Noisy House Guests

We currently have two slighty smelly and loud house guests. They are big D and little D, aptly named for their respective sizes. Big D is the dehumidifier we have set up in the guest bedroom and Little D is in the kitchen. To the left is a picture of big D and the guilty radiator in the background.

Unfortunately, they are staying for a week to ten days. Hopefully, they will do a good job pulling the water out of the floors so that we don't have a mold issue.

While we are in Greece, the flooring guys will be replacing the floors in the hallway, spare bedroom and kitchen. Thankfully, we won't have to be here at that time as they will have to completely remove the kitchen to redo the floor underneath.

My plan to have the house completely set up before we left for Greece is foiled again. At least the living room/ dining room is finished. I thought I'd attach a picture so that everyone doesn't think we are living in a hovel.

I am confident that everything will come together, and we will love this flat. Probably right about the time we are get relocated to Switzerland.

A River Runs Through It (our apartment that is)

Yesterday I came home from my German lesson to find our apartment flooded. I walked through the front door into about an inch of water. My first thought was that the dishwasher was leaking. The kitchen had a few inches of water on it but I could hear something else leaking so I went to investigate the other rooms.

The hallway was flooded and when I got to the back room (guest room), it wasn't hard to figure out this was where it started. The water came up over the top of my boots and some of the boxes in the room were actually floating.

The water was leaking out of the radiator. I put a large bowl under the radiator to catch the water which filled up about every 7 minutes.

I frantically called Jim. After collectively calling about 6 plumbers, the landlord and our relocation specialist, we finally reached someone who came to our rescue about 30 minutes later.

I attempted to mop up some of the water in the kitchen with towels. However, I quickly had the feeling of being in a very small boat with a very large hole. I decided my nerves would best be served by waiting outside for the plumber to arrive. Additionally, our names are not yet on the buzzer outside so I didn't want to risk him buzzing the empty apartment below us.

Luckily, the floors of our apartment are incredibly uneven so the living room and bedroom stayed almost completely dry while the kitchen hallway and spare room were covered in 2-3 inches of water.

Of course, I didn't think to take a picture of our little flood until after the plumber had been using the shop vac for an hour. At one point, I think he called in reinforcements because his shop vac was a little one.

Only a few things were damaged. My new iron being one of those which I will happily take as a sign that I shouldn't iron.


This morning I looked at the apartment below us to assess the damage. I initially thought that they put cardboard on the floor to soak up the water. Then I realized that it was actually part of the ceiling which was now on the floor.

Bacharach and Beyond

Sunday we headed down to an area called the Romantic Rhine. This area is known for its half timbered old houses and Riesling wine. We saw plenty of both.

We set out for Sankt Goar with our cruiser bikes in the car. The plan was to park the car in St. Goar, bike along the river to Bacharach for lunch and continue on to Bingen. At Bingen we would take the Koln Dusseldorfer boat down river to St. Goar. I figured it would be a faster boat ride going with the strong current of the Rhine.

We had a coffee in St. Goar so we had to stop for a bathroom break in Oberwesel. Oberwesel was a sleepy town in contrast to the tourist laden St. Goar. It isn't somewhere I would stop again. There is a 3km medieval town wall which runs along the river. You can actually climb up and walk on top of it. As we walked on top of the wall Jim said, "it's just like the Great Wall of China, except it's not in China and it's not all that great."

Our next stop was Bacharach which hasn't changed at all since I was there in 1994. It was still a beautiful old German town. We stopped for lunch at Zum Grunen Baum for what they called a light lunch - a sausage with hot potato salad and a cheese plate.

We decided to split one wine sampling to go with our "light" lunch. Apparently, I didn't read the menu all that closely. We were expecting a 4 wine sampling of the local white wines and received a huge lazy susan filled with 15 different glasses of wine. The Germans around us found our predicament very entertaining.

Needless to say, we decided to forgo the bike ride down to Bingen and preferred to spend the rest of the afternoon walking around Bacharach. After successfully finishing our carousel of wine, we hiked up to the Burg Stahleck. This 12th-century castle was turned into a hostel. I stayed there for a night back in 1993 when I travelled around Europe.

We took the KD boat to St. Goar with our bikes. All of the seats on the top of the boat were taken by Japanese tourists so we parked ourselves in the front of the boat. We ate almond Magnum bars (the best ice cream bars in the world) while enjoying the views on the way back.

