Sunday, March 27, 2011

BTW

I think the last post is the last time I'm going to post that many pictures on this blog. From now on, I'll just do one or two, and then put the rest up on FB. It's way too time-consuming this way, and I don't want to overrun my blog with tons of photos.

Castles, etc.

Saturday was a full day for the Aycocks. We had to drive out to Krahenberg, where we were to meet the landlord of the house we wanted. He had it narrowed down to us, and one other family (out of 30 applicants). So, we were feeling pretty good about it. We talked with him for about thirty minutes, then he said he would call us around 12:30 or 1:00pm to let us know his decision. Ugh, more waiting.
BUT, that was quite all right, because we had plans to go to Lichtenberg Castle, located in the town of Thallictenberg. It was pretty small, but still awesome. Construction was started in the year 1200, and I believe the church section was finished in 1700.















The castle had it's very own little restaurant we ate at. Josh had potato soup & I had fried camembert, with cranberry sauce & a balsamic salad. So good. We just got water to drink. They brought out a small bottle of evian to split, and then charged us 3,50 euro. Tip of the day - always order "TAP water". The restaurant is apparently known for their basil ice cream, which is why I wanted to eat there in the first place, but unfortunately, it won't be available for another two weeks. I'm so going back if nothing more than for the ice cream.

After this castle, we drove to Landstuhl, which is just five minutes outside Ramstein. There, we went to another castle called Nanstein. This was more touristy, and actually cost a little bit of money to get in - but it was much smaller than Lichtenberg. As soon as we got to the parking lot, the landlord called about the house. He decided to give it to the family with children. He said that he thinks it will be much easier for us to get a house since we don't have kids, and that's why he gave it to the other family. BOOOOO. So that pretty much put a pall on Nanstein.









After we were all castled-out, we went back to the house and took Sasha to the dog park outside our apartment. She's never been to one before, and I was a little nervous, but she did really really well. She actually kinda sorta played with one of the other dogs (which is surprising, since normally she is a big biotch that doesn't want to lower herself to the level of "other" dogs".




After doggy time, we went back out to Ramstein & went to a bar where one of the locals practiced his English on us. Everyone is pretty friendly around here. I think one of the reasons is there are a lot of locals that work on base.



After the bar, we went to dinner & had a board game night with the Myers. Verrrrrry full day, which means that today (Sunday), I was quite lazy. And I'm okay with that. Plus, Daylight Saving Time started today, so we lost an hour. At least I'm going to use that as an excuse to lounge. So, we're now 7 hours ahead of CST, not 6.

Now we're back to the drawing board with the house-hunting. Wish us luck, it's a jungle out there.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Updates

So my 2nd driver's test was a huge success. I got a 98. And it REALLY ticks me off that I don't know which two questions I missed. Plus, it makes me feel even more horribly embarrassed that I was such a retard the first go-round. Obviously I'm completely capable of smoking the test. But DAMN, why couldn't I have done it the FIRST time???

Josh and I had to give up the SmartCar yesterday. We only had it for a week, and it cost us $250 just for that week, which is really expensive. We found a rental place actually in Ramstein, and they were much cheaper. So, we went ahead and rented it for a month. Josh's car won't come in til mid-April, and we had to have a car now. We will be buying another car soon, but because we've rented this one for a month, we won't rush in to buying the first POS that we find. The downside of our new rental - it's standard. Which I don't know how to drive. Granted, the SmartCar was only semi-automatic, and I did okay with that. But I do not want to start learning a manual on foreign roads. Good Lord, who knows what kind of a disaster that would be. For those of you who know me, you know I'm quite.....disaster-prone.

Josh and I are meeting with the Landlord of the house we want this Saturday. He told us to bring a contract, just in case (the military has their own renter's contract, so we can get reimbursed). So, that's a good sign. If we get the house, believe me, I will bombard everyone with pictures. It's like a B&B on the hillside. I don't want to talk about it too much and jinx it, though. But I will say this - it's 8 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a finished basement, and two stories, with glass window-walls all along two sides of the house. Awesome.

We also got our library cards, which allows us access to Rosetta Stone, and Mango (which is like Rosetta, only it's streaming, not a download). We get to access it from our home computer, which is awesome. We started our lessons yesterday, and we've learned quite a few words. My favorite sentence I've learned thus far: Schones Wetta heute, nicht vah? (not quite sure of the spelling, but I think that's close). It means, "Beautiful weather today, isn't it?" Heehee!! Although, anyone out there know how I can type the umlaut above a letter? I can't figure it out.

