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Montag, 7. September 2015
Weindorf and other things
durhamfamily, 00:48h
It is the weekend once again, so here I am to report on all of the most important news of the week.
Saturday was spent entirely at the Stuttgarter Weindorf. Weindorf is a large wine festival (45 different booths) held in Stuttgart every year. We walked from booth to booth trying different wines and eating various German treats. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of any of the wines I drank, but they were all pretty good. More importantly, I got a GIANT pretzel. It was very fancy, with an extra braid in the front. Elizabeth took pictures, so she'll need to post one for you. All in all, it was a festive, fun adventure. However, I think next time we should try something a little less expensive, haha.
We went to the festival with our American friends, Kyle and Chrissy (being the only two Kyles in Germany, it makes sense that we should hang out together). We have a lot in common, so it's nice we're all in Germany at the same time. On Sunday they adopted two adorable kittens! It sounds like we will be potential cat-sitters, so that will be fantastic. I wonder if they will get to meet Ozzie and Riker one day?
It was finally chilly enough Sunday for us to turn on our heat in the apartment. We should have turned it on much sooner than we did (Elizabeth has been wrapped up in a blanket for several hours). I'm not positive that I'm using the radiators correctly, because they sure don't get very warm.
On Tuesday, other Kyle and I went for a run. I can't remember the last time that I've run with someone else. Being the younger and fitter Kyle, he gets me to run faster than I'd run on my own. Kyle is a triathlon racer, so he's basically good at everything. It looks like he might join me in a few of my European marathons down the line.
Our first European vacation is coming up soon! I'll be away from work for nearly two weeks! I've never been away from a job that long before. It will be fantastic.
There isn't much else to report from last week. It feels like I am developing a good reputation at work. My German skills are still terrible, and I wish I had more time to work on it. One big problem is that I'm only able to study German at night, after work, when my brain is already mushy. I feel awful in German classes (typically 6:00 to 7:30) because I hardly participate whatsoever. I just glaze over like a potted plant. It's a good thing that Elizabeth is also there to pick up some of the slack. Practicing German during the day could potentially yield much better results. Too bad.
We miss everyone. I hope you are all doing great!
Saturday was spent entirely at the Stuttgarter Weindorf. Weindorf is a large wine festival (45 different booths) held in Stuttgart every year. We walked from booth to booth trying different wines and eating various German treats. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of any of the wines I drank, but they were all pretty good. More importantly, I got a GIANT pretzel. It was very fancy, with an extra braid in the front. Elizabeth took pictures, so she'll need to post one for you. All in all, it was a festive, fun adventure. However, I think next time we should try something a little less expensive, haha.
We went to the festival with our American friends, Kyle and Chrissy (being the only two Kyles in Germany, it makes sense that we should hang out together). We have a lot in common, so it's nice we're all in Germany at the same time. On Sunday they adopted two adorable kittens! It sounds like we will be potential cat-sitters, so that will be fantastic. I wonder if they will get to meet Ozzie and Riker one day?
It was finally chilly enough Sunday for us to turn on our heat in the apartment. We should have turned it on much sooner than we did (Elizabeth has been wrapped up in a blanket for several hours). I'm not positive that I'm using the radiators correctly, because they sure don't get very warm.
On Tuesday, other Kyle and I went for a run. I can't remember the last time that I've run with someone else. Being the younger and fitter Kyle, he gets me to run faster than I'd run on my own. Kyle is a triathlon racer, so he's basically good at everything. It looks like he might join me in a few of my European marathons down the line.
Our first European vacation is coming up soon! I'll be away from work for nearly two weeks! I've never been away from a job that long before. It will be fantastic.
There isn't much else to report from last week. It feels like I am developing a good reputation at work. My German skills are still terrible, and I wish I had more time to work on it. One big problem is that I'm only able to study German at night, after work, when my brain is already mushy. I feel awful in German classes (typically 6:00 to 7:30) because I hardly participate whatsoever. I just glaze over like a potted plant. It's a good thing that Elizabeth is also there to pick up some of the slack. Practicing German during the day could potentially yield much better results. Too bad.
We miss everyone. I hope you are all doing great!
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Samstag, 29. August 2015
German Stuffs
durhamfamily, 23:50h
We have a kitchen!
Sorry, did I blow the biggest news upfront? Should I end the blog already? Clearly I couldn't have anything more important to write about for this week.
