Saturdays and mental breakdowns...

Can you see the rainbow?  there above the top of the middle peaked house?  Yep, it's not super bright, but it's there... I had SUCH a hard time remembering the word for rainbow... I literally just sat there trying to think of the dang word.  Really Brain???  It's an easy word, really!!!  UGH!

 Why were we out driving around on this cold day?  We were looking at house locations and seeing what we liked and what we didn't like.  Yeah.... none of them were a go, really - they were row houses or what they called duplexes but were more of a row house with tiny, tiny yards.  SO - none of the houses we looked at were considered a "go" for us.. so we moved on.  Well, I moved on and signed into Bookoo Stuttgart and looked at a few homes on there.  Found a few that we sent messages on.  We'll follow up with them on Monday.  I sent them all messages via bookoo.

So we started out with a town called Waldenbuch - on Liebenaustassa. 

note that is a 12 minute drive but an hour and a half by transit.  Yeah... fun times, eh?  It was a row house, on a fairly main drag.

Next up was Herrenburerstrassa, Nufringen

THIS was a fun drive through a lot of back roads and a lot of forest roads... and this road... down the side of a hill into a tiny little town...

 very TINY road down the hill with lots of hunting looking cabins and some sheds out in the woods for critters.
This house was also a no go as it was crammed in a small community of multiple tiny houses that were indeed duplexes, but with ZERO yards and zero personality... they were a NO GO.

Next up was another townhome in Aidlingen

Again, a townhome with zero lot lines and in a row of other homes...but at least it backed up onto some farm land across the road behind the homes.. but they were rejected.

Next up was in Gaertringen.

AAANNNNDDDDD here is where I had lost it totally - somewhere near the tennis club and I thought we were back tracking back to the place prior and we didn't have a way to understand the dang GPS in the freaking car... and I was out of sorts and, and, and... every freaking house was a duplex or a row house and crammed into town and the list went on.  Add to this the frustrations of the deleted mails and all the technology issues I seem to have because my freaking brain doesn't work and/or retain ANY. THING. and I was a blubbering mess... and we went back to the hotel.

yeah... NOW I look at the map and realize we screwed up and didn't
see the LAST house on the list and I do believe it is more along the lines of what we would want... damnit!!!

Sigh... all because I lost it on the way to this one... drat it!!!!!

Oh well, there is always tomorrow and I have sent the owners an email, so maybe they will get back with us tomorrow or the next day and we can go see the place.

BUT we came back to the hotel and I took a nap and had a good cry on the toilet and am all better now.  What a mess... ha!

For dinner we walked to an Italian place on the top of the hill.  Think I'm kidding?  Read on!  We had about 600 steps in at the beginning of the day - the total steps and floors climbed are at the bottom, so just wait for it!!  ha!

Anyway - we walked up a very steep hill to the TOP... pant, pant, pant, some 1,500 plus steps and about 6 floors climbed.  YIKES!!  Pictures to follow on our way down, our way up we were just trying to breathe and not snot all over the place from the cold - hee hee hee.

Anyway, cute restaurant and HUGE servings - I have a 1/2 salad left over from dinner as we thought it was starters and found out it was almost a meal unto itself. - it was essentially a club salad with salami, eggs and artichokes.  VERY good, but way too much so I stopped half way and asked for a take out box for it.  I then had Gnocchi for dinner with a carbonara sauce that was SUPER heavy and super cheesy, but good.  OINK.  I ate it all, had a glass of wine and chilled out.

The funniest part of the restaurant was the magical toilet door... we were sitting there and this door to the left of the man:

 well, it's marked toilette.  OK... I get it.. but as we're sitting there there was a stream of people coming OUT of this door - to include some 15 kids and adults... coming through the door, then out the main door to the restaurant that you see to the right of the picture... it was SO odd... so it was dubbed the "majical toilette room"...yeah.. interesting for sure!  I guess they have some meeting rooms downstairs or something ... but it was comical for those of us not in the know.  ha!


OK, here are the very blurry pictures (hey, it's night, it's late and my phone doens't focus well in the dark!).

