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.
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