Life in Germany

Lots going on, little time to be online.

I am going down to Heidelberg Army post tomorrow to interview for a Computer Support job. It is a LONG commute, so not sure if I will take the job or not, will have to see. About half of what I made in the states, but double what I am making now, plus health care, etc.

We are in the new apartment, no kitchen for a month, nothing on the walls or floors (welcome to renting in in Europe!) not even light fixtures. We will be buying wallpaper and will be taking advantage of the long weekend for Christmas to paper the walls.

Have bought a couple of beds, that is it. we have the TV, basic cable comes with the apt..... will be getting a land line in this next week i hope. internet (YES!!!!) in a few weeks.

Cats are confused, the place is huge and empty so it echoes.

Am short on time, will try to write more in the next couple of days....... Bye!

Officially Army

well, before I get into my day,I just to reply to the comment made about my adventure having a purpose...

This blog was was simply created so that I could communicate with friends and family without having to write emails to everyone. That's it.

SOOOOOO.. today we went in, and finally got our ID cards that gives us access to the base. We also received a card that goes with our passports that will allow us unrestricted access in and out of Germany, since our three month tourist visas will be up.

Of course I went and got the covetted(sp) bars of Coast soap and the can of Sierra Mist. (Just about as good as I hoped, but will taste much better in a glass with ice when I am sitting in our new apartment.

We think we have an apartment right in Hanau! This means a 5 minute bus right to and from work, not bad!! It is also owned but a woman Veterinarian, SCORE again, she said no porblem to the 4 cats. it is also located right next door to her Vet clinic, score again for the cats! i can't stand it, cn hardly wait until Monday to see it.

Whe have an appt Monday at 9 am to see it, but unless there are gaping holes in the walls, we will take it. That means we only have to pay for bus to and from work, about a 5 minutes ride from the apt. What a deal. monday and Tuesday we also have real orientation.... Two all day sessions.

Jess actually worked until 6 tonight, I am waiting for her to come back any time. I work tomorrow from 1 pm to 9 pm....so I get to sleep late....

What else, oh yes! We both opened up APO boxes, meaning that we can get mail from the US at regular stamp prices. This means my mother no longer has to put 5 stamps on everything, if she sends it to the APO box. Cool!

What else, oh yes, tomorrow we have to go before I start work and open up accounts at the community bank on base. This way we get direct depost and also are able to pay our German bills through this account.

I am so tired, really can't think of much else to say right now, so am off for the evening. Take care!!!

THANK GOD FOR MOTHERS!!!!!!!!

Ok please, I would like every one of you to post a comment thanking my mother for being there and being generous enough to save our butts again! I can't really explain how and why she did it, but you will have to trust me, short of giving up a kidney she made the ultimate sacrifice so that we were able to stay here, get back and forth to our jobs, find an apartment etc. All I am asking of you who read this is to put an anoymous comment on this blog thanking her....


I LOVE YOU MOM!!!!! thank you for being there for us.... nothing I can say will truly express how thankful I m that you have been there behind us!!!!!!!!

Both Jess and I received a call today saying that we have been apporved to work before we even go to orientation on Monday, so tomorrow morning we go in, fill out paperwork, and start our respective jobs at Subway and Taco Bell. LOL

Should be a lot of fun to be busy again, and be around people esp those that speak English!

That is all for now, bye! (mom, to read any comments, just click on the number of comments at the end of this blog.)

The best of both worlds?

Anothe short blog, sorry.

We went on post today, the woman at Taco Bell didn't even really interview me, just said how many hours a week were available, anywhere from 25-35 or more. Asked if I could work evenings, weekends, holidays. I said yep, I have no life, will be glad to, so i now work at Taco Bell!! piece of cake...less problems with carpal tunnel! plus there may be a supervisor position coming up, which changes my staus from intermittent to PT, which gives me more benefits, though not sure health....

We went in to the commissarie, and I found COAST SOAP and SIERRA MIST! I actually started crying (ok, that is mostly because I have been off meds a month, and I have a tendency to cry when not on them.) but it was soooooooo nice to find things like that. Hey, I left America because of the crime, etc. No one said i could not have coast soap and Sierra Mist if I left.

I had 3 bars of Coast, a can of Sierra Mist (all I could afford) a Slim Jim and some ladies items that Jess can not find in Germany stores. AND THEY WOULD NOT LET US CHECK OUT WITHOUT AN ID from on Post.. I about died... no fair.... *SIGH* That is OK, we will get them within the next week. We have orientation on monday and Tues and should be able to start as of next Wed.

There is an unfurnished apt we want to take a look at. Unfiurnished being nothing in the kitchen but walls and outlets. Bathroom had toilet and tub, but the place is huge, two bedrooms, and cheap, 360€ a month, which is about $400, so I am waiting to hear from the agent tomorrow about going up and seeing it.. YES!! It woul dbe so nice to be in a place of our own by xmas. ok, have to go, using the expensive coputer time at the hotel. No cash right now. Love you all and take care!!!

