Lost in Translation...

I recently took a class through the Air Force about shopping on the Germany economy. They basically brought us to a large grocery store chain gave us a tour and a ton of samples. The differences between here and the U.S. were showcased and explained to us, for example at a German grocery store your purchases are not loaded into bags, after they are scanned you place them back into your cart and then into some sort of basket you keep in your trunk. So the next afternoon I felt confident enough to try some food shopping off base. Globus, the large family owned German grocery store chain that I had already toured, has a cheese counter with over 400 types of cheese. I saw on my tour they had goat cheese, or at least I saw a picture of a goat next to some cheese, I love goat cheese. I had gotten out my recipe for Bryan Chicken that is made with yummy goat cheese and I had looked up how to say goat cheese in German on the internet. The German instructor made shopping and communicating seem so easy I was ready. When I got to the kase counter they had cheese with a picture of a goat on it but the name did not match the one I got on the internet, but surprisingly this happens a lot. I was very excited because even with the exchange to Euros it was pretty cheap for goat cheese. After some internal debate about exactly how much is 100 grams, my recipe being American called for 8oz, I asked for 100g. The girl behind the counter, who I can only assume is a trained cheese lady,took my cheese to the slicer. I thought this was extremely odd, I have never seen goat cheese sliced but, she is the one who works with cheese all day so I went with it. A few days later, I went to make my Bryan Chicken the chicken was on the grill the sauce was ready so I unwrapped my goat cheese, and being the dedicated wife and mother I am decided to sample the cheese before feeding it to my family. It was provolone! Laura and Sam laughed while eating what was labeled butterkase, which I assume is what the Germans call provolone cheese. That explains why it was sliced.

Unplanned tidbit...

Lucky for us Laura has offered us another “unplanned tidbit”. While walking home from the train station on Sunday in the rain, Laura ran out in front of a car after a big rumble of thunder. This triggered Sam to give the lecture of how dangerous cars are and how getting run over by a car can be deadly. Laura responded by asking “Do they use cars in war to run people over?”

Bad again...

Speaking of bad, this week the award for the worst parents ever goes to Sam and I. Laura lost her other front tooth. That night she actually went to bed on time without her usual complaints of “It’s still light out” and Sam’s favorite “can we play hide-n-go seek instead”. The next morning when her alarm, she insist on having one, went off at 6:45 she actually got out of bed before I had to go upstairs and be the mean Mom. She came into our room and miserably announced that the tooth fairy had not come in the night to take the tooth and leave money, her tooth was still under her pillow. We assured her that this happens all the time, although I am not too sure about that, that this time of year must be the tooth fairies busy time, and the rain must have delayed her, or as Laura pointed out him. Lucky for her when Laura got home from school that afternoon the tooth was gone and in its place were some Euro and a note apologizing for being late.


Sam likes to call this picture "Shark week!"

Bad Durkheim…

This weekend in Germany Europe’s largest wine festival took place in Bad Durkheim, we decided we had better go and check it out. Because we have never had great luck with parking, we decided we should embrace a European life style and take the train. Apparently so did half of the American’s stationed here, because when we showed up at the train station the ticket machine lines were long and not moving, turns out on weekend the German who runs the ticket window, who we had been assured would help us purchase the best tickets for us, was off. My husband, whose award shelves boast all the great things he can do with satellites, does not know how to use a bahn (train) ticket machine. We decided to postpone our train departure until we were certain we could purchase tickets for our return trip, if (and this was becoming a big if) we ever did get to the Bad Durkheim station. We loaded back into the car and left the bigger station and its crowds for our small local train station, which is not so much a station as it is just a ticket machine and bench. There at the Obermohr stop after we had spent as much time as we needed reading and starting over on the machine, I was able to purchase tickets to Bad Durkheim for the next day and I was confident we could use the machine to purchase ticket to home when the time came.

