Oct. 16th 2007
When we were in our cross cultural training class we were taught about something called the W curve. Basically that you have highs and lows when you are adjusting to a new place. I think I would classify today as a low point on the W curve (it has now been our way of describing days to each other “high” days vs. “low” days). Now, I would say anything bad happened. In fact it was a pretty normal day if you were to just look at it. My mission today was to find a connector USB cable for my camera so that I could upload some of the pictures I have taken as well as pictures of our cars that we took before we left. Someone is interested in Matt’s car but needs pictures hence the need for the cable. The original is currently either on its way here or in storage. But I figured I would just go to the Saturn store I mentioned earlier. I figured I would go in and find the replacement I needed no problem. Wrong. They make every possible USB cord imaginable except the particular one that I needed. Well, normally I would just ask someone for help and see what suggestions they had (I even checked and they carried the camera I had!) but everyone I asked if they spoke English (I even learned how to say it in German so they would respect me more) and of course they didn’t. All of the younger workers who are more likely to know at least basic English, were helping people who wanted to buy Mac computers. So, not to let my one task of the day go unfinished, I went to the local “department” store because I heard they carry everything you could need. I went to each and every floor and finally on the 8th or 9th floor I hit paydirt. It was the electronic section. It was quite a big section so I thought I might have better luck. But again no luck. By that point I realized that I couldn’t just ask anyone and that I really was there by myself. I have heard it is the little things that make you realize that you are not in the U.S. (or wherever your home is). This is definitely true. After that I realized that I had not talked to anyone all day long. By 5:00 I was wishing I had a dog to just talk at! I did hear some English being spoken and was ready to go up and ask if they lived in Germany but realized that they were trying to convert people…… decided to just keep on walking!
Luckily Matt came home early (6:00) with his boss Thijs to try to figure out our cell phone situation. We want to buy prepaid SIM cards for our phones so that we can call locally without paying a dollar a minute. It went well and we should be able to make it work in the next day or so. It was very nice to have a translator with us and we are forever in debt to him.
I talked yesterday about trying the washer/dryer. Well again, Thijs came in very handy. We couldn’t figure out what everything meant on the dial or where to put the detergent. Now I know most of you are just thinking about my lack in domestic ability but trust me, I don’t think many could have figured this out! There were three openings for detergent alone. Not to mention 20 different symbols on the dial! So Thijs came and read the instructions and explained how he thought it worked. Well we tried it tonight and it worked!! Although a few differences that I noticed (besides 80 different options for settings) were the size of the washer, it held two regular size towels and 4 small towels. I could have put a little more but was scared! It also takes about 45 minutes to complete the cycle (and that was with me stopping it a bit early) and spins at a ridiculously high speed. At one point Matt and I actually thought someone was drilling outside. So after starting the dryer on what I assumed was the correct setting we realized it was quite loud and due to the restrictions on quiet hours decided to stop it. So hopefully it works and we can start washing our clothes!
Another big discovery that we made today was that we are able to buy the DVD’s at the german stores because they are also in English! We currently wait eagerly every night for Jay Leno to come on which they have cut down to ½ an hour so we are very excited to have options of watching movies as well.
We are also going to be taken out on Thursday by one of Matt’s coworkers who lives here during the week and goes home on weekends. So needless to say he is bored as well and knows the area someone (and is German) so he will show us some of the local restaurants etc. so hopefully we will be able to check those out and have some favorite places for when people come to visit!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Shopping!
Oct. 15th 2007
Matt started his first day of work today which went well. His deskmate coworker is about his age and lives here during the week in a hotel. So he is quite eager to get out and do stuff and we are happy to have someone show us around! Drinks are on for Thursday after they get done with work!
