Store Hours

This is a picture of our dining room with a wood burning stove. There are seats that run along it where you can sit to warm your....seat.

We went to IKEA today which is near Wiesbaden, (a U.S. army base and hospital is located there). The kids couldn't help but notice the Toys R Us right across the way. We saw several things at IKEA that we would like to get, but we need to wait till our container arrives with all our belongings. Our house feels very roomy right now, but that's because it is sparsely furnished. We're actually liking how much easier it is to keep tidy and are starting to dread having all our stuff here. Even though we got rid of a lot and put a lot into storage, we still probably brought too much.

The kids like the IKEA because they can go from floor to floor via slides rather than stairs. Plus we let them get hotdogs.

On the way home, we stopped by the mall so that I could get a cell phone number (it's not set up to call internationally, though) and we needed to shop for meals for today and tomorrow because stores are closed on Sundays.

Until 1996, the government mandated that stores close by 6:00 pm on weekdays, at 2:00pm on Saturdays and they were to be closed on Sundays, to ensure the reduction of working hours in Germany. You can imagine how hard that was on single people or families where both parents worked. I have heard horror stories about people needing to leave work early to go food shopping or about that one Thursday a month where stores were allowed to stay open till 8:00pm, it was a madhouse trying to get shopping done. Plus, you only keep a few day's worth of food in your kitchen at a time. In Germany, people don't "stock up" on food the way we do in the U.S. In fact, our American friend Dina told us that she went food shopping every day on her way from work.

The government has since relaxed the rules and the grocery stores around us are open until 8:00pm and one is even open until 10:00pm, but all are closed on Sundays. Fortunately, bakeries are sometimes open for a few hours Sunday morning so you can get fresh brötchen (rolls) for breakfast. In an emergency on a Sunday, you can get some milk and bread at a gas station, or some people even go to the airport grocery store which is allowed to stay open.

I was nervous about the whole food shopping thing before I came to Germany. You hear about the stores hours (which it turns out is not a problem) and then most Germans have small kitchen and tiny fridges, and even smaller freezers in those fridges. Our generous landlord, however, installed new large kitchen cabinets and a refrigerator the same size as our American one. Even with the storage space, I still go food shopping almost everyday, mostly because I can't come up with more than one meal idea a day. Plus, it's a nice walk by myself during quiet time. So far I have been pretty wimpy and have made familiar foods - hamburgers, shepherd's pie, pasta, frankfurters, etc. But I always have to be sure to shop for Sundays in advance.

The International School

Today is a big day. We drive the kids to the International School where they are to be tested for grade placement. There are definitely spots for Micaela and Emilie, but no spot yet for James. I'm working under the assumption that they will see the wisdom of making a spot become available as we will eventually have four kids enrolled there.

We have decided on this school, called ISF, because we were already familiar with it (our American friend's kids went there) and they stress learning German more than the other international school did.

It's my first time driving and I'm OK once we get going, but now that I'm behind the wheel, I realize that there are tons of traffic signs and I have absolutely no idea what they mean. I need to get to that driving school fast! We not taking the highway and make a few wrong turns, but arrive safely.

We need to go through a manned security gate to get into the school and while there, Micaela and James get tested in math and English. It turns out Emilie will need to come back another day.

David leaves to go to work and I take the little ones onto the playground. I meet another American mom there whose son is being tested as well. She has been here for several weeks and said that things are going OK. She's not overly enthusiastic, but she also has four kids and is still getting adjusted. Her son did not pass the school's math test on his first try -- and he was in honors math back home in the U.S. This was his second try, so now I am a bit nervous about how my own the kids will fare.

She tells me that she has "Slingbox"--where they kept their house in the U.S. and hooked their TV back home through the computer to their TV here. She can watch her American TV here, though it's at real time, which means The Office is on at 3:00am here. No, problem, though. She has Tivo so she just tapes everything and watches it later.

Back home, we go the the playground and a grandmother strikes up a conversation with me, but I feel a bit conspicuous. When I go to the park, once I open my mouth and English comes out, everyone stares at us.

We are getting more used to our house. Compared to most German homes, our kitchen is big and we have a full-sized fridge (much to my relief). Other homes I have been in have a fridge that is 2/3 the size of ours and then the freezer is 1/4 the size of the typical American one. You can probably fit 2 gallons of ice cream in there and that's it. On the other hand, the microwave oven and regular oven are much, much smaller and have no clocks nor timers. I use a little plastic timer if I'm baking.