Money in - money out

Sheesh, we seem to get enough cash in for a couple of days, then it is gone. We have been broke the last few days, which is why we have not been online and/or written blogs. We've simply been sitting in the hotel room sulking, waiting for the week to begin. What a LONG weekend. Some money came in this evening, but then this internet cafe closes in about 20 minutes. Will write more tomorrow. Got a call from Taco Bell and have an interview tomorrow at 10 am. Then we will be contacting a couple of rental agents in Hanau about an apartment. YES!........ So til tomorrow..... Bye!!

A bit of America in Germany

Yesterday Jess and I went to the Hanau Army base for her two job interviews. One with Subway and one with a pizza place. Obviously they loved her a smuch as she loved them, and before we even left the base after the interviews, Jess was being offered the Subway job. YEAH!

I had decided enough for shooting big with jobs, and the day before had gone ahead and applied for a fast food job also. WEE NEED MONEY! (That and being able to access the base means books and magazines in English, access to used cars cheap, commisary, etc..)

Since Jess has taken the one, and the HR person has spoken with me while jess was making out paperwork, I got lucky. The HR person called Jess this mornign and said they had reopened the pizza job so that I could apply for it. LOL. I never thought I would be bragging about a pizza job being opened for me so that I could apply. :-D

Works for me, will get us money for transportation and an apartment while I keep applying for other jobs. To be honest, I don't even care if I get an IT job any more, I think this is a blessing in disguise.

We will also be able to go to the onsite university for cheap, and then I think I wll go ahead and take the few classes I need to get my BA. It walways seems to haunt me that I have 2 -two year degrees, so close to a BA.....

Well, i have to go, we have used the last of our cash again, waiting for a refund on some clothing i brought back to a store. Will talk more later!!!!!

Baby Steps

are what we are taking. Going to another part of Germany means leaving our comfort zone and going somewhere where we have NO idea where things are, how far away, what they cost, etc.. It is going to take a few days for us to get our bearings. In the meantime, WE GOT OUR MONEY BACK FROM ATENA!! Which works out really well, because we had 4€ in our pockets, enought to get online and see if my money came in, and then we were broke..

My dear mother had emailed them saying what a digsgrace it was that they would not return my money. They emailed her back and CCd me saying how rude she was, but amazingly my money showed up today also. Co-inky-dink? I THINK NOT!

Below is the blog I wrote out on paper last night....

We have escaped, YEAH! We gor into Langensbold, a town about a half hour out of Frankfurt, at about 5 pm or so, with minimal trauma to the cats, etc. The drive took about 3 hours. We found the hotel and saw that it had undergraound parking. SCORE. We got buzzed in and got out of the car to go to reception when suddenly a god awfulear splitting alarm went off! I mean this was LOUD. In my version of this story the lights are flashing on and off. I later made the mistake of asking Jess if this really happened or not. The killjoy she is, she said NO mom, the lights were not flashing on and off. She then goes on to say, but the lights did go off and I had to find the button to get them back on. I say that qualifies me to be able to say the alarm was skrieking and the lights were flashing on and off.

We make it to the elevator, all the while yelling back and forth.... Did we cause this? What IS it? Did we make this happen? It finally stops somewhere when we were going up to reception in the elevator. We ask check-in and they say no, we didn't cause it, they were testing the alarm system. (Is that some sort of sick German way of greeting guests?)

I hate checking into hotels with the cats, because even though I pick pet friendly hotels, my worst nightmare will be them seeing up drag in 4 cats and they will proceed to kick us out.. In thi hotel the elevator goes directly from the parking ramp to the rooms, bypassing the lobby altogther. SCORE again. This way not only do they not see us bringing up the cats, by they will also miss the show of us making 6 trips up with all our worldly possessions, parking themin the hotel room. I was however able to get just about everything into the armoir, only leaving out our suitcases. Thus housekeeping will get the idea we are just your ordinary travelers. LOL.

The room is only 29€ a day, or about $33. Although after getting up and lookkng at the information we are supposed to pay an extra 5€ a day, so that makes it more like a whole $40 a day or so, and that includes the taxes. Let's face it, it would not be possible to rent something habitable for that amount in the US. This room is GREAT. We each have a full sized bed, a mini-bar refridge so we can buy pop etc and store it. We also have a corner room on the second floor, with a big windows on each side, and also a small sofa and a huge desk, worok area. AND, a tub. YES... It has been so ong since I have been some place with a tub. I don't even like baths, but I plan on taking one every night here. Sheer heaven.

I have had the stomach flu this last week or or so. I have not had the flu in so many years, has b´to be 20 or so.... Must be some strange European bug. I would much prefer a cold thank you. The constant queasiness sucks big time.

Anyway, tomorrow (really today, I wrote this Monday night) we take the car back, check out buying some sort of weekly or monthly rail tickets and start looking for a place to live, etc.


Off the subject.

In Germany people don't eat french fries with their hands, they use this cool little thing to spear them. It looks like one of those flat wooden sticks youget when you buy the little individual containers of ice cream,but this is forked at one end. It is disposible and you use it to spear your french fries. I'm telling you, it beats the hell out of getting your hands full of grease, and if you have been shopping, etc, who the hell knows whathas been on those hands. I have even been in some semi-fast food restaurants that have a little sink right in the eating area so that youcan wash your hands before and or after eating. Pretty smart.

