I cannot believe I blew my schnitzel wad on that

I have to say that, tonight, I had my first really bad food experience in Germany.

We went to a place called "Paradox" in the village of Ramstein-Misenbach (which may actually be spelled differently, but google maps is just too far of a click away for me to check right now).

We ordered nachos for the table, chicken tenders for Ari, some kind of flat bread pizza thing for Amy, and then Jagerschnitzle for me.

Why? because I love me some pork, pounded flat, breaded and fried, served with brown gravy, mushrooms and french fries.  Don't knock it 'till you try it.

We chose to eat outside, because it was a nice cool evening, and the inside was a bar, where people were smoking.

The first course, the nachos, came 45 minutes after we ordered it.  I was a little pissed, but, they were playing great 80's music, so I was rocking out (but a little pissed, and getting hungry).

As it turns out, the Germans eat their nachos with BBQ sauce. It's an interesting mix.

20 minutes later, Ari's chicken tenders and my schnitzel came out.  Amy's meal, as it happens, was dropped on the floor, and so they had to make another one.

But I had my schnitzel, so all was good in the world.

Let me explain that I love schnitzel. I LOVE schnitzel.  I have put a limit on the amount of schnitzel I can eat during the week.  I get one schnitzel. ONE.  And my week, nay, my life revolves around the mystery day of the week where my schnitzel embraces me with it's golden arms of love.

Today was going to be that day.

And then, the unthinkable happened.

A German restaurant made horrible schnitzel.  It was hard, overcooked (not sure how you dry out something that is fried...but they managed to do this) and tasked like old boot funk.

I left disillusioned and broken.

It's still hard to talk about.

Anyway.

Other things:

I looked at a Land Rover Defender the other day.  It was too beat up and the guy was asking too much (also there were some issues with the engine and gas milage that the guy wasn't being totally open with me about).

For those asking, Ari is doing great in daycare.  It is a small class and he is already best friends with the cute girl in his class.  There have been, however, a few incidents where another kid has smacked him in the face.  I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't punch a two year old, but I'd be lying that the thought hadn't crossed my mind.

Amy got her truck this week.  It is amazing how different the gas milage (kilometerage?) is between the diesel cars we had rented for the last month and Panzer is. Thank the Maker (what's up C3PO?) that we don't have to pay taxes on the gas we buy.

The large black dog bed that we shipped on April 24th showed up today.  There was grave concern that it wasn't going to make it...which would have sucked, because Harley has been sleeping on the bed with us and it has really been hurting my sleep (with Bucky usually somewhere around my head and Harley wedged in someplace else, I would just lay awake at night sweating, covered in animal).

We move into our new place on Tuesday, so if there is a bit of a blog lag, it is because we don't have internet yet.

Pictures:

Amy inspects Panzer with the only helpful person at the vehicle pick-up and inspection facility.

Ari needed consoling after a bad meal at "Paradox"

Nachos.  With BBQ sauce. Also, Amy's pizza thing that came so long after  Ari and I ate that Amy had to eat the nachos (no BBQ sauce was harmed during this meal).

Weird fountain in the middle of town.  Everything was cats.

A weekend of photos

Slightly random order...

Wine festival in Brucken...I want to call the musicians an "Umpa Lumpa Band", but I don't think that's right.

New friends on teeter-totters

Ari telling daddy to go away so he can wander through the crowd by himself

Ari was told he could have anything he wanted from the snacks/meals available at the wine festival.  He chose a salami sandwich.  Which he destroyed.  Just like his old man.

Lovely German countryside

King of camouflage

This one will stay with him forever

One House Down...

Yesterday we closed on the sale of our Frederick house to the People Who Shall Not be Named.

I sorta wish I had thought that through before I typed it, so that I could have come up with a better acronym. PWS(b)N just doesn't have a interesting ring to it.

Yesterday was also the day that we got our rental contract OK'd by the local housing office.

So lose one, win one.  Everything always seems to work out.  I think there was a Seinfeld episode about that.

