Parkstein, Germany

The sunny weather continues as we continue to make progress on settling in here in Graf.  Sunday evening we did end up doing a little hiking at a nearby village called Parkstein.  We had considered renting a house there but decided with one car even a 10 minute commute would potentially cause too many hassles so we ended up in Graf.  Parkstein is even smaller than Graf and is built around the base of an extinct volcano that erupted about 24 million years ago.  On the very top of the old volcano sits a tiny church and there is a nice little path that leads you up to it.  The kids loved getting outside and hiking and due to the great weather we were take in some beautiful views of the countryside.  Surprisingly, Lydia thought the little church was "really cool" and kept going back in just to look a little longer.  This bodes well for sightseeing in the future I hope.  As an added bonus, I got to dork out on some columnar basalt that formed when the magma cooled and has since been exposed due to erosion.  Unfortunately most of the park information was in German so I had to look it up on the internet when we got back home.

Parkstein from above (complete with soccer field and beer tent)

Bavarian landscape

Volcano Church

Lydia's favorite

Columnar Basalt!

I can't remember what we did yesterday, but today, true to my military experience so far, I spent 6 hours signing the lease for our house.  I had a whole list of stuff I wanted to get done, but at least I got the most important one out of the way.  I met the landlords, a German couple in their 60s I would guess.  They only speak German which means to communicate either we speak through the housing office or play charades.  They were very nice people and got a kick out of Haaken greeting them with "Guten Tag!".  I took a picture of the outside, not a very good one since the yard hasn't been tended to in a week or two.  I'll add more once we spruce it up a bit, but this will at least give you and idea of where we will be living.  We are now free to start moving things in - we're hoping to be out of the hotel by Sunday night.

Hochstrasse 23 B (yes, it's purple)

Sunny Day

Finally the sun has come out.  60-70 and sunny which feels awesome.  We've had a good weekend so far.  Yesterday Elise went to an amusement park (Geiselwind) with 3 other girls and rode on her first roller coaster.  Sounds like they had a blast.  While she was off having fun, we drove over to a nearby town, Weiden (about the size of St. Cloud) to look at a mattress.  From what I had read in one of our books, Weiden is a perfectly preserved medieval town and the person who we were buying the mattress from was living right in the center of it.  The guy we bought it from said you have to park outside the wall because unless you have a permit you aren't allowed to drive in the "old city".  We parked at a bus station across from the new Rathaus (City Hall) and then he guided us in via a few phone calls.  We walked across a street into a park and then along the wall until a bridge led to an entrance to the city.  I made a couple wrong turns, which allowed Carissa to find some throw pillows for our new free couch and loveseat and then we finally found Frank the mattress guy's flat at Hinterm Wall 4.

Frank's street - Hinterm Wall

After looking at the mattress Frank suggested we walk over to the original Rathaus for the best ice cream in the region.  The original Rathaus is right in the center of town and a beautiful square with some outdoor dining, a fountain, and an outdoor market.  We browsed the market on the way to get some ice cream and then sat by the fountain and enjoyed the sun.  While we were sitting there the bells on the Rathaus began to play some sort of tune and I noted that finally we had our first true European experience.  Graf is a nice little town, but since we've been living on the base thus far, it's pretty much like living in America.  After the ice cream Carissa bought some fresh produce from the market and Lydia, Haaken and I got some sausages on hard rolls from a street vendor.

Tulips in the park

Weiden Rathaus

Rathaus Bells

Ice Cream break

At this point we had to head home to Graf because we had promised the kids we would take them the a USO carnival on post.  We hadn't been in the USO building yet and it's a nice facility for the soldiers to get on computers / email for free, call home, play some video games or watch moves, and it even has a really nice kitchen which I presume anyone can use to host parties, etc.  It was a Military Family appreciation event, so Carissa and I felt a little strange being there, but the kids had a good time playing carnival games, jumping on the castle outside and eating ice cream.  We assumed the carnival would've been  outside, but afterward we went over to the school playground and just relaxed in the sun while the kids played.