So now it is Tuesday,and we have brought back the car in frankfurt, and inquired about rail passes. looks like we can get a bahncard, where it will get you 25% off your tickets for one year for 50€, 50% off all your fares for one year for 200€ and for a mere 2,000 €, free riding for one year. Man, I like that one. But I don't think we will be going for it quite yet. Though the 200€ one would pay for itself in a month or so if you are riding back and forth to work. Train fare is expensive here!

JESSICA alread received a call for an interview to work at the onbase Subway in Hanau. The interview is for this Thursday. Certainly not the most glamorous job in the world, but a great start! The next step is for me to get some sort of interview.

Anyway, enough blogging, I need to get to work online looking for a place to stay, work etc. Later!

Escaping to Reality

So my son Nick… I LOVE HIM! He is doing great at UPS and sounds like he is also working a lot of hours at Blockbuster. He has a girlfriend who is very nice to him, and some great friends who are covering his back.
He has pretty much moved out of the apartment I rented for him, and will be sharing a townhouse with some friends starting the first of the year (I think)

I miss him soooooo much. I love when I get online in the morning and he is on AIM. Some days I get a hard time from him, but most times we just talk. That works for me.

I can hardly wait until he gets here or I get there to visit. He’d better get ready for one hell of a hug!

*SIGH*

Well, tomorrow we head off to Frankfurt. Not sure if I can even get Mark to give me a ride to Northheim as he promised…. Typical… So I will be online tonight checking train fare to go pick up the car. We have the car for one day, thank god in Germany it costs no more to drive a car one way, so I will be able to drop it off in Frankfurt Tuesday morning. We have a hotel rented for a little less than a week, and about 60 euros in our pockets. LOLOL Back to the adventure.

Trust me, Tues after I drop the car off we will be calling every base ion the area looking for work, and going out to the main hiring HQ and dropping off CVs, etc.


I am hoping things go better there. In the back of my mind I see myself saving every dime I can, doing a bit of cheap travelling to Spain, England, Netherlands etc, and the whole time doing research on what would be the nicest, safest area of the US to live. Propose to my mom that when her lease is up next October, to move in with me somewhere… We’ll see, so many things seem to change, and I know now that plans don’t seem to go the way we hope. So………..

I will be so glad to leave here, the Pension. Even though Mark was nice enough to give us a place to stay, it is time to move on and find a place of my own. I really long for a place of my OWN. Without jess, just me, mine, no one else’s. I am tired of trying to make sure everyone is happy. I actually came over to Europe so that I could be selfish. Yeah, right. HA.

Well, I need to get online and print out some directions to the hotel, etc. mark is on the phone, Jess is sitting here SIGHING because god forbid she may not get online right at 9 to talk to Rob. A word of advice to those planning to be parents, do NOT give your kids everything. Be really mean to them, deny them everything, beat them. Trust me, they’ll turn out to be better people and thank you for it. Damn straight.

Phase 3? 2.5?

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to look for work we go.

As of Monday, we will be broke and down in the Frankfurt area looking for work and a place to live.
My mother God bless her, has come to the rescue again and is lending us her credit card to rent a card for one day and a cheap hotel for the next week or two until we can get settled. My only fear is that the car rental and hotel will say no to it being used and not even there with me. I have a feeling that the hotel will not care, but the car place I am not sure about.

(Oscar speech time)
I would like to take this time to say thank you to all of those who have helped Jess and I get to this place.

First and foremost my mother, who besides giving birth to me, has put aside her own feelings and stood beside us the entire way, giving moral and monetary help even when I know she just wanted to scream “WHAT THE HELL KIND OF DUMB THING ARE YOU DOING? JUST GET BACK HERE SO THAT YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF YOUR FAMILY AND HAVE A NICE JOB AND HOUSE AND BE NEAR ME SO THAT WE CAN ALL BE TOGETHER AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE ALL THIS WORRY AND YOU WILL BE SAFE!!”

Hopefully at some point things will settle down, in the meantime, I LOVE YOU MOM!!!!

Next I would like to thank Jodi, my friend and unfortunately for her, my real estate agent. She gave me the initial money for the house, in good faith that it would sell, and the damn thing is still on the market. She also was able to give me a couple thousand more that should have been paid only when the house sold. This got me out of trouble a few weeks ago and allowed me to pay the car payments and insurance up, get Nick out of the red in his checking account (my fault he was there) and buy pants that fit me and winter coats for Jess and I. We went a little spend crazy because I thought we were set staying in the house, had I known, we would at least have a couple of hundred dollars left in my account. Oh well, it is more important that Nick is able to have a car to get to and from work.

Next would be Eric, who no matter what anyone else thinks about this craziness, has ALWAYS backed me 100%, saying to go for the risk, take a chance and enjoy it all. Of course he admits that is not what HE personally would do, but he knows me well enough to know that these are things I have to do. THANK you Eric, for standing by me! ((HUGS))

Ann is my voice of reason, tells me what I should be doing, the smart way to handle things. I of course ignore her, but I love the fact that she worries about me and wants me to be safe and secure!