That's not to say that there wasn't any last second drama in regards to getting the all the final paperwork signed, sealed and delivered from one side of the world to the other.

On Thursday night we got a final addendum from the buyers, who wanted some money because (and I'll say "we" here) we decided that we wanted to keep some drapes that we had originally put on the conveyance list (along with our basement freezers, which we had sold, and didn't  realize we were supposed to leave...oh well).

WWI Memorial.  Had an Iron Cross on the front of it,
not sure it is visible from this angle. 

So the plan was to have Amy print the paperwork from her office on Friday morning, and then we'd sign it, scan it, and send it off.

This made total sense.

As it happened, Friday was an Army "Training Day" and the floor to Amy's office was locked, so no access to her computer, printer, or scanner.

Landstuhl Internet cafe? Yeah, no printers.

Co-workers who could help? Yeah, all taking the day off.

Options: Buy a new printer / scanner at the BX (which would be a waste, as we have a new printer / scanner on a boat that is floating it's way to us right now), or, pray that in the time that we were running around the hospital that one of the people on Amy's floor decided to show up for work (and had a key).

It took a little convincing, but I got Amy to try her door again.

Eureka! And now every third Wednesday of the month Amy has to go on a date with some weird guy who came to work on his day off.

Small price to pay, if you ask me.

We also met with our real estate agent, the housing office, and had lunch in the town of Landstuhl.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating, the thing about Germany is all the Thai food you eat.

It's been a good Saturday.  The weather has been fantastic and I'm cooking roasted pork belly.  Might be gross, but it smells great.

Later kiddos.

Oh, and more pictures....

I think this is a convent.  It looked old as poop.

Hard to see here, but here is a lady walking her cat.
She had two cats and her husband was walking the other.
Whipped...

I love these guys.

But first, the news

I could say something about how my last post was riddled with typos, but if you're reading this you probably already know, and you weren't so offended that it stopped you from coming back.

Now, the real news is this:

And this:

And this:

And this and this and this....

Yes.  Yes the house I am moving into has a urinal. 

So the deal is, we are going to rent this place for the near term.  If we decide that we like this house, and the town, and being where this place is, well, then we have an option to buy it.  But for right now, we're just glad to have an end date in sight for our stay on Ramstein Air Base.

Later Skater

Now we're getting somewhere

Ok.

So we've had the discussion on the interesting method that German real estate agents (immobilien) use to contact (or, rather, don't contact) prospective clients.

Now it seems we have overcome this lack of interaction (by sheer force or will) and cannot turn it off.

Our non-English speaking agent, Erkus, has been sending us emails and link very regularly over the last two days.  Although I think I confused matters when I used a internet translating service.  As he has stopped sending us e-mail in broken English and now sends them only in German.

Amy has been emails and calls non stop from random immobiliens and from people she has just happens to meet with weird and horrible housing recommendations.

Regardless, we seem to have found a good fit with a group called Stranz (vice the more recognizable Re/Max, where that Erkus guy works).

We saw a very interesting new house (almost finished) in a village called Katzwailer, about ten kilometers north of Kaiserslautern (near Otterbach, not that you should have any idea where Otterbach is, but hey, that's where it is).    It is a three story house, about 300 square meters, and has an ok back yard.  Best thing about the house is the heated floors that run throughout.

Coolest thing about Katzwailer, why, it would be this place:

I cannot remember the name of it...but you can sort of make it out.  Whatever it's called, it is the coolest, weirdest, oldest schnitzel haus in town.

The inside hasn't been updated since ... well ... a long time ago.

Nobody here spoke English and it looked like we had interrupted a secret meeting.  It was a little uncomfortable.

Anyway, we managed to order (Amy ordered us 2 mineral waters, when she had intended to order us 2 glasses of water).  Granted, we weren't exactly sure what we had ordered, only that we knew it came with french fries (pommes frits).

About 30 seconds before our food came out Amy wondered aloud about if the establishment accepted credit cards, as we were a little short on euros. 