I started out my time in Germany with a cold which is great! But I decided to get to an internet café today to finally check my emails. That helped ease some of the home sickness. After that I walked down to the main shopping center called the Zeil. It is a pedestrian only shopping area. One side is something similar to the Watertower in Chicago and then there are sections with stores like Escada, Chanel, Gucci but there are bookstores (their version of Barnes and Noble or Borders is called Hugendubel) and a department store that I have not yet gone to. One of the biggest stores down there right now is Espirit. Which is very weird considering I haven’t seen an Espirit store in the U.S. in years. But it was croweded so they must love it. From what I could tell, their version of Best Buy is called Saturn. Imagine Best Buy on a Saturday before Christmas in half the size. That will give you an idea of how busy it is. I was very excited to find the Starbucks down there and actually be able to order something in English!
We live on Eschershiemer LandStrasse which means Eschershiemer Land Street. Our road starts at the Eschershiemer Torm which is one of 4 or 5 towers throughout the city that were left over from when the city was walled in. So we are able to find our way home pretty easily from that landmark!
Tonight we are going to try and figure out the washer and dryer!
Matt started his first day of work today which went well. His deskmate coworker is about his age and lives here during the week in a hotel. So he is quite eager to get out and do stuff and we are happy to have someone show us around! Drinks are on for Thursday after they get done with work!
I started out my time in Germany with a cold which is great! But I decided to get to an internet café today to finally check my emails. That helped ease some of the home sickness. After that I walked down to the main shopping center called the Zeil. It is a pedestrian only shopping area. One side is something similar to the Watertower in Chicago and then there are sections with stores like Escada, Chanel, Gucci but there are bookstores (their version of Barnes and Noble or Borders is called Hugendubel) and a department store that I have not yet gone to. One of the biggest stores down there right now is Espirit. Which is very weird considering I haven’t seen an Espirit store in the U.S. in years. But it was croweded so they must love it. From what I could tell, their version of Best Buy is called Saturn. Imagine Best Buy on a Saturday before Christmas in half the size. That will give you an idea of how busy it is. I was very excited to find the Starbucks down there and actually be able to order something in English!
We live on Eschershiemer LandStrasse which means Eschershiemer Land Street. Our road starts at the Eschershiemer Torm which is one of 4 or 5 towers throughout the city that were left over from when the city was walled in. So we are able to find our way home pretty easily from that landmark!
Tonight we are going to try and figure out the washer and dryer!
Jay Leno and Ikea
Oct. 14th 2007
We slept in on Sunday trying to make up for a lot of the lost sleep. We then decided to try out the Navigation system in the car and try the drive to Matt’s work and around town. We ended up going to his work and then to the Ikea and one of the shopping centers. They were all of course closed but it was nice to see where they were. The Ikea was even bigger than the one in Canton and the shopping mall was an outdoor mall with a glass covering.
We got home and were very excited for Jay Leno at 9:00. That and Conan O’Brian are the two non-news American shows on. So we went on a walk around to “explore” and then we hurried home to watch Jay Leno. It really is the small things that you get excited for when you can’t understand anyone around you. So imagine our excitement when Conan was on immediately afterwards! It really was a great night. When we are lucky the MTV Austria is playing some shows like Hogan Knows Best, Flavor of Love and occasionally old “the Hills”. MTV Germany dubs over but MTV Austria subtitles so you can actually understand it! We are working on getting our satellite turned to get the British stations that also include American network shows. We are very excited about that.
We slept in on Sunday trying to make up for a lot of the lost sleep. We then decided to try out the Navigation system in the car and try the drive to Matt’s work and around town. We ended up going to his work and then to the Ikea and one of the shopping centers. They were all of course closed but it was nice to see where they were. The Ikea was even bigger than the one in Canton and the shopping mall was an outdoor mall with a glass covering.
We got home and were very excited for Jay Leno at 9:00. That and Conan O’Brian are the two non-news American shows on. So we went on a walk around to “explore” and then we hurried home to watch Jay Leno. It really is the small things that you get excited for when you can’t understand anyone around you. So imagine our excitement when Conan was on immediately afterwards! It really was a great night. When we are lucky the MTV Austria is playing some shows like Hogan Knows Best, Flavor of Love and occasionally old “the Hills”. MTV Germany dubs over but MTV Austria subtitles so you can actually understand it! We are working on getting our satellite turned to get the British stations that also include American network shows. We are very excited about that.
