Our House

After many people have asked (and we finally have the house all set up and looking like a home) we took some pictures of our house to share with everyone.   The whole house has radiant heat in the floors, it is awesome!

Living room looking out toward the patio

Kitchen - We have decided we love the open shelves next to the cabinets in the kitchen and we definitely want them in our kitchen in the states someday.  On the opposite wall there are quite a few more cabinets and the refrigerator.  The wine fridge is in the bottom right corner of the picture (the only appliance we brought with us from home ;) ).

The 2nd floor hallway

Master bedroom

Walk in closet (this picture only shows half of it) - We definitely need one of these when we get home! :)

Guest bedroom #1 on the 2nd floor

The guest bathroom on the 3rd floor

Guest bedroom #2 / music room on the 3rd floor

Guest bedroom #3 - the workout room that leads out to the balcony on the 3rd floor

View from the balcony 

The top floor (4th floor) is one big open room that we use for storage.  There is a half bath and a laundry room right off of the entry way on the main floor.  We love this place and can't wait to have visitors!

Stay tuned for a  post from our Christmas in Paris in the next few days! :)

Thanksgiving in London

I'll start this off by saying that we are all moved into our house and love it except for one small fact....we still do not have phone and internet.  We have been "battling" for lack of a better word with the phone and internet companies here and still haven't gotten very far.  I promise when we have internet at home I will be much better about keeping everyone posted on our adventures.

Ok...back to November....

We moved into our house on November 16th.  This was a crazy day filled with lots of unpacking and cleaning.  I'm a spaz and insisted that we get everything unpacked that weekend before we took off for London on the 22nd, so within a few days the house was in order and everything was put in it's place.  We did a little bit of shopping and bought some rugs, lamps, etc. and it started to feel like home very quickly since we had all of our own furniture from the states.  We were REALLY excited to sleep in our own bed again!  I will post pictures of our house on the next post, I forgot to take some before we came over to Toni and Warren's house to use the internet.  We are all ready for guests and can't wait for people to visit!

On November 22nd (Thanksgiving) we ate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our friends Ben, Stacy, Luvy and their kids.  After breaking out of our food coma we drove to Frankfurt and hopped on a plane to go meet up with Toni and Warren in London for the weekend.  On Friday we started the day at the London Tower and had a great tour from one of the famous Beefeaters.  We also got to see the Crown Jewels that are housed at the London Tower.  We then walked across the Tower bridge and went to Bourough Market for a GREAT lunch.  This market is all local organic food venders and sell all different types of food from ostrich meat to traditional London meat pies.  After lunch we walked down to Big Ben and Parliament and followed Rick Steeves' walking tour to see many of the major landmarks including Buckingham Palace and Trafalger square.  We almost had to change our route when we got to the main road (Parliament/Whitehall street) of our walking tour when we saw police tape with the whole road blocked off.  We asked the officer what was going on and she responded "don't worry, it won't be long now....the naked man on the statue has come down."  Apparently no matter where you go, somebody wants their 15 seconds of fame :). We stumbled upon a beer festival at a really neat little pub in town and spent the rest of the night trying some really great beer from all over the world.

On Saturday we started the day at Westminster Abbey and did an audio tour.  I really wish we could have taken pictures, this church is amazing!  We walked to the Churchill war rooms from there and got to see London's "home base" or operating center during WWII.  This was really interesting and I learned a lot about the war from a different perspective and about Churchill himself.  It was a rainy day, but we still walked quite a bit.  We split from Toni and Warren and Brandon and visited St. Pauls Cathedral and the Handel Museum (which is his old house).  We got to stand in the room where the Messiah was composed....pretty awesome!  There was a string quartet and a vocalist practicing in the house while we were there, so we even had some great music with our tour.  We met up with Toni and Warren again at a little pub and turned in pretty early after a long day.

On Sunday Brandon and I did the city walking tour and saw the sights of the old city of London.  We also went to the Queen's gallery and saw part of the changing of the guard outside of Buckingham Palace.  We visited the National Gallery and called it a day.

To avoid a crazy long post I will call it a day for now.  Check back in a week or so for a new post with some pictures of our house and of some Christmas markets :)

We miss everyone!!

Merry Christmas!!

Our First Multi-Day Weekend Getaway

This was our first long weekend since we have been here (Brandon had Veterans Day off) so we went on a weekend trip with Warren and Toni to Bamberg and Rothenburg.  We left Saturday morning and drove about three hours (in the rain) to Bamberg.  The rain had let up a little when we got there, so we walked around the town a bit, saw the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. George, an old monastery and found a great restaurant/brewery that makes Bamberg's famous beer.  This rauchbier (smoked beer) is definitely unique, but was really good!  We also found a little shop that sells Germany's traditional attire (the dirndl and lederhosen) and I found a really pretty dirndl.  This is one of the things I really wanted to buy while we are here and I can't wait to wear it to next year's Oktoberfest in Munich.  Brandon has yet to get his lederhosen, but he is planning on it ;).