It was so crazy: Rieger called Elizabeth on Wednesday, out of the blue, telling her they were coming on Friday. It's really weird that they operate on such short notice. If I was alone, I would likely need several days, if not weeks, in order to schedule time (an entire day!) away from work for them. Luckily, of course, I have Elizabeth here to take care of everything for me. I truly believe it would be impossible to manage all of it alone.
As you can see, it looks great. And Elizabeth had to sit around with them the entire day... from 8 am until 5 pm. I failed to get home early, so she had to deal with them alone. When I got home, she was in the process of signing the papers and handing them the cash.
Side note: I'm very uncomfortable about paying them cash. They supposedly checked a box that indicated they received cash from us, but it was all in German words that we weren't familiar with. I fully expect Rieger to come knocking down our door in a few weeks demanding a few more thousand euros.
BUT, who cares about a kitchen? This week my sister announced that she's pregnant! I will be studying up on the German family words. I will be an "Onkel", and they will be either my "Nichte" or my "Neffe"! After years of my sister telling me to hurry up, it looks like she has gone ahead and beaten me to it! She even sent us a letter about it (with suspiciously little postage...)!
In other news, no more long runs for me. My first European marathon is in 3 weeks. I am not ready in the slightest, so I won't be bragging about my results, haha. Regardless of pace, I fully intend to participate in as many marathons as humanly possible while I'm here.
Today I made an honest attempt to run to another mountain, but it was much much farther away than I expected. I will pencil it in for another day. As of this blog post, I have not identified this mystery mountain. Rest assured it will be found and conquered before I am done here.
That might be all that I have for you today. No new information about our speeding ticket, but we'll let you know when we know more about that subject. Elizabeth baked a cake today, so that'll be how I'm spending the rest of my evening.
Bis bald!
Sorry, did I blow the biggest news upfront? Should I end the blog already? Clearly I couldn't have anything more important to write about for this week.
It was so crazy: Rieger called Elizabeth on Wednesday, out of the blue, telling her they were coming on Friday. It's really weird that they operate on such short notice. If I was alone, I would likely need several days, if not weeks, in order to schedule time (an entire day!) away from work for them. Luckily, of course, I have Elizabeth here to take care of everything for me. I truly believe it would be impossible to manage all of it alone.
As you can see, it looks great. And Elizabeth had to sit around with them the entire day... from 8 am until 5 pm. I failed to get home early, so she had to deal with them alone. When I got home, she was in the process of signing the papers and handing them the cash.
Side note: I'm very uncomfortable about paying them cash. They supposedly checked a box that indicated they received cash from us, but it was all in German words that we weren't familiar with. I fully expect Rieger to come knocking down our door in a few weeks demanding a few more thousand euros.
BUT, who cares about a kitchen? This week my sister announced that she's pregnant! I will be studying up on the German family words. I will be an "Onkel", and they will be either my "Nichte" or my "Neffe"! After years of my sister telling me to hurry up, it looks like she has gone ahead and beaten me to it! She even sent us a letter about it (with suspiciously little postage...)!
In other news, no more long runs for me. My first European marathon is in 3 weeks. I am not ready in the slightest, so I won't be bragging about my results, haha. Regardless of pace, I fully intend to participate in as many marathons as humanly possible while I'm here.
Today I made an honest attempt to run to another mountain, but it was much much farther away than I expected. I will pencil it in for another day. As of this blog post, I have not identified this mystery mountain. Rest assured it will be found and conquered before I am done here.
That might be all that I have for you today. No new information about our speeding ticket, but we'll let you know when we know more about that subject. Elizabeth baked a cake today, so that'll be how I'm spending the rest of my evening.
Bis bald!
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Dienstag, 25. August 2015
Just a little late
durhamfamily, 00:49h
Hello Everybody!
I'm sorry this is a little late this week. The weekend was pretty full, and I knew you wouldn't mind waiting as long as I came back with some good stories.
First and biggest news of all: I got my first speeding ticket this weekend! Rewinding a little bit...
Our German teacher is unbelievably nice. Her husband was not using his car this weekend, so out of the blue she offered it to us.
On Friday we drove the car to the Seeger household. For anyone who doesn't remember: the Stefan worked with me when I first started at ZF. We had a delightful evening with them in their home... speaking English, playing with their children and their dog. It is a shame that we are not able to do it more often.