The festival was less festival and more carnival. It was almost exactly what you would expect at a state fair, there was no wine tasting and buying bottles like we expected. Instead there was heavy drinking of wine and purchasing it by the HUGE glass, these were more like beer steins and less like dinky wine glasses. But like a state fair the food section was good, Sam got to enjoy a ½ meter long bratwurst. There were only a few differences in the way Germany does their “festivals” and the way we do our “State fairs”, here in Germany I didn’t see any livestock. No tent to see the baby calves or arena to watch the pigs run in circle, giving the audience the impression that they are actually racing. Besides the lack of live animals at the wine festival when you buy a drink, coke, beer, wine or the popular Fanta, it comes in a glass. An actually glass cup! When you purchase your drink you pay a deposit and receive a chip with your full actual glass cup of refreshing liquid, then when you have finished enjoying your drink you return the actually glass cup to the counter with the plastic chip and you receive your deposit back. Turned out having glass cups was not the best idea after people had enjoyed a tumbler full of wine and the cup tumbled off the table. Ooops!

A New School Year...

Next week Laura starts first grade and this year I am having the opposite response then I had last year. Despite the changes that a full day of school brings for Laura, I am very ready for the school year to start. All day first grade is different from our half day kindergarten experience, and in addition Laura is starting at a new school. Laura will be attending Ramstein Elementary on Ramstein Air Base and although we have attended the new student “tour” we are still not sure what to expect at the new school. We have learned that kindergarten through 12th grade all ride the bus together, therefore a total of 54 German city buses drop off and pick up every day. (OH MY) After the last couple of weeks with Laura in a new house and new country I am over ready for her to go to school and meet some new friends. I love having Laura around, but every evening when Sam returns home from work and Laura is on her 9th straight hour of talking, my nerves feel very frayed. Fortunately for her and her new teacher, Laura already knows everything there is to learn in first grade, I know this because whenever we sit down to work on her summer homework packet Laura corrects me. I constantly hear “That is not a sentence” and my all-time favorite “Did you even go to the high school mom?” So on Monday at 8 am, with brand new lunch box in hand, Laura will start a new school year at a new school.

Romantic Heidelberg...

On Saturday we headed out to the romantic city of Heidelberg. All of our Germany travel books describe Heidelberg, along the Neckar river, as the city of romance. We explored the city for most of the afternoon we walked along the river, ate in a café along the cobbled streets and shopped in the marktplatz. Heidelberg is a busy university town, so we actually saw young people, which was a dramatic change since Sam and I were beginning to think that Germany only had very old folks living here. Although after about four hours spent sightseeing, shopping and eating I am not sure what the guide books consider romantic, the one armed man playing drums for spare change, the convert to Islam booth or the dozen or so dogs aloud in the restaurants. While I was still looking for my romantic part of the city, Laura found hers at Build a Bear! We traveled thousands of miles and we just cannot seem to get away from buying the bears new clothes, therefore one of her numerous bears now sports a fashionable “I Love Heidelberg” shirt. Maybe I should have looked harder in that chocolate shop for romance, I am sure with enough Euros spent I could have found something.


Sam and Laura beside the Neckar River.


As ussual I appear in one picture!

Sam sucked it up and paided the 1.50 Euro for him and Laura to head to the top if the old town Church.

The Kitchen Plan...

There are many differences here in Germany from our life in the U.S., space is a major one. The one closet our house has is a linen closet located on the second floor next to the bathroom. The Air Force helped solve the closet problem in the bedrooms by lending us four closet like wardrobes. Unfortunately these did not help with the kitchen storage issue. I knew that something would have to be done in the kitchen even before our stuff had arrived. So I grabbed the Ikea catalog and braved the German information desk at the store in Mannheim to ask how to find things in the warehouse, turns out this was a valuable lesson I would use again when replacing Laura’s furniture. Somehow we made it home with some shelves and to Sam’s surprise and pleasure not much else.






In the video you might notice the ONE small drawer , the multiple trash cans (trash is an ordeal here), the small frig (we have a big one downstairs),and the lack of counter space. Not to mention my kid who decided not to brush her hair yet this morning.