it is pouring here... i'm loving the storm, though i fear the girls need to go potty and none of them will go out in the rain. hopefully we'll get a break here soon and can go out for a quick walk. right now i'm distracting them from their bladders with bull penises. doggy crack, i tell ya!
tomorrow we get up early and drive to dunkirk, france to meet sean following the end of his 5-day bike ride. then we're off to bruges for the night. it's one of my favorite cities to visit, small, picturesque... love the canals, and i love the kriek. kriek is this cherry flavored beer that is very very sweet. of course, in germany it would be illegal to flavor beer like this, so it's a special treat for me. the germans, instead of brewing beer with flavors, just mix things into beer after it's brewed. like the radler, for example, which is beer mixed with a sprite-like drink. or beer and cola, which i have never tried and proably never will.
i'm looking forward to my first excursion out of deutschland, and bruges is the perfect place. five years ago when we first arrived in germany, our first trip was to brusells, and i THINK we spent a day or two in bruges afterwards. i'm losing my memory.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
neighbors
so our nasty neighbor frau heinzscheisse is at it again... we walked by her house, on the OTHER side of the street, and of course rena desides to pee. quite a feat in itself, really, considering the decline. so she and her daughter stick their heads out the window and starts yelling at us. her daughter insults sean for speaking english back to her (really, should he just stand there and take it and say nothing because he doesn't speak german well???), and then they yell at us for a few minutes about how we should walk UP the hill to pee the girls before we walk down the hill by her house. now i need to find out if it truly is verboten for dogs to pee on the street. if it is, fine, we won't do it. if it is NOT, we still will do our best to not do it as she obviously wants her f***ing street to be pristine, but we won't put up with the abuse...
we have a few sightings of a neighbor across the street whose balcony faces ours. um... i'm pretty sure he's a nudist. or just really likes hanging out on his balcony naked. i wonder if he knows that this place is not empty anymore? or if he even cares?
we have a few sightings of a neighbor across the street whose balcony faces ours. um... i'm pretty sure he's a nudist. or just really likes hanging out on his balcony naked. i wonder if he knows that this place is not empty anymore? or if he even cares?
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Please omit it.
last night our house turned into a giant panic room! german houses have metal blinds on the outside of the windows called rolladen. germans typically put the house to bed and close these in the early evening. last night at around 7 we had a problem with the electricity and a fuse broke, and all of the electric rolladen (leading out to all the balconies) closed and wouldn't open. s said it well when he emailed our landlord - "it's almost like being prisoners in our own home..." had to make a few calls and pull out my rusty german, but the rolladen are fixed and we are no longer prisoners.
so this morning, after the rolladen phone calls, i was pouring a cup of coffee when the bell rang. i went downstairs and my next door neighbor from down the hill was standing there. i opened the door, and since we had not spoken other than 'guten morgan' and 'guten abend' the first thing i did was introduce myself to her. we shook hands and she brought out a handwritten note and started trying to tell me something. i knew immediately that i had done something wrong and she was here to tell me ALL about it.
well, it turns out that one of the girls peed on the ivy that grows off of her property and stops at the street, and she would like them to stop. She was kind enough (really, i actually thought this was very thoughtful of her) to write the note in german and then use a dictionary to translate it into english for me - evidently one can tell i'm an american when i say good evening, which is just wunderbar...
here's how the note reads...
the urine from your 3 dogs before our premises. There ivy grow is our premises, above and below our house (home). Please omit it.
so we now have to avoid one side of the narrow road when we walk down to the river. it's truly ridiculous in my opinion that the dogs can't pee there, but who am i to argue? the sad part of the story is that as she's telling me what i've done wrong, and i'm trying to explain to her how this house and the steepness of the hill and lack of grass are such an issue for us, i start crying and can't stop. now i rarely cry... really. however ever since i was a child, the one thing that gets me is being reprimanded for doing something 'wrong' and of course this time was no different, especially since i was so utterly frustrated with the situation. i think she felt sorry for me, because she started saying things like "you love your animals... i have two cats, i understand. i love my animals too," and then told me how to get ticks off my skin with tape that she happened to have in her pocket. wtf???
