Name That Tune and Other Observations - Part 1

For the record I do not enjoy typing/writing/blogging in general. Every one of these posts takes me a long time to put together and I can usually come up with an excuse to do something more interesting or at least takes less effort. The blog was always intended to be an archive, scrapbook if you will, for us to reference when we are old and need something to do with our time when the kids are grown up and out of the nest. Now, since we have this great expat adventure we have a lot of family and friends checking in on us more regularly here at blog central. Cindy has a stat tracker on the blog that shows traffic and page views. It is way up from any previous time due to our current situation. I have actually started to....not worry, at least think about the numbers and having a small amount of drive to try and keep them up. A few of you have left some very nice comments and others have communicated the enjoyment of reading the blog and hearing about the intimate details of our encounters. That really means a lot and makes it worth the time and effort, plus I still get the original objective achieved with the archive for later reference. In summary I guess I am asking for continued feedback and requests to aid in keeping this interesting.

Disclaimer: I am sort of joking about the numbers. We are not trying to make this a public blog. The link to the blog is not search able and only friends and family that we have shared it with know about it. There is too much personal information being shared within the posts to have it too widely circulated. We just ask to keep the blog in the "circle of trust" with friends, family, and friendly acquaintances of the Ferguson Four.

First off, the name of the blog. Is anyone confused? Some of you may not know the background. Here is a link to an old post that explains. http://canihavethispen.blogspot.com/2007/10/whats-up-with-pens.html  

Music in Germany - Sure we have heard traditional German polka and other accordion music in some places. My estimate is that 90% of any music that we have heard overall has been American music. Whether is was central Munich, Freising, or even smaller towns like Haimhausen the restaurants, shops, cars driving by are mostly playing American music without voice dubbing in German. It is in English. This has been surprising. I really thought we would hear a combination of either David Hasselhoff or German Death Metal and traditional accordion music. Even if it was more of a pop or hip hop type music I expected it to be in German, and different songs. Last Sunday night we went to dinner before dropping Cindy off at the airport. We found an Italian restaurant close to the airport that was pretty popular in this small town. We arrived as they opened and several tables were all seated at the same time. Initially there was no music, but after we ordered our drinks we started hearing Pavarotti singing "La Donne e Mobile". (no I did not recall that at the time, I had to look it up) Okay, very nice, famous Italian singer belting out a famous opera in an Italian Restaurant. See, this is one of the first times that we have eaten indoors due to the nice weather and German culture to soak up the sun as long as it lasts. There was a slight chill in the air so the outdoor part was not open. It was a good atmosphere to start off the night, then things got weird. The music volume was up and down and I am not sure if it was a jukebox situation or a wacked out waiter turned wannabe DJ. Next on the play list, Sinead O'Conner "Nothing Compares to You", as if she had another song anyone would recognize. After that there was a few minutes delay, then Shakira started turning the heat up with some Latin pop. This was quickly followed by the Village People's "Y.M.C.A". This is when I started taking notes to remember. Finally the last song before we left was Sadness Part II by Enigma. I think we covered every decade from the 1970's to today while we were there. Personally I think more of these people should speak better English if their music is in English. Oh yeah, update on my German language training. Not going so well, or quick. I have not managed to absorb conversations around me and automatically learn the language, weird, I know.