GES Playground

We wrapped up the day by going to the PX and buying a badly needed GPS and then headed over to the house to take some measurements of the rooms.  Of course that's the only thing I forgot to take pictures of...

GPS shopping

Today is beautiful again and we spent the morning driving around looking at a bed for the girls and some bookshelves that Carissa and I are going to use to hold our clothes.  This afternoon we are thinking of going to a nearby town and doing a little hiking.  Then it's back to the grindstone for the next few days.  We can start moving our stuff into our house on Friday.  One more week / week and a half of hard work and then hopefully things will calm down a bit.

Scavenging

The weather here is ridiculous.  Every single day is overcast with a chance of rain.  Today it warmed up to 60 at least.  I keep hearing the weather back home is fantastic and I'm starting to feel like Courtney and could really use some sun.

Yesterday we finally closed the deal on the Hoopty after 3 full days of running around trying to get the inspection complete (it failed because of a burnt fuse), the title transfered, the temporary plates obtained, the insurance purchased, the lights fixed (manual is in Italian so we had to bring it to the dealer), the inspection redone, the registration completed, new official plates affixed and the rental car returned.  It took me about 30 minutes to sell the Pilot back home.  I'm considering driving this car off a cliff when it comes time to leave so I don't have to go through that again.

 Our Hoopty (1999 Honda Accord)

Finally getting a vehicle is a huge weight off our shoulders.  I need everyone to pray for us that it never breaks down (Scovill, if you're reading this, any advice about Hoopty ownership would be very much appreciated.)  Next week we sign our lease and we couldn't be more ready to move into the house.  We are lucky to have a "Family" hotel room which consists of a bedroom and another room with a couple love seats, a desk and a TV, but it is still pretty tight and we are really sick of eating out for dinner.  That said I used to have a coworker who was going to move his family of 6 from his house to his trailer on his hobby farm so I guess I shouldn't complain.  Before I came I told myself I wouldn't eat the fast food at the PX and I've already eaten there a half dozen times.  Also the days and nights have been so busy and we've been so tired I'm sorry to report I've only had 3 beers since we arrived a week and a half ago.  Today I went to the grocery store and got the ingredients for Pita Bread Sandwiches and made it while Haaken slept.  I made sure that none of the food made contact with the bathroom sink.  It will be nice to have a "home cooked" meal.

 Sleeping Quarters (Haaken sleeps on roll-away between the beds)

Living Room

Today Lydia is on a field trip to the Nunburg Zoo.  She continues to have good and bad mornings and today was not a good one unfortunately.  She was upset about the field trip because they don't get home until 5pm instead of the usual 2:40.  The drop off was brutal, so I hope she cheered up after I left.  Elise seems to love school so far and actually got invited last night to go to the Munich aquarium with a girl from her class this Saturday.  We met this family because we bought their old bedframe.

Most of our nights are still spent running around trying to get things done.  We scour the internet classifieds every night trying to find good deals and then run around looking at the stuff we think we might like.  It's not the most fun but so far we seem to be finding some pretty good stuff and have had a bit of luck as well.  The family we bought the bed frame from offered us their old TV for free, and a couple days ago we bought Lydia a bike and ended up with a mid size fridge, a microwave, a TV, some german tv cables and and iron on the side.  On top of that the guy selling the bike said he'd check with his platoon and was sure he could get a lot more stuff by the end of next week.  We have leads on a mattress for the bed frame that was hardly used in a guest room and also a couple bikes for Elise and Haaken.  We found out today that a coworker of Carissa has offered her basement couch for free because she feels sorry for us.  Carissa was very grateful, but we're not sure we'll take it as it sounds like they may still use it.  The woman is just really nice and is wanting to help out.