So we anxiously checked out the room, the cash register, the front door (for your standard MasterCard/Visa stickers). No credit card reading devices in sight.  Slight gurglely feeling in the lower bowels.  

Two, clearly American kids, who had interrupted a secret meeting, were either going to have to run out before the meal came (or, more accurately, as the meal was being brought to the table), or we were going to have to dine and dash.  It didn't look good ... and I had such high hopes on becoming a regular here.

Fortunately, the combined English of the three other patrons was enough to get us directions to the closest ATM (which happened to be right out side ... clearly, it was my keen powers of observation made me the fine intelligence specialist I am today). 

Anyway.  It was a beautiful day. Tomorrow we go see another house ... and think we'll have to make a decision in the next 48 hours.  Kind of exciting.

The good-looking two thirds of Team Bucky on a German countryside excursion
(also known as an ant observation adventure)

Some little German village that we drove through to get to some other little German village so that we could look at a house there that we didn't end up liking.  Neat house, but just not right.

No ARI's, No Excuses. (Not that they would have done me any good in the first place)

Meanwhile, in Game of Thrones

The castle you see here is the burnt out ruins of Winterfell. Dan Holstein will be the only one who understands this.  Wish I could have gotten a better shot.

Odds and Ends

Danny asked me for more pictures, and so I am trying to oblige.

I thought that I could provide some interesting commentary on things around the base as I walked home from the gym this morning.

I was wrong.  I'll prove it to you.

Here is our wonderful Commissary. It is considered the worst in Germany. However, it is partly under construction. So the outside is just as big of a mess as the inside. In two years it should be up to snuff.

The other night I went out to get a few things for dinner:
- Orecchiette  pasta
- Swiss Chard
- Cannellini beans
- Lemons

They had the lemons. I ended up substituting bok choy, for the chard, great northern beans for the cannellini beans, and shell pasta for the orecchietta.  It worked out, but, that's kinda the way it is here, the commissary has nothing you want and nothing you need, but it's there when you have no other options.

But, hey, they prices are good, so that's something.

Also, we have these trees that look like Birch trees, but instead of having bark that peals, it just sorta does this...it splits and gets all funky looking.

Anyway, I'll do better with the pictures.  I promise

The joys of House Hunting

Let's face it.

Amy and I are really picky (well, I'm picky and whiny about it...and Amy might just placate me).  It took a really long time (months and months) to find our place in Frederick, and that was only after we had given up looking.

Now, we don't have that kind of time here (we probably have until the end of next week).  And while "military style" house hunting is something that I am familiar with, Amy, certainly is not.

All of this is complicated by the German real estate agent method of doing business, which is, to say the least, laid back.  Germans, by nature, are an exacting, slow, process oriented bunch, so when they look for homes, they look for homes that they will spend the rest of their lives in.  The process can take years, and the market has adapted to this.  I guess I should not be surprised that all the real estate agents that we've contacted have been extremely slow to respond to us, and some of them haven't responded at all.

This totally flies in the face of my philosophy as a customer. If you, as a business, don't make an effort to earn my money, then, I'm pretty happy to not give it to you.

Anyway...

We went out the other evening to take a look at some places.  We're still undecided when it comes to renting vs. buying, but that's a whole other topic.

The first place we went to was way, way, way out in the country.  I think it was in, or near the town of Schneckenhausen.  Yes, this is a real place name.

The drive was adorable, and so were the towns we had to drive through to get there.  There would be pictures, but...uh...I was driving.

Regardless, the house had a nice view (it was on the top of a hill overlooking some farm fields ... and a chicken farm, which is nice for those sunday morning sleep-ins. However, the place was just too small.  The kitchen was literally the size of the island from our Frederick house.  This included cabinets and counter space. Also, there was no fence, or really, no yard to speak of.  Both things we need.

We were all set to see another place, but we never ended up finding it.  This place was in Ramstein (the town of, not the base).  I think we are going to try to see this place again sometime today, but we're relying on one of these really aggressive German real estate agents to take the time to get back in touch with us.

