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!