Penny, our relocation agent, told me a funny story about how her family hosted some others for Thanksgiving, to show their German friends how we celebrate it. She got a big turkey ready for roasting, opened the door of the oven and then realized that it wouldn't fit! Her husband had to saw the handles off the roasting pan and it just barely fit.

We have a 1/2 bath on the first floor and a family room that is like a solarium -- lots of glass for me to clean. At night we lower the electric metal blinds and feel quite sheltered.

The kids have their own floor with a full bathroom and their bedrooms are much bigger than their old ones in Atlanta. Rebecca and Emilie share a room which frees up the smallest one as a playroom.

Go up a wooden spiral staircase and you're in the penthouse suite. We have our bedroom, a large bathroom, an office and then a dressing room where we will put shränke. The first few times I had to venture back down the spiral staircase, I got a little dizzy, plus you look down 1-1/2 stories. Poor Guinness, he's still not comfortable either. He sort of surfs down the stairs. All you hear is him slipping and sliding down.

The basement is divided into three small rooms and we hope to put our fußball table in one of them.

We have many rose bushes in our backyard along with three wooden barrels with lily pads and goldfish. We also have two little garden sheds to put bikes and landscaping materials. There is a great climbing tree with a swing for the kids as well.

At the Playground

Today is David's first day of work. My first day at home alone.

Some workers come to do some odd jobs around the house, like fix the dishwasher and put in new lights. They speak no English and I speak only a little German, but we manage OK.

Penny, our relocation agent stops by and I asked her to show me how the washer and dryer work. She oohed and aahed over the new front loading machines our landlord got for us and translated the settings for me. She reminded me, "And don't forget to empty the water reservoir out of the dryer when it finishes a load. " Excuse me? Empty a water container? In the dryer?

There are two dryer systems in Germany, one like the American system (a heater heats the water in the clothes and the water passes though an exhaust vent in the form of steam to the outside) and the other, like ours, where water is drawn into a large reservoir. It probably holds almost a gallon of water. That would come in handy for watering flowers during all our months of drought in Atlanta!

Our dog Guinness and one of the workers walk into one of the glass doors.

During quiet time, the kids obediently keep quiet inside and I walk to one of the three grocery stores located only 5 minutes away. As a going away gift, my friend Valerie gave me a Pride and Prejudice canvas tote bag. She knew from experience (she and her husband Jim lived in Germany for three years when they were first married) that I would need a shopping bag. Here you pay for plastic bags at the grocery store, so people bring their own canvas bags or even baskets. It's saves money and it's less wasteful, but, hey, I re-used every one of those little plastic bags from the supermarkets back home in the U.S. They were handy.

The kids like going to the park and always stop to say hi to the chickens along the way. The chickens come running to us in such a comical fashion. We never feed them, though, much to their disappointment and I'm waiting for one of my kids to pecked as they can get rather peeved at us.

The playground has the tallest slide I have ever seen and the kids carry sand in their shirts up to the top and pour it down the slide to make their descent even faster.

Graffiti is everywhere.

 Leg placement insures that Becca doesn't go flying across the park.

It also has a zipline which I have never seen in an American playground.

I'm brave and decide to try to cook wienerschnitzel. It's a bit overcooked, but OK for a first try.

David brings home a rental car for me to use -- a little tiny Ford Fiesta. Who cares how little it is, it's automatic!

But I need to learn stick eventually. David has tried teaching me a few times, but I'm nervous and jumpy and it's not going well. We also found that Germany does not recognize our Georgia driver's licenses, so we will need to submit to the notoriously difficult German driving tests within the next six months -- notoriously difficult even for Germans. We will need to take lessons at a driving school, so maybe they'll be able to teach me stick.

We use our new dishwasher for the first time. We use the little tablets of detergent and need to put rinsing agent and salt into little containers inside the dishwasher. The water here is so hard that you need to buy special salt for your dishwasher (they don't have water softeners). The only thing I notice is that when I go to empty the dishwasher, it smells a little funny. I told David that it reminds me of a not-so-clean beach. This is probably one of those things we won't notice in a few weeks (I hope).

Shopping and German TV

The town we live in is Liederbach, which means "song creek" and is named for the creek that runs along the path near our house. It is about 15 minutes from Frankfurt and 15 minutes from school. David is looking forward to a 15 or 20 minute commute to the airport as opposed to 1 to 1-1/2 hours each way in Atlanta.

