Adventures in Temporary Furniture

 Our address, not that anyone really would use it is: Fliederweg 5/1, 71116 Gaertringen Germany (well, really it's Ga(umlaut)rtringen)... but I'm not sure how to put that on this keyboard.  So... that little VW is the rental - this was just as we were moving in...  He's actually parked on the "yard" in the front (yeah, it's pretty non-existent).  Anyway THIS is the front of our house... yep, all ours... just for two of us.  Seems a little silly but hey, if we have folks come at the same time, we're set!! 

 Here is the lovely (yes, that is sarcasm) loaner furniture that we have for the next few weeks while waiting for ours.  This will not be our true living room but rather than have the movers heft this stuff down stairs until then seemed... well, a little cruel!  So, it's upstairs for now.  We do plan on getting a larger dining set while we are here as we re-sold our dining table from Georgia for the move.  To our defense it was a table I got for $45 and fixed the wooden slides to work (they were stuck prior), then Butch sanded the corner... and.... well, we never did anything else with it after that.  So this room will become one BIG dining room with the doors that will open onto the deck.  yes, BOTH of those doors open all the way on BOTH sides... so it really is a nice airy set up for a dining table in the summer.

This monstrosity... uh, I mean bit of loveliness is our bed.  Yeah.  It's a double.... yeah we are WAY too close to each other right now!  ha!  And the thickness of it?  Yep, that is it.  There is foam... there is hardness... there is misery... there are some old backs that are ready to cry now.  This was delivered to us on the 15th... we got sheets and such and we moved in on the 16th.  It's now the 18th and let me tell you what... that thing makes my hips hurt to look at it from here....  sigh... it's temporary... it's temporary.  We should have our household goods before the 3rd of March or something like that.  I would honestly have to look it up but I think that they had a "must deliver date" no later than the 5th.

SOOOOO pray for me that we live that long... two weeks isn't that long, right?  RIGHT????  Yeah, my back would disagree with you there... my lower back is hurtin!!

oh, well, it was MY decision to move here and my stupidity that allowed us to move into this place without really looking at paperwork to know when the furniture would be here.... so it's all my fault.  I said something (or just thought it possibly) about "next time I'll know better"... lordie, there's not going to be a "next time" ... next time we will hopefully be moving home.... and have someone nice enough to let us crash at their house before we have to move into an empty house!!

So... that is my update for last week...
I am now away from the hotel and will try and load pictures as I can but I'm working on the equivalent of dial up at this point, so things are slow going.  I loaded these pictures while I was at the BX when Butch was signing us up for phones.... 

SO... in about 2 weeks we should have phones that will work in Germany for cell phones AND have a home phone that we can call home to the states for free!!!  FREEEE... OK, so it costs us about $19 Euro a month, but shoot, that's a drop in the bucket compared to what it would cost without that.

Wonderful Wednesday...

OK So Tuesday (or was that Monday?) wasn't so wonderful as I made it all the way into work and to the first room of my office... and then when I stood up to go to another office... flop, flop, flop!!!

 I had a BAD flat tire in my shoe!!!  Yes, this is what it looked like when I got back to the hotel later in the morning.  It was sooo funny!  So no one had any super glue at all at work and *I* had a meeting to go to with the big boss in my area... yeah, fun.  So I asked the Marines across the hall if someone had anything to include duct tape....

 Yep, they had duct tape!!!  Talk about classy, eh?  ha!!!  I fixed up my shoe, kept my foot on the floor and tried to not draw any attention to it!  I then went over to the BX during my lunch break and picked up shoes from there... I did find a nice pair that were very close to what I had but they actually have heels on them and are better for me in the winter weather here!  Score.


Annnndddd today we signed the final paperwork for the apartment.
SO here are the picture from the house today... starting from the top floor - this is the north side room with the tilted ceilings.  I think this will be an office or possibly a guest room.  it's on the 3rd floor - which here is called the 2nd as they start with 0 for ground , then 1 then 2.

 Nice bright hall way with the stairway to the downstairs... and the bath to the right.