Back in Bonn, we headed downtown to the wine festival set up in Munsterplatz. We weren't able to get there on Saturday night so thought we'd check to see if it was still going on Sunday night. We were in luck. There were a ton of people having a very good time as you can see from the video.

Rain rain go away, come back another day

The weather in Germany is a lot like Seattle which is why it is so green and lush here. There is a lot of rain and it is generally pretty temperate. Summer days are usually only in the high 60s to low 70s, but it doesn't get below freezing in the winter.

I am hoping that my gardening abilities might be enhanced by the rain. I was never able to keep anything alive in Denver. I bought a bunch of plants last night for our new balcony. Initially I wasn't planning to buy plants until we got back from Greece. I was worried there would be no one here to water them. I don't know what I was thinking.

I got stuck in Karstadt yesterday for a few hours while I waited for it to stop raining. I finally gave up and braved the rain after I had explored every inch of the store. Ironically, I initially went into the store to look for an umbrella.

I have been searching for a new bathmat and thought I'd check out Karstat's collection. For some reason rugs for the bathroom are insanely expensive here. I'm talking 150 euros. I am curious to know what is so special about these rugs. Do they have gold thread? Or maybe 125 euros sewn into them? Some of them seem to simply be really thick towels? I am perplexed.

Today Jim and I are going to go for a ride and hopefully won't get wet. Then this evening there is a going away party for an Australian guy from Orica and his family. They are moving back to Australia in a few weeks. I don't think he really liked the weather here in Germany.

I am hoping to also hit a wine festival tonight after the party. When I was walking around in the rain yesterday, I saw a bunch tables set up in Munsterplatz. There were local wine vendors set up around the platz selling their wines. Of course there were a few sausage vendors as well.

Money, Cashola, Geld

Germany is a cash only society. Credit cards are not widely accepted here. It has taken some time to get used to carrying cash again. Before moving here, I used my mileage credit card for everything and just paid it off every month.

While it is a little less convenient, I do think people are less likely to get into financial trouble without the ability to buy anything they want regardless of whether or not they can afford it. I find that I spend less money when I'm paying in cash.

Although everyone pays cash or uses their EC card (debit card), no one uses checks. You don't even get checks when you open your bank account. To pay our bills, we simply give the company our banking information. They then automatically withdraw it from our account.

One of the down sides to carrying all this cash is that it is heavy! Because I'm still learning the language, I generally give any cashier a large bill so that I don't need to have them repeat themselves 10 times before I figure out what I owe. My mountain of change is really starting to pile up. I am continually emptying the change out of my wallet to lighten my load.

Siebengebirge

On Saturday the CFO in Jim's office (Helmut) organized a day touring the area for the head CFO visiting from Australia. We started out at the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany). The museum concentrates on the history of Germany from WWII to the present. We were able to have a tour in English by joining a group of teachers from Turkey and England. It was a great review of recent German history.

After the museum we went to the Siebengebirge which is literally translated as seven mountains. I don't think I would actually call them mountains but they are decent sized hills. The area of the Siebengebirge is on the other side of the Rhine about 20 minutes south of Bonn.

We hiked up one of the gebirge to a restaurant at the top. Unfortunately, I can't remember which mountain it was or what the name of the restaurant was, but it had an amazing view. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so we had to again take pictures with Jim's phone.

The restaurant specialized in wild game which the owner of the restaurant went out and hunted (according to the menu). It was typical German fare. They love their cream sauce here in Germany. I got Spaetzl with Pfefferlinge (chanterelle mushrooms) in a cream sauce and Jim got venison which was quite good.

After lunch, we hiked down and drove to Linz which is located directly across the river from Remagen. Ramagen is the remains of a bridge which had been the only remaining bridge along the Rhine during WWII. The Germans tried to blow it up to prevent the Allied forces from crossing. However, two Polish engineers who were forced to work for the Nazis cut the fuses. Hitler executed the four generals who failed to blow up the bridge.

In Linz we visited a museum which had various instruments of torture from the middle ages. It was a bit like visiting a haunted house. They had a moaning soundtrack, a bunch of skeletons and a rattling door which was set off by a motion detector when you approached. In the same building they also had a guy blowing glass and a store where you could buy his creations. I'm not sure I understand the connection between glass blowing and torture.

After Linz, we took a ferry across the Rhine. There aren't a lot of bridges south of Bonn but every 10 miles or so there is a ferry. The ferry only takes about 5 minutes so it is a much faster option than driving up to Bonn to cross one of the three bridges there. You simply drive onto the boat and drive off when you get to the other side.

