Just Another Week in Germany

Cindy made it home from her "team building" trip on Thursday. They were in Kitzbuhel Austria, she said it was very beautiful. David made it back home from his trip to Salzburg Austria early Friday evening. He did really well and had a nice time. It got off to a rough start. It was suggested to him that a watch would be a good thing to have for this trip and to use for middle school next year. On the bus ride to Salzburg David had no electronics to occupy him, so he started setting an alarm for the time they were supposed to arrive. Some of the kids around him did not like the beeping every time he pushed a button. When the chaperon asked him for the watch he refused. According to David, he thought they were trying to take away his watch FOREVER and he was not having it. Once his regular teacher explained to him that he would get it back after the trip he gave it up. I am still not sure on all of the details, it seems pretty harmless, what he was doing. That was the only bump in the road as far as we know. The primary school principle was on the trip. She was emailing all of the parents each night and morning on the status and shared a few pictures.

The purpose of this trip was to wrap up on a study of culture. The first day of the trip they did a guided tour of the city and some of the famous landmarks. Later they sat and watched a Austrian string quartet play at Schloss (Palace) Mirabell pictured below. According to David the gardens of this palace were designed for the mistress of the Archbishop. He doesn't know what a mistress is, but that is who is was built for.

The next morning they took at train to the top of the mountain Festungsberg to tour the castle Hohensalzburg pictured below. David said there was a "panic room" designed into this palace where the Archbishop and his guards could live for up to three months. It was never fully completed.

They then got to see another concert that included some history about the instruments that were being played. They were playing on middle age instruments. David said he enjoyed this better then the string quartet. They were also asked to interview several people on the street about their culture and get their thoughts on the culture in Salzburg. David asked questions to the people that spoke English and a boy in his group would speak German to others, with a third group member taking notes for the team. On day three they checked out of the hotel and spent the day at the Haus Der Natur which is a hands on natural history museum, zoo, and science center. David got to participate in a science experiment while there. He is in the middle in the blue jacket. It sounds like he got a chill in his bones that day and could not get warmed back up. David said this was the best museum ever. He talked a lot about a water droplet track with very little friction. He compared it to a marble track but for water droplets.

Cindy picked David up on her way home from work. When he walked in the door I got a big smile and an even bigger hug. I was relieved that he was smiling and that he had a nice time. To my surprise he did not immediately run to the computer to play games. He sat and told us about the trip for a good long time. 

We are 90% unpacked and moved in to the house. We wanted to share some photos of the house now that it is ours and we have our stuff in it. This can be information in advance for any visitors that want to come visit us. You know what you are getting into here.

This is the street outside of the house. The right side of the stone is supposed to be the sidewalk, people just park there most of the time.

 This is our one car garage and the entry into the house.

This is the entry. We are still going to find another piece of furniture that can be used for coats and shoes, scarfs, gloves, rain suits, etc. There is plenty of room for something along the wall to keep all of that stuff out of site. Below are the kitchen and dining areas off of the main entry. I really like this kitchen, compared to other options I have seen in Germany so far. The appliances are really nice and it is larger than most. I moved the extra freezer that was in the lower level into the kitchen area.

All of the kitchen stuff that we brought did fit and we actually have some room to spare.

There are three rooms and the largest bathroom upstairs. David only has his name and a bulletin board to hang up in his room. The desk we brought from home fits well in a little cubby space in his room. We just need a chair for him to leave in there.

This is the "game room". We used the third bedroom upstairs for the video games and one of the televisions that we brought from home. The television is WiFi enabled so Katherine has been streaming Netflix on it. David has not really played much on the Wii or at all on the Kinect.

This is the largest bathroom of the two in the house. The kids use it. It does have a separate bath and shower. We still need to do some organization in here, but you get the idea.

Katherine's room is a little larger and has the built in wardrobe. She brought a lot more wall hanging stuff, not sure why. These houses are all brick underneath the walls so hanging stuff might be more challenging than I am used to. These roof lines are killing me. I have hit my head over and over in the kid's rooms. Katherine can reach up and touch the roof line ceiling while laying in bed. Giving her goodnight hugs and kisses and rough, maybe I will learn one of these days.

This is the hallway on the kid's level. There are attic pull down stairs and a fully floored area up there. There is even a heater. If someone wanted use it for a room they could, with the fact that you have to get to it with attic stairs as the main drawback. That will be Josh Henry's room when he comes to visit.

Stairs back down to the main level.

The living area is very large. We have a separate area set up with the computer and a desk. The next picture below I am standing next to the radiator in the above picture.