Anyway, I promise I'll take more pictures this weekend. It's been gorgeous outside, and should be all weekend. I think we'll try to find a castle or two to explore. ;)

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Ew, stress!

My next driver's test is tomorrow. I feel MUCH more prepared, but who knows. Pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I pass it this time. Josh will NEVER let me live it down if I don't.

Other than that, not much has gone on the past couple of days. The weather has been high fifties and sunny, frosty at night. Today, Josh and I did some kind of newcomer's orientation that went on fooooorrreeeevveerrrrrrrrrr. But, there were some good points to it. We learned more about the tipping situation at restaurants. The general rule is 2 - 5 euros. 2 euros if the service was just average, blah, and as much as 5 euros if the service is spectacular. Any more than that, generally, and people will get offended - like we're trying to prove something. We also learned that if the little old neighbor lady next door is spying on you, there is no need to panic. They spy on everyone (in a good-natured way). Also, German's do NOT like being disturbed by noise. 1-3pm is quiet time in neighborhoods (no lawn mowing) and Sundays are also quiet days. AND, it is illegal to wash your car in your own driveway. If the police see you, you can get a ticket of up to 5000 euro. They consider that pollution - even if you just take a hose and no soap to your car.

Josh and I have been desperately trying to find a car to buy. I will eventually need my own car, and his car doesn't get in until April 11th, and it has cost us $250 to rent the SmartCar JUST for this week.

Speaking of - I absolutely CANNOT believe that we've only been here a week. I feel like we've been here for a month already. It has just been nuts!

A couple other things - Josh and I get free language classes (Rosetta Stone and something called Mango Language - which is supposedly better than Rosetta). We actually can log on to them from our home computer, which is really exciting to me!! I'll be a German speaker in no time!

Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration.....but maybe I'll get beyond the 4 words I know. Maybe I'll get up to a 10-word vocabulary!!

Monday, March 21, 2011

A Shot of Depression (with a Ray of Hope chaser)

Well....the unthinkable happened today.....

I failed my driver's test.

So deflating. Although, to be fair, I only read thru the material once last night. I know how to friggin' drive, and I know what most of the signs mean. I blame the wording of the test entirely.

Ok, not really, but I feel like I need to be able to blame someone other than myself. Damnation. At least I wasn't the only person to fail the test today. Of course, Josh passed with flying colors. But that's just because he's Rainman when it comes to test taking. Ask him next week to take the test, and I'm sure I'll blow him out of the water. ;)

Seriously, that was such a depressing moment. I didn't even think I did THAT bad. It was 100 questions, and you had to make an 85 to pass. I don't know how many I missed, but obviously it's more than 15. I think a lot of it was questions about meters. There were a bunch of parking questions with multiple choice answers of 5 meters, 15 meters, 50 meters. It threw me.

So - my next test is on Thursday. I WILL pass that test!!!!

Now for the ray of hope:
We looked at our first house today. I don't want to say too much about it, but it's AMAZING!!! The only downside is it's out in the boonies, about 25 minutes from base. But it would be the ultimate German experience. I guess we'll find out tomorrow whether or not the landlord wants to work with us (there are 9 more people looking at the house tomorrow).

On that note, my deflated self is going to have a glass of wine now.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Camera Fail

Today was laid back. Really, we just studied for our driver's test tomorrow. I don't think it will be THAT difficult, but learning the right-of-ways is the big thing.

As for the complete failure of the night:

We went out to eat at a restaurant called Big Emma's. Check it:

http://www.big-emma.com/

Anyway, it is a smallish German restaurant right outside base. They are known for their burgers and schnitzel. I got a "small" salad and a plate of dumplings. Josh got a "1/2 size" burger.

HOLY MOLEY, these things were HUGE!!! The burger was the size of a dinner plate. My salad was twice the size of the burger. And, I ordered a full liter of beer. AWESOME.

Here's the fail - I forgot my camera.

Tip for the day: ALWAYS BRING YOUR CAMERA!!!!

The Wild Blue Yonder

We FINALLY made it off base on Saturday. It was the first sunny day, and not too cool (it's been in the low forties and rainy since we've been here).
Here's our little Smart Car:


The passenger seat is actually pretty roomy, but try squeezing behind the steering wheel...

It's really not too difficult to drive around here. There are roundabouts EVERYWHERE, but you really get used to them after awhile. Although, I will admit, we got absolutely SMOKED on the autobahn. We did manage to get our little car up to 120km (about 72mph) but that only lasted about two seconds before we slowed down a little, due to the fact we were scared the car would blow away.