Today our neighbor Frau Müller presented us with the traditional housewarming gift of salt and bread. The bread is a very large, very delicious round loaf of dark country bread.

We went to our local mall, which is an open air one, to do some shopping and were surprised to see dogs all over the place. Can you imagine seeing a woman at the cosmetics counter at Macy's picking out lipstick with her labrador retriever sitting calmly by her side?

I kept an eye out for the fashion trends. Women with very, very, very low-cut jeans with huge shiny belt buckles to draw your eye and lots of men in capris. It was warm, in the mid-80s, but I'm glad that I remembered that Europeans tend not to wear shorts in public. I wore my jeans and counted only two women in shorts. Otherwise, they were all in long pants, capris or skirts. Later on, a German woman would tell me that she doesn't even own a pair of shorts.

Our mall does have McDonald's, Häagen-Dazs, Starbucks and a Game Stop. There is also a movie theater and this week, every single movie playing is American or British, but dubbed in German. And I never knew that our cell phone provider, T-Mobile, is a German company.

When we got home, David walked into one of the glass doors.

After dinner, we gave the kids an assignment. They were to go to the park and say, "Hello" (Germans do say, "Hallo") to one person. They returned, very proud of themselves. They said hello to two children who turned out to be very friendly, but, alas, they were only visiting the area for the day. I think it did give our kids a bit of confidence, though.

The TV satellite fellow stopped by and hooked up our TV. We had fun flipping though the channels to see what we would recognize. We do have the option of paying extra and receiving some American English-speaking channels, but we'll see how we do with regular German channels for now. In any event, we still saw Spongebob, Caillou, Jimmy Neutron, etc. albeit in German. Spongebob is Spongebob Schwammkopf (Spongebob Spongehead), Patrick is Patrick, and Squidward is Thaddeus (???).

Getting Settled

Doors, doors, everywhere! Our house has a door going into every single room, into every single hallway. That means there is a door going up the entryway stairs to the first floor, a door going into the kitchen, a door going into the living room area, a door going from the top of the stairs into the kids' hallway, doors everywhere! Having so many doors means you only need to heat the area you're in and it's more economical.

It is a problem for us, however. You open the front door to enter our "foyer" area. Then up a set of stairs and there is a door that leads into the first floor area. That door is glass. There is another door that goes from the hallway into our living room. That door is glass. Do you see where I am going with this? James, Emilie and Rebecca have all walked headlong into one of the glass doors. They are heavy doors, it's shocking when it happens and it hurts! Plus, it is a little humiliating. We need to get some stickers for those doors. I have a feeling they won't be the last ones to bonk their heads.

After a breakfast of yogurt and cereal, the kids were off again to the park. James came back rather frustrated. "The kids all speak GERMAN!"

Penny, our relocation agent, stops by to see how we are getting along and promptly walks into one of the glass door. That's four people, and counting.

The most important thing we learned from Penny is the importance of "quiet hours." Everyday from 1:00 to 3:00 and all day Sunday is quiet time. No making loud noises. That means the kids can be outside, but they can't be yelling (at the park is OK). You shouldn't be running your vacuum cleaner nor your lawn mower. I'm glad she told us about that before we had to hear about it from one of our disgruntled neighbors!

We meet our neighbors, the Müllers who are our landlord's parents. Our landlord and his family lived in this house until they decided to move into the city this summer. The Müllers seem very nice and speak English. They miss having their grandchildren right next door and said that they are happy a family with children moved in. You can't wish for a better reception than that. There are not a lot of children in our neighborhood, so I was nervous about how we would be greeted.

I make our first meal and go out on a limb and make......... cheeseburgers. It's tricky as I don't have any of my kitchen supplies (we do have rented ones), no cook books, no internet to look up recipes and a good deal of the food at the supermarket is unfamiliar. I'm playing it safe for now.

Arriving in Frankfurt

We arrive to a rather deserted Frankfurt airport in the early morning hours, find our luggage and dog Guinness, and make our way to our new/used minivan, tired but excited. Imagine my shock when I settle down into the passenger seat and notice that the van is stick shift. I think a naughty expletive escaped my lips. So, along with needing to get settled in a new country, learn new driving rules and my way around, I would need to learn stick shift?