Tomorrow night we are going out for dinner with Carissa's coworkers.  It will be nice to meet some people around here.  We're going to get the keys to our house so this weekend we can get in there and take some measurements and plan out what we need to get and where it's going to go.  I'll take some pictures and post them Saturday or Sunday.  We drove around the neighborhood the other night and found out it has it's own little park and it appears the neighbors keep up their houses and yards (nothing compared to the Peterson's mind you).  We also noticed some of the houses have swing sets so hopefully the kids can find some neighborhood friends.

IKEA Field Trip

A pretty uneventful weekend.  The weather here is worse than Seattle - it's been in the 40s and raining pretty much the entire time we've been here so far.  Today is better, it's party cloudy and maybe 55 and not raining.  We keep getting reports from Minnesota that it's in the 70s and 80s, go figure. 

Friday night we had a family movie night with popcorn and m&ms and just laid low.  Saturday morning we ran around trying to figure out our cheapest rental car options to get us to Tuesday when we purchase the Accord and then after naps we drove into Nurnburg to IKEA to see what we could purchase there for our house.  Even though everything was in German we had a successful trip and left feeling that we can furnish our place pretty nicely for a reasonable amount of money.  Sunday we took the kids to an indoor park here in Graf, which was quite large and had wide variety of things for the kids to do, especially considering how small the town is.  We followed this up with a really expensive asian dinner (it was good, but we won't be going back there for a while due to the cost).  I've spent most of today running around trying to get the paperwork done for the vehicle.  Just a huge pain, luckily Haaken has been great.  Off to get the kids from school.

Overdue Pics

USAG Grafenwoehr Dental Clinic

The PX

The Commisary

Rec Center

Our Hotel on base

Dinner in Freihung

Haaken's first schnitzel

Super Troopers

Friday today, rainy like it's been most of the time we've been here so far.  Climate thus far seems a lot like Seattle.  We've been told this is not typical for this time of year.  I should apologize for not posting any pictures - I was about to last night and then realized I brought the wrong cord from home so you're out of luck until I can get to the PX to find a card reader for our camera.

Elise and Lydia had their first day of school yesterday and it went well.  Neither of them really showed any signs of nervousness and seemed to be excited to go.  We got to school about 20 minutes before class started so we could get a tour.  We tried to schedule a couple days before but apparently getting a tour a day before they actually go is not "standard procedure" - God forbid a kid can get a chance to see the new school in a new country a day beforehand.  Anyway, we kind of rushed through the tour and Elise got dropped off first.  Her class has only 13 kids, and she is only the 4th girl.  She started on a good day as they were having a "Reward Day" where all the kids brought in their favorite games and got to play them.  They have assigned seating and oddly enough the girl sitting next to her is named Lydia.  Today Elise is on a field trip to a butterfly museum and a locomotive museum.  She was excited about that and about the 5 Euro we gave her to spend at the gift shop.

Lydia got dropped of next, and her class is a little bigger, maybe 17-20, but there is the teacher and then an assistant.  They have a loft in the room with pillows and two little kid sized love seats where they can read during quiet time.  Lydia did great as well and found out that next week they are going to the Nurnburg Zoo.  Today she struggled at drop off and did not want to go, even though when I asked her she said she had fun yesterday.  They have their "Reward Day" today and get to have ice cream sundae's but that didn't cheer her up.  Probably feeling a little overwhelmed at times like mom and dad.  All three kids are back to normal though, and we are extremely proud of them.  Despite moving them across the world away from their schools, friends, and family, they have never once complained about being here or said they wanted to go home.