 Standing at the "top" of the hill - actually about a full 1/2 block or more away from the restaurant and down hill a bit (maybe a floor or so)... looking down the hill towards the red dot... that red dot is the sign on the top of our 8 story Marriott hotel...

 zoomed in... yeah, you STILL can't make out that this is a Marriott hotel in the distance!!  You CAN, however, now see that it's quite tall in the distance...

 THIS it the path that we walked up... the apartment buildings at the bottom are in the 8 or so floors tall... so this is a very steep hill and a very twisty path up... and on the way up there was some entertainment about 1/2 way up with a dog "interaction" shall we say.  Someone was walking a little black pug looking car up the hill and there were some folks with two pitty looking dogs not on leashes at the half way point... we thought for sure there was going to be a row at that point, but nope, they all held it together although the little pug dog was NOT happy about being rushed by the pitty dog at first and was growling.

And here is the evidence of the walk... 6 floors of stairs and just under 2 miles walked.

Need to do a bit better and get to the 10,000 feet again.. we did get almost there last weekend when we went to Stuttgart.

THEN when we came back to the hotel, we saw our buddy Craig in the hall as we were coming in - he had a laundry basket... what????  There is a laundry here?  Uh, yeah.  He's in the executive suite and has access to the laundry facility here in the hotel.  So, being the person I am, after we had our coffee in the lobby I went to talk to the folks at the desk about getting access to the laundry.  I THEN found out that our travel folks on base did us ZERO favors when booking this hotel in that they did not request the PCS package which would include parking for free, breakfast for free AND laundry access... guess what??  For FREE.  yeah... thanks government travel - they should have known this... darn them.  SO, they don't do anything retroactively here, but they did move us to that rate where I will now get these lovely benefits.  OK, why would I care as it's really NOT out of my pocket at this point except maybe the parking for Euro 125 or so.  I guess I can live with that mistake - or just charge it to the dang government as they didn't see fit to let me know what was available to me.

Either way, it's fixed and life is once again good with free laundry instead of Butch having to dig out quarters to do laundry.  Yay us for asking!

And with that it's not almost midnight.  Doesn't help if you go to dinner close to 7pm and have a SLOW dinner until almost 9pm, then have coffee before coming upstairs for the night.  Guess I'll be switching to later work days at this rate.  :)  

Another day spent spinning wheels

Friday night (1/25/19)
SO... everything revolves around getting an ID.  EVERY. THING.
I can't get a house
I can't get a bank account
I can't get a license
I can't get logged in and actually WORK
I can't put in vouchers to get money back

No really, that is the list so far.  I can't do a whole lot.
Up until now it's kind of been a joke, but as I was running around trying to get stuff done as I didn't get done the time prior, that I would go ahead and get a few more things out of the way.  uh, yeah... that didn't happen... I went to get a bank account - yep, nope - can't do that without an ID card.  I then went my office to see folks.  No-one was there that I needed to talk with.... annnddd, I can't log in to do any work.  Sigh.

I decided to go ahead and see if I could go ahead and set up a bank account while I was on base and wandering around trying to accomplish some things.  Yeah, that didn't happen - see note on what I can NOT do without an ID card.  I DID find out that I should have gone to the Credit Union instead of Bank of America type of bank.  They say it's Bank of America associated... but it's NOT.  Yeah, that sort of ruined my thought process on using that bank.  They have no reachback what-so-ever to Bank of America.  BUT while waiting there I got to talking to the guy next to me and found out that the Credit Union would offer a card that can be used on the economy - score!  So, decision made and I waited to go over there to get an account.  NOPE.

So, I headed to the hotel to see if I could lot into my email from here... it didn't work.  drat it!  Either way there was nothing I could do either way about it, so I went back to the base to wait for Butch to get out of drivers training and have lunch with him.

We finally found a healthier option on the base with a nice salad place.  I had a great salad and Butch had a Pita he enjoyed.

Butch headed to class, I headed into the BX to get somethings that will be needed once we DO get a car.  Want to know what they are?