And then there is everyone else who reads the blog and sends words of encouragement. I finally put a counter on the blog, I have no clue how many read it, but I received a comment the other day from someone I worked with at the state, he works in another building. He said he had gotten the site address from someone at work. So now I am wondering just how many people might be checking the blog out. Might be fun to see, or maybe depressing. LOL


This started out to be thank you, and as I read it, it almost sounds like a goodbye letter! LOL Not at all, This is the next phase of the journey, I just wanted everyone to know that I am thinking of you all, and thankful I am able to share all this, and to thanks you for supporting me!

All that aside, Monday we rent a station wagon, pack up all of our worldly goods and cats and take a 3 hour drive down to Frankfurt. Once we get there I know we will be able to get jobs at the army bases right away, even if they are only cashier ones, those are always available.

The big problem is to get money for an apartment. The damn rental place in Italy is STILL sitting on almost $400 of our deposit money. They keep saying it has been sent, be we have seen nothing of it.


Well, I need to get online and post this. Will keep you informed the best I can when we get down there. Will be using internet cafes again, and depending on money, may only be able to post once in a while.

Will talk to you all before we leave on Monday. Take care!

Hmmmm

Sooooooo.. We have been asked by the new renters to be out of the house before they arrive.
We are trying to find a way to get back down to Wiesbaden, about 3 hours away. (hi mom!) and rent a room while we get jobs at army bases.

UGH.. I was going to write more, but not even sure I want to right now.

Yee-Haw

Amazing how quickly things can change on this great adventure of ours (said with just a bit of sarcasm). One day you think that you will be the chef for a bistro, the next you are again sitting wondering what the future will bring.

And yes, all of you who told me to go for the job interview may now tell me “I told you so!”

Well, nothing is concrete yet, but the people from the UK who wanted to rent the house seem to be backing out. They’ve dropped the price they want to pay up front from 10,000€ to 3,600€ and are just sort of making noises like if this who thing doesn’t come together quickly, it won’t at all.

Jess was just sobbing last night as we talked to the woman via IM. Now those of you who know Jess well also know that she can really push people too far. When we found out about the possibility of the deal going sour, she wanted to go with the family to Portugal so that she could be with their son. Well, this was too much for the woman who literally said she didn’t know us or our history and that she had to think of her family first and she felt she was being pushed into something…. Now in reality these are all valid statements, but it was the way she said it that came as a personal affront to us.

These were the people who blew in one day, stayed for four, made all these plans and sucked Jess and I into them, continued to be in contact with us and then who suddenly are really rude.

I’m sorry, but I still live in a state where I do trust people, and as you already know, am more than willing to take a leap of fate, but I have to tell you that yesterday my “glass is half full” optimism took a hard hit.

So I emailed the man who wanted to interview me for the job in Frankfurt and asked if the position was still available and if so, would he still be interested in talking to me. I also went back and put in some applications for civilian military jobs.

And now we sit and wait. To be honest, if they bought the place I wouldn’t be too happy staying here, though I would until I found a job, then adios.

Either way, Mark is saying to hang in there, a solution will come up, and to not worry. He may be really hard to listen to all the time, but he is nice, he has never questioned our “history”.

So we have two couples staying here for the next couple of days, and I decided to use an empty table in the former bar now lounge/TV area and put out coffee, tea, and some cookies for the guests. In the back of my mind I was thinking, if I wanted people to eat dinner here, I would start out giving them a reason to hang out, in order to smell food, see others eat etc. Maybe the first night they would g out, but the second stay in. I just wish I could take this place and run it myself, with all my own ideas. It is very hard butting heads with Mark. I would want to be able to just dig in and make my changes.

I don’t think I will plan on staying here if Mark stays, only because he wants to open the bar up again. I know it does make money, but I just hate living in a place where it is so disgustingly smoking and there are people coming in and out the door all night.

But who knows, planning does not seem to be my forte. LOL


In the meantime Jess moved into the small single room last night, and is still sleeping. I am surprised she didn’t come down to check her mail every second. I feel really badly for her.

Travelling with the Ortegas

Well, a bit more excitement our way.

Jodi was kind enough to send me the remainder of the money from the house (YEAH!) so I have been able to pay up the car payments, get Nick’s bank account back into the black. Not sure if I told that story, but basically they took his pay check to start to pay off Jess’ overdrawn account, so he ends up minus $500 after fees!!!!! AUUGGHH.

Note: NEVER, I repeat NEVER open up a bank account at US Bank. NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that got paid up, now all he needs to remember to do is get MY name off his account or they will probably take his pay check for my overdrawn account. But hey, I’m betting he forgets to. GRRR……..

