Some minor annoyances about our life in Germany

At gas stations around our area, you cannot pay at the pump. You must go into the little store and pay an attendant. This wouldn't be that big a deal except for the fact that there is usually no place to park your car away from the pump to let other people pull up to one while you pay. As a result, I often see cars back up down the street as drivers wait for their turn to fill up their tank.

******************

This little garden and wall in front of our house is a pain. First of all, I need to weed the gosh darn thing and keep the rosebush trimmed, and some of you may know that gardening is not high on my list of priorities. Maybe in the future, but not now. The bigger issue is that little wall. It's a low one, but just high enough that if I park beside it facing away from the front door, I cannot open my car door. It took me whacking the door against the wall several times for this fact to become ingrained in my brain.

**********************

When we were preparing to move to Germany, I said to myself, "Having the internet will make everything easier. I mean, you can even watch full episodes of Dora the Explorer on-line." Ha. Having the internet is a godsend, but forget about being able to watch programs and videos from the U.S. with no problems. Go to Nickjr.com, Hulu and even sometimes youtube and try to watch a video while you're abroad. You will get a message informing you that that video or program is unavailable outside the U.S. David did some research and found out that you can fool some of those sites into believing you are in the U.S., but over time, those sites figured out what we were doing and we couldn't watch the videos anymore. We finally found a way to watch some show and videos, but we then run into the problem of having a slow internet connection and at times, the video needs to buffer ever 5 seconds and makes watching something too frustrating. That's just one reason why I have bought so many DVDs for the kids these past three years.

*********************

The grocery store where I do my weekly shopping has stopped selling my orange Irish cheddar in favor of yellow British cheddar -- not the same thing, believe me. It's a sign that this is the right time for us to move home.

**********************

I'm not sure what is up with German electronics. Since we've been here, we've gone through 2 DVD players and the one we have now is on the fritz; our DVR is freezing up all the time; I've gone through 3 pairs of good-quality headphones for my ipod (can't do earbuds); 2 of our 3 telephone handsets won't pick up calls; James' drumset and Micaela's electric guitar -- each less than 2 years old -- have needed to have pieces replaced; we've gone through 2 vacuum cleaners and my current one just had a wheel fall apart; 2 little boom boxes have broken. Some of the items were hand-me-downs and it wasn't a big surprise when they broke, but other people have complained to me about how often they need to replace their electronics here.

**********************

Right in front of our house is space for two cars to park. The house right next to us has a handicapped reserved spot and we are not allowed to park in front of their house. 95% of the time when I take the car somewhere, upon arriving home, I have my parking spot open right in front of my front door. I say "my parking spot" but I have no legal claim on it. It's public parking. 5% of the time, however, there is a car parked in my spot and it is usually parked in such a way that I cannot park in front nor behind it. I must park somewhere else on the street. It's not a big deal, but I still let curse words fly out of my mouth every time we arrive home to see someone else parked in front of our house. David had to find another spot on the street about 1/2 the time when he came home from work as someone took the other spot in front of our house.

When we first moved here, it was an issue, though. There was a woman who came to ride her horse in the afternoon near our house (it was boarded in the barn across the street) and when I would come home from picking up the kids at school, she would be parked in such a way that she was taking up both spots in front of our house. I finally had had it and asked the nice teenage boy across the street whose car that was and could he please ask the driver to just park farther up or father back so that I could park there, too. She never parked in front of our house again.