1. safety triangle to put out in case of breakdowns/accidents, etc.
2. safety vest.  Apparently in some of the countries you have to have a vest for every passenger
3. a first aid kit for the car.  I'm sure this is overkill as we already had one, but hey, we bought the german approved one.

So, that was purchased along with a dual USB plug for my stuff here in the hotel - just to make life easier as I don't need a transformer for iPad type things.  OH and a diet Dr. Pepper as I didn't get a drink with lunch.

So - then I headed out to get my approval for a temporary gas card for the rental.  THAT I was able to get done, but I went to the wrong building the first time - to the third floor walk up... BUT that isn't our third floor as there is a ground floor here, then 1st, 2nd, 3rd.... so it's actually a 4th floor walk up.  pant, pant, pant... then I had to go out to the car, get the registration, head to the CORRECT building which was a 3rd floor walk up again, but the first floor was a 1/2 basement.... daylight basement?  Either way, just 3.5 floors up... still had worked up a good sweat by the time I got up there - HA!  SO, that paperwork done, but not fully as Butch doesn't have an ID number as he's not got one either.  SO, that was done... and Butch was almost out of his test for driving.  Yay him.

Once he was done - he passed by the way - he headed out with me to go see about tax forms to save the 19% German taxes.... BUT, guess what?  Can't get that without an ID.  sigh... so there was no way to get that done either.. so we headed to the BX to get our temporary gas card.  Once we got that I encouraged Butch to stop at the German bakery there to pick up a lighter meal - and that is just what we did.  The night before we ended up with room service which consisted of a Club Sandwich for Butch with fries and a Pepsi and a meat/cheese platter for me - it was delish and I should have taken a picture of it as it was pretty and served on a cutting board with salami, lettuce and some tomatoes and a cheese spread with some crusty bread - it was delish!!  So delish I didn't even pause to take a picture, I just dove right in... I didn't even share it with Butch it was so good.

Tonight was a different story in that we stopped off and got a croissant and salami sandwich and a pretzel (just for me... as I ordered that last night and they were out) and a salad ... and this time we shared with the exception of the pretzel and Butch didn't want any of it.

  While we were eating Angela face timed us for a chat, so that was nice.  She was going over to cat sit her friends cat at her house while she is in California.

And with that, the day is over and the weekend will start!!  Yay!!!

A day spent in classes..

Yesterday we woke to snow - new snow... and it was still snowing as we (I) drove onto base!  Lots of comments from the peanut gallery on my driving, how to, etc, but we made it onto base without me killing him or a full on fight coming out of it.  I parked and left the car to run into my office to drop off some paperwork for our HR person. That being done, I got BACK in my car and we drove over to the chapel to park as that was where we would spend majority of our day.  

 A shot to show you guys the cute little rental we have gotten - it is really cute, isn't it?  Yes, it's a stick shift.  Yes, I'm doing OK with shifting thanks to having Steve (Liz's CRV) around and getting a little practice over the years in him :)

 Looking over towards the gym area

 Looking at the woods behind the chapel so you can actually see some of the snowflakes falling ... it's pretty but it's COLD...

LOOK at thos great little snow flakes... it was so light and fluffy that you could blow it off the car when we got back out at 4pm and it was about an inch dep at that point... too cold to take a comparison shot (and didn't actually think of it until much later!)

The day was FULL of information, most of which will be forgotten before we walk out, but hopefully the important parts will remain in our head for a while!!

We walked back to the PX for lunch ... I'm not thrilled that it's fully americanized and all that effort I did to STOP eating at the fast food places has been shot.  Ug.  Oh, well, I have found a place that looks a bit heathier in there with rice bowls and such, so maybe that will be a bit better.

This is us walking back from lunch in the snow!

After we got out of classes at 4pm we headed over to some of the offices to see if they were still open (it was 15 till)  NOPE all closed.  SOOOO we headed out to drive by a house that someone had told us about during class.  Karma as Butch had shared some quarters with another wife in the laundromat the day prior... she was in the class and this was the house they turned down.  It's a 3 story in a town near the base, but may be a bit too big for us and the reasons they didn't like it were the same reasons Butch doesn't like it.  The back yard is tiny and is looked into by multiple houses... no privacy.  So we continue to look.. and I emailed the realtor to see if she has any more houses in her listing that may fit our needs.