Also,(GOD forbid I ever have money for me) it turns out somehow I had missed a car insurance payment, which I need to check out, because I am not sure I did, but nick was driving with NO insurance. AAUUGGHHHHHH…………


Looking bank through my bank account, I remember one month the State Farm statement being like $18, which I thought was cool, did not question, and I though I paid, but maybe something was wrong with online payment or something, but I do remember that, so…. Anyway, there went another $300 of my newfound money to get it back on, WHICH Nick is supposed to do this morning by going down and giving them a check, cross your fingers he does this.. (HUGE SIGH)

So yesterday Jess and I took a train to the nearest fairly big town to go shopping.
We get to the station in Herzberg, which is basically a little platform next to the train tracks. We get our tickets, board the train, and then notice that the train is going the total opposite direction. (Welcome to the Ortega world of travel)

Our only guide up to this point has been this laminated train schedule in German that Mark has hung up at the house. (THAT should have warned us right away) It’s really odd, you would think in a normal world that one side of the schedule would be times the trains come and the other side would be times the trains leave. Well, we never really figured the damn thing out, and then later in the evening coming back, Jess decided that it wasn’t even the right schedule for where we needed to go…… yeah….

ANYWAY, we are heading in the wrong direction, and Jess deciphers that the train will go the same way about a ½ hour, and then it would start back the opposite direction to where we came from, and THEN go the right way…. We started out at 10:30 in the morning, expecting to get there by 11:30…. Read on! LOLOL

So the ticket lady comes by, she looks at my ticket and says it is no good. (FUCK, I think, it’s bad enough it is going to cost us something like $40 to take this trip, she’s now going to fine me…) Luckily she must have seen this happen before, because she sort of laughs, shakes her head like “more American idiots” and goes on…. SHEW!)

Off we go, back and forth along the same route for another hour, and instead of getting to the city by 11:30, it’s now 12:30. We head out of the train station and look for a bus that says Zentrum, meaning center, which we figure will take us to the shopping district. (Need I say more?)

We hop on the bus, and within a few minutes we are going through the shopping district. BUT, being who we are, we decided that in order to make sure we get the right bus back, we need to make sure we get off at the stop that actually says Zentrum. After a bit we leave the shopping area.. Now somewhere deep down inside we KNOW we should immediately get off, but again, somewhere in our pea brains we think, or at last I think, (who KNOWS what Jess was thinking) I think ok, no stop that says Zentrum, maybe there is a BIGGER shopping area in the mystical place called Zentrum.

So we hang on, and drive and drive through the university area, the low income area, and the start heading out of town. Ok, by now we are saying hmmmmmm… should we have gotten off at the shopping area? Do we want to get off and walk all that way? Do these busses make a circle back? Are we in fact going to France?

Back out into the countryside, we sit frozen in our seats, and then we start to laugh. Oh what the hell, our journeys are always an adventure, relax and enjoy.

We pick up a bunch of little 8 year olds coming home from school. That is one thing we have noticed in both Italy and Germany, school kids take trains and local busses to get to and from school. There are no “school busses”

The kids all have their backpacks on, dolphins and undersea creatures seem to be the craze with them this year. After about 5 minutes of mass chaos, the bus driver takes off, using the brakes just a bit to put them off balance and into hysterical and VERY cute peals of laughter.

By now Jess and I have moved ourselves into the fat person seat at the very front. We figure this because it’s bigger than one person, but certainly not big enough for two. We know this because half of my left leg is hanging off the side of the seat. We fight for space for a few minutes, pushing each other back and forth until I give up and balance precariously off the edge. I hang onto a pole for dear life and hope the bus driver doesn’t notice and decide to be a smart ass and turn a sharp right to make me hit the floor.

After we are settled, we ask the driver if he speaks English and then ask about Zentrum and shopping and he laughs and basically says relax and enjoy the ride, it’s going to be another ½ hour before we get back to town.

We sit back and enjoy the outskirts of town, the clean German streets, houses, yards, and finally head back to the shopping center. Not once have we noticed the elusive ZENTRUM stop.

We decide to be smart and get off the bus.

Now the trip that should have taken us a little over an hour has now taken over 3 hours. This, we decide, is typical for us, so we hake our heads and then go off to shop!
We go first to our favourite German store – CandA. I LOVE the clothes there. I head for the jeans. FINALLY I will be able to get a pair that fit, since mine have been hanging off me for months now.

I get into the dressing room and joy oh joy! I look THINNER! The stomach is still there unfortunately, MUCH smaller, but I decide I really need to start doing sit-ups to help that. My legs and hips however look great!

I try on the jeans, they looks great! I then have to put the old pants on… MY GOD, I look like a skateboarder gone bad. The crotch hangs down LOW, very sad looking. After we pay for everything, I make sure I go to a WC as soon as possible to change pants. I FEEL HUMAN again!

I also finally get a coat!!!!!! It is brushed leather, a camel color, shortish, with a lining, collar and cuffs made out of what I can only describe as shorthaired curly caramel colored cocker spaniel ears. I LOVE it and it is WARM. Now I just need a scarf, mittens and hat.. It has turned cold here and the wind is deadly.

Jess now needs a heavier coat, but she did get jeans and a sweater.

Anyway, we did our shopping we each bought a couple of books in ENGLISH! We also stopped in the town square where everyone was drinking glasses of warm punch and hot chocolate. There was a kinder (child) and adult version of the drink. I thought it meant size, but soon found out it meant with or without alcohol! Jess had the hot chocolate which had like coconut liquor in it, I had the punch, which I personally though sucked, but I am not much of an alcohol person. We both understood why everyone there was in such a good mood and not complaining about the cold!