Carissa is now seeing patients full time, and Haaken and I are busy running around trying to get us settled.  We unofficially have a place to live now here in Grafenwoehr and our lease signing is scheduled for the 28th.  Last night we went to Carissa's Colonel's apartment in Amberg (about 30 min away) and checked out the kitchen he wants to sell us.  We need to ask the landlord if we can install it in his kitchen - it's definitely an upgrade over what is there.  If not, we'll probably just buy the fridge and keep looking for an oven.  Within the housing department there is a Furniture lady and I'm going to meet with her Monday morning to see if we can get some furniture from the Army at least for a couple months so we have time to get settled.  I found a little known codicil in the packet they gave me that on a exception basis contractors can be issued government furniture if there is excess available.  Then I spoke with a woman in the Youth Services department who said I should not to let them tell me there isn't excess furniture because her husband works in the warehouse and says there is plenty.  Needless to say, that would be a huge help.  Looks like we're getting the Hoopty on Tuesday so we have to extend our rental car a few more days.  We're buying it from a really nice young couple - the husband has been deployed twice, but now is heading back "stateside" - somewhere in the desert in California.  They wanted to keep the car but it has European specs so it makes no sense to ship it home.

This weekend will probably entail more running around, but hopefully we can get out a bit and let the kids have some fun and try to relax a little bit.  I'll try to post some pictures this weekend.

Slow going

Haven't had a lot of time to blog and still don't but I'll post a quick update.  The trip over with the kids turned out to be a very long journey.  The first leg from Minneapolis to Amsterdam went well, the kids were very well behaved and were able to sleep a little bit maybe 2-3 hours.  It got in to Amsterdam late, however, due to the volcano in Iceland which meant we missed our connecting flight.  Unfortunately this meant that I would have a layover in Amsterdam with 3 kids that had only slept a couple hours from what to them was 2 in the morning until 9am (the next flight was 7 hours later).  We were able to get something to eat ($30 for McDonalds and a slice of Sbarro pizza) and then spent a ton of time trying to find the "red" KLM phone that I could use to call Carissa with the voucher KLM gave us.  We ended up finding it but then the number I had for Carissa didn't work (later found out because from another country I had to add 00-49 and then drop the 0 from the number Carissa gave me).  Amsterdam is a giant airport so finding this phone was not a lot of fun, Haaken was crazy, and the airport was incredibly busy.  The kids packed too much stuff in their backpacks for this kind of walking so there was quite a bit of whining although Elise was absolutely incredible the entire time - stayed calm, helped dad when he needed it without asking, etc.  We found a children's play area and I let the kids burn off some steam they didn't have for about a half hour and then went up to a "Meditation room" that we had walked by when we were trying to find something to eat.  After quite a bit of disciplining I finally got the kids settled down and they actually slept for about 2 hours.  Elise woke up first which allowed me to get maybe 15 - 20 minutes of sleep (I never was able to sleep on the plane with Haaken and Lydia basically sleeping on my lap and fidgeting during the first flight).  Then I got the kids up and we headed to our gate - we had to go through customs and the guy checking my passport was giving me a hard time because I didn't have a "blue card" or something which stated my wife was a contractor for the DoD.  His supervisor finally came over and let us through thank god.  The second flight was short, about an hour and the kids were occupied with Coca Cola and European airline snacks.  We finally touched down in Nurnburg 20 hours after we left Minneapolis and Carissa met me with a beer and a kiss.

Things have been a little stressful the first few days.  Working with the military is like working with the DMV. It is unbelievable that the US spends 3 times the amount the rest of the world combined on our military and they still are this inefficient and unhelpful.   They have all these forms for everything and once you think you have everything done and show up to turn it all in, they tell you "oh sorry, you're missing such and such form.  we can't do anything until you have that."  They always act shocked that no one told us about it the 1st or 2nd time. We are also finding that cars and housing are very limited although I think we have decided on both as of today.  We are going to purchase what the Americans around  here call a "Hoopty" - a 1999 Honda Accord with 91k miles on it.  It will be our 4th Accord and we are praying it will be just as reliable.  For housing we basically had two options, one place in a little town called Parkstein about 10 minutes away, and another here in Graf.  Both had their pros and cons with the Parkstein being a little bit of a drive (logistically we weren't sure how this would be with one car, getting Carissa and the kids to work and school), and the one in Graf has zero appliances (no fridge, oven, dishwasher, washer or dryer).  We had a bit of luck today though when we found out that Carissa's supervising Colonel is building a house and will sell us his old fridge, dishwasher and oven (plus cabinets) for a tentative 300-400 Euros, pending approval from his wife.  The only downside to this is we have to wait until the middle of June or maybe July 1st to get them.