As we were driving out I had Butch take a few pictures with my phone so I would be able to show you the area a bit... there were some open fields at one roundabout that I should have had him take a picture of as there was a horse and rider ponying another horse along the walkway.

Mostly that is salt residue on the road, not ice or snow.

Work day 2 was a bit easier

...and WHY was day two a bit easier?  Well, it's because we now have a CAR.  yes, we rented a cute little VW wagon.  It's little, but should hold all our luggage until we get our car - just in case we get a HOUSE before we get the car.  Can you tell I have HIGH hopes for things to just "fall into place"?

Yes, I do.  I hope we get a house fairly quickly and I get to stop hearing from everyone that I don't have an ID card and how *I* should somehow wiggly my nose and be able to force the powers to be to actually produce said paperwork....  SO.  I'm getting an ear full most days.  Sigh.  Today in the BX I got told by the women in there that I really needed to press the ID office to get my ID.  UH, yeah, because that works so well.

Anyway... what I failed to mention is that we didn't do ANYTHING this morning - aka NO work for me.  :)  I got up LATE and we got ready.  We packed our laundry into a suitcase and headed out to get a cab go to get our rental car.  That was fairly uneventful.  Then we headed to base to seek out where exactly the laundromat IS.  We didn't have any success finding it per the map we had looked it up on, so we went to talk to the folks and the inprocessing office.  WOW is all I have to say.  The gal who was a volunteer there was AWESOME!!  I wish she had been there the day prior!  She had lots of great advice and information and set us on the right path for quite a few things, one of which was a website for the base - whoo hoooooo... we can now make appointments to get things done like the local community introduction and the car registration (early, but hey, it's better than waiting until the car gets here!) as well as a few of the other things we need to do like a hospital tour. Hospitals here are very much specialized and if you go to a hospital that is just maternity and children, you will be turned away.  So... for me, it's important to know just WHERE I need to go for my care with cancer history as well as the gyno things I need to have looked at.

Oh, yeah, you guys don't know about that.  I had gone in for my 18 month check and there is a cyst on one of my ovaries that is new.   Surprise!!  The oncologist at home doesn't think that this is anything to do with cancer, however, he's not a gynecological oncologist, so we'll have to get that checked out by a gyno at a minimum, then they can tell me if it's something I need to be concerned with.  I'm not really freaked out by it, but it is a concern and the doc said if I had been staying he would have had me get it checked out, so that's what we'll do - get it checked out.  More to come on that subject later.  :)

So - the rest of the day today was getting the car, getting to base and getting my first part of my in processing done.  I got through an afternoon of introductions and will do a full day tomorrow... then have a few set appointments here and there.  I went ahead and made an appointment with housing on Friday as well because I can't do anything with them until I actually have my meet and greet, so we're getting the initial brief done tomorrow and the meet and greet on Friday - then I have four houses I want to go see.  They're all within a 1/2 hour drive to base, so that will make it close for a commute and then we'll see about going out to do other things further away with the gas money we'll save being closer to work.  :)

What else?  We came back to the hotel with me driving and I missed a major turn and ended up on an autostrada - ha!  I just pulled off at the next exit and made my way back, no biggie.  Butch is making me drive, which in a weird way is helping me adjust a bit faster as well.  He's thinking he may not get a 2nd car and just take bus and trains everywhere, which is a definite options.  There are lots around here.  There are a lot of busses and trains to get you just about anywhere... it just takes much longer.  Butch said "just what else am I going to be doing anyway?"  Ha!  Point taken, point taken.  So... hopefully we'll go house hunting next week.

Other than the general news, it's super cold outside, but "do-able".  Not something I look forward to, but something I can prepare for.  I understand we don't get a lot of snow here either, just the colder temps and snow on occasions.  I'm OK with that, I guess... don't really have a choice either.  I did tell Butch next winter is a trip to spain or somewhere equally as warm.