anyway, i got about 50% of everything she said in the 10 minutes or so that we talked, which i'm pretty proud of, and hopefully we won't piss her off again. if you know me and the story of the guy who yelled at me in our last house in heidelberg, you'll know this isn't the first time this has happened. he ended up being a great neighbor, hopefully she will too.
good news... this afternoon i found a great grocery store (on recommendation from a friend) down the road in a small town outside of heidelberg. they have big aisles, great produce that i don't have to weigh and print stickers for myself, free parking, and they take credit cards so i don't have to worry about having enough cash on me when i go. it was nearly empty today at around 3pm when i went, which was also wonderful. i still have to bag my own groceries, but one can't have everything... : )
s got to spend the day in paris (while i argued with neighbors, stocked his fridge, and finished painting the bedroom) and will be home in an hour. now i will admit, he had meetings, but still - he had meetings in paris.
i'm ready for a 'meeting' in paris with a bottle of wine.
so this morning, after the rolladen phone calls, i was pouring a cup of coffee when the bell rang. i went downstairs and my next door neighbor from down the hill was standing there. i opened the door, and since we had not spoken other than 'guten morgan' and 'guten abend' the first thing i did was introduce myself to her. we shook hands and she brought out a handwritten note and started trying to tell me something. i knew immediately that i had done something wrong and she was here to tell me ALL about it.
well, it turns out that one of the girls peed on the ivy that grows off of her property and stops at the street, and she would like them to stop. She was kind enough (really, i actually thought this was very thoughtful of her) to write the note in german and then use a dictionary to translate it into english for me - evidently one can tell i'm an american when i say good evening, which is just wunderbar...
here's how the note reads...
the urine from your 3 dogs before our premises. There ivy grow is our premises, above and below our house (home). Please omit it.
so we now have to avoid one side of the narrow road when we walk down to the river. it's truly ridiculous in my opinion that the dogs can't pee there, but who am i to argue? the sad part of the story is that as she's telling me what i've done wrong, and i'm trying to explain to her how this house and the steepness of the hill and lack of grass are such an issue for us, i start crying and can't stop. now i rarely cry... really. however ever since i was a child, the one thing that gets me is being reprimanded for doing something 'wrong' and of course this time was no different, especially since i was so utterly frustrated with the situation. i think she felt sorry for me, because she started saying things like "you love your animals... i have two cats, i understand. i love my animals too," and then told me how to get ticks off my skin with tape that she happened to have in her pocket. wtf???
anyway, i got about 50% of everything she said in the 10 minutes or so that we talked, which i'm pretty proud of, and hopefully we won't piss her off again. if you know me and the story of the guy who yelled at me in our last house in heidelberg, you'll know this isn't the first time this has happened. he ended up being a great neighbor, hopefully she will too.
good news... this afternoon i found a great grocery store (on recommendation from a friend) down the road in a small town outside of heidelberg. they have big aisles, great produce that i don't have to weigh and print stickers for myself, free parking, and they take credit cards so i don't have to worry about having enough cash on me when i go. it was nearly empty today at around 3pm when i went, which was also wonderful. i still have to bag my own groceries, but one can't have everything... : )
s got to spend the day in paris (while i argued with neighbors, stocked his fridge, and finished painting the bedroom) and will be home in an hour. now i will admit, he had meetings, but still - he had meetings in paris.
i'm ready for a 'meeting' in paris with a bottle of wine.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
i hate ikea...
so today didn't go as planned...
i woke up early to get my 'charges' to the train station by 8:45. s has a colleague whose kids i entertained last night for 7 hours (which i enjoyed, but i am a scatterbrain right now dealing with everything that's going on, so i'm sure they think i'm loony), and they stayed at the temporary apartment we are not using but still have access to.
