Burg Eltz and Cochem

So far we are adhering to our goal of going on a trip every Saturday :).  Yesterday we drove about 2 hours north of Kaiserslautern and went to Burg Eltz (Burg = castle) and a beautiful town called Cochem.  The trees here in Germany are at the height of their prettiest colors and the drive was beautiful.  With the help of Rick Steves (we have decided we definitely need to buy a bunch of his books after borrowing them from friends), we decided to park about 2km away from the castle and hike to the castle grounds.  When I say hike, I mean steep downhill to the castle and a heart pounding uphill climb back to our car!  It was definitely a work out, but the weather was beautiful for it!  

The inside of this castle is beautiful, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures.  The tour takes you through 8 or 9 rooms that are all decorated with 14th - 16th century furnishings.  It was really amazing and our tour guide spoke Engish very well and was very knowledgable.  We really look forward to hosting visitors and this is definitely a place that would be great to go see again!

After the hike back to our car we drove about 15 minutes to the town of Cochem.  We rode a chair lift up to the top of one of the hills (I say hill, but the hills around here are really sort of like mountains :)) and had a beautiful view of the Mosel river.  The Mosel region is one of the wine areas of Germany, so of course we found a local winery and did a tasting.  The wine was delicious!  We walked around town a bit and had some dinner before returning home. 

We will definitely be returning to Cochem!  It was an awesome town and there is a castle there that we did not have time to see.  The castle at Cochem even does mediaeval dinners and dances.  

We slept in today and checked out the contemporary church service at Ramstein Air Base.  We did some shopping this afternoon and checked in with family via Skype tonight.  It was great to talk to (and see) our parents! 

Below are our pictures of our trip this weekend as well as the pictures of our house (still under construction :)).

View of the Mosel taken from along side of the road on our way to Burg Eltz.

View from the hiking path on our way down to the castle.

Burg Eltz

Burg Eltz courtyard 

The Mosel River at Cochem

The Living Room

The Master Bathroom

View from one of the guest rooms

Our future home! 

We are the end unit that goes until the other side of the blue "thing" (I don't know what to call it :)).

 

First Week

Our first week here was full of running around and waiting :).  Anything with the government is a process and man have we been victims of the process this week.  We have spent lots of our time going to in processing meetings, drivers education class, setting up car insurance, setting up our mailbox, etc., etc., etc.  There is so much that goes into the first few weeks that you are here (Brandon has to deal with all the paperwork and such, so I can't complain too much :)). We decided that an Army Civilian that has been through this process should write a handbook.  There are so many things that they do not tell you that you need to find out on your own.  For example, we did not know we needed our marriage license and my social security card for me to get my military ID (even though I'm on Brandon's orders which required a marriage license and I have a government passport).  Thanks to one of the offices here and Barb sifting through the files we left at their house, we were able to produce enough documentation for me to get my ID (after waiting in line for over an hour....twice).  However, this laundry list of crap to get done is coming to an end and we are excited for that!

Some VERY exciting news is that we both passed our drivers test and we found our house today! The drivers test was actually pretty tough and lots of people do not pass it on the first try.  So, we got to pick up our car yesterday (YAY freedom!!) and we went to look at a house this afternoon.  We are SO thankful to Ben, Stacey, Toni and Warren for taking us everywhere this past week.  Our car is officially foreign ;) We asked and we do not get to keep our license plates when we move home...we were kind of bummed about that.

Our new house is a brand new place still under construction and since we are the first tenants we actually get to pick the flooring that we want!  It is 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 4 floors and has beautiful views from the bedrooms and the third floor balcony.  This house is huge, so we fully expect (or should I say hope :)) to have lots of guests!  There is no ductwork in the house and every room has its own thermostat for the radiant heat flooring.  There is a nice little back yard all fenced in with a patio and a one car garage.  They claim they do not allow pets, but our realtor told us after we build a relationship with the landlord we may be able to convince her to let us bring Oscar in a year or so (which is what we were thinking about doing anyway).  It is REALLY nice and is actually two houses away from our friends Toni and Warren!

We have also booked our first weekend getaway.  We found really cheap tickets on RyanAir (by cheap I mean less than $100 round trip for both of us together) and we will be going to London over Thanksgiving! We are really excited!