SO looking forward to settling in and starting to travel around a bit and see a lot more!

tonights dinner was my first Sauerkraut and Bratwurst and gravy.  You would think that gravy would NOT be good on sauerkraut, but it really was.  With crusty bread as well on the side.  quite tasty dinner!  Butch had some schnitzel and fries and eats them with mayonnaise.  You would think that is gross, but it's actually good.  I had that last night with my chicken for dinner.  It's not the normal mayo, it's a german mayo that is much better.

Another day in paradise.

Today was MUCH colder than yesterday, so I'm glad we went to Stuttgart the day prior... burrr... I don't think it got above 32degrees today.  VERY cold!!!  Anyway, if you read FaceBook you know I was left in a lurch today at the hotel with NO ride.  Yeah.  That was fun.  My sponsor was to pick me up at the hotel and I waited patiently.  When he didn't show I called his office and was very lucky in that his co-worker answered his phone.  Thank goodness. I was able to beg a ride in and start the process to get into training, get a temporary badge into the building, request a mail box, and a few other things I'm sure.  BUT there is much more to get done that isn't quite getting done as I don't have access to a computer access... 

And so it begins.  I have training tomorrow afternoon and Thursday all day and tomorrow morning we are going to pick up our rental car from a local car company here in town to make life a little easier.  

Other than that, I could do nothing at work without , so I computer access, so I headed (well, was given a ride) home (aka the hotel) to get my drivers training out of the way so I could go in and take a driving test to get my German driving license.  What will this do?  Allow me to drive on base, get my car registered when it comes in and have FREEDOM.  ha!  

So, tomorrow is rental car pick up (no driving license from base required - yay!!), and training.  That is my job for tomorrow.  We MAY go find the laundromat in person, we have found it on a map.. now to find it in person... lots to do!  Lots to do!!

German adventures part 1

OK, the start to the day was VERY slow... I woke up at 8:30ish and thought "yeah, I'll rattle around a bit and Butch will wake up" fully knowing he had been up WAY longer than I was last night.  We had gone downstairs for steak and for dinner at the restaurant in the hotel.  It was VERY good and very heavy and I came up, brushed my teeth and climbed into bed, got warm and was going to sleep at 10pm.  I did get woken up at 12 with a text from Angela. We're still working out the time changes - ha!  I talked to her for a bit and went potty again, then back to bed.  Butch was still up then and wanted to chat, I wanted NOTHING to do with that and went right back to sleep... zzzzz.  Ha.  So, I read a few posts on facebook then promptly went right back to sleep too as it was warm and snuggly in bed.... and I haven't slept in for a long time, plus add some jet lag and there you go - sleeping forever!!!!  We didn't get up and moving for a bit... just lazed around and tried to figure out what we wanted to do.  We settled on a train ride into Stuttgart to see the Mercedes Museum.... we got to the bus stop after a short COLD walk and found that they were closed today!!!  ha!  So, we opted to go ahead and go to the train station and just make up our minds when we got there as to where we were going.  Well, the train station was just a stop ... so nothing there but a machine to help us make up our minds to just go to the center of town and see the walking shopping street there...

Here is a screen shot of the overall plans for the first trip.  A few walking sections, but nothing horrible.

We made it there without incidence.  Well, not to there, but to the main train station in downtown... and to the walking downtown shopping area without incidence as well.

I had to chuckle at the TKMaxx instead of TJMaxx as we have at home.  It seems similar.  We wandered one of the indoor malls and ate some lunch (really a super late breakfast!)... and we both realized we don't know the first thing about German and I have noticed that my words that come to mind are all Italian... for excuse me, please and thank you are all coming out Italian... that won't work here - ha!  I'll get there, give me a few months and they will come out German, I'm sure!

Notice there is a McDonalds here too... there was a Burger King as well.  Yep, they are everywhere.  There is one close to the hotel as well - both McDonalds and Burger King.  Not that we went there.  We went to a cute little cafe and had a german dish that was like a light tortilla with a cream cheese like sauce with onions and bacon on it.  It was quite tasty.  I have since downloaded Google Translator so I can "read" menus and figure out what the food is.  I used it at dinner.  We went to a chinese restaurant right across from the hotel that turned out to be quite tasty and was just what we needed.