Anyway, we went off to Kaiserslautern today (aka K-Town by the Americans). This town is called the Little America by most people around here, but we must not have been in the right section...I neither saw nor heard ANY English speakers. There were no shops or restaurants with English written anywhere, hell, there weren't even any tourist shops. NOT that I'm complaining at all, I just haven't seen evidence of it being a Little America. It was a bustling place, down in the walking district. There were also a lot of people playing music (in actual bands) on almost every street corner.







Also, I don't know what was with this guy, but I had to take a photo of him. Yes, I know my finger is in the way, but I was trying to be sly about taking the picture.



At this point, I just wanted to go and see some German villages. So we got out of the city, and started driving back towards all the little villages around the base. Unfortunately, as we got closer to base, a little warning light came on in our car, so we decided to go back to the KMCC to have it checked out by the rental company (the manual in the car was only in German, and neither of us could decipher anything it said). The lady wasn't much help about it, but she said it meant "Danger of Skidding". We totally don't believe her though. But, for the rest of the day, the light never came back on, so we're just going to let it go for now. ANYWAY, we were at the KMCC (which, remember, is like the mall on base) so we decided to eat at the German restaurant in there. I consider it to be pretty authentic, since it was run by Germans. The portions were absolutely ginormous. I don't know if they did that because they assume all Americans eat that much, or what. It was good food, but even better - I got my first beer in Germany!!



And Josh got a Sprite...



After lunch, we decided to go back out to the little villages. We drove thru Ramstein-Miesenbach (basically that's two villages - like saying Dallas-Ft. Worth, only on a much smaller scale), Mackenbach, and Weilerbach. All little villages within 3km of each other. We decided we'd rather look for a house in one of these small villages, as opposed to K-town. I gotta tell ya, at 4pm on a Saturday, these are absolute ghost towns. Everything was closed. Hardly any cars on the road or people on the sidewalks. We did end up stopping at a biergarten in Ramstein. I really was expecting there to be a lot of Americans here, but nope. Just Josh and I.
At this point, we went back to the apartment, when Josh's friend called us to come over (he's married and has two small children). This is the guy who Josh worked with in Ohio, who got the Germany job a month before we did. It was nice to go over and spend time with friendly faces, and talk about all the new things we're experiencing. I'm sure we will be spending a lot of time with them over the next few years.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Argle-Bargle

Today was....not the funnest day ever.

First off, I must have delayed jet-lag. I didn't get to sleep til after 3:30am, and I had to wake up at 6am. Horrigible.
Second off, there is no bus station close to the housing. There is a reason for it, but it's just too boring and political to explain. Remember yesterday when I talked about how much I'm excited to walk a lot more around here? Well, I may have spoken too soon. The closest bus station is in the middle of the base - we're on one end, and all the buildings we need are on the other end. So, walking for 20 minutes thru the 38 degree rain at 7am in the morning - not the most fun.
Anyway, we finally make it to the office that provides my ID card - I'll need it for shopping on base. Josh was told exactly what he needed to bring to the office, but of course they forgot to tell him that we needed our marriage license. So, that was a bust. Then we went to the Finance office to get his civilian pay figured out. They were closed...even though they told us yesterday that they would be open today. THEN, we went to another office and we didn't have a copy of Josh's orders, so we couldn't do anything there either. At this point, we were so tired and cranky that we went to Josh's office and had one of his coworkers drive us back to the apartment, pick up all our needed paperwork, and drive us back. Thank God, because I swear it was getting colder and wetter outside.
Anyway, we managed to get most of our stuff done, and even went grocery shopping. I guess the most exciting thing about today is we rented a car!!! It's just so far from our apt to the rest of the base, and we have to go house hunting ASAP, so we just had to bite the bullet now. Anywho, we rented a 2 seater smart-car. They call it an automatic, but it shows a little arrow on the dashboard when you have to up-shift (if that's not the correct name, then I'm patenting it, because it fits). Basically, it's exactly like driving a golf-cart around. All of the traffic rules on base are German, so it's good practice for the real Germany. LOTS LOTS LOTS of roundabouts!!!
BTW, I suck at life, because I haven't done pictures yet. As soon as we were done today, we came back to the house and I crashed for a little while. I couldn't help it, but I know I'll regret it later today. At least tomorrow is Saturday - and we TOTALLY plan on exploring off-base tomorrow. Yay!!
Oh, also, Sasha did SO GOOD today!! We practiced with her - we leave the apt and stand outside the door. As soon as we hear whining/barking, we give one rap on the door and she calms down. We figured out that if she is out of her kennel she barks and whines, but in her kennel, she does perfectly. I'm so glad that's one less thing we have to stress out about.