Saturdays and the Gym
Oct. 13th 2007
Saturdays are somewhat thought of S-day. Shopping day. All stores are closed on Sunday except for convenience stores and apparently stores that sell wine. Which led us to notice a lot of wine stores that mainly sold other stuff, like the wine was a cover. But most of the stores at the train stations are open if you are in a pinch. So after we met with our landlady on Saturday morning (more on her in a minute) we went and did grocery shopping to get us through Sunday and Monday morning. Our landlady is Reneta Krause. She owns the actual apartment (not the building) and the one we share a foyer with and rents it out to companies. She also was telling us about her house they have in Alaska for fishing and how she rigged her Ford Explorer here to take gasoline instead of benzyne because it is cheaper. Needless to say an interesting lady. She was very helpful and had no problem getting new things for us if we were missing them, we realized afterwards that she just charges the company!!!
After that we went to the gym called Fitness Company. It is similar to a Gold’s Gym or something like that. It is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment so it is pretty convenient. We met with a trainer named Josip (Yosip) who liked a lot like Matt Swiss, but with a German accent! By the time we were done there we thought we would go to the English speaking movie theatre but were too tired!
Saturdays are somewhat thought of S-day. Shopping day. All stores are closed on Sunday except for convenience stores and apparently stores that sell wine. Which led us to notice a lot of wine stores that mainly sold other stuff, like the wine was a cover. But most of the stores at the train stations are open if you are in a pinch. So after we met with our landlady on Saturday morning (more on her in a minute) we went and did grocery shopping to get us through Sunday and Monday morning. Our landlady is Reneta Krause. She owns the actual apartment (not the building) and the one we share a foyer with and rents it out to companies. She also was telling us about her house they have in Alaska for fishing and how she rigged her Ford Explorer here to take gasoline instead of benzyne because it is cheaper. Needless to say an interesting lady. She was very helpful and had no problem getting new things for us if we were missing them, we realized afterwards that she just charges the company!!!
After that we went to the gym called Fitness Company. It is similar to a Gold’s Gym or something like that. It is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment so it is pretty convenient. We met with a trainer named Josip (Yosip) who liked a lot like Matt Swiss, but with a German accent! By the time we were done there we thought we would go to the English speaking movie theatre but were too tired!
Day 2
Oct. 12th 207
We met Frau Hector (who works with the transfer company and is considered a Destination Assistant) at noon to get our residency permit from her as well as have her show us around the town. She lives 2 u-bahn stops north of us so she knows the area well. When we first met her we were a bit scared. She filled every German woman stereotype. Direct, no sense of humor and didn’t really seem interested in us. But as the day went on we realized she was very nice (still direct but that is the german way) had a dry sense of humor that sometimes translated a bit weird and was excited to help us get the best deal on things. One of these things was a gym membership. We wanted to get a membership asap so we could get a sense of home and normalcy. She helped us get a good deal at the chain gym here. We went out to dinner that night. But were only adventurous enough to try a restaurant called Lousiana. An interesting thing there is that you seat yourself. There is no hostess. It seems to work well as we were served quickly. But still through us a bit. We are not sure if this is the case at all restaurants or not but believe it is.
After dinner we returned home to realize (at 11:30 p.m.) that Frau Hector had our keys! We were lucky to find that she had put her home phone number on our gym membership, so we were able to call her and she came with the keys. Our only other resort was to stay at the Hotel Mondial that shares a parking lot with us! Quite an adventurous second night.