Its now 10:30 and I need to get to sleep... Butch is already passed out on the other side of the bed while I type away - ha!!  The good news is that the remote is really close to me, so I can turn off the TV while he's still sleeping - ha!

guess it's time to figure out what time I'm getting up to go downstairs, eat and get out the door by 7:45 for work and inprocessing tomorrow.... what to wear, what to wear...

Willkommen in Deutschland

ANNNNNDDDD 

9 hours and 45 minutes later we are in Stuttgart... and I am blogging in an effort to keep myself awake as I really just want to SLEEP as I only got 4 hours of sleep on the flight.  yawn!!!

 that's actually patches of snow not roof tops!

 More snowy frosty grown.  The temperature here is a balmy -4 degrees Celsius (that would be 25 degrees... burrrrr).

Stuttgart Airport  

Taxiing in to the airport... 

Our hotel looks like this... really... it honestly does, but with three LARGE suitcases and two carry ons and an array of crap in our room it really looks nothing like this at this time!  ha!

I'll share a picture of our real mess with suitcases as soon as I get a bit more organized... Butch took all his clothing out and put it all in order... I haven't done that yet.  I have been blogging... then I'll nap for a bit :)

Farewell to GA

Saturday morning was met with some rain and some stress ...
We discovered during our repacking efforts that we had severely over packed and were facing bags in excess of 50lbs each to INCLUDE the carry on bags.  They all looked like they were pregnant and if I could have kept my sense of humor about it all, that would have been great but I had TERRIBLE nightmares about the whole trip, over packing and total loss of control over cars and such... so I had a very bad nights sleep with lots of tossing and turning and was NOT well rested in the morning.

SO.  We finally got to the place where we were going to meet up with Lizzie and pick her up and leave her car.  She had a suitcase we were going to give to Angela, however, we decided that this bag was now ours and was going to be used to balance the load from the overweight suitcases.  We almost succeeded.  ha!  The bags at the airport were: 54, 52 and 49lbs respectively.  Now we also took some of the weight out of our carry ons as well, so that was an indication that there was a LOT of weight between our four bags... Piggy sized bags.  BUT by splitting them out across more bags made life a lot better.  Getting a taxi on the German side was kinda funny, but we'll talk about that later :)

We went up to Kennesaw and saw Angela at her work and she was able to take a lunch with us.  Then when we said goodbye she got supersad and walked away... then called me back for a "REAL hug" because she had run away due to her being upset and going to cry. :(  I did fine on the first goodbye, but knowing how upset she was *I* cried at the 2nd goodbye.  Dang her for making me cry!!  Oh, well, we got the second hug in and she was happy and let me go.  :(  Poor Angela being on her own for the what she sees as the first time, but not really.  She's been on her own for a while now, she just likes that idea of us being nearby just in case.

Anyway, we were at the airport early and hung out in a more comfortable area of the international airport before going to sit near our gate.  Our flight was on time, even with the rain, which was surprising.  We then pushed back from the gate....

 only to have issues... and were sent back to the gate to get maintenance on board to fix things....THEN they needed to top the fuel off as well...

1 hour and 45 minutes later.... Farewell to Georgia Take TWO....

 only to have the same thing happen!

This time apparently this reboot didn't entail an issue with the airplane just the entertainment... and we had to wait until we were almost cruising level before they got that all back on lie and everyone was happy!

AND WE ARE OFF!!!!!

A clean house!

 Before carpet cleaning... just EWH!!

 AFTER carpet cleaning... yeah there is still a "T" pattern of wear on the carpet and it will have to be replaced when we get back regardless... sad, but true.

 LOOK at that sparkely fridge.. it's not looked that good since it was brand new!!!

I won't describe the other pictures, they are simply a clean house, nothing more relevant to say than that... I think I understand the merry maids advertisement with the gal who is "whoooo hooing" after coming into her clean house :)

It was a nice feeling!!