We told the previous tenant that it was okay to leave the orange walls. The custom here is that a tenant has to paint the entire interior white when they leave so the next tenant has a clean slate. Our American landlords were okay with us taking it as-is with the agreement that we would not have to paint since we did not receive it freshly painted. We are keeping it simple and not planning on a bunch of wall hangings and decor in the common areas. The little fireplace is pretty cool. None of the furniture in this room is ours. It is all rental furniture. I brought all of the electronics from home.

Hallway between the kitchen/dining to the living room.

Stairs down to the lower level.

The laundry room is very large. We are trying to get rid of the kitty litter smell from the previous tenant. It is bad. You cannot leave any cloths or towels in there because they will absorb the smell. I think it is slowly going away. This is one of the only windows that does not have a screen on it. The previous tenant put up the screens, most homes do not have them. You would think this one would have one since they put the cat box in here and you would want to open the window when the condenser dryer is running.

This is the "master bath". Cindy and I must really love each other to sign up for two years of sharing this space. A lot of the German homes do not have bathrooms on the lower level. This home has a pump in the laundry room that has to pump everything from the toilet and shower into the sewer lines at ground level. With the laundry room door closed it is not too loud.

My laundry rack is sitting in the hall right now for a couple of reasons. The previously mentioned smell in the laundry room, plus we have all of our extra coats and jackets hanging on the back side until we get something near the entry to put them in. There is another credenza or sideboard behind it that has additional storage space.

There is a little room for the mechanical stuff. The water heater and furnace. This house is warmed by water that is heated by the furnace and sent around the house to all of the individual radiators. Each radiator has a dial adjustment for temperature control. The furnace just has to be set to the desired temperature based on the time of year. Right now it heats the water to about 30 degrees Celsius. In the coldest part of winter it might be 50-60 degrees to keep the house warm. Our neighbor was telling us that it is common to have the radiator run from 6am until about 10pm in the winter, then it shuts off for the night. I thought this was counter intuitive since you at at home sleeping and it is the coldest at night. He explained that people are up and about during the day so they need the house warmer, but at night they are under piles of warm blankets so the house can be cooler. By the time you get up in the morning the radiators are already running to get the temperature back up. It makes sense I guess, unless you are someone that gets up multiple times at night for the restroom or just a night owl staying up too late. We will see how it goes.

Here is the master bedroom. Unlike the bathroom this is a very large space. As you can probably tell Cindy sleeps on the right side as pictured. You can tell cause there are multiple levels of blankets making the bed higher on that side. She has also procured a 220V AC electric blanket and she is not afraid to use it. We are happy to have our bed back.

From the other side of the room.

We still do have a window even though we are below ground. You may not be able to tell really well, but the ground slopes down to the window. This is the backyard so it is nice and private. I did put up some black out shades for sleeping late on the weekends.

The house is nice and cozy. We will be just fine here for a couple of years. Can't wait until we have some guests around to share in the closeness.

Cindy is out of town again already. She left Sunday afternoon back to Nice returning Thursday night. I think she will be done with the work travel for a little while after that. The kids are back to their normal schedule at school. Since David returned he has played a lot less Minecraft. He played over the weekend with his friend Drew. They call each other using Facetime on their iPods and then join the same server to play together. He has spent a lot of his time recently putting together a very complex marble track. It is one that he brought from home. He has had it for several years and I put it together a couple of times before. This time David is trying to do it on his own and is determined to complete it.

Sunday after Cindy left we did go over to the neighborhood park. We took a soccer ball and baseball gloves. I think I now understand how uncommon baseball is here now. David and I were just playing catch in an off the beaten path area away from the action. We still had people stop down and watch us playing catch. You could tell some little kids had never seen such a thing. David worked on his pitching for a while too. It has been a few months since he picked up a baseball, it was packed in our sea shipment. He did really good. His arm strength and accuracy has improved just from getting older and stronger. Now if I can just getting to work at it while we are here.........Katherine kicked the soccer ball around with me for a while too. She is also doing really good for having such a long layoff.

We do have some more travel plans coming up. It has been a while since our last big adventure. Between buying the car and moving, getting settled, we have been busy. The kids are out of school for the last week of October. The plan is to spend five days in Vienna Austria and Budapest Hungary. Budapest is about six hours away and Vienna is on the way. We also have plans for our first Christmas in Europe. We have some friends that Cindy met through TI that invited us to spend Christmas with them skiing in Chamonix France. This is the site of the first modern day winter Olympics in 1924. We have a large property leased for a week. We are very excited. Now I just have to figure out how to get into skiing shape before the end of the year sneaks up on us.

That is all I have for now. I look forward to hearing from everyone with your comments.