skiing I could do down there!

 

Sunday we visited the Konigsee which is a lake surrounded by mountains. With the leaves changing, it was another stunning site. We were going to spend a few hours hiking and then visit the salt mines, but we decided to find the waterfall which Mike did not get to hike to several years ago when he was here. Let’s just say there was a lot of hiking, but we did find the waterfall. And every bit was beautiful. When you get to the lake you have to take an electric boat to get to the areas to go hiking.

 

 

During the boat ride, there is a tradition where the boat capitan gets up and plays a song on the trumpet in the middle of the lake due to the perfect echo that returns the music – it was amazing.

There is also a monistary on the lake shown here.

 

 

 

At the end of the lake you hike to another smaller lake, obersee and hike around this lake to get to the waterfall. And, finally, here is the waterfall:

 

 

After a long hike back we got a late lunch and then met up with some friends for dinner. It was a very nice and relaxing weekend, which was needed after the stress and craziness of the last few months.

 On the way home there were lots of speed unlimited sections and I drove 100mph several times, here is the proof (taken very safely, may I add):

 

 

Also, because we live on a river, the GPS decided the fastest way to get home was to take the ferry across the river. And just for the fun of it I decided to do it. Pretty fun and only 3.60 euros.

 

 So, that’s the news here. Misty will be arriving to Germany in a few days! Very exciting. And then hopefully in the next two weeks we will be more settled and feeling like we are more at home.

 

Until next time!

 

~ Katie and Mike

Oktoberfest 2012

Hey everyone!

This update is definitely overdue but there has been so many things to do since we moved into our house! Hopefully, in the next few weeks things will be settling down.

So last weekend we experienced Oktoberfest in Stuttgart. Since it was a long weekend, we went down with a bunch of people on Sunday and came back on Monday. It was a super fun night, but I can see why it is not the German's favorite fest. Basically you drink beer (not a special beer) and stand on tables dancing to a band. Which, don't get me wrong - it was fun, but I'm excited to attend other fests and make my own judgement on the best one. Also, we heard that the night we went was unusually quiet and less crowded - we'll see how it is next year.

So, I'll just post some pictures now....let me just preface with the fact that the mug of beer (a mass) we are drinking out of holds 4 beers. Yeah, that's a lot of beer!

 Welcome to the fest!

 Our first mass of beer!

 Dancing on the bench!

 Brian having a good time!

 More dancing. I'm definitely going to need a dirndl (traditional German dress) for next year.

So that is how we started out this week. Other fun stuff that happened this week is that our household goods arrived in Germany. They are getting delivered on Tuesday so we will finally get the house set-up!

In other news, I was presented with an awesome opportunity at the medical clinic on post. They currently do not have any TBI Occupational Therapy services and asked me to become a volunteer at the clinic to provide these services. So, not a paying job, but if I get enough clients I might be able to convince the command to pay me. Also, being a volunteer means I can work any kind of schedule I want! This is a great way to keep my skills and certifications current and have a flexible schedule to travel or work a part time job, etc. I also applied to be a substitute teacher. It will probably be a few more months before I am working either job, but at least the process has started and soon doing some pretty cool things!

Anyway, that's the big news here. Mike and I are off to Berchtesgaden this weekend which is about 5 hours away. I'll try to take a break next week to update you all again!

Oh, and today marks one year until Mike and I have our big wedding! So excited!

Hope you are all doing well and planning your visits out to see us!

~ Katie and Mike

So many houses! Too many decisions!

So we decided to start a blog. This was suggested by a few people and will probably be more fun that sending emails to everyone! Plus I get to play with fonts and customize backgrounds, etc - so that will be fun.

Anyway, I'm sure you are all eager for an update. The last two weeks have been extremely busy, stressful, and exciting. When I last emailed, we were looking for a house. And let me tell you, that was NOT fun. At one point we saw 5 houses in 24 hours - I can't even remember some of the houses we saw. Mike and I decided the housing office really didn't have anything to offer us and so we started looking at what the German market had - which was also very limited. I had the pleasure of calling German realtors, asking them in broken German if they spoke English- which was so much fun. They all spoke a little English and were willing to work with us - but then when they tried to give me the street name and numbers of the houses it was so difficult to understand! I mean were talking about streets like Graesiger Weg (I don't even know how to pronounce that - let alone spell it when somone says it to me!).