We met Frau Hector (who works with the transfer company and is considered a Destination Assistant) at noon to get our residency permit from her as well as have her show us around the town. She lives 2 u-bahn stops north of us so she knows the area well. When we first met her we were a bit scared. She filled every German woman stereotype. Direct, no sense of humor and didn’t really seem interested in us. But as the day went on we realized she was very nice (still direct but that is the german way) had a dry sense of humor that sometimes translated a bit weird and was excited to help us get the best deal on things. One of these things was a gym membership. We wanted to get a membership asap so we could get a sense of home and normalcy. She helped us get a good deal at the chain gym here. We went out to dinner that night. But were only adventurous enough to try a restaurant called Lousiana. An interesting thing there is that you seat yourself. There is no hostess. It seems to work well as we were served quickly. But still through us a bit. We are not sure if this is the case at all restaurants or not but believe it is.
After dinner we returned home to realize (at 11:30 p.m.) that Frau Hector had our keys! We were lucky to find that she had put her home phone number on our gym membership, so we were able to call her and she came with the keys. Our only other resort was to stay at the Hotel Mondial that shares a parking lot with us! Quite an adventurous second night.
Getting Here and Our Apartment
Our flight over to Germany was leaving at 5:30 p.m. U.S. time and landing in Frankfurt at 7:30 a.m. German time. We were hoping to get some sleep on the plane ride over but weren’t so lucky. I think Matt and I averaged about 1.5 hours of sleep. We did have some WWF wrestlers on our plane though. We noticed quite a few large muscular men and one short stature guy. We figured they were wrestlers of some sort. At the Frankfurt airport we were waiting at the baggage claim and there was Triple H. I am not a WWF fan but trust me, if you saw him, you would know too! So there were about 20 of them all together and we noticed in the group Mike “the miz” from Real World. He had always wanted to be a wrestler and it looks like he made it!
We were picked up by Thijs (Matt’s new boss) who was very nice and quite tall! He took us to our new apartment and helped to show us around. The place is nice, older and a weird setup, but nice. I will try to describe as best I can but I think pictures will be best.
We are considered the 2nd floor although we are really on the 3rd story. The first floor is a doctor’s office (we think a dentist but are not sure) and then the second floor is another apartment. On our floor there are 2 separate apartments that we believe at one time were actually 1 big apartment. Reasons: you open a door from the hallway that leads to a small foyer with a door on each side. When you are in the family room there is a door that is sealed off that appears to lead to the next apartment.
We have 1 bedroom, bathroom, family room and a kitchen. Here you don’t go by bedrooms, you go by number of rooms, so this would be considered a 2 room home. (kitchen for some reason doesn’t count). We are also lucky to have a balcony that over looks the next street. When you walk into the apartment from the before mentioned foyer, you walk into a small foyer/hallway with a door straight ahead and an entry to the kitchen on the left. In the kitchen is the dishwasher (woohoo!) the washing machine (still can’t figure out) and the dryer. We also have a small storage room at the back on the kitchen. According to European standards we have quite a large fridge, but in the US it would be smaller than your standard fridge, but it does the trick!
From the small entry foyer if you walk through the door ahead of you, it will lead to the bedroom! The bedroom is actually quite large, with nice widows at the back that let in a lot of light. There are closets (from ikea) on the left side and the bed to the back. The bed itself is a double bed and we can’t wait to get our down comforter and feather bed for it!
Across from the bed is the door to the bathroom. It is quite possibly one of the smallest bathrooms I have seen in awhile but we are making it work. The landlady has tried to install as much storage as possible (again ikea!) so that definitely helps. There is a lot of light in there as well from the windows and a heater which I assume will be good for the winters.
If you were to take an immediate right when you walked into the bedroom you would go through the door to the family room (yes, you walk through the bedroom to the family room! Another reason we think this was initially one big apt.) The family room is a decent size and it has the balcony off of it so we have a doorwall there. We are hoping to spruce it up a bit and our land lady Reneta Krause has promised a larger T.V.!