 The bath - it's small but functional and the lovely skylight is GREAT - as you can open it and there is a pole to get the window back down again to lock it.  It's GREAT to have the airflow from the bottom floor to the top!

 This is the south room - it's quite large and look at that cute terrace!  I can imagine sitting out there having a tea watching the world!

 OK, down the stairs to the master floor leel....

 The north side room - will be an office or a guest room ... probably an office as it's next to our room and if we put the guest upstairs everyone coming to stay would have their own bath.

 This is the master bedroom and I just noticed that window to the left is full length to the floor... interesting... you can see the shed in the back yard (aka garden)  The others who lived here prior to us had some wardrobes on that side... note that there are NO closets... welcome to Europe... wardrobes are the thing here!

 "master bath" aka main floor bath... two sinks... bath.... and shower behind the door....  I thought I had a picture of that shower... but maybe not...

Here... I'll never understand why they don't shove the toilet over and make a MUCH bigger shower.. but OK... we'll deal with it as it is what it is... it'll do.  The shower is the same size upstairs as here.. and it will do for now... it's a temporary thing... temporary... keep repeating after me.

 This is the hall and that wardrobe will move to a bedroom to be used there... but for now it's in the hall as we purchased it from the prior tenants.

 Yep, MORE stairs!!!!  ha!

 main floor as seen from the kitchen.  those doors ALL open - as in it can be very, very open to the outside... and I LOVE that idea.  We plan on using this as a very large dining room and the living room will go downstairs... yep, there is MORE... four floors...

 Butch putting our lovely $20 microwave into the microwave hole....

 This is the entry area...

 Tiny 1/2 bath right off the front door.

 Potty... why is that toilet paper blowing out?  Not a clue.. probably because the windows are open and I just shut that door, but it's funny that I JUST noticed this as I'm publishing the blog!  ha!

No pictures of the stairs going down this time... they were right beside the 1/2 bath and the door... as you walk in and face a stairwell and a few doors... if you go downstairs you get to this room:

 They consider this a craft room or hobby room... we will call this our living room for the duration and put our living room down here to watch TV and hang out.

 good size storage room in the basement...

 absolutely HUGE landry room with a sink and a FOLDING area... I could even get to like doing laundry down here!!

 The other end... they have heated floors throughout... this is going to be GREAT... the water pipes and heating elements are all in this corner.

 OK, the back yard is in rough shape right now as they had a BIG down out there... a Rottwieler... so a baby horse.  There is straw out there to keep the seed down and we'll rake it up and/or add seed as the spring hits to see if we can get the lawn looking good.  I did tell her I love flowers, so we were given permission to plant as we want.  Should be fun to plant here.

 This is the back of the garage...

This is the other side of the house... so tiny, tiny, tiny!  BUT it's all we need.... really.

I forgot to get a good shot of the front of the house and see how it all looks from the outside.

Friday we get temp furniture... and who knows when we get the rest of the goods... sometime in March I'm sure.  So about three weeks to go until we can really settle in, but it's a start!

Saturday wanderings

Today I pressed to go to the downtown market in Sindelfingen - the town we are staying in.  It was a nice walk - we parked near the downtown and walked in... a few euro for parking street side and off we went.  

Look, Woolworth still exists here!  This is the mall at Sindelfingen.

 OK, this one makes me giggle... let me know when you SEE it... I just started chuckling and told Butch to just look and do the same... let me know when you see it... his reaction was hilarious.  Same as mine... what on earth???

 There is a sheep on the corner of this building.  Not really sure why, but it's there... and it matches the horse from the picture prior - ha!

 Not sure what this building is, but the vines are great and the construction of the doors was new.. but there was a lot of older construction in there... now keep in mind that most of this was rebuilt with older material in the 40's after the war... still pretty.

 A fun door into someones house...

 This is actually a pizzeria in the walking zone of the downtown - very cool older building.

 This is how the buildings are constructed with the older boulders and plaster... very cool to see some being redone in downtown.

Another cool older door in the old part of town.