I have not been very impressed with German Christmas so far, very limited I think. I like the lack of commercialism, no huge Christmas displays in the stores, etc, but there is a lack of variety as far as cookies, etc…..

We ended up eating at the same Chinese place we ate at the last time we came into town. Well actually we got it to go and ate it at the train station. It was NOT as good as last time. Of course last time we felt like we had come from the ends of the world for a decent meal, and now that I have been cooking decent food, I think we just realized it was always so-so Chinese food. LOL

We knew that the last train left about 19:46, 7:46, so we made sure we got to the train station on time, even managed to catch the right bus! Even though train stations have an indoor area underneath the rails, there are open stairwells that go up to each track, so finding a warm place to eat our food was not easy. We finally decided to go up to the track early and were lucky enough to see our train was waiting, so we were able to go in ½ hour before it left.

On our adventures in the morning we found out that Herzberg actually has two train stations. The little one we were at and a big one. We had no idea where this big one was located with perspective to the main town we knew, so we had bought tickets back to the little station.

All was well, the train stopped at the main station first, and then we assumed at the small train station…. Uh-huh, you guess it, back off in some other direction we went. Not even to the same place as in the morning, some really unknown town we had never heard of. This was the last train of the night and we again were heading off to France or some other strange place.

After some discussion, I went and asked a young girl if she spoke English.

Note: This may have been made before, but is an important note: Ask young people first if they speak English, as they now have to take English classes in school.

She was very nice and told us we could get off at the next town (thank god we asked when we did) and then wait and there would be one last train coming back to the main Herzberg rail station. We did as she told us and decided we would like to get home some time, and took a taxi from the main station in town. I decided to look on the bright side of things….. I thought the train fare was too expensive, so we certainly got our money’s worth of ride!!

Once again, a 1 hour trip took twice as long. We had decided to go into town and use the internet café, since they had screaming fast computers compared to the dial up at Mark’s. I am not complaining, thank god he has access, but screaming fast internet was nice for a change.


Well, that was our big trip to the city.

We got about 2 or 3 inches of snow today, very pretty to see the snow on the pine trees up on the mountain.

I took the dog for a walk the other evening, about 10 pm. It was so quiet, really nice. Chilly, and as we walked down the street the mountain went straight up along one side of us, and on the other I could hear the stream that runs through town. The sidewalk was cobblestone and there weren’t many cars going past. We walked and walked, and I just breathed in the air, listened to the water, and admired the Bavarian style houses along the way.

I was trying to figure out what was different and I suddenly realized…. I was not spending any energy listening to hear if anyone was following me… in America if I would walk at night I would be nervous, and listening to make sure no one was walking behind me, etc.


Here I was simply walking and enjoying myself. It was a nice feeling. I liked it a lot…………

Counting down the time

Well, at least Jess is counting the days. I just know that in a little over a week the new owners will be coming here and another great change will happen in this adventure of ours.

Or not. I have beening talking online with Jan, and she is very nervous about how unorganized Mark is. She feels like he is not telling here everything and she doesn't want to sink 10,000€ into a place where he might want it back in a couple of months. I DON't see him doing that, he wants out badly, but I can't blame her for being VERY nervous about the whole thing. She told me not to worry, things will work out, they are moving ahead on the place in Portugal. Maybe they will let us come work there if this falls through. Let the chips fall where they may. We seem to have become permanent wards of whatever family will have us. :-)

In the meantime, I tried to get ingredients for some sort of Thanksgiving dinner here, NO GO. I think I would have to go out and grown my own sweet potatoes, plus we have no oven for turkey, etc. No problem. I am thinking Tacos, which here is just as good as turkey. We haven't had any sort of Mexican food since we were in the states. Taco shells here were a whopping 3.27€ which makes it around 3.75 dollars for a box of 8, probably old shells.LOL Oh well, worth a try.


The weather here is sunny but cold. About the same tempp as it has been in MN. I can see why there is such a large German population there. SAME weather up to this point, but I kknow that pretty soon MN will be WAY colder than here.

Not much else going on, just hanging out, trying not to die from boredom. I think we are going to have to scare the sit out of Mark today and make him see that if he doesn't get on the ball with this, the deal will fall through, he will have NO money and will end up losing the house altogether. Oh joy.

I WANT MY MONEY FROM ITALY SO JESS AND I CAN GO TO FRANKFURT FOR AN ENGLISH MONVIE MARATHON!

ME, the person who loved movies, looked at the listings in the Blaine area yesterday and didn't even recognize the names of half the movies playing! Amazing. Starting to feel like a European.

Well, I am going to go now. Later!

SAFE? We don't need no freaking safe!

Well, most people said to take the job in Frankfurt... That means I went ahead and emailed not to call me about the job, I had found another. LOL

Most replies were about it being safer to take the job, except for Eric, who knows me sooo well. LOL He said he chose number 1 for me, but HE would take 2.....