got them to the train station, and then headed off to complete first errand. IKEA. which i both love and hate dearly. i needed a clothes rack or two to get us through the next few months, hangers, and the two missing sofa cushions from saturday's purchase. a note on the clothes rack... german houses generally have no closets. evidently it's a tax thing - houses taxed by room, closets considered rooms. i don't know if that is fact, but that's what i have heard. so when i tell you that besides the smallish basement, kitchen cabinets and two small cabinets in our master bath, we have NO storage space, i'm not kidding. there is none. no linen closet, not a hall closet for coats, and certainly nothing in the bedrooms... anyway, i digress. i get to ikea, grab the hangers, locate the aisle number to pick up the racks, and of course they are out. i pay for the hangers, and go and get a number to wait for customer service to ask them for the cusions i was not given on saturday. when i pulled into IKEA, i had a sneaking suspicion that i was going to have a problem because this was not the original IKEA where the sofa was purchased, but s assured me that it would be no problem and they would be able to help me. sure enough, after a 20 minute wait, i was told that i would have to drive back to the mannheim IKEA (25 minutes or away) because that was where the original purchase was made. the rep confirmed that yes, had i purchased the sofa in berlin, i would have to drive to the berlin store. you see, i gave the mannheim store my money, and if they gave me something from the weinheim store, they would be in the the negative. ???? nice. so i drive to the other IKEA, get my clothes racks, and then get a number (okay, and a hot dog i'll admit, by this point i'm starving) to wait for my turn. i'm number 39, there are 28 people ahead of me, and there are two people working customer service. so i wait. about 45 minutes. thankfully i get my cusions with little hassle, but i spent 3 hours total running this "little" errand.
so then off to get paint and painting supplies at bauhaus. thankfully, during my 45 minute wait, i've had time to double check colors and make my detailed list. i arrive at the big bauhaus with easy parking, get my cart (thankfully i had a euro coin today), and head upstairs. find someone and tell them i need a LOT of paint, and she tells me that they can add the color, but they can't mix it because their machine is broken for the next few days. okay, so i get my painting supplies, and a few lights for the house (because in germany renters take their light fixtures when they go. hey, they often take everything AND the kitchen sink, so i'm not going to complain about this). i also pick up some white overalls for the painting, which i turned into cutoffs and am looking forward to sporting for the next few weeks until the walls in this place, as well as my overalls, are no longer white...
then off to get dog food, because we're out and i need somthing until tomorrow when the air shipment arrives. picked up a 10-pack of bull penises and some dried intestines for the girls (they are LOVING me tonight) and the food, and then head to a different bauhaus to get the paint. at this point i'm tired and i'm not going to wait for more than a few buckets, so i just go with the two main colors for now.
by the time i get home, i've been running around for 6 hours and i'm exhausted. i look longingly at the air mattress in the middle of the living room, but take the girls for a short walk. when i finally crawl into bed for a little nap, it's wet. peed-on-by-mara wet. she's always had this behavioral thing where she'll pee on the bed (and nowhere else in the house - really, she's good!) and i know better, but i forgot to stack something on top of it to keep her off. of course we have no other sheets, and i don't have a washer and a dryer until friday.
at this point i was about to lose it. i get the sheets and head off for the other apartment, where i know i'll be waiting three hours to do one load of laundry. thank goodness i decided to call my friend who lives down the street first and was able to use her washer and dryer. she was nice enough to switch the loads for me so i only made two trips and got clean sheets AND dinner.
i went for a walk on the neckar with the girls later on in the evening to remind myself why i LOVE this place, cause today it gave me an unexpected beating. painting begins tomorrow, and i've got the bedroom prepped and ready. obviously that has to be first so i can get the bed out of the living room. air shipment tomorrow includes, among other things, my accordion, big fluffy dog beds, extra linens, and my brand new city bike, complete with big basket and shopping bags attached to the rack on the back. i can't wait to go for a ride!!! the question is, do i change out of my paint stained overalls before i go?