Toni and Warren (Toni works for the Army as well and she and her husband have become quick friends of ours :) ) took us on our first trip this past Saturday to help us learn to navigate the bus system and see some sights.  We took the train to Schwetzingen  and visited a beautiful palace and garden there.  We hopped back on the train and went to Heidelberg to walk the pedestrian area and have some drinks at an Irish Pub there.  It was a great trip and a beautiful day!

We definitely miss home, but we are very excited and glad for this opportunity! We love it so far!

Tidbits :)

1) Driving in Km...it is so strange to look down when you are on the road and see you are going over 100!

2) Driving on the autobahn - contrary to popular belief much of the autobahn has speed limits, but people still drive like crazy!

3) German people dress up all the time! I went to the store in jeans in a hoodie and was very out of place.  No more sweatpants trips to the store unless you want to scream "I'm an American!" Which isn't bad, people here like Americans, I just want to try and fit in as much as I can.

4) German people also have a very different style.  I love it! Lots of scarves and layered stuff.  Guys on the other hand....lots of skinny jeans and deep v's :) I may migrate toward their style..Brandon...not so much :)

We're here!

Our journey to Germany started on Friday night when we were supposed to leave Moline airport at 6:59 to fly to O'Hare and board our flight to Frankfurt at 9:50.  Well, the plane was late to arrive to Moline, so we were delayed an hour and when the plane finally did arrive there were mechanical problems that delayed the plane even more.  We were getting worried that there was no way we would make our flight on time.  We ended up boarding the plane in Moline around 9:15 and were in the air around 9:20.  They said or flight time would be 35 minutes and we were just praying we wouldn't have to taxi far and that the gates were close (we were thinking we would have to take the tram to the international terminal in which case there is no way we would have made it).  By some miracle (thank you God!!) we landed at 9:55, only taxied for a few minutes, knew where we were headed and ran the 4 gates (yes, 4 gates) down that we had to go to board our next flight.  WE MADE IT!! We were so relieved to not have to contact our friends in Germany that were picking us up from the airport and the landlord that was showing us our apartment on Saturday afternoon.  We had a really nice flight and landed in Frankfurt an hour early (only a 7.5 hour flight from Chicago).

One of Brandon's co-workers at the arsenal (Ben) moved here a little over a year ago and he and his wife Stacy have been helping us out and are our sponsors for our move here.  Ben picked us up from the airport and took us to the PX (a huge store kind of like a Target where military or civilians here with the military can shop) to get some essentials.  We then drove to the village of Ramstein-Miesenbach where our apartment is located and met our landlord.  We really love the place we are staying and our landlord is a really nice guy.  The first major difference we were faced with.......trash.  You are required to recycle in Germany and everything has to be separated.  They have specific trash days for specific types of trash and they are really strict with making sure everything is separated and nothing that could be recycled is going into the regular trash.  This is definitely going to be something to get used to, it is completely different than even recycling at home.  We spent some time relaxing and getting things unpacked and walked about 10 minutes down the street and found a place to get some food.  We found a thai, sushi, mexican and pizza restaurant (no German restaurants) so our first meal in Germany was pizza.  We watched some of Brandon's brother's football game stream online and turned in early.

Today was a packed day as well.  We slept in and Ben and Stacy picked us up to do some grocery shopping at the commissary (a grocery store much like the PX).  We hung out with them, got some lunch and went back to their house to hang out, meet some other new friends and eat dinner.

Overall we have just been settling in.  It is strange not having a vehicle and having no way around other than friends to pick you up and drive you.  There really isn't a lot we can do until Tuesday when we get our military ID cards so we can get onto the base by ourselves.  We also are VERY anxious to take our driving tests to get our license and get our car.  We drove past our car today, so we know it is here, we just need to jump through all the hoops to get it hopefully sometime this week.  We aren't really sure when we will start our house search; we have to meet with the housing office sometime this week as well.  

We are really excited to get settled in and start some traveling.  From talking to people, there are so many wonderful places to go and things to see a short distance from where we live.  Hopefully next weekend we can take a quick day trip somewhere and start sight seeing.

We are going to eventually try to start a picture album in another website that we can link to the blog, but in the meantime we will post a few pictures here of our apartment.  It really is more of a townhouse and it is very nice!  Our friends Ben, Stacy, Warren and Toni say we are very lucky to live in a place like this.  Many people end up living in a hotel room.  We got lucky and got some inside info that we could get a place like this if we found it ourselves, so we did! :)

We are missing people at home already, but are really excited to be here and make some new friends and see some awesome places!  More to come in the next few days and weeks!! :)