Here in Germany, traffic is monitored by completely by cameras. It's a very fair and reasonable system. You know that speeding equals ticket, so you don't speed. Well, we were caught by a traffic camera on the way home from the Seeger house. You know when it catches you because it flashes a blinding light in your eyes (smart, right?). I'm not thrilled about it, though, because I maintain that I was following the speed limits to the best of my knowledge. You could almost say that I was obsessive over them (yeah - I don't want to cause trouble if I'm literally incapable of communicating with law enforcement).
Anyway, because I THINK I was going the speed limit, I have no idea how much I was speeding. At least if a cop pulled me over, I'd know what kind of trouble I was in. That's my first issue. Secondly, it wasn't our car! Now, because of this camera system, we must explain the ticket to our German teacher... when the police mail it to her house.
Needless to say, I refused to drive the car on Saturday. Instead, I used my long run to climb a few of the big hills in the neighboring cities. I've spent weeks looking at these hills from afar, wondering exactly what and where they were. It is very rewarding running to something that you can see far off in the distance. I should keep track of which ones I've visited.
On Sunday we drove to Bartholomä (pron. bar-toe-loh-MAY) for a giant horse festival! Elizabeth posted several videos on Facebook. Germany seems so much like America... except for the times when it totally doesn't. She has some pictures, too. I'll tell her to post them on here this week.
That's a random picture of our tower. There are five of them along the outer wall of the city, but this is the one right next to us (and it is the reason why we'll never need to purchase a clock for the apartment). I'm fairly certain that we have the best one.
Before I say goodnight, I want to apologize for any current or future grammatical errors. I find that I am losing both my German and my English and a fairly rapid rate. To make matters worse, the German keyboard has a few critical differences to the English keyboard. I'm actually comfortable with them now... but that means that I make all sorts of typos when I'm back at home with this keyboard. It's just a mess, haha.
Macht's gut
I'm sorry this is a little late this week. The weekend was pretty full, and I knew you wouldn't mind waiting as long as I came back with some good stories.
First and biggest news of all: I got my first speeding ticket this weekend! Rewinding a little bit...
Our German teacher is unbelievably nice. Her husband was not using his car this weekend, so out of the blue she offered it to us.
On Friday we drove the car to the Seeger household. For anyone who doesn't remember: the Stefan worked with me when I first started at ZF. We had a delightful evening with them in their home... speaking English, playing with their children and their dog. It is a shame that we are not able to do it more often.
Here in Germany, traffic is monitored by completely by cameras. It's a very fair and reasonable system. You know that speeding equals ticket, so you don't speed. Well, we were caught by a traffic camera on the way home from the Seeger house. You know when it catches you because it flashes a blinding light in your eyes (smart, right?). I'm not thrilled about it, though, because I maintain that I was following the speed limits to the best of my knowledge. You could almost say that I was obsessive over them (yeah - I don't want to cause trouble if I'm literally incapable of communicating with law enforcement).
Anyway, because I THINK I was going the speed limit, I have no idea how much I was speeding. At least if a cop pulled me over, I'd know what kind of trouble I was in. That's my first issue. Secondly, it wasn't our car! Now, because of this camera system, we must explain the ticket to our German teacher... when the police mail it to her house.
Needless to say, I refused to drive the car on Saturday. Instead, I used my long run to climb a few of the big hills in the neighboring cities. I've spent weeks looking at these hills from afar, wondering exactly what and where they were. It is very rewarding running to something that you can see far off in the distance. I should keep track of which ones I've visited.
On Sunday we drove to Bartholomä (pron. bar-toe-loh-MAY) for a giant horse festival! Elizabeth posted several videos on Facebook. Germany seems so much like America... except for the times when it totally doesn't. She has some pictures, too. I'll tell her to post them on here this week.
That's a random picture of our tower. There are five of them along the outer wall of the city, but this is the one right next to us (and it is the reason why we'll never need to purchase a clock for the apartment). I'm fairly certain that we have the best one.
Before I say goodnight, I want to apologize for any current or future grammatical errors. I find that I am losing both my German and my English and a fairly rapid rate. To make matters worse, the German keyboard has a few critical differences to the English keyboard. I'm actually comfortable with them now... but that means that I make all sorts of typos when I'm back at home with this keyboard. It's just a mess, haha.
Macht's gut
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