The kids are registered for school as of today and it sounds like Elise and Lydia will have their first day Thursday.  Hopefully that all goes well.  That will give me a little more time and less stress (kids have been acting as you would probably guess, a little out of sorts - lots of fighting and tears) to try and figure out where we are going to get furniture for our house.

Carissa is seeing her first patient today, which is good to get started but challenging in that she's doing a procedure that she hasn't done in 10 years.  I feel badly for her because stress is coming both at work and at home, another reason it will be nice to get the girls started at school so I can try to take on more of the home at work.  We figure if we can get through this month things will get better, but right now it is quite the challenge.  This part of the country is beautiful though and we are hoping to have a great experience once we get settled.  That's it for now.  Need to get the kids up from nap and outside.

Last Day at Home / School

Today is our last day at home and the kids last day of school.  We are scheduled to leave tomorrow (Friday) night at 5pm and landing in Nuremburg at about 11am.  So far the kids have been excited to see their mom, no tears yet about leaving their friends.  There were tears last night though, at least for Lydia.  I found out yesterday morning that Elise and Lydia needed a couple more vaccinations in order to attend school in Germany.  So as soon as they got home from school we went to the doctor for shots.  I made it up to them with some ice cream from Nelson's.  Just a couple more things to do around here and then my mom is coming to pick us all up - we are staying at her house tonight - that way Haaken won't have a chance to destroy our clean house.  Looking forward to finally getting over to Graf with Carissa.

Bavarian Bells

Carissa has been doing well over in Germany over the last week.  She has been working everyday (not seeing patients) and then hanging out with her mom (who arrived on Thursday I think) at night.  They have been able to do a little bit of investigating into our car and house, but haven't had great luck.  There is a place that Carissa is very interested in, but we are second on the waiting list and won't hear until tomorrow.  They did a bit of sightseeing this past weekend at Flossenberg concentration camp, and then Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic.  They also had attended a dinner with all of the dentists from the clinic to send off two of the Army dentists who are being deployed to Iraq.  Both of the women have children and Carissa said it was pretty emotional to be there watching them with their kids a few days before they had to leave.  She thought two weeks was difficult and these women will be away for 6 - 9 months!  Everyone has been great and very welcoming though, and her new coworkers have amazing stories and are incredible people.

Imperial Hotel, Karlovy Vary

They have also had a chance to check out more of the base, which Carissa has found is home to much more than just Army personnel.  There are soldiers from the Navy and Air Force on base as well as NATO soldiers from many different countries.  Any and all of these will be patients in the clinic where she's working which should be very interesting.  In addition, she went to the commissary (grocery store) and the PX (similar to Target) and said both are very reasonable and have almost everything we have here at home.  She also went to the Rec Center and said it was incredible.  As far as the food goes she just told me today that she's been eating a lot of pizza, but our conversations have been quite short so I'm not clear why.

The only downside of her time there so far are the church bells.  Apparently all the churches in Bavaria sound their bells every 15 minutes (1 time at 15 min, 2 times at 30 min, 3 times a 45 min, and 4 times on the hour and then it changes tones and rings 1 time for each hour).  She said it is charming, except for the fact that it goes all through the night and a church is right outside her hotel room window (so at 11pm it rings 4+11 times for 15 total).  After the first couple nights of getting no sleep she got some earplugs and is now sleeping much better.

The kids and I are doing well back at home.  They had a busy weekend with sleepovers with friends and family, and I had one last day and night with my college buddies and Luke golfing, eating and drinking.  This morning I was able to ship 95% of our things and also found out for sure that we will be flying out Friday morning.  Still have quite a bit to do at home, but I think I'm right on schedule.  My last day of work was last Friday, so I have a lot of time to get everything together before we leave.