Heidelberg, Germany

This past weekend was another 3-day weekend so we made sure to take full advantage! Friday we made a day trip over to Heidelberg with our friends Drew, Rhiannon, Trivan, and Tia, who are all stationed at Ramstein. One of the main attractions at Heidelberg is the castle, which was erected from 1775-1781. It has been destroyed several times by wars and fires, but it is still very neat to see.

Pictures from next to the castle. There are 300 stairs leading up to the castle, but we found that you could park on a side street and skip about 250! You could go inside, but we chose not to pay the extra money.

View of Heidelberg from the castle! That is the Neckar River and the Church of the Holy Spirit sitting in the Marktplatz.

After seeing the castle we enjoyed the Marktplatz shops. We stopped at the Brauhaus Vetter for a late lunch of sausages and beer, including the record setting Vetter 33!

Weekend Travels

This past weekend we headed over to Luxembourg, which is about an hour from our house. We did a little shopping and visited the Hamm American Cemetery. The cemetery is the final resting place for 5,076 American soldiers including General George S. Patton. Most of those resting here were killed in the Battle of the Bulge. It really is a beautiful cemetery, and was wonderful to see the American soldiers being honored on foreign soil.

General Patton's Grave, sitting at the head of the cemetery. Just a normal marker like every other soldier, yet he is honored by being placed at the commanding position.



We also did some driving around of our local area, mainly looking for hiking trails. We did find a few, but we will have to look around for some more. What we didn't expect to find was a wonderful bakery in Hetzerath that has fantastic chocolate filled croissants!! Look out!

Adventures in Laundry

What happens when you put too much American laundry detergent in a German washing machine?

And on a side note, I have to use a translated instruction manual to do the laundry as all the labels on the machine are in German. Fun!

Wittlich Pig Festival

This past Saturday we attended the Wittlich Pig Festival. The story behind the festival is that in the medieval age, the people of Wittlich closed the city gates each evening because they were constantly under attack. One evening, the guard couldn’t find the bolt to close the door, so he used a carrot instead. In the middle of the night a pig came, saw the carrot, and ate it. What happened of course is that the door opened and the enemy entered the town. The people were thus very angry and decided to punish the pigs. So they made a big fire and herded all the pigs into the market place and roasted them! Today the legend continues with a festival entailing a parade, a carnival, lots of wine and beer, and of course the roasting of pigs!

Wittlich Town Marketplatz where the main festival was held.

The ceremonial pigs being brought into the marketplatz to be roasted. They roast around 100 pigs for the festival.

Flowers being presented to the Saint of Wittlich. This man loves his job and was really hamming it up!!


Pork sandwiches being prepared!!


Wine selection!! Of course you order by the bottle here!

Lots more pictures posted on facebook! The link is below, copy and paste!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290335&id=17019382&ref=share

Still unpacking!

Sorry for the blogging lull! We've been pretty busy unpacking and setting up our house! Things are coming along pretty good. We have our living room/dining room/kitchen complete, as well as our master bedroom, office, and bathrooms. Only part left is our spare bedroom which is currently holding all of our clothing boxes! Let me say, I am really missing not having closets!! In Germany they are taxed on the square meters of their homes, so they don't build closets. Thank goodness we have a very large attic for storage!! But, we should be mostly organized by tomorrow! I promise I will post some pictures, but I didn't want you all to see our gigantic mess!!

Moving In!!

We have officially moved into our new house!!! Let the unpacking begin!

Everything is going good so far. The movers moved everything into our house yesterday, and even put together some stuff for us. They were very nice guys. We also got our loaner appliances from base too, which are necessary with the 220 voltage here. We got a washer and dryer, fridge, and a microwave; all brand new!!

So we have lots to do!! We got our t.v set up and it works! It is even dual voltage, so we don't have to run it through a transformer! Which basically saves us from having to unplug and plug it in every time we use it. Finished unpacking the kitchen and organized the furniture in the living room last night. I will probably be trying out some different arrangements til I find one that makes me happy. Just had a few broken glasses so far, but nothing really to get upset about!

Our living room/dining room/kitchen after the movers left! So much to do!!

Phillip surrounded in our kitchen! It is quite a bit smaller than our last kitchen, so we will be storing some stuff in our attic. Good thing we have a large attic!!

Clara is so happy to have her toys and bed back!!

And it was so wonderful to sleep in our own bed last night!!! First time in over 2 months!!!!

Sundays

Sundays in Germany take some getting used to. Here they very much embody the whole "day of rest" idea. Everything is closed, and you are not allowed to do any work either. It's weird getting accustomed to because in the States we always reserved Sunday for doing the house work that needed to get done before the start of the new week. So, in keeping with the Sunday theme, here is what you are not allowed to do.

Thou shalt not:

- Do any yard work, including mowing the yard or sweeping your driveway/street.
Yes, you are expected to sweep your driveway and street in front of your house (the first foot or so into the street), but not on Sunday!

- Wash your car.

- Go shopping.
Everything is closed! Retail, grocery, everything.

- Eat out.
For the most part, but in our town there are 2 open restaurants, so this doesn't really apply all the time.

This kind of makes for a boring day. You can't go traveling, you can't do any work on your house, you just kind of bum around. You can do stuff inside, like laundry or cleaning, but I'm going to object to those tasks and enjoy my day of rest!

Congratulations Amanda and BJ!!

Amanda and BJ are tying the knot this Saturday!! Phillip was able to make it back for the wedding, so we are very happy about that! Wish I could be there too as I'm sure it's going to be a great time! Congratulations and Best of Luck!!

No longer Homeless!!

We have a place to live!!! We will no longer be homeless come August 4th!

We picked the house that we were looking at before. We finally decided to go ahead and do a German contract since we kept looking and found nothing that was even close to the house that we previously liked! The landlord has been very easy to work with, so we feel comfortable with our decision. Plus our housing office offered little help, so we weren't benefiting by using them either!

It is a 3 bedroom/1.5 bath house with a combined living room/kitchen/dining area. Its a small house, but we're happy about it since it will really cut back on heating costs. Plus the house is brand new, and "low energy." The walls are made of special bricks and the heat is by a "heat pump," so no paying for oil or gas!! WAHOO!! And it is only minutes to base, so we won't have to worry about paying huge amounts in gas for the vehicle. Phillip is very excited about not having to drive an hour each way to work anymore!

So, no pictures yet. They are still finishing up some work, so I didn't want to post any til its done.

YAY!!!

Germans Love the Rav4

A very odd thing is happening.  We keep running into all of these Germans who love our Rav4.  At first we couldn't figure out why all of these people kept staring at us.  We figured it was just because we must stick out as Americans. But now they have started coming up to us, saying how much they like our vehicle.  We have had at least 4 in the last week!

Just last night we were walking back to our Rav from dinner and this lady came up to us and started talking in German.  We didn't understand her but the way she was motioning we thought that she had scratched our vehicle! When we told her we only knew English she was able to talk to us and told us, "No I just love your car!  I was going to have them find you in the restaurant so I could talk to you!" 

I guess we picked the right vehicle, not only to buy but to bring with us!