First Week in Our Home Away from Home

It is Tuesday early evening. Katherine and I just got back from another bike ride exploring the many different pathways that are all around our neighborhood. Cindy has made it safely to her team building work trip to Austria and David is over at a new friend's house playing for a little while. He is pretty well packed up and ready for his 5th grade trip to Salzburg Austria, leaving tomorrow morning. He needed to get some last minute Mine Craft time with his buddy that is almost as obsessed as David about the game. Katherine is doing really well on her bicycle, these paths are now paved like bike paths around Allen. It is mostly gravel and rock and sometimes just worn ground where people have made paths. She has to pedal so much more than everyone else with her short legs and smaller bike, but she can keep up most of the time. The bicycles are just one of many things we are enjoying the use of again.

 This is a view of our backyard, or as they call it here "garden". There is a nice forest area behind the house and the yard has been well maintained.

It has been a crazy past couple of months. We have completed our final move on our long nine week journey to get into a long term housing situation. The last week in July we were in a hotel in Allen since our sea shipment took our beds out of the house. Once we arrived in Germany on August 2nd we spent a week in a hotel villa, spent the next week in a hotel in Nice, then spent six weeks in a two bedroom apartment in Freising with only our air shipment stuff. As much as I don't like sitting and typing on this blog thing, it is kind of nice to feel like I have the time to provide an update. I could start cleaning the house, the floors, after all of the moving in activity; but Cindy will not be back for a couple more days so I can procrastinate.

Moving Day:
On the last day of September we met the property manager at the house to pick up the keys and make our inspection. The previous tenants did a fantastic job fixing up the house and having it cleaned for us to move in. That afternoon we had loaded up the Volvo SUV with some things from the apartment that we did not need for the next couple of days. See, we had to figure out how to get all of our air shipment, plus all of our initial luggage from the flight, plus any other additions since we have been here over to the new house. The sea shipment and the rental furniture were both scheduled for the 2nd. I figured I would spend most of October 1st making several trips back and forth. By having one car load knocked out while picking up the keys, that is one less to do later, right? Well, it worked out pretty well. On the evening of the 30th, back at the apartment, we loaded up almost all of the cloths and other stuff that was not needed for the next 24-48 hours. The morning of the 1st I took the kids to school, then stopped by the house to unload and went back to the apartment. The morning of the 2nd we were able to get almost all of the remaining items into the Volvo and put the rest into Cindy's car. It turned out I did not have to make any special trips to get it all moved. This is working out well. I dropped off the kids at school, Cindy headed to work for quarter end close stuff. When I arrived at the house there was already a truck sitting there with the back door opened, I could tell it was our sea shipment. They guys were sitting in the truck and did not notice me at first. I quickly unloaded my car and moved it down the road out of the way. Now the sea shipment guys got to work. I had expected to see our green 20' container sitting on a truck. Instead this was a smaller truck designed to fit on these small streets. They relatively quickly unloaded the truck and I started to wonder if everything was here. I had the little number sheet and I was checking off the numbered boxes as they unloaded. Now it started to get a little harder as the furniture rental people drove up in a big truck while the sea shipment truck was blocking the driveway. The sea shipment had two people unloading and the rental place brought three. In my mind I was making a plan to try and keep up with everything. I then learned that the sea shipment truck was only half of the stuff. They had to make a trip back to get the other truck. This was a good thing. They finished up the first truck while the rental people waited. As soon as they left for the other truck the other guys got to work.

Cindy had done a good job giving me notes on what pieces we selected for which room. This plan was shot once it became evident that most of the furniture was in boxes to be put together with no pictures on them. We eventually figured out a way to tell this from that and where to put everything. Both crews really struggles getting big or wide on long pieces of furniture into this house. The house is three levels and the stairs have ninety degree angles with little clearance above. The corners of the walls took a little abuse but there was no other way. The rental furniture guys also unloaded pretty quickly, now they just had to put everything together. I had no idea what we were in for at this point.

The other sea shipment truck showed up and all of our stuff made it. The main guy was one of those people that takes a lot of short cuts and tries to get away with it due to personality. When they were done he mentioned that he forgot to do the pre-inspection to point out existing floor scratches or wall marks, etc. He took me around the house and pointed at random stuff saying it existed, that he noticed it early on. I have no idea at this point and there had been two crews running all over the house all day. I think he was pretty safe to get out of being blamed for any of the minor damage that occurred. There was only one exception. As we were finishing up we walked by a doorway into the kitchen and he pointed at a corner area that was smashed, the evidence of sheet rock was on the wood floor. He said the other guys did it. It just so happens I saw that one happen early that morning, and he was the one that did it. I smiled at him and nodded, I am pretty sure he realized that I knew who did that one. No big deal, they did a good job and it is an easy fix, much easier than trying to make some sort of claim with the moving company.