Misc. Trivia thus far:

- our dishwasher is awesome. it is the most quiet and amazing dishwasher ever. yes, i'm a nerd
- our oven sucks. well, let me rephrase....i don't know how to work the oven correctly.
- Josh and I own way too much stuff. we came here with 3 checked bags, 2 backpacks, and 1 rolling carryon. those, combined with our furnished apartment - all we really need. i think 95% of people, us included, need to look at our lives and realize how little we truly need.
- german tomatoes are yum
- german toilets are yuck. it's true about the shelf. google it. it's like a drag race in the bowl.
- pets with jet-lag are annoying
- there are emo kids EVERYWHERE on base. i don't know where they are getting it from
- i've yet to see the sun. it's a good thing i love vancouver island weather.

And on that note - the AFN movie channel plays some good movies, so we're watching Temple Grandin tonight. I really will try to post pictures tomorrow.

xxooxx

by the way - yes, i know i complained a whole lot in this post....but i'm cranky, and unapologetic about it.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The 2nd Day

Even though we went to bed at 10:30 last night - which was definitely a struggle - I slept til 10:30 this morning. Oops. Today was Josh's meet-and-greet with his coworkers. I hung out in the room and got everything unpacked and put away, did some laundry. Pretty boring all-in-all. Another cool thing about our apartment is that we get daily maid service. So I took the dog and went to the dog park while they cleaned. Such a hard day of work. ;) Josh came home early and we took the dog on a walk. It will kind of suck not having a car for awhile, but on the other hand, it will be really great for us to have to walk everywhere. I'm going to have to walk to the grocery store probably every day or so, but I'm kind of glad for that.
Tomorrow we have all kinds of stuff planned - getting my ID cards, going to look for a car at the lemon lot, etc. Hopefully we'll get a car soon, because I am going stir crazy here. I want to go explore Germany!!!! First things first, though - I have to get Sasha used to being alone in the apartment. She's not so good with new places. Even though we kennel her, she will bark her head off. Hopefully she'll get used to this apartment quick, because I want out!!!
I'm going to try and take pictures of our surroundings tomorrow, just so people can see what our life is like right now. I'm happy to be here, but ready to get settled.

Germany: The Beginning

So Josh and I left from Baltimore on Wednesday (1am, actually) to fly straight into Ramstein. We were tired and cranky, and the pets were NOT happy. We had to leave the dog and cat at check-in and we could hear Sasha barking throught the entire terminal - which made me quite unhappy.
But anyway, the plane ride was fine. We were in the very back of the plane, but it was really roomy, and we had our own row of two seats. It is so much easier and more calming to fly with a bunch of military personnel, and not the average monkey that flies commercial. The attendants provided two full meals and a snack, and they played movies throughout the flight. Although, Josh and I really didn't really do anything but doze.
We arrived about 2pm in Germany. It was cool and cloudy. After we went thru customs, we got to pick up the animals. They were a little shell-shocked, but really did much better than I thought they would, especially since I was expecting the worst. One of Josh's new coworkers actually picked us up in a van. Before we went out to our TLF (temporary living facilities) we had to go check in at KMCC (Kaiserslautern Military Community Center). It is basically a huge mall, but they also have some other offices in there. As soon as we walked in, we saw some old friends that we knew in Virginia (Sheila and Eric Johnston). She was on her mid-deployment R&R and he had come to visit her. Small world, eh?
At this point, all I wanted to do was get the animals out of their kennels and sit down, but Josh and his coworker wanted to do a quick walk-thru of the KMCC. Sooooo, I grumbled a little and then followed. It is actually a really nice facility, and I'm sure I'll have fun shopping there in the future. They have the BX (which is like Wal-Mart) and a furniture store, but also little local shops. They have a German baker, a German bar, a pottery shop, etc. etc.
Finally, we left and made it to our TLF. We are in one of two pet-friendly apartment buildings on base. It's actually a really awesome little apartment, with everything we could possibly need inside. Full kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms, laundry room, and bathroom. We are on the top floor (it's a 3 story building) and have a really nice balcony overlooking a large dog-park. Not a bad set-up at all, and we can stay here for a month.
Josh met up with his old boss who's been here for a month, and they went to the commissary (the grocery store). I stayed to unpack and hang out with the pets. Although, I have to admit, I'm super-jealous he got to leave. I don't really feel like I'm in Germany yet. Josh got to go off base before they went to the commissary. He did say I will definitely feel like I'm in Germany once I'm on the outside.

I can't wait!!!