On the other side of the Rhine in Rolandswerth we went to a restaurant high in the hills with another stunning view of the river. It is apparently one of the best restaurants in the area with a more casual menu on the terrace. There was a wedding at the restaurant and none of us were all that hungry after the big lunch so we were content to sit on the terrace and drink local wine with some antipasti until late into the evening.

Kottenforst

About 15 minutes from our house is a huge nature park with a ton of paved and dirt paths. I have been exploring the park on my mountain bike. Unfortunately none of the paths are marked, and I have yet to come across any sort of a map within the park. I am somewhat afraid of getting completely lost so my forays into the forest have been short. The next time I go out, I plan to take water, food, phone and a map so that I can really explore.

A mobile phone in Germany is called a handy. I have a prepaid phone which was only 20 euros. I simply go to the T-mobile store every month and put money on it. Thankfully, my handy has a language option so that I was able to figure out how to retrieve voicemail. I can't say the same for my home phone. The phone actually calls us to tell us we have a new voicemail. It then proceeds to tell me to press different numbers to do different things all in German. I'm not quite sure if I am getting a lot of messages or it is only one message that I never can find a way to hear. Most likely the former since there aren't too many people who even have my home phone number.

I officially have made my first friend here in Germany! While searching for ex-pat groups in Bonn, I stumbled across a blog by an American woman here in Bonn. She moved with her husband who was transferred to Bonn for work. After reading her blog, I thought we had a lot in common so I asked her if she would want to meet for coffee. We met today at a coffee shop in Bonn. I had a great time talking with her. There is something so comfortable about spending time with other Americans that you don't get even with other English speakers. When I looked at my watch, I couldn't believe we had been sitting there talking for about 2 1/2 hours. It felt like it was 40 minutes.

Yesterday we finalized our plans for our trip to Greece. We are flying into Athens on Sept 7th. We will be spending 6 days on the boat to the left. Zarko (Jim's friend in London) let us know he was renting a sailboat with some friends and asked us to join. The boat sleeps 12 so it will be pretty close quarters. We haven't met any of the other people on the boat so hopefully we will all get along.

The plan is to sleep on the boat Sunday night after we arrive and then set sail for Cyclades Islands. I think we will just hop around from island to island until we get to Santorini on the following Saturday. I can't wait for good Greek food, sun and lots of water! Oh, and of course the historical landmarks.

Testy Trash Men

Germans are very into recycling. I have 5 separate garbages in my small kitchen. I have a bio container for all plant, fruit and vegetable matter - like a compost, a bin for glass which needs to be deposited at bins located around the city and separated by color of glass, a bin for paper and cardboard, a bin for plastic and aluminum and finally a bin for residual waste.

Luckily, my parents actually have this same set up at their cabin so I am somewhat familiar to this system. However, their kitchen is three times the size of mine so they have the space for five different garbage containers.

Jim is still not totally on board with the effort that this recycling requires. He jokingly asked me the other day if his nail clippings needed to go in the bio container.

I haven't quite figured out when the garbage is picked up. I simply do whatever my neighbors do. Whatever bin they put out, I do the same.

Yesterday was the residual trash bin day. I had an old mop, shelving unit and old milk crate that wouldn't fit so I leaned them up against the trash bin. The trash man was really pissed off. Apparently, anything that doesn't fit inside the bin they don't take. He threw the stuff leaning on the garbage across the sidewalk. Someone picked up the shelving unit so I am only stuck with an old mop that I doubt anyone will want. Maybe I can break it half and fit it in the bin? I wonder what people do with their large sized items? I momentarily thought about waiting until cover of darkness to sneak the mop in someone else's garbage, then I thought that might not be the way to go about meeting the neighbors.

I drove in Germany for the first time last night (without incident). I was really apprehensive about driving here. There are so many bikers, very narrow streets and lots of one way streets (einbahnstrasse). I also don't exactly know all of the road rules and signs which is probably the more concerning issue. I am embarassed to admit that for a while I actually thought einbahnstrasse was the name of a street which was quite confusing. I kept thinking that I was walking in circles because I kept ending up on Einbahnstrasse.

Thankfully, we have a navigation system which is absolutely key here. If you take a wrong turn the system recalculates and gives you new directions. So many of the streets are one way or a pedestrian only street. If you do miss a turn, it may take 20 minutes just to get back on track. Now I know why so many people bike here - it's faster!

