So I was thinking you might like to hear some of the little quirks we have experienced living here in Europe.
We ordered pizza tonight to be delivered to the house and it made me think of the first time we did so. I asked for a pepperoni and mushroom. I was surprised when we received a mushroom and peppers (pepperoncini?) pizza. It had no pepperoni on it all all. I quickly learned that the Germans call pepperoni salami! I even found salami in the Italian grocer several days ago. But the pizza we ordered tonight advertised pepperoni, salami and mushrooms, so I questioned the order taker on the phone. He said it was the meat pepperoni! Yippee, it was meat, but wow, was it spicy! Also, Hawaiian Pizza (pineapple, ham and mushroom) is a very big seller here. Pineapples are called ananas! Bananas are bananen and one is a banane.
Diet Coke is Coke Light here. The Germans do not use aspertame, so the Diet Coke doesn't taste exactly the same as it does in the U.S. I'll drink lots when we visit between Christmas and New Years. Also, Coke and Pepsi are made with cane sugar, not corn syrup, so aficionados like the German soda better, I'm told.
Cell phones are called handys.
There are very few fast food establishments in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. McDonald's is the most prevalent with Burger King coming in second. There are no German fast food establishments to speak of, although we did dine at a Schnitzel restaurant that looked a lot like a fast food restaurant near the amusement park, Europa Park, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa-Park. For fast food, the Europeans pack their food or buy food at a grocery store, or buy from a small mom-n-pop type place in any small town, or they can buy something from numerous bakeries in each town, which sell breads and maybe a meat sandwich or a flat bread w/ meat or veggies on it. But no German fast food restaurants.
Many houses have art on the side of their houses. I've started taking pictures and will begin posting some soon.
There is a lot of Christian art or crucifixes in the towns, both large and small. As you can see from my photo above, which is a Starbucks in Heidelburg's pedestrian district, they also place statues and other religious relics on the corner of buildings in the old parts of town.
You cannot find a hamburger in the shops and restaurants that sell food, but you can get a frickadelle, which is like a super ground beef (?) patty served on a hard roll. Caitlin loves them and we're beginning to like them, too.
Dogs are allowed in most restaurants and shops, with the exception of stores that sell food. Germans LOVE their dogs!!!
Germans believe that cats are free spirits and should NEVER be confined indoors!
Germans don't celebrate Halloween, but with areas where the Americans live, the Germans have embraced our traditions. Today, Kelley, Caitlin along with Alex and Anderson Woods, our neighborhood boys, carved some pumpkins and put put 3 up on one of our 14 fence columns. Because we live next to one of 2 village playgrounds, we get a lot of families bringing their kids to play. Today, the moms and grandmas were lifting their children up to see the faces carved into the pumpkins. (Caitlin always asks great questions and asked when pumpkins started to get carved and I found this great link on Wikipedia when looking for pumpkin carving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_carving.
Germans serve sodas without ice. Sam believes they don't like their drinks diluted by the melting ice. The glasses have a line on them that measures out .5 L (liters) or .3 L so that everyone gets the right amount. Americans have to ask for extra ice when ordering a drink (that's if the restaurant or bar has ice at all).
If you want catsup with your fast food, you pay for the packets, which are bigger than U.S. packets. We have also seen the new catsup containers that are being introduced in the U.S. soon.
You can buy beer at McDonald's in Germany, actually, just about anywhere! There is no open container law, so you can walk down the street with a beer in your hand.
Cigarette smoking is very popular here. The towns have cigarette machines posted on houses or poles along popular streets, so you never need to go to a store to get a pack of smokes.
Each town has a church that chimes the bells at each quarter hour.
Milk in the German grocery store is not in the grocers cooler, it's in a plastic laminated cardboard 1 liter container and is near the cooler, but usually not in the cooler. Aldi grocery stores are very much the same in Germany, but everything is written in German.
Germans have many, many festivals! September starts the festival season and you can find something to do every weekend with small fests in villages like ours or large fests in larger cities, to the mondo Octoberfests in Munich and other large cities.
Many Germans ride bikes. Up hill, down hill, while smoking, in the rain, young and old alike. Bike riding is a passion in Europe. The villages and towns have bike clubs that compete against each other with an eye to getting to the Tour de France, like Lance Armstrong did.