EXACTLY! Staying here is not safe at all, much more risky, but hey, risk is why I came here! I would rather put "Chef in a German restaurant on my resume" than "Helpdesk in Germany" any day.

Plus, it was just a man wanting to talk to me about the job, I was not being offered it. This is really where I want to be for now.

So Eric wins the prize of the day.......

Not to make anyone mad, because I did want peoples' opinion.... I was surprised how many times the word safe came up in the replies.

Anyway.. I was desparite(sp) for dessert tonight, so made a cake, oil and eggs, flour and baking soda and pineapple juice, made this stuff that I bought a while ago, hoping it was cornstartch, but is some sort of cake filling mix, which cooked turned out sort of like custard.

The cake once again didn't cook in the middle because I did it in the toaster oven, but I scooped out the middle part where it was raw, then filled it with canned pineapple, and then poured the custardy stuff all over the cake and pineapple.... NOT BAD!

Anway, not much else new here...... Thank you very much for the replies on what to do!!!! Later!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

It snowed last night and this morning, it was NICE to see snow when I didn’t have to drive to work in it. The mountains are beautiful, and did I mention that I don't have to drive in it? ;-)



Well, I KNEW this was going to happen. As soon as it looks like I could be settled here, I get a couple of calls and then an email asking me to contact a man abut a helpdesk job in Frankfurt that I applied to. GRRR… I received two calls from England on my cell phone that I missed, and since I have no credit left on it, I can’t even get into my voicemail to see who the messages were from. Then I get an email today from a gentleman with that number, asking me to contact him about the job in Frankfurt.


Ok people, here is where I could REALLY use your advice. There might be 2 options if this man is going to offer me a job. Tell me what you think about both, which you think I should do (this could obviously change if I don’t get offered the job, etc)

I also would like to know who might like a Christmas card from Germany, should my money come in, in time to send them out.
After reading this, please send me an email at synch390@yahoo.com with your opinion and
Whether or not you would like an xmas card (send me your snail mail address)

Here are the possible two scenarios:

#1
Stay where I am.
Help set up menus
Learn to cook things
No need to find place to stay
No income until kitchen is up and running
No guarantee of income should kitchen not make money
Kick back atmosphere
Lots of nice people around for support
SMALL town atmosphere, but will have car to use to get around (they are bringing one down from England for us to have (use)
Chance to fly back and forth to Portugal to help in the kitchen when they are busy

#2
Accept job (if offered)
Make way more money guaranteed, even if pay is not huge
Get apartment of our own in large city
Will have to FIND apartment in city
Privacy, but no one around for support
Live in larger town, be nearer to stores, transportation
More time to ourselves


Ok, this is dumb, even I can see option number 1 is better, it just the no money thing gets old after a while, though I know they will take care of us, etc.

UGH.

I made some sort of funny potato thingies with dinner tonight, they are sort of like mashed potato buds in little plastic bags with holes in them. You boil them and the water goes through and constitutes them, though they tasted stale and starchy to me. Maybe old, and maybe better with gravy. I made them with frikkadel(sp) pork of course, every damn thing that is meat here, is made out of pork. If I start making piggy noises….slap me.

Well, that is enough… I think I will just email the gentleman back and say that I am no longer looking for a job. I can’t believe I will be doing that. God I hate having to be an adult again to do this. It has been so nice not being responsible.

Either way, email me with your address if you would like a Christmas card.

Love to you all!!

One hospital per country!

Wow, another blog entry from me! Spent the majority of the day at the local hospital seeing if I had a sinus infection. I thought it was too early in the lifespan of it, to go in, but figured why wait until I got really sick before I went in.

I was also very lucky to have been made to buy insurance in Italy, because they let me use it here. Sooner or later I am going to be forced to come up with some sort of insurance. UGH…..

The German hospital was so much better than the Italian one, we only ended up waiting for about 15 minutes versus the 2 hours in Italy. In the waiting room I had been translating everything I could think of and putting it on this little teeny bit of paper I had in my billfold. It was about 1 inch by 3 inches and had someone’s email address written on it.

I wrote down the German words for “headache”, “stomach ache”, no fever, “I have chronic asthma”, “today asthma OK”, “but” no antibiotics, “possible” pneumonia.

I didn’t know if the Dr would speak English, so right away I handed him this tiny scrap of paper, and all the words were in different places on it, so I had to point out one, then the next, make him turn the paper over, show him the next. He was laughing and when he was done looking at it, began speaking in English .LOLOL. Hey, I wanted to make sure everything was understood!

It turns out they have a blood test (only in Germany? I had never heard of this) that checks for a certain protein that will tell them if you have a sinus infection. I didn’t have it, so that was good, but he still wrote out a prescription for me that I could get filled if I got worse. He said wait until I needed it, because it is about 45 €, but was good. So I am hanging on to that.

Not much time online tonight, so will just let you know that I FINALLY managed to get through the whole Lord of the Rings Triligy. Ok, I do admit to fast forwarding through some of the war scenes.. *YAWN* Anyway, I will keep this short, and will write tomorrow. Night!

THE UK INVADES!!!!