I have decided that Deutsche Bank sucks. We opened an account over a month ago, granted with no money to deposit at the time. The plan was to get online banking going to transfer US funds into our German account. We went to the branch to open our account. The guy told us we would receive a telephone banking PIN, an ATM PIN as well as an online PIN. A couple of weeks went by, we returned from Nice and finally got some mail. This was a PIN but the letter was in German. I tried to use it for online banking, eventually translated the letter to find out it was the telephone PIN. By this time school was starting and we needed to transfer was money into the kid's lunch accounts. I called, held for an English speaking person, got a rude Frau that was no help. She at best spoke broken English and could not understand me well. She was frustrated and laughing under her breath. In the end I understood she had requested an online PIN. Another week, no PIN. Now I had it, I went back to the branch and spoke to the guy that opened the account. By now we had deposited checks from TI and could not access it. He could tell I was unhappy from the beginning. We went back to his office and got the school lunch accounts set up manually. He was very happy to let me know he was not even going to charge me the transaction fee. Very smart on his part. He also, one again, promised I would receive an online PIN. Finally, yesterday I get the PIN. They make things so complicated. To log in you have to have the branch ID, the account number, sub account number, then the online PIN. As soon as I log in I get a message that my account is locked and the only way to unlock it is to enter code number 17 from my code sheet. This is the code sheet that comes in the mail after the online PIN. I still don't have access!!! The whole point of online banking was to avoid transaction fees for transfers and to use Quicken. I have spent a lot of time setting up accounts and creating a budget, only to manually add transactions thus far for this account. Well finally I get the last item in the mail, the code sheet. I unlock my account and go into Quicken to set up web access. No Deutsch Bank option, hhhmmmmm. Log in to my account, try to search for topics about Quicken, the search function does nothing. After spending another hour messing with this I confirm they don't allow Quicken support. Really, a bank this big? I think I am going to find another option.

Last night Cindy and I had a bazaar experience in our apartment. We put the kids to bed and decided to watch The Newsroom on the computer. As we are watching we hear and feel something move the entire building. Cindy was asking me if I thought it was an earthquake. We still have no idea what it was, it only lasted a second or two. We finished our show then started getting ready for bed. Cindy noticed a slope from the bathroom to the hall that she did not notice before. Also, the bathroom door would not open more than about a third of the way before dragging the ground/tile. Not barely touching, the door would not open any further without digging into the tile. It had not done this before. At this point we started thinking about the sound and wondering if the building shifted. I looked around the floor and the walls, no cracks or broken tiles or evidence other than the door no longer opening. I think the slope was already there. Well, I can report that as of this morning we still don't know what the sound was and the door is back to normal, it no longer drags the tile and opens like normal. There was rally no significant temperature change and the doors here are pretty solid. It even shut normally last night when it would drag the ground while opening. It was a little freaky.

You might have gathered from the last story that Cindy made it back after a successful business trip to Nice. We picked her up on Wednesday night from the airport and had a good dinner at the Hofbrauhaus Freising. It was packed again with the weather warming up for maybe the last time. Today it got above 80 for the first time in a couple of weeks. Jealous much, Texas friends?

We are making arrangements for our new home. I have been trying to figure out TV, telephone, and internet service. Telephone and internet turned out to be pretty easy. We really did not want a home landline, but it comes with the internet package. I went with the cable company since they offer a 100mb internet connection with telephone service for 20 euro per month for the first year and 40 euro for year two on a two year agreement. Not bad, in Texas the taxes on voice services are almost that much. The current residents have the cable service so I know they are there already. TV has been more complicated and interesting. It turns out English speaking folks from the US and UK are involved in some gray market activity. Sky UK is a satellite service that is licensed to deliver service to UK residents. There is a whole system set up here that ships you equipment and an authorized satellite card that is registered with a phantom UK address. They get all of the English speaking programming they want. That is appealing but there is a large investment in the equipment plus you still pay a monthly subscription and there is no American football. We have decided that for now we will be happy with a fat internet connection and subscriptions to stream the stuff that we want to watch. I have already been watching the Rangers with my MLB subscription and as of yesterday, just in time for Broncos Ravens, I got my NFL subscription for all games. I will watch the Cowboys put up another .500 season, but I think my team is the Broncos. Did anyone see that there are three Texas Tech starters on offense, including Wes Welker? I have also found methods to get American network programming that is restricted to US based IP addresses. With my 30 euro cell phone data plan and my 30 euro average internet telephone plan we are coming out ahead on our budget for those things. Now tv will be limited with no monthly recurring bill and I still get to watch what I want, I am very happy.

I am going to make that the end of part one. Part two will cover grocery shopping updates, school buses, laundry talk, protests, and Volksfest Freising. Really exciting stuff.

Tomorrow morning we are off on our big castle tour.