Americana is huge in Germany. They might not sell many English version papers, magazines or books, but you'll be able to read may headlines because they love using English in ads and the like.
Sundays are quiet days, when people are encouraged to spend time with their families and keep those bonds strong. It is illegal to wash your car or mow your lawn on Sunday. Your dog can't bark and you shouldn't blast loud music either. I think the villages with a heavy American presence are a little more lenient, but I don't think by much.
I added some links for places or store I've been to or places that I have patronized or will in the near future. I hope you like the links.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
I'm here, I'm here, I'm here...
...yes and I know you guys are wondering what the heck I've been up to here in Germany! Well, I can't get it all typed out tonight, but I would like to give an overview of the things I would like to share with you in the near future. More on that later...
As for right now, Sam, the girls and I are all doing fairly well. The girls and I are in the last stages of suffering from either: bronchitis, ear infections, or Strep throat. Having our antibiotics since Friday means we're starting to feel better. Here's hoping we can get through autumn without any more illnesses.
As for living in Germany, we're still loving it, mostly. There are days when I wish I were anywhere but here, but they are fewer and fewer. Sometimes, those feelings come from an overwhelming sense of lonliness. (I know Kelley and Caitlin feel that way, too. I can suppose that Sam feels that way, as well.) But, I'm finding my place and am working on making myself the best I can be each day in hopes of making my world a brighter place. According to my teen, sometimes I'm not too cheerful. Imagine that! Said by a teenager! In all honesty, when you're not happy, sometimes it's hard to be cheerful. But I've gotten over that hump and am really making an effort to be more cheerful.
So as to what's going on around here, we are currently without U.S. base privileges and have been since September 30th. Sam's contract expired and we are awaiting a new one, which should be issued very soon. I took precautions and stocked up on those items at the commissary (grocery store) that we can easily store. I only need to go to the German grocery store for fresh vegetables and bread at this point. I bought a case of 1 liter milk containers and we've been using those, so we're not in need of milk purchased "on the economy" (which means at the German stores).
We go to a German doctor mostly, so we've been able to get medical attention as needed. Kelley has gone to the U.S. hospital at Landstuhl for some of her care, but we're able to wait until we get back on base for any further attention she needs. It really has been reassuring knowing we had the ability to get medical attention wherever we deemed best, whenever we wanted.
We love the town we live in, Queidersbach (rhymes with spiders bock). It's rural enough to have a rooster crowing during the day on the hill across the valley, 2 resident horses being walked to various fields in the neighborhood or a little farther away in the pastures that are an easy walk from our house, tractors driving by as they do their plowing or mowing in those same pastures, cows being moved closer to pastures near us, but our town is also large enough to have a butcher directly across the street from us, allowing us to buy fresh pork, beef and chicken weekly (although we haven't done that often enough), a nice grocery store with a large selection of items and church bells from either the Catholic or Protestant church chiming each quarter hour with a lovely 15 minute chime at 45 after the hour when someone in town has died. I understand that if the chimes are softly run, the death was that of a woman. If the chimes are loud and strong, that indicates the death was that of a local man. We're also close enough to a military training facility for pilots practicing war games that we get frequent fly-overs from U.S. and other NATO nations aircraft honing their skills in the sky. We LOVE that, although we hear them more that see them, because they are so very fast.
Our nights are getting darker earlier, as I'm sure yours are, too. Our leaves are starting to turn colors and leaves are starting to fall. We have a larger percentage of hardwood trees, compared to deciduous trees that keep their greenery all year long, so we're starting to see the leaves fall during windy days. Because we are closer to the Canadian latitude, I expect we're seeing more of upstate New York's autumnal changes that we are seeing with North Carolina's changes. It looks like it's going to be a very beautiful autumn here with sharp color differences.
I got a Facebook message today reminding me that our time change in Germany happens on October 30, although yours in American happens on November 6th. Speaking of late October, it's sure to be an interesting Halloween in Queidersbach. We live in a newer part of town with many Americans. I hear that the German people have gladly embraced our Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating. The Ramstein base has traditionally held trick-or-treating on the weekend before Halloween, but the towns in the area hold it on the actual date. We certainly don't want to confuse our German hosts by trying to explain that trick-or-treating needs to happen on a weekend for the convenience of parents or because it's not a school night. So, we will have our pumpkins carved and lit, while the girls go around with their neighborhood friends getting lots of yummy candy from our Queidersbach neighbors on Monday night, October 31st! Kelley thinks we need a carved pumpkin for each of our 14 or so columns separating the sections of fencing around our yard (we have the front of a duplex, so it's the front yard). I'm thinking if she can do it, it might be a nice idea...