gute nacht, heidelberg...
i woke up early to get my 'charges' to the train station by 8:45. s has a colleague whose kids i entertained last night for 7 hours (which i enjoyed, but i am a scatterbrain right now dealing with everything that's going on, so i'm sure they think i'm loony), and they stayed at the temporary apartment we are not using but still have access to.
got them to the train station, and then headed off to complete first errand. IKEA. which i both love and hate dearly. i needed a clothes rack or two to get us through the next few months, hangers, and the two missing sofa cushions from saturday's purchase. a note on the clothes rack... german houses generally have no closets. evidently it's a tax thing - houses taxed by room, closets considered rooms. i don't know if that is fact, but that's what i have heard. so when i tell you that besides the smallish basement, kitchen cabinets and two small cabinets in our master bath, we have NO storage space, i'm not kidding. there is none. no linen closet, not a hall closet for coats, and certainly nothing in the bedrooms... anyway, i digress. i get to ikea, grab the hangers, locate the aisle number to pick up the racks, and of course they are out. i pay for the hangers, and go and get a number to wait for customer service to ask them for the cusions i was not given on saturday. when i pulled into IKEA, i had a sneaking suspicion that i was going to have a problem because this was not the original IKEA where the sofa was purchased, but s assured me that it would be no problem and they would be able to help me. sure enough, after a 20 minute wait, i was told that i would have to drive back to the mannheim IKEA (25 minutes or away) because that was where the original purchase was made. the rep confirmed that yes, had i purchased the sofa in berlin, i would have to drive to the berlin store. you see, i gave the mannheim store my money, and if they gave me something from the weinheim store, they would be in the the negative. ???? nice. so i drive to the other IKEA, get my clothes racks, and then get a number (okay, and a hot dog i'll admit, by this point i'm starving) to wait for my turn. i'm number 39, there are 28 people ahead of me, and there are two people working customer service. so i wait. about 45 minutes. thankfully i get my cusions with little hassle, but i spent 3 hours total running this "little" errand.
so then off to get paint and painting supplies at bauhaus. thankfully, during my 45 minute wait, i've had time to double check colors and make my detailed list. i arrive at the big bauhaus with easy parking, get my cart (thankfully i had a euro coin today), and head upstairs. find someone and tell them i need a LOT of paint, and she tells me that they can add the color, but they can't mix it because their machine is broken for the next few days. okay, so i get my painting supplies, and a few lights for the house (because in germany renters take their light fixtures when they go. hey, they often take everything AND the kitchen sink, so i'm not going to complain about this). i also pick up some white overalls for the painting, which i turned into cutoffs and am looking forward to sporting for the next few weeks until the walls in this place, as well as my overalls, are no longer white...
then off to get dog food, because we're out and i need somthing until tomorrow when the air shipment arrives. picked up a 10-pack of bull penises and some dried intestines for the girls (they are LOVING me tonight) and the food, and then head to a different bauhaus to get the paint. at this point i'm tired and i'm not going to wait for more than a few buckets, so i just go with the two main colors for now.
by the time i get home, i've been running around for 6 hours and i'm exhausted. i look longingly at the air mattress in the middle of the living room, but take the girls for a short walk. when i finally crawl into bed for a little nap, it's wet. peed-on-by-mara wet. she's always had this behavioral thing where she'll pee on the bed (and nowhere else in the house - really, she's good!) and i know better, but i forgot to stack something on top of it to keep her off. of course we have no other sheets, and i don't have a washer and a dryer until friday.
at this point i was about to lose it. i get the sheets and head off for the other apartment, where i know i'll be waiting three hours to do one load of laundry. thank goodness i decided to call my friend who lives down the street first and was able to use her washer and dryer. she was nice enough to switch the loads for me so i only made two trips and got clean sheets AND dinner.
i went for a walk on the neckar with the girls later on in the evening to remind myself why i LOVE this place, cause today it gave me an unexpected beating. painting begins tomorrow, and i've got the bedroom prepped and ready. obviously that has to be first so i can get the bed out of the living room. air shipment tomorrow includes, among other things, my accordion, big fluffy dog beds, extra linens, and my brand new city bike, complete with big basket and shopping bags attached to the rack on the back. i can't wait to go for a ride!!! the question is, do i change out of my paint stained overalls before i go?
gute nacht, heidelberg...