Note the center is sinking?  There was a lot of sinking in this old building... and the carport to the left - very cool... large older building with maybe 6 apartments in there... larger apartments, but still apartments.  Not the place I would want to live, but to each their own.

Dinner tonight was the steak house for a VERY nice meal that we splurged on... it was a hard day for me finding out that our Unaccompanied baggage was to be delayed.  What does this mean to me?  We have no dishes, no cookware, no blankets, sheets, towels.  NOTHING to start a house with... so we have a house to move into on the 15th.. with NOTHING to move in with but the clothes we have with us and the few loaner furniture items we get from housing... we will have to buy blankets, sheets, pillows and towels and stuff to make the place livable for the three more weeks until our house hold goods get here...very frustrating!!

Oh, well... we'll make do and get the minimum we'll need to survive until the stuff gets here...first world problems, right?

FriYAY! (aka working is for the birds!)

So I have finished my first week at work... not that I'm working really as I'm still holding for all the access that will be required to actually WORK, but I'm there, I'm watching and I'm learning and seeing how things work and getting to know a little bit about how things work here.

It's going to be interesting... we'll leave it at that... but mostly my look today has been something like this...😨  This job is going to be a little more than I was bargaining for, but still, I think it's doable... and I'm looking forward to the challenge.  This is what I will be repeating for the next three years, I'm sure!  Here's hoping I'm ready for the challenges coming my way.

Other than that on the fun side - the car has changed positions since Monday...
She is now in this status -

What does this mean?  who on earth knows.  What I THINK it means iis that she is sittings in the port just waiting for a truck to be full and ready to come to Boblingen to the receiving area here!!!  YaY!  Come on Reba, get here... although, shhhh, don't tell her I sort of like this little VW wagon I'm driving around town as it's a 6 speed stick shift....  it's kinda zippy!

 So I have told you guys that I am SO going to miss breakfast fixed for me here at the hotel... so this is my typical breakfast from here... some days it may be bacon (aka Speck) and on really good days it will have the grilled veggies on there too with bell peppers and spinach.  Today was baked halves of tomatoes with cheese.  Not my favorite, so I pass on those.  There is typically a smoothie a day.  It may be strawberry, mango, pineapple.  I guess what ever they have a lot of in the back they will just whip it into a smoothie...  quite tasty.  Then here is the standard cappuccino and a glass of cranberry juice along with it.  MMMMMMM.

Thought I would share that with you this morning.  Some days I get a bowl of yogurt and granola, but honestly as I will probably be shifting back to that when I get the house, I am avoiding it and going for the gusto for now :)  I will be good soon enough.

So - today was the last day of the first week and I survived!!  Yay me!!  I did get a few days of "drinking from the fire hose" type of information overload... but hey, it's all good..  I'll get there in time.  I survived moving to SMXG and adjusted quick enough... so I'm sure it will happen here... it's just a little more daunting as it's more "in your face" real world stuff here... in the states it's more abstract in what you're working with.  Anyway, suffice to  say I have had a GREAT deer in the headlights look for the week - ha!  I'm sure I look quite petrified at times!

Last nights dinner was room service.  I finally tried to club sandwich and had a HUGE fruit salad to go with it... it was delicious - just fresh fruit cut up, but it was JUST what I wanted for my dessert!  Butch had the wiener schnitzel.  He said it was good.  Tonight we chose to go to a asian place - Siam  - well, it was Butch's choice, so we sought it out.  It was down the road from where I had chosen a few nights ago. 

 I took a minute from my navigating to take a picture of the lights in downtown Boblingen's walking area... they are pretty cool - they really light the way and are just cool.

Anyway we followed the directions on the phone and ended up BEHIND the place we needed to be... so we went back the way we came and tried again, but ended up missing it AGAIN... pulled into McDonalds.  Nope, didn't see it... looked AGAIN and I zoomed in the building and we found it was across the street upstairs over the toy store.  OK then... we drove over there, squoze into a parking spot... went up the flight and a half of stairs only to find out that they didn't have room for us as they were booked solid for the night.  Good to know they are popular and looking at the menu sign at the entrance we WILL be back there...  with reservations this time. 