We have a new kitten names Chessie, which is short for Cheshire, which is short for Cheshire of Wonderland Akers! She's Caitlin's kitten and she's almost 13 weeks, which is almost 3 months! She's teething and loves to try to eat our fingers. I learned to push my finger back into her mouth along her gumline to get her to stop. She is very surprised when I do that. Today, she was practicing jumping vertical on the bathroom door frame. I think she's trying to learn how to open Caitlin's door at night so she can let herself out to play! She saw our 2 year old, Dash, do it recently to get in to her room for her kitten chow and now she wants to do that too! Our 75 lb Standard Poodle, Zeus, has had his heart stolen and is totally smitten with this little kitten. He is FINALLY settling down while being around her to let her just WALK through the house. Prior to this week, she was "IT" and he was on a mega game of "Hide N Seek". She has a 7 foot tall cat tree that she escapes to when he's getting a little too crazy ['];m
\ (oops, she must have known I was typing about her, so she decided to say hi to you all via walking across the keyboard) dasuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye7's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaau - or as I was saying, and she's back! I think she smells the crumbs in my keyboard, because she tries hard to get into the keyboard when she's not lying on it!
We had a scare with her a few days ago. She managed to choke herself with a headphone wire and a cloth laundry basket nylon handle in Kelley's room. It's a great thing that Caitlin was up there with her and that we were both home at all. It took some doing, but I was able to cut the cloth handle from around her neck which freed her, only with Caitlin's help. She managed to get caught up in that stuff and then get caught up in a chair hinge which had her standing while she was being choked. It was all very quick and very scary! Thank goodness Caitlin and I were there. Chessie is no worse for wear now, except that I was doing my nails at the time and she received fresh nail polish on her lovely shiny kitten coat, which I had to cut parts of off.
So here's the overview of that I'd like to tell you about in the near future (with photos):
* Fasching Parade on the Tuesday after Easter in April
*Metz, France and the Cathedral there
* Munich, Germany and the Lincoln Park concert
*Trier, Germany and it's Roman ruins
*My drive through Germany, Switzerland and Italy to take the girls to Girl Scout camp in Livorno, Italy, along with our stays in Swiss Youth Hostels on the way there and a week, later on the way back.
*Our family trip with Sam to Grindelwald, Switzerland to stay in a Youth Hostel in August.
*Our family trip to Munich the first weekend in October for Oktoberfest via train.
*Our upcoming trip to Austria to the Alps over the Thanksgiving weekend to learn to ski and, for the girls, to learn to snowboard.
*Plus so much more. A photo journal of the artwork on houses in Germany. Beautiful gates and fences of Europe. Animals of Europe. Cars of Europe. Food, candy and beer in Europe! The language. Cooking in Germany; electricity; heating the house; the lack of air conditioning.
So as you can see, I have SO MUCH to say about our 5 months here. I can't wait to make the time to tell you all about it. PLUS I have a lot of photos. Now to figure out how to upload those to my blog...
Chrissy
As for right now, Sam, the girls and I are all doing fairly well. The girls and I are in the last stages of suffering from either: bronchitis, ear infections, or Strep throat. Having our antibiotics since Friday means we're starting to feel better. Here's hoping we can get through autumn without any more illnesses.
As for living in Germany, we're still loving it, mostly. There are days when I wish I were anywhere but here, but they are fewer and fewer. Sometimes, those feelings come from an overwhelming sense of lonliness. (I know Kelley and Caitlin feel that way, too. I can suppose that Sam feels that way, as well.) But, I'm finding my place and am working on making myself the best I can be each day in hopes of making my world a brighter place. According to my teen, sometimes I'm not too cheerful. Imagine that! Said by a teenager! In all honesty, when you're not happy, sometimes it's hard to be cheerful. But I've gotten over that hump and am really making an effort to be more cheerful.
So as to what's going on around here, we are currently without U.S. base privileges and have been since September 30th. Sam's contract expired and we are awaiting a new one, which should be issued very soon. I took precautions and stocked up on those items at the commissary (grocery store) that we can easily store. I only need to go to the German grocery store for fresh vegetables and bread at this point. I bought a case of 1 liter milk containers and we've been using those, so we're not in need of milk purchased "on the economy" (which means at the German stores).