Monday, May 12, 2008
one week in...
well, i've been here for just over a week now. we arrived on my 32nd birthday. mara flew with us on the plane, boney and rena traveled below in cargo. both arrived fine, however boney arrived covered in her own feces, which was a truly heartbreaking sight. thanks to germans and their love of dogs, i was able to take her right in the ladies bathroom and clean her up as much as possible for the ride home. we had a friend meet us and help us with luggage and crates, and he was kind enough to bring some wurst for the girls to welcome them to their new (old) home.
not much has changed here (okay, maybe i have). i've been sleeping on an air mattress for a week now, which now sits in an empty house that i'll begin painting tomorrow. i'm actually looking forward to beginning, i need something to keep me busy until i get furniture and can get this place in order. entertainment has been provided by my computer and downloaded episodes of heroes that for some reason i've put off watching for a year - i LOVE it.
it's been wonderful seeing old friends. people i've missed, people i am so happy to have in my life again.
i'm concerned that our house's location will be a problem. we're on a steep (seriously - STEEP) hill, and I don't want it to become an issue for the girls or in the winter if it becomes icy. i hope this place proves me wrong, i'm very concerned that we have made a mistake. that i made a mistake saying go ahead and take the place, after refusing it at first sight.
why does it take 2 hours and 30 minutes to run the dishwasher, and around 2 hours to wash (yes, just wash) a load of laundry (and a TINY one at that). this is the country that has produced some of the fastest, best cars in the world, yet it takes hours to do a load of wash, and i can't fit more than a few towels in the washer at once. we had a german washer and dryer in the us that was amazing, yet i've never seen anything like it here. do the germans have any idea what they are missing out on? is it a space issue? does smaller have to mean slower? am i saving the environment because i'm going slllooooowwwww?
i think i'm having a harder time adjusting the second time around than the first. to everything. don't get me wrong, i love this place. it's just different this time.
i did 195kph on the autobahn the other day. but i really just want my bicycle.
not much has changed here (okay, maybe i have). i've been sleeping on an air mattress for a week now, which now sits in an empty house that i'll begin painting tomorrow. i'm actually looking forward to beginning, i need something to keep me busy until i get furniture and can get this place in order. entertainment has been provided by my computer and downloaded episodes of heroes that for some reason i've put off watching for a year - i LOVE it.
it's been wonderful seeing old friends. people i've missed, people i am so happy to have in my life again.
i'm concerned that our house's location will be a problem. we're on a steep (seriously - STEEP) hill, and I don't want it to become an issue for the girls or in the winter if it becomes icy. i hope this place proves me wrong, i'm very concerned that we have made a mistake. that i made a mistake saying go ahead and take the place, after refusing it at first sight.
why does it take 2 hours and 30 minutes to run the dishwasher, and around 2 hours to wash (yes, just wash) a load of laundry (and a TINY one at that). this is the country that has produced some of the fastest, best cars in the world, yet it takes hours to do a load of wash, and i can't fit more than a few towels in the washer at once. we had a german washer and dryer in the us that was amazing, yet i've never seen anything like it here. do the germans have any idea what they are missing out on? is it a space issue? does smaller have to mean slower? am i saving the environment because i'm going slllooooowwwww?
i think i'm having a harder time adjusting the second time around than the first. to everything. don't get me wrong, i love this place. it's just different this time.
i did 195kph on the autobahn the other day. but i really just want my bicycle.
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