So after dropping our stuff off and getting changed we headed out to the grocery store so Thijs could show us the ropes. Pretty much the same as any small grocery store at home, except for a few things, first being that you pay for a cart (1 euro that you get back at the end) and second you must bring your own bag to put your groceries in or else you have to buy one from the store. The other interesting thing is that there are these stores (the name of the chain is Rewe) every 3-4 blocks. Some small some big but it is nice since you have to walk home with your groceries!
We then went to the Frankfurt facility for Arvin Meritor where we saw sunroofs being made. They are shutting this plant down and apparently some of the machinery is over 100 years old. We then went to the headquarters where Matt will be working which is in Dietzenbach which is about 25 minutes south of Frankfurt. We met people there and got a tour of the manufacturing there as well. By this point we hadn’t slept in the equivolent of 24 hours so we were pretty exhausted. About 3 hours later we were able to go home! We got here and quickly fell asleep.
We were picked up by Thijs (Matt’s new boss) who was very nice and quite tall! He took us to our new apartment and helped to show us around. The place is nice, older and a weird setup, but nice. I will try to describe as best I can but I think pictures will be best.
We are considered the 2nd floor although we are really on the 3rd story. The first floor is a doctor’s office (we think a dentist but are not sure) and then the second floor is another apartment. On our floor there are 2 separate apartments that we believe at one time were actually 1 big apartment. Reasons: you open a door from the hallway that leads to a small foyer with a door on each side. When you are in the family room there is a door that is sealed off that appears to lead to the next apartment.
We have 1 bedroom, bathroom, family room and a kitchen. Here you don’t go by bedrooms, you go by number of rooms, so this would be considered a 2 room home. (kitchen for some reason doesn’t count). We are also lucky to have a balcony that over looks the next street. When you walk into the apartment from the before mentioned foyer, you walk into a small foyer/hallway with a door straight ahead and an entry to the kitchen on the left. In the kitchen is the dishwasher (woohoo!) the washing machine (still can’t figure out) and the dryer. We also have a small storage room at the back on the kitchen. According to European standards we have quite a large fridge, but in the US it would be smaller than your standard fridge, but it does the trick!
From the small entry foyer if you walk through the door ahead of you, it will lead to the bedroom! The bedroom is actually quite large, with nice widows at the back that let in a lot of light. There are closets (from ikea) on the left side and the bed to the back. The bed itself is a double bed and we can’t wait to get our down comforter and feather bed for it!
Across from the bed is the door to the bathroom. It is quite possibly one of the smallest bathrooms I have seen in awhile but we are making it work. The landlady has tried to install as much storage as possible (again ikea!) so that definitely helps. There is a lot of light in there as well from the windows and a heater which I assume will be good for the winters.
If you were to take an immediate right when you walked into the bedroom you would go through the door to the family room (yes, you walk through the bedroom to the family room! Another reason we think this was initially one big apt.) The family room is a decent size and it has the balcony off of it so we have a doorwall there. We are hoping to spruce it up a bit and our land lady Reneta Krause has promised a larger T.V.!
So after dropping our stuff off and getting changed we headed out to the grocery store so Thijs could show us the ropes. Pretty much the same as any small grocery store at home, except for a few things, first being that you pay for a cart (1 euro that you get back at the end) and second you must bring your own bag to put your groceries in or else you have to buy one from the store. The other interesting thing is that there are these stores (the name of the chain is Rewe) every 3-4 blocks. Some small some big but it is nice since you have to walk home with your groceries!
We then went to the Frankfurt facility for Arvin Meritor where we saw sunroofs being made. They are shutting this plant down and apparently some of the machinery is over 100 years old. We then went to the headquarters where Matt will be working which is in Dietzenbach which is about 25 minutes south of Frankfurt. We met people there and got a tour of the manufacturing there as well. By this point we hadn’t slept in the equivolent of 24 hours so we were pretty exhausted. About 3 hours later we were able to go home! We got here and quickly fell asleep.
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