We go to a German doctor mostly, so we've been able to get medical attention as needed. Kelley has gone to the U.S. hospital at Landstuhl for some of her care, but we're able to wait until we get back on base for any further attention she needs. It really has been reassuring knowing we had the ability to get medical attention wherever we deemed best, whenever we wanted.
We love the town we live in, Queidersbach (rhymes with spiders bock). It's rural enough to have a rooster crowing during the day on the hill across the valley, 2 resident horses being walked to various fields in the neighborhood or a little farther away in the pastures that are an easy walk from our house, tractors driving by as they do their plowing or mowing in those same pastures, cows being moved closer to pastures near us, but our town is also large enough to have a butcher directly across the street from us, allowing us to buy fresh pork, beef and chicken weekly (although we haven't done that often enough), a nice grocery store with a large selection of items and church bells from either the Catholic or Protestant church chiming each quarter hour with a lovely 15 minute chime at 45 after the hour when someone in town has died. I understand that if the chimes are softly run, the death was that of a woman. If the chimes are loud and strong, that indicates the death was that of a local man. We're also close enough to a military training facility for pilots practicing war games that we get frequent fly-overs from U.S. and other NATO nations aircraft honing their skills in the sky. We LOVE that, although we hear them more that see them, because they are so very fast.
Our nights are getting darker earlier, as I'm sure yours are, too. Our leaves are starting to turn colors and leaves are starting to fall. We have a larger percentage of hardwood trees, compared to deciduous trees that keep their greenery all year long, so we're starting to see the leaves fall during windy days. Because we are closer to the Canadian latitude, I expect we're seeing more of upstate New York's autumnal changes that we are seeing with North Carolina's changes. It looks like it's going to be a very beautiful autumn here with sharp color differences.
I got a Facebook message today reminding me that our time change in Germany happens on October 30, although yours in American happens on November 6th. Speaking of late October, it's sure to be an interesting Halloween in Queidersbach. We live in a newer part of town with many Americans. I hear that the German people have gladly embraced our Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating. The Ramstein base has traditionally held trick-or-treating on the weekend before Halloween, but the towns in the area hold it on the actual date. We certainly don't want to confuse our German hosts by trying to explain that trick-or-treating needs to happen on a weekend for the convenience of parents or because it's not a school night. So, we will have our pumpkins carved and lit, while the girls go around with their neighborhood friends getting lots of yummy candy from our Queidersbach neighbors on Monday night, October 31st! Kelley thinks we need a carved pumpkin for each of our 14 or so columns separating the sections of fencing around our yard (we have the front of a duplex, so it's the front yard). I'm thinking if she can do it, it might be a nice idea...
We have a new kitten names Chessie, which is short for Cheshire, which is short for Cheshire of Wonderland Akers! She's Caitlin's kitten and she's almost 13 weeks, which is almost 3 months! She's teething and loves to try to eat our fingers. I learned to push my finger back into her mouth along her gumline to get her to stop. She is very surprised when I do that. Today, she was practicing jumping vertical on the bathroom door frame. I think she's trying to learn how to open Caitlin's door at night so she can let herself out to play! She saw our 2 year old, Dash, do it recently to get in to her room for her kitten chow and now she wants to do that too! Our 75 lb Standard Poodle, Zeus, has had his heart stolen and is totally smitten with this little kitten. He is FINALLY settling down while being around her to let her just WALK through the house. Prior to this week, she was "IT" and he was on a mega game of "Hide N Seek". She has a 7 foot tall cat tree that she escapes to when he's getting a little too crazy ['];m
\ (oops, she must have known I was typing about her, so she decided to say hi to you all via walking across the keyboard) dasuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye7's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaau - or as I was saying, and she's back! I think she smells the crumbs in my keyboard, because she tries hard to get into the keyboard when she's not lying on it!
We had a scare with her a few days ago. She managed to choke herself with a headphone wire and a cloth laundry basket nylon handle in Kelley's room. It's a great thing that Caitlin was up there with her and that we were both home at all. It took some doing, but I was able to cut the cloth handle from around her neck which freed her, only with Caitlin's help. She managed to get caught up in that stuff and then get caught up in a chair hinge which had her standing while she was being choked. It was all very quick and very scary! Thank goodness Caitlin and I were there. Chessie is no worse for wear now, except that I was doing my nails at the time and she received fresh nail polish on her lovely shiny kitten coat, which I had to cut parts of off.