So, we were on standby and Butch wanted to go to the Chinese place round the corner from the hotel but honestly I wasn't too awfully thrilled about that so I suggested a local pizza place that I had wanted to try.  We agreed to try it, called ot see if we needed reservations - NOPE, so off we went!!

BEST decision ever!!!
I was reading through the menu and mentioned to Butch they had HIS favorite pizza there (Diavola)... and kept reading and found MY favorite pizza there (Capriciosa) and said... uh, yeah, game over, I'm getting MY pizza - you get what you want!  ha! 

 It did NOT disappoint!!!  It was delicious and just what I wanted/needed for the night!! Wasn't too heavy and was VERY close to what I would have gotten in Italy - actually I think it was even better than what I would have gotten in Aviano!  More toppings than they would do there!

Butch had the carbonara and said it was BETTER than the first time he got it at the other restaurant (La Romantica)... so I think this place will be revisited in the summer if we don't find a similar place close to our new place.

VERY tasty!!

So, as you can tell this move so far has been about the food... but the good news is that the walking is keeping me from getting too awfully chubby just yet!  This is a good thing!

Not sure what is on the agenda this weekend, but next weekend we should be moving into the house with temporary furniture and hopefully some of our unaccompanied baggage if it's here by then.  It is supposed to be here the 18th but it just dawned on me that the 18th is a freaking holiday, so we won't have anything until the 19th, I'm sure...  Ah, well.  We'll work around it.

Wednesday the 6th....

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - what happened to the 5th?  Well, it was spent finding a restaurant after work, then navigating to said restaurant... and then getting home at 9:30 and me trying load pictures that were being difficult and me going right to sleep instead because I have started back to my "normal" routine of getting up at 5:30am to get to work early... why on earth would I do this when I live a meer 15 minutes from work?  Well, because here at the hotel they FEED ME!!  HA!  I can get up and go down for Breakfast and it is nice and hot and cooked at 6:30am.

I found that out on Tuesday morning - it wasn't open when I went down at 6:15am, but it opened up at 6:30 without fanfare and I got to have my nice little on egg over easy with potatoes, sausage, croissant and when I'm really lucky some nice mixed grilled vegetables as well.  Some days it's roasted tomato halves with cheese - meh... I would have liked them raw better... and some days it's mushrooms.  Those are OK too, but I do prefer the days that they have the bell peppers and spinach instead.  MUCH more of what I want - yum...

And a coffee - of course, and it's a cappuccino to boot, so even BETTER... mmmmm  So, loaded up on Breakfast I head out.  YESTERDAY I got my ID finally!!!!!

Did you hear the whooping of joy from there??? Yeah, I was super happy... finally  I can do a few more things.  I went and started my security crap (not sure why the h*ll they didn't have me do this PRIOR to the ID as it was coming no matter what), then applications to systems and the drill goes on ... probably another week before my email becomes active but I will email you when I get it completed if you leave me a message here or PM me.  Either way.

I still get texts on our old phone numbers (they are FREEEEE)... so you can always text me as well.  I'm here... just about 6 to 10 hours later than you!!

I'm waiting until we get into our house (which is what I really should be doing is xfering money to my new german bank account that I got today... but I'm being a slug and blogging instead!  I came home to an empty hotel room.  I assume Butch is up doing laundry... but it's not defined yet as his phone is here in the room... and he is not.  The only evidence I have that is where he is, is that the laundry bag from his stuff is gone.

SO, back to yesterday.  I went home and got Butch and dragged him to base to get his ID as well so now we're both set with ID's that won't get us scrutinized either... AND we went to check the mail on the way off base and we had MAIL in the mailbox!!!!  Yay!!

OH, AND the car is in country now... it's not HERE, but it's in Germany at least!!!  Yay!!!  We're about 7 to 10 days away from a Reba Reunion!!