Oh well.

Hey,  for those wondering, Ari is doing just fine in his new daycare.  It's a much smaller class than the one he left at Ft Detrick, but from what I've seen, there is only one girl in his class...which must be a shock to him.

Also, driving on the Autobahn has been a learning experience. While I don't think we've been on any part of it that has no speed restriction, the max limit around here is 130 KMH, which is about 80 MPH, some folks just sorta tend to ignore the limit.

And while we're on the topic of the Autobahn, Einfhart means "on ramp" and Ausfhart (yes, it is pronounced the way you want to say it) means "exit ramp".

Now you're educated.  Go do some damage.

A Collective Sigh of Relief (and now I'm allowed to drive here, too)

First things first.  I managed to pass my driving test today, although I did give failing the test my best effort.

These Germans sure are tricky.  They have you study your butt off, take a two hour long class, take multiple practice tests, and then, on the real thing, spring all sorts of things on you, not covered in any of it.

Regardless, Team Bucky is now fully on the road (not that I didn't almost totally go through an unmarked intersection today and attack a Land Rover with our little Opal rent-a-wreck...don't tell Amy, she'll never let me out unsupervised again).

 Ok.  That being said.

For those of you who are trying to figure out where this place is on Google Maps, or Google Earth, or whatever you have, there is no way to express how hilly/mountainous/wild this place is.  It's all rolling hills.  Not little hills like we had in Maryland...everything here is like the Catoctin Mountains, or bigger, and everything is set into the valleys. So everything is squeezed in tight.

Oh, we also managed to do a couple of other things today.

 This afternoon we went to Ari's daycare orientation, on Kleber Kasern (Kleber Army Garrison).  This base is located about 20 minutes east of Ramstein Air Base, and about 30 minutes from Landstuhl, where Amy is working.  This was not the ideal location, but we'll stay at this daycare until a spot opens up at Landstuhl, which is supposed to be a much nicer/newer facility.

 The orientation was given by a older American woman, who was an administrative assistant, and made no bones about her displeasure with the separation of church and state.  She also didn't seem to have a command of of the information she was presenting to us.  While she did not leave me with a warm fuzzy, we were introduced to several of the care givers, who were very warm and welcoming.

Regardless, Ari starts tomorrow.  This should be interesting.

 We also got a temporary Status Of Forces Agreement card, and I got my permanent one, which entitles us to flee the country if the Red Hoard should ever try to re enter Western Europe (maybe also if the Iranians start launching missiles at US bases in Europe...hey, I'm just saying it's a possibility).

The weather, which was awesome at the end of last week, has become much cooler.  Today it started sunny and maybe 60 degrees, and then went to cloudy, raining, sunny, pouring rain, sunny, thunderstorms (hey, the new French President's plane was hit by lightening on his way into Germany today), sunny, little rainy, sunny, cloudy, rainy, cloudy...and now it's still cloudy and probably in the 50's.  Just like Syracuse.

Well, that was Tuesday. More when we get there.

Amy / Ari / Ben

Happy Mother's Day Mom! I Pooped (on the floor)

That's kinda self explanatory, right?

Weekend number one of ... 156 (3x52? right?) unless we stay for the full five years then it would be one of 260.

Apparently I don't do math in my head all that much any more.

We've got a busy week ahead.

On Monday I take the drivers test overview (this is some bizarre mandatory class where a guy who sorta speaks english teaches a class on German road rules.

 On Tuesday morning I take the driver's test (75 multiple guess questions and a random selection of 25 of the 168 German road signs).  I've actually been studying.  I'll try not to embarrass myself.

 On Tuesday afternoon, assuming that I'm not wallowing in self pity, we have to go to Ari's daycare orientation.  That'll be fun.  Which will be followed by finishing up our Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) paperwork and getting Ari an Official ("No Fee") passport.

 Wednesday is going to be Ari's first day at school...and that's about all I can see at the moment.