Sunday we walked around Bamberg more and hiked up to the Altenburg (burg = castle).  It was a very foggy day, so our view wasn't as good as we had hoped, but it was still really awesome to see!  We hiked back down to the Domplatz which is an area of downtown that still holds it's medieval character.  We toured the Neue Residenz which is a huge palace still decorated with 18th century decor.  This palace was amazing.  All of the ceilings had elaborate paintings and amazing stucco detail.  We toured a few different local breweries and called it a night.

Monday morning we got up and headed about an hour and a half down the road to Rothenburg.  This is definitely my favorite town we have been to so far.  Rothenburg is a preserved medieval town that is situated within old stone city walls that still stand today.  When I think of a postcard of a downtown setting in Germany, this is what I think of.  We spent the day walking around and visiting some little shops.  They have a medieval torture museum that was really interesting as well!  It is crazy to see the different things that they used to torture criminals and all of the artifacts in the museum are original.  I was scared I would dream about being tortured and publicly humiliated :).  It was funny to read the different things you could be publicly humiliated for.  If you had a fight in public with another girl or with your spouse you could be put in neck violins that bound your neck and hands and forced you to stare at each other until you settled your differences.  People were also forced to wear different cast iron masks for "acting like a pig," being a gossiper or even making bread loaves too small.

I downloaded an awesome iPad app (thank you Stacey!) and made a few little videos during our trip.  We actually made a few videos, but I tried to upload them to YouTube and found out that I used a song in one of them that is protected by copyright and now you can't see it :(.  I may be able to email it if anyone is interested, just let me know. It is a video of our day in Rothenburg.  The Bamberg video works though...follow the link below :)

Bamberg Germany Trip


Well, on to news that isn't travel related.  We got some good news today that our household goods have arrived and our house is done.  We will be moving into our new house on Friday!  We are so excited to finally put down roots and have a place to call home with all of our stuff from home.  I can't wait to sleep in our own bed that we haven't slept in for almost two months!  I also had a job interview today for an educational aide position that I am hoping to get.  It can be difficult for a civilian spouse to find a job here because veterans or active duty spouses get preference for most jobs regardless of qualifications.  However, I feel good about this one, so we will see!

Has it been a month already?!

Sorry for the lack of a new post last week, but we haven't been up to a whole lot so I thought I would wait until this weekend.

We discovered a few weeks ago that our village (Ramstein) was having their Oktoberfest festival last Friday and Saturday and we were really excited to be able to attend one of these festivals!  We called up Toni and Warren and got tickets to go Friday night.  We got there early and there weren't many people there yet (as you can see in the picture :) ), but by the time the band started playing it was pretty crazy in there!  We had a great time and this great time sort of knocked us out from doing much on Saturday.  Alas, we broke our "go somewhere every Saturday" on the third week.  Oh well, we have lots of time to go on little weekend trips.

We woke up Saturday morning to a beautiful snowfall outside!  It wasn't sticking to the ground, but it was really pretty.  We walked to our neighborhood bakery for some delicious breakfast and relaxed Saturday morning/afternoon.  Saturday evening we went to Toni and Warren's house to have some homemade chili and to go to their neighborhood Halloween party.  I've mentioned this before, but our new house is in their neighborhood.  So, we got to meet some of our new neighbors!  Everyone was really nice.  The neighborhood is about half Germans and half Americans, but most of the Germans speak English as well so it was easy to meet people.  We found out this week that we should be able to move into our house on November 15th, and we are very anxiously awaiting our move so we can really get settled in and have all of our own stuff (especially our own bed!! :)).

Sunday was a pretty lazy day.  We checked out one of the church services on base, did some shopping and hung out at home.

For all of you that know me well, I'm not the type of person that can sit around with nothing to do for very long and I haven't had a full time job since the first week of June.  This was starting to drive me crazy, so I called a few of the schools here and got the contact information for the choir directors.  They both emailed me back very quickly and for the past two weeks I have been volunteering with the choir directors at the two American high schools here.  As a result of this, I was connected to a potential job opportunity in one of the schools.  I had a phone interview this past week and I'm anxious to hear back (hopefully soon).  I am also going to be a co-director of the Spring musical at Ramstein High School!

Brandon is getting settled into his job and is starting to feel not so much like the newbie.  It is similar to what he was doing back in the states, but different enough that the first few weeks were kind of tough to get used to a new job and learn all the ropes here.  He works with great people though and is starting to feel more settled in.

As a result of meeting the choir directors here, Brandon and I were invited to dinner last night and tonight with a bunch of the Department of Defense School music teachers from all over Europe.  Their yearly music teacher conference is in Ramstein this year, so they are all in town this weekend.  It was really great to meet fellow music teachers in the area and do some "networking."  They were all really fun people and we are actually meeting them again tonight for some dinner and wine tasting in a few hours.  

Hopefully we will have more exciting things to share after next weekend.  We are headed to Bamburg, Germany for the long weekend (Veteran's Day) with Toni and Warren.  They have been there and have said great things about this town.  We are also really excited to head to London in a few weeks.  Oh yeah, and to move into our house!  This month will be pretty full of exciting things!

I can't believe we have been here a month already.  It has finally sunk in that this isn't a vacation and we are here for awhile.  We are really enjoying it though and are always talking about where we want to go, what we want to do and things we want to see while we are here!  Everyone tells us our time here will fly by and to take advantage of the time we have as much as we can.

We miss everyone at home!

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 :)