Anyway, we finally made it back to the hotel and I was in charge of picking out the place for dinner... OK it's really a shot in the dark, but I'll pick one.
Well, I had to pick the restaurant last night and I chose this one:

 It's more of a place for summer visitors as See in Germany is a lake... it's a small lake, but it's a nice little lake in the middle of town that they overlook - so it's a nice spot to have a dinner and enjoy the view of the water or sit on their terrace overlooking the water.

The food was DELICIOUS!!!

 Check out this salad... what are those pink things on top?  That is what we can only guess are beet root sprouts and they were very tasty.  There were shredded carrots under there and some pickled cucumbers and something else that was shredded and white, but all super tasty with their own dressing on it.  mmmmmm.

 This is my dinner...Kotelett vom Mangalitsa-Schwein (pork cutlet) mit mziebeimamelade (onion marmalade) Blaue Kartoffeln (blue potate) and Schwarzwurzel (It is also called Skorzener root and winter asparagus or "poor people asparagus")

Butch's dinner was: Schwäbischer Zwiebelrostbraten ... swabian roast beef with spaetzle.... mmmmmmm  I had this a few nights prior at the hotel in smaller format...

very good meal, but as I said I would recommend this place for summer over winter, however, it was nicely decorated regardless, so it was enjoyable.  We were only the 3rd set of folks in there... there was a larger group in the center of the restaurant and us and one other couple in the place... but I found it very enjoyable. 

Then when we came home I just went straight to sleep (or close enough!)... zzzz - full belly!!

Monday.... Monday... (insert music in the background)

 Today dawned nice and clear today... no snow, no rain... what?  Yeah, it's getting less and less snowy and yucky over the last few days!  Yay!! 

So - what happened to Sunday??  Absolutly freaking NOTHING.  I got up and got showered and went downstairs and grabbed some brunch.  Butch was convinced that Brunch didn't exist AND he didn't want to go down anyway, so I went solo.  I went ahead and went down and found that Bruch did exist... so I got some fruit, yogurt and coffee.  I was even nice enough to get coffee for Butch.  SO.  I had some breakfast, thinking that I would just get a little to eat as Butch said that he wanted breakfast... so ... we never got out for lunch... we didn't even leave the room until dinner... then we went downstairs for dinner.  I didn't really care as I was able to read and nap and just chill for the day!  It was nice!! 

Monday was the day after superbowl, so we had been told that we would be coming in at noon rather than at regular time... then I found out AFTER I got to work that they didn't get the 1/2 day after all.  Well, good thing I went to housing to finish up the contract with them for the house - eh?  Yeah.  Lucky me.  Butch came in with me to do laundry - then he forgot to give me my ID back as we came into base, so I jumped out of the car without it, so he ran it up to me just as I was getting into see the counselor, so he came  on in and participated.

So - we have a date to move in and now I know what to do with the contract.  The temp furniture is ordered and all is well with the world.

Then I went to work and sat in on a few meetings.  Yeah... work.  Nothing grand, as I'm not really "in" work yet, but I'm there in the building.  Sigh.  I did run over to Patch to pick up a fan.  Why you ask?  Well, because there is no place with A/C here and this was/is a nice fan that will do the trick for the summer... for $20.  Works for me.  Then I dashed back to base to work... then didn't leave until 4pm after another meeting or two.

Tonight was a room service night after doing a few more things work/claims related to get some of the $$ back that we're hemorrhaging right now!

SO... this is what I ordered: Schwarzwälder Brotzeit 8.00 € Pfefferbeißer, Schwarzwälder Schinken, Schwäbischer Coppa, Obatzter Smoked and peppered dry cured sausage, Black Forrest ham, Swabian coppa, Bavarian spread cheese.  It's DELICIOUS!!!  I started eating before I took the picture again. 

 It's deslish... and it was the same again... and Butch got the same thing again -

He got the club sandwich!  It looked just as good again... and I still didn't ask for any :)  I still just enjoyed my choice and ate it all!!  Yeah!!!

So... how very boring, eh?  Yeah... things are definitely getting back to just "work as usual" now.  Sigh.  That's OK, I'm sure there will be LOTS more to do in a few more weeks with getting the house set up and getting things moved in.