Those of us who are about to embark on a world wide adventure salute you!

 Not that it is of any interest to you guys, but on the 16th our Frederick house is having it's radon remediation work done, I need to call the legal office here and find a notary so we can fill out our closing paperwork, and we need to find a better deal on a rental car.

Gutentag!

I will have to learn how to spell that.

The Holstein clan has arrived in Germany and everyone seems to have survived.

As you know, Amy set out on 1 May, only to have her trip delayed 24 hours, due to lack of pilots.  I'm not sure who's running this operation called the Air Force, but you'd think that this was something that would have cornered the market on.

Regardless, Amy set off on her merry way, with Bucky in tow.  Both Amy and I had been under the impression that Bucky was going to be a trooper when it came to travel...and not coincidentally, we were both wrong.  My heartfelt prayers go out to the passengers of Amy's flight, and I hope that they all manage to strive for some kind of normalcy in their lives after having to endure eight hours of howling, peeing, pooping trained Siamese attack cat.

If it is any consolation, Bucky seems to be doing fine now (although there have been a few reported escape attempts...it's a small apartment and she has few places to hide).  Bucky has also begun a whirl-wind love affair with the dryer.  I hope it goes well for her.

The dogs ended up leaving on the same day as Amy, due to her delay, and it seems our fears regarding airline travel and our pups were without merit. Both dogs arrived in good health and in clean crates (we had heard horror stories about animals being covered in all sorts of ick once they got off the plane.  There is a long story in regards to the process Amy went through to retrieve the guys up in Frankfurt, but I don't think I could do it justice.  Just know that it involved multiple offices, random cash payments (sounded like bribes to me) and hours of running around.

Ari and I spent the third through the fourth up at my dad's before coming back to Frederick for one last night in the house.  The fifth, was a mess of a day.  We had packages to ship, a car to return, more luggage to buy and laundry to do...none of which would have been possible without the help Summer, Brandon and Gail of the Duncan / Larson clan (also, hello Emma and Campbell...it was great to see you guys before we had to leave!).

When the cab finally came on Friday night to pick Ari and me up from the house Ari thought it was Amy coming home...it was really sweet.  He had been asking where she was all week.

The ride to the Airport was uneventful...although slow.  I was worried we were going to be late for check-in.  It's not that there was a lot of traffic...we just had a 400lb driver who just didn't want to exert himself that much (who knew pushing the gas peddle was such a workout?).

However, we managed to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so Ari, daddy and five checked bags made their way to the check-in counter with great confidence.  We checked in our luggage.  Showed our IDs and asked which gate we should head to...which was when we were told that we wouldn't be going to the gate.  It turned out that as a result of Amy's flight getting delayed, every flight that week ended up getting delayed.  So Ari and I got an all expense paid trip to the BWI airport Hilton (which wasn't as smooth a trip as I would have thought...the van for the hotel never showed up, so I ended up bribing the driver of the Marriot bus to take us, and a few other stranded travelers, to the Hilton instead.  Once we arrived at the Hilton we were told that they were full up and that a bus would then take us to the Hilton Garden Inn a few miles away.  This bus also never showed up.  So, I went to the front desk and asked them to take mercy on a weary two year old and a few stranded soldiers, and to my surprise, they did ...and we all got VIP rooms).

The next afternoon we headed back to BWI and fro that point until we landed in Germany, things were exceeding uneventful.  Ari slept the entire flight, all our bags made it (although it did take an hour to get them) and I got to watch Captain America twice...without the sound, so truly, I have no idea what was going on.

Ramstein is a very nice...sorta small base and there seem to be playgrounds every 100 yards or so.  I'll get into that more later.  We've done some driving around, had some good schnitzel, some good German beer and even some good pizza (and some not so good pizza).  We got new German phones...so expect e-mails and calls from us so you know what the numbers are.  It looks like Ari is going to start daycare next week...normalcy is returning. More, when we get there.

Amy / Ari / Ben