My first impression of the Frankfurt area is that it was very industrial. We pass by a good deal of factories and smokestacks, but then a second later, we see cornfields and cows grazing underneath power lines. We see walking/biking paths everywhere.

James comments on the amount of graffiti. It is everywhere and doesn't look to us like it is gang-related. We'll need to research this. Someone would later tell me that graffiti is an acceptable form of self-expression here. Hmmm...

We go first to our American friend Dina's empty apartment where the kids and I immediately fall asleep on the floor and David leaves to check on the rental furniture being moved into our house. We have a relocation service that has been taking care of a lot of the hassles of getting set up here.

For dinner, we go to an Italian restaurant for pizza and the kids have their first taste of spetzi - a mixture of Coke and Orange Fanta. The kids get ice cream cones for dessert and walking back to the apartment, an older woman speaks to James. When he doesn't answer her, she catches up to David and says, "I spoke to your son and he didn't answer me." David explains that we're American and James doesn't speak German. She replies, "Oh, I was just saying to him, 'You look like you're really enjoying your ice cream!' " She goes on to tell us how nice the Hessen region is, how important family is ("And look at you! With four children!") She wants to touch all the children and wishes us well. Hmmm, what's this about Germans in this area being unfriendly? Well, that was an excellent first impression.

We finally arrive at our new home in Liederbach, a small town located west of Frankfurt. From the outside, our house appears to be a small row home, but inside it is large. And we have our much longed-for basement!

The floors are all tile or wooden and with little furniture, there are strong echoes. We're having a hard time understanding each other at times.

The kids right away take off for our backyard...

...and then down the path that they know leads to a playground. In my jet-lagged state, I struggle to put five feather beds into their covers. In Germany, you have a mattress covered with a fitted sheet and then a feather bed (like a comforter) in a cover. That's it. No top sheet, no other blankets. There are lighter weight feather beds in the summer and heavier ones for the winter. Also, the pillows are squares. I must have been tired as the things I noted right away have to do with sleeping!

Rebecca, feeling uncomfortable in her new surroundings, screams for over two hours at bedtime. David has assured me that our concrete walls are very thick and the neighbors won't hear us. He'd better be right.

As things stand now, we have no dishwasher, no phone, no internet and no TV. Germans usually wait months to get phone and internet, but we should get ours in a few weeks. These are sure to be very long weeks.

Moving Day

The day we have been --dreading? --or --looking forward to? Our emotions are so mixed.

Our suitcases are packed for us to survive for five to six weeks. We are to live in our house with rental furniture until our cargo container with all our belongings arrives after crossing the Atlantic by ship.

Until the last minute, though, I was scurrying around deciding on last minute items to take and trying not to panic. Our good friends, the Aubers, thought to bring us lunch and we enjoyed munching on our sandwiches with them.

While waiting for the airport shuttle to arrive, the Aubers and our good friends and neighbors, the Honeys, stood with us. What a surreal moment that was when the shuttle finally came into view. The tears flowed and I think we were all in a state of shock. The Honeys even unfurled a goodbye banner they had made for us. What affected David and me the most was seeing our kids saying goodbye to their friends. We would have all been happy to stay in Atlanta forever (as long as all our friends did, too), and we felt so awful that our decision to move was going to tear our children away from their friends. We can only hope we made the right decision.

It was a quiet ride to the airport, but even that short trip could not end without a little drama. Our driver did not seem to know the airport very well and in spite of our protests, ended up letting us off at an island in between two streets. So there we were with four kids, 10 large bags and dog in a crate, with cars and buses whizzing by us, wondering how we were to get across the street to the departure area. We hoped this was not a foreshadowing of how the rest of the trip was going to go.

David was able to coax a skycab to cross the busy street to help us get to check-in. At that point, everything went well. We got to our gate and were struck by the large number of U.S. soldiers there. We boarded and the kids were thrilled with our business class accommodations. A flight attendant greeted us right away with comic books and German gummy bears (one of our favorites). The kids were able to watch movies on their own personal TV screens while they enjoyed their Häagen-Dazs ice cream and then recline almost totally horizontal for bed. The only thing James complained about was that the flight attendants were too attentive. He just wanted to watch his movie, thank you very much, but they kept bugging him to see if he needed anything.

Rebecca was very restless and would not settle down until she banged her head on the hard armrest and cried herself to sleep. I dozed, but my mind was going a mile a minute, and it seemed way too soon that we were descending into Frankfurt.