The sea shipment guys were gone and I was trying to start unpacking the kitchen while the rental company people were assembling the furniture. They were not making much progress. I told the main guy I had to leave at 3:30 to get the kids from school. He said he was not sure when they would be done. Once 3:30 came they decided to take a break, I locked up the house and picked up the kids. The crew was waiting when I got back and they went to work. The kids and I continued to unpack a few things and try to get their rooms a little organized. Eventually Cindy made it home from work and we all continued to try and settle in, the other crew was still here. Finally around 7 we decided that I should go to the grocery store and pick up dinner on the way back. The next day was a German holiday and all the stores would be closed. I made the trip, stopped at a McDonald's on the way back and arrived at the house a little after 8pm. We ate dinner and started working some more. They company called and asked if it was okay for the crew to stay a couple of more hours to get done. They were also sending over a fourth guy to help. Around 11pm Katherine asked if she could go to bed. They finally had her bed put together and she was done. We had the computer and the Internet up and going by then so David was happy playing Mine Craft. Those guys did not get done until 1am the next morning. By then we had unpacked so many boxes, along with their boxes, the entire walkway and driveway was covered in trash. The guy had said he would haul away our boxes too, so I helped them load up all of the trash, while trying not to wake up the neighborhood in the mean time. It was a little annoying that it took that long but we were glad to have it done and in the end appreciative that those guys continued to work those hours to finish the job.

After thinking about the steps along the way I decided everything was backwards. The rental furniture should have been in the house first, then our sea shipment, then all of our other crap, uh, stuff. That would have made more sense instead of having cloths and stuff that goes into the furniture here and in the way. Oh well, it worked out just fine, as it usually does.

Post Moving Day:
We are pretty well settled in now. There are only a couple of wardrobe boxes by the front door that have the remaining trash and other boxes in them to be hauled off. We have been cooking and eating in since the McDonald's meal on moving day. We ordered a lot of stuff from Amazon.de and made a shopping trip over the weekend for other stuff. You always want certain things when you move into a new house like window covers, towel racks, shower caddies, etc. But we also had to order brooms and mops and find cleaning supplies since we were not allowed to move chemicals. There are very few electrical outlets in the house so we needed additional power strips and extension cords. Cindy had to buy a new electric blanket to work on the 220V power system here. Planning for the power system was a big effort. I am happy to report that all of the planning payed off. The computer that I built prior to leaving works great. We also brought a Wii U, XBox Kinect, 63" Plasma and 43" LED TV, Bluray player, amplifier, sub woofer, speakers, etc. Some of which was compatible with 220V and most of it not. The power converters that I bought prior to leaving work great so we are up and going with electronic entertainment. The plasma TV in the living room is set up as a secondary monitor for the computer. Someone can use the computer while someone else is watching something on the TV streaming from the Internet. I think you would be surprised how well it works.

Took a break from writing. It is now Wednesday around noon. I am thinking about David a lot this morning. We sent him off on his trip today. I could tell he was a little worried about it when we were in the car. Once we dropped off his suit case and we were saying goodbye he was having a rough time. The kid gave me a big bear hug and would not let go. He has never squeezed me that tight. We talked for a minute, he is fine. He is a little worried about who he will room with and be partnered with during the day. He was calculating how many minutes and seconds he has to get his shower done in the allotted time with a couple of other boys staying in the room with him. He is a little down about not getting to take any electronics with him, and no Mine Craft for three days. I bit my tongue in this moment from what I really wanted to say. I just reminded him to stay in the moment and remember to look around and create some memories while he was there. This is very much a trip intended for cultural learning. They are going to see some symphony performance and interview people on the street about their culture. This is not David's idea of fun. For me this type of opportunity is why I was so excited for the opportunity to come here. As much as I love it that Cindy and I get to see Europe and live her for a finite time, the opportunity for our kids was exciting. Even though he may not know it yet, I think opportunities like this will help him in many ways and hopefully he will think back fondly on the memories when he is older. I think it will be good for him and I look forward to hearing about his adventure.

Speaking of David. He finally lost another tooth last night. This one has been loose since a couple of weeks before we left the US. He has been very late with teeth his whole life. This is the first new tooth in over two years. It came out pretty easily last night, which was good since he was leaving for a few days. I am not sure the tooth fairy would have found him in a hotel room if it had come out while he was on the trip.

I wanted to include some photos since we have not had that many lately. Here is the park that is a few houses down and around the corner from us. What a great area! Plenty of room to play and move around. 

Katheine brought her American Girl doll Gabby to the park to swing this weekend. There was a slight chill in the air but within minutes the had and coat were off and I was carrying all of it, along with Gabby around while she played. Below David is playing a game of tag or hide and seek with the neighborhood boys in the field. Not sure what crop this is, but they had fun playing around it. 

There is a cool little zip line that is way fun. 

This is a big and very fast slide. 

and a very cool ropes course for our monkeys.

So I think we will try to get some photos up of the interior of the house with our stuff (and the rental furniture stuff) all organized. This is the kitchen after I unloaded all of the boxes. I wanted to get a feel for how much we had and what we had before trying to organize it into cabinets and drawers. 

There was a bunch more on the table behind this shot. Did it all fit? Find out next time.