Despite the language barrier we saw several houses on the German market. As we saw more and more houses our criteria changed for what we wanted. And we found that there just wasn't much available. Despite that, we found one house that fit all our criteria and we really liked it. Unfortunately, there was more than one realtor on this house and the other realtor had already found someone who was interested. So, the owner told us we would know the following week if we could have the house. Well, waiting 5 days would mean everything else we found would be gone! In addition, there was another nice house where the owners were willing to wait for us so that we could live there - but it wasn't really what we wanted and it wasn't fair to make them wait until we heard about the other house.

So all that happened last Thursday and what was the final outcome? Well, on Friday I was getting ready to go test drive a car with Mike and I got the urge to look at the housing website again - just to see if they had anything new available - and they did! A great townhouse with a backyard out in wine country. So, I quickly got an appointment with our housing advisor, found Mike at the car dealer to tell him I couldn't test the car with him, got an appointment to view the house and then coordinated with the dealer to let us borrow the car for 2 hours to drive to our housing appointment and back (okay, take a breath!).

So, Friday afternoon we drove a sweet Audi A4 out to Oestrich-Winkel to see this house. It was at the end of this cute neighborhood, surrounded by rows of grape vines with a view of one of the oldest vineyards at the top of the hill - talk about picturesque! The house has plenty of space, including an open kitchen and a nice sized backyard that the owner was willing to fence in for Misty (the dog).

Well, after seeing this house we struggled with what to do. There were a lot of factors that we had to consider, which I won't bore you with, but we decided to take the house in Oestrich-Winkel.Even better, the landlord was going on vacation so we had to expidite our move-in date to October 1st! So we had a few days of running around to get all the paperwork in order and we move in Monday! So exciting!

On Friday they delivered our washer/dryer and a full sized refridgerator and our Army-issued furniture (until our stuff gets here in a few weeks). So now its a matter of packing up our hotel room and moving everything (and the cats) to the house Monday morning! Quite a week!

Oh, I'm sure you want pictures so here you go:

Our Front Door

 

The kitchen which opens up to the dining room/living room and backyard!

 

 

Living Room with wood burning stove and access to backyard

 

Dining Room with access to backyard

 Stairs to basement and 2nd floor

 



Master bedroom

 

 

Backyard

 View from the kitchen

 



View from upstairs

 

There is much more that I did not put pictures of - I will put more up when we have our furniture and are all set-up. We have more rooms than we know what to do with at this point - looks like I will be getting my NY Giants room after all! :)

 

 

Besides house hunting, Mike and I have taking some time to enjoy our weekends and de-stress a bit. Here are some pictures of what we have been up to:

 

Rhine River Cruise (with lots of wine) - this is a famous river which is surrounded by wine country - we will be living a few blocks away from the river!

 

We saw lots of castles

 



And more castles

 

And drank wine - pretty much a perfect Saturday. Don't mind our friend in the background, he actually had a good time, it just doesn't look that way in the picture.

 



 

We also took a water powered train up a super steep hill in Wiesbaden to this pretty overlook. We went hiking for a bit as well, it was a nice way to get out and see the city from above.

 

Water-powered train

 

At the top, overlooking downtown Wiesbaden

 

We rode in the front of the train on the way back down the mountain - pretty cool!

 

And we've spent some time at Rudesheim - a popular tourist place near where we will be living - but fun to visit because it has the traditional German feel. I'm sure when you all come to visit we will take you there!

 

 

Well, that was a long blog post, but there was lots to update you all on. Some cultural things I have learned: 1. When a girl gets engaged in Germany her friends take her around town to sell some embarassing stuff to make money for the bachelorette party. We saw this at a festival yesterday and some of the Germans were really mean to her and embarassed her a lot! We took pity on her and gave her some euro in exchange for a rose - I'm glad we don't do that in the states!

2. A popular drink in Germany is Federwiesser  which is early wine (basically the early states in wine making). There are stands every where selling this stuff and an entire festival to celebrate the drink. We haven't tried it yet, but I'm sure we will soon!

 

Thanks all for now!

 

Tschüss (bye in German),

Katie and Mike