So here's the overview of that I'd like to tell you about in the near future (with photos):
* Fasching Parade on the Tuesday after Easter in April
*Metz, France and the Cathedral there
* Munich, Germany and the Lincoln Park concert
*Trier, Germany and it's Roman ruins
*My drive through Germany, Switzerland and Italy to take the girls to Girl Scout camp in Livorno, Italy, along with our stays in Swiss Youth Hostels on the way there and a week, later on the way back.
*Our family trip with Sam to Grindelwald, Switzerland to stay in a Youth Hostel in August.
*Our family trip to Munich the first weekend in October for Oktoberfest via train.
*Our upcoming trip to Austria to the Alps over the Thanksgiving weekend to learn to ski and, for the girls, to learn to snowboard.
*Plus so much more. A photo journal of the artwork on houses in Germany. Beautiful gates and fences of Europe. Animals of Europe. Cars of Europe. Food, candy and beer in Europe! The language. Cooking in Germany; electricity; heating the house; the lack of air conditioning.
So as you can see, I have SO MUCH to say about our 5 months here. I can't wait to make the time to tell you all about it. PLUS I have a lot of photos. Now to figure out how to upload those to my blog...
Chrissy
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
What a day :-( & :-)
Well, we finally made it to Moving Day (day 1 of 4)! I know some of you may have believed we were NEVER going to get here! I was one of them, too. But, here we are.
The 6 movers were alert and ready to start packing this morning. I was on pins and needles wondering what they were going to say of the mess my house was and of how much stuff, er... clutter, er...things our family has!
I couldn't help it but shortly after they came in the house, I had to head off into another room and I burst down crying from the stress that's been building up to this point. I said I wasn't going to do that till I got on the plane when I was mentally saying my goodbyes to family and friend all over this great country. But the tears came and I couldn't stop them. It felt so good once I was finished. I felt refreshed and was ready to get going, doing whatever the movers wanted me to do.
I guess it didn't help that I got a touch of bronchitis, made me feel sick in my head and chest.
So now we have a lot of the "to be stored" stuff taken out of the house. Tomorrow brings the rest of the "store" stuff being removed and more of the "travels by sea (surface)" stuff that will take 2-4 months (yes I said MONTHS) to reach our house in Queidersbach (sounds like Spidersbock), Germany.
I will try to update my blog tomorrow night with the day's events. I will close with something my Mom used to say to me "Chrissy, stop your crying" (I guess I've always been a little emotional).
Night Night
p.s. Tomorrow I will tell you about the adventure our animals are on while we pack up their whole world and prepare to plop it down somewhere new.
The 6 movers were alert and ready to start packing this morning. I was on pins and needles wondering what they were going to say of the mess my house was and of how much stuff, er... clutter, er...things our family has!
I couldn't help it but shortly after they came in the house, I had to head off into another room and I burst down crying from the stress that's been building up to this point. I said I wasn't going to do that till I got on the plane when I was mentally saying my goodbyes to family and friend all over this great country. But the tears came and I couldn't stop them. It felt so good once I was finished. I felt refreshed and was ready to get going, doing whatever the movers wanted me to do.
I guess it didn't help that I got a touch of bronchitis, made me feel sick in my head and chest.
So now we have a lot of the "to be stored" stuff taken out of the house. Tomorrow brings the rest of the "store" stuff being removed and more of the "travels by sea (surface)" stuff that will take 2-4 months (yes I said MONTHS) to reach our house in Queidersbach (sounds like Spidersbock), Germany.
I will try to update my blog tomorrow night with the day's events. I will close with something my Mom used to say to me "Chrissy, stop your crying" (I guess I've always been a little emotional).
Night Night
p.s. Tomorrow I will tell you about the adventure our animals are on while we pack up their whole world and prepare to plop it down somewhere new.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Yeah! My Blog is Up and Running!
I'm auditing a homeschooling co-op class with my 2 daughters, Kelley & Caitlin, at Learning Arbor Co-op in Apex, NC so that I can learn about blogging before we move to Germany in a month.
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