I think my driving stressed Jim out a bit because when we got back to the house, he downed his wine and ate a bar of Ritter Sport Chocolate. Yes, I said Sport Chocolate. I'm not sure what exactly is so sporty about this chocolate. Although if eating chocolate was a sport, I have no doubt that Jim and his mother would be Olympians.

A good day

Yesterday was a great day. Since we have been here it has been a bit of a roller coaster as far as emotions go. One minute we can't believe how lucky we are to have this opportunity and the next we are frustrated with how difficult things can be when you don't know the language.

It is interesting how achieving one small thing can make you feel so good. Yesterday, I got directions to a watch repair shop and actually found it. When I am able to get something right I feel such a sense of accomplishment. Who knew getting a watch repaired could be so satisfying?

I have two German classes a week. The class lasts about 2 hours and 15 minutes. For some reason, my German teacher thinks I have a Scandanavian accent and Jim has a French accent when speaking German. The French accent makes sense for Jim, but I'm not sure how he gets a Scandanavian accent with me. Maybe it is the midwest accent coming through?

I actually learned some useful things in German in yesterday's class. Until now, a lot of the class was talking about the brown dog. Is the brown dog small or big? Who owns the brown do? Where is the aforementioned brown dog sitting? Is he under the table or on the carpet? Not things that are exactly useful in everyday conversations (albeit things I should definitely know).

I was going to take some pictures of the woods near our house where I walk and bike but the camera was dead. I'll have to do it another day. Today is gray and rainy so isn't ideal for pictures.

Poppelsdorfer Schlosskonzerte

On Friday night, we attempted another furniture shopping expedition. We were much more successful this time. However, it will take 6 weeks to get our wardrobe, shoe organizer and futon. I will have to get some temporary hanging racks in the meantime and potentially a blow up bed for our first official guest. (Sorry Beth!)

Saturday we decided to check out an open air concert at the Schloss right by our house. Schloss is the German word for castle. This castle has a huge rotunda courtyard which they use for concerts every Saturday night.

Jim and I were both really impressed with the performance of the Bonn Philharmonic. They played a selection of Mozart, Bach and Stamitz featuring two flautists.

To get tickets we simply had to queue up at 7:00 for an 8:30 show, find some seats and we were able to leave until the show started. You can buy advance tickets, but you never know what the weather will be like so it's better to wait until that night to buy tickets.

At the intermission, everyone mingles out to the grass and either walks around or has champagne. We packed a bottle of wine along with some bread and cheese but couldn't find the wine opener so we just walked around a bit to stretch our legs.

They apparently have concerts during the winter. Hopefully, they don't have them outside. It got pretty cold once the sun went down. I was happy to have the blanket we brought for our non-existent picnic.
The outside of the Schloss has beautiful botanic gardens which we walk past just about everyday. I can't quite figure out if you are supposed to pay something when you enter. They have a cashier station there but there is never anyone there when I go during the week.

After the concert, we met up with Lars and Magda at a tapas restaurant. Lars works with Jim. Magda let me know that she has a connection at the International Paralympic Committee. After we come home from Christmas, I am going to investigate to see if I could get a job with them. Magda said that the staff is quite young so it also may be a way to meet people. The UN has offices here as well so I will look to see what positions they have as well.

Jim's friend Zarko let us know that he is renting a 12 person sail boat for a Greece trip starting in Athens and ending in Santorini. It would be in the beginning of September. We are waiting for a few more details on the trip, but are leaning towards going. I've always wanted to go to Greece and take a trip on a boat that isn't a cruise ship.

I'm going mountain biking this morning. There is a huge forest about 10 minutes from our house. The trails aren't really what you would call mountain bike trails in Colorado. Dirt trails with rolling hills is more my style of mountain biking anyway. I'll take some photos and put them in tomorrow's blog. It sounds like I'll be inside most of tomorrow since the forcast calls for HEAVY RAIN.

Catch Up

Well, it has been a while since I have written. In the time since my last posting, we have gone to France for a mini vacation and moved into our house. I'll back track a bit to get you all caught up.
The night before the movers were supposed to come Jim got a call. The moving company let us know that our container has been “misplaced”. They said it wasn’t “lost” but they “don’t know where it is”.

How exactly does one “misplace” a 20 by 20 ocean container? We aren’t talking about a set of keys here. According to the mover, it happens every six months at the port.

I had no idea how large this port warehouse is so didn't have a sense of how long it will take to search. However, I couldn't help but envision a scene from Indiana Jones where he hides relics among seemingly endless rows of containers never to be found again.

We decided not to worry about the fact that we had an apartment but nothing to put into the apartment and took off for France. Along the way, we stopped at a rest area and had to take a picture of this tour bus.

Jim's friend, Andrew, had rented a place in Rocroi which is just over the Belgium border so was only a 3 hour drive for us. Rocroi is a small little town which is surrounded by a fortified wall in the shape of a star.

The house that Andrew had rented was huge. It had 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. We had our own kitchen so we went cooked and ate at the house the whole weekend.

The group consisted of Andrew (cycling friend of Jim's), Celine (his French wife), their 4 month old son - Martin, Matz (friend of Andrew's), Myriam (Matz's girlfriend), Matz's 2 teenage kids - Alex and Jeremy.

The day after we arrived, Matz, Andrew, Jim and I went out for a long ride. We got lost a few times but the roads were great and there was hardly any traffic. I was worried at the beginning of the ride because we seemed to be going downhill for a really long time. The ride back up wouldn't have been too bad, but we took a wrong turn and ended up doing the climb twice.

There were some Roman ruins that of course the guys had to investigate. However, it was a steep, rocky, dirt road to get there so needless to say, I wasn't very happy when I got to the top to look at a 3 foot rock wall, Roman or not. I wouldn't ride this road on a mountain bike much less a road bike. On the way down, Jim somehow ran over a big pile of poo and got it all over his bike. KARMA!

We went to the lake that afternoon. Andrew jokingly referred to it as the Monte Carlo of the Ardennes. It was far from it. It was actually a reservoir. The weather wasn't that warm that we spent too much time in the water. We mainly hung out on the grass and relaxed.

The next day Andrew's friend Eric from San Fran arrived with his wife, Tatti and their 1 yr old son, Gregory. We didn't see very much of them as they slept most of the day and would be up at night. It seemed odd to Jim and I that they would travel all that way to only sleep the day away.

On Monday, I was pretty sore from the long ride we did the day before so I went out on my own. I found a beautiful bike path along a river. The morning started out really foggy so the woods and the river had a very mystical feel to them.

The trip was very relaxing which is what we needed before the chaos of our move. We spent the mornings riding our bikes and then took another trip to the lake and hung out in the little town of Rocroi.

Jim and I left on Wednesday at 4am to drive back to meet the movers at 8am at our new house. Needless to say, it was a very long day. The movers do help you unpack your stuff but they just put it on the floor. By the end of the day we had all of our possessions covering every inch of the floor. I now wish I would have taken a picture of the chaos but at the time I was so completely overwhelmed by the amount of crap we had. I wish I had been even more selective about what I brought with us.

Our first weekend in our new home was spent trying to get organized, buy furniture and some electronics. We bought our phone, TV, satellite receiver and a clock radio. The clock radio was definitely a good purchase considering that both of our watches stopped working this week and the other two clocks we brought also do not work.

The TV is really nice except for the fact that we only get German channels. The only English speaking channels are news or Eurosport. So I've been reading a lot. Any recommendations for books would be greatly appreciated as it seems that will be my main entertainment outlet. We have watched 2 of our 7 movies on our computer. I'm trying to space it out a bit so that we don't watch all of our movies in one week.

We failed miserably on the furniture. We went to IKEA which was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I don't think we will ever go back. You have to stand in line in each department to get a print out of what you want. Then you have to go to the warehouse to pick up each part of the piece of furniture. Finally, you have to go to another area to arrange for the delivery. We got to the warehouse part of the process after about 3 hours. Then after realizing you have to get each piece to the wardrobe, that it doesn't all come in one box we abandoned ship and left. We are going to attempt going to another furniture store this weekend. Hopefully, this time we will actually get something.

Last Saturday, we were invited to the house of one of Jim's co-workers. They are Australian and have two kids. We had a great time at their house but they are unfortunately moving back to Australia in September. Another Australian couple was also there and thankfully they are staying here. I am going to take some additional language classes with Louise at the end of the month.

This past week I have mainly getting things organized and doing laundry. Everything in our house has a bit of an odor. I think they spray the container with pesticide or something.

Yesterday, I went to the store and bought room deodorizing spray, candles, lavender oils and some air fresheners along with the RAID products I bought to deal with my little fruit fly infestation. I can't imagine what was going through the check out clerk's mind.

Well, I better get outside and enjoy the sunshine. This week has been gorgeous but I've been stuck inside getting the house organized and haven't taken advantage of the nice weather.