Ok, way better news going on here. A lovely family from England converged upon us this last Saturday and is taking over this place. Jan, the mom is originally from Scotland, she’s 45, her son Rob is 19, and her husband, Frank is a police officer. They brought along Jay, who has a 4 month old baby with Jan’s daughter. Jay is the chef of the family, though both Frank and Rob like to cook…. BUT, since they are also buying a restaurant in Portugal, Jay will be helping me come up with a menu for here, as well as refining my cooking skills, etc.

In short, Jess and I can stay living here, and I have been hired on as the main chef! I will also be going to and from Portugal to help out in the kitchen there when it gets busy! Oh yeah! That to me is amazing, I get to fly back and forth to Portugal, to their place which is right on the ocean, and help cook there! THIS is the type of thing I was looking for when I planned to come to Europe. I don’t mind staying in one spot at all, because there is so much within a short flying
distance!




Everyone left this morning to go back and sort things out in England, and then in 2 weeks everyone will converge on us again, Mark, the current owner will be gone by then. Rob will be living here permanently. Jan’s parents will also be coming in two weeks, and it looks like everyone will be staying through Christmas. Frank is a police officer in England, so he will not be here the whole time.

They are also bringing down one of their cars so that we’ll have transportation, since Mark either didn’t want to sell his car, or was asking too much, etc. So this means that I will be driving a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side!!! How fun will that be! It can also be training for when I visit England.

Everything happened so fast, and everyone in this family is so fantastic, but I sort of had a mini breakdown last night. I ended up calling my mom and bawling my eyes out. I feel so guilty that we will have all these people here and my mom and Nick will be alone for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The family said they are welcome here any time, but I don’t get paid until the restaurant is up and running in a month, so money is still going to be tight until then. PLUS both my mom and Nick still need to get their visas.

Jess and I still have the second half of our plane tickets from the original trip to Italy. We could pick up the flight in Amsterdam and fly back Dec 1st to the states to visit, but I have no money for a return flight to Germany. I am praying the house sells or I get another payment from Jodi, but then I should be paying the car payments for Nick, they are now two months behind. Anyone know how long you can get away without making car payments before they come to repossess it?? AUGH. So all troubles are certainly not over, but we are sure now that we will be staying in Germany long term. That is kind of a relief, now in December sometime we can apply for the extension of our permits here, and then we will be able to take free German language classes that the government offers. They do this to encourage assimilation, which works for me, I WANT to be able to speak the language.

Sooooo… that is the latest…. Much more exciting and upbeat than the last few blogs have been. I should have a lot more to say now, and should be updating the blog more often. We just need to be able to get through the next two weeks living with Mark. Things will be much harder now, I think, to be able to lend and ear to listen to him for long periods of time unfortunately.

Lot’s more to tell. Where to start.
Weeelllll… Jess and Rob hit it off right away and after only 3 days consider themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. OH,OH! The first night everyone was here, Jay and Rob stayed up with us and Mark, and were drinking. Jess and I went to bed, and sometime in the early morning we hear Mark outside our door asking if Missy, his dog was in our room. She was and the door was open, which is weird because we keep it closed because of the cats. (which, by the way are going to be allowed to have run of the house, in fact Jan has two dogs but is only bringing one for the month of December because of the cats, which to me says it is fine to let them out. They also have a Persian cat at home, and they are always worried about it getting out, so we should be safe in making sure our cats don’t get out here.)

Anyway, Missy was in our room. Jess gets up to close the door and go to the bathroom. When she comes out, she sees a strange shoe on the floor at the end of my bed. (My side of the bed is the farthest from the door.) When Jess looks closer she notices that the shoe is actually a foot! She goes up and looks, and Rob is sleeping on the floor along my side of the bed!

We laughed so hard. We think he drank too much and didn’t know what room was his, which could make sense but we were amazed that he could make it to the far side of our room in the dark to lay on the floor, without making any noise to wake us up! We made sure he was breathing, threw a blanket on him and a pillow under his head. I could not stop laughing. Later when we were talking about how we were surprised that he didn’t just trying to crawl into bed first, jess said if he has, she would have just shifted to the middle. LOL. That is how comfortable we both feel with all of this family right away.

The next morning I told Jan that if she was wondering what happened to her son, he was asleep on the floor of her room. She was so apologetic, we just said not to worry about it, no big deal. Then after we found out that Rob and Jess slept together last night (JUST SLEPT) Jan was so cool. She just says “I apologize for my son’s behaviour.” I just cracked up and said “And I apologize for my DAUGHTER’S behaviour” and then Jay just said “And a truce has been formed”

But make no mistake about it, these are NICE people, not one sleazy person in the bunch. They have manners, respect each other and genuinely LIKE each other. Very nice.

Last night, when my stomach was so upset due to stress I now think, Jan brought down something for me to take called “Andrews salts”

The closest thing I can compare it to is alka seltzer, but it is nothing like it. You put it in water, stir it up, it fizzes like crazy and you are supposed to drink it down fast. I then let out one small burp, then one HUGE one! That is part of what it does, like lassoes all the air in your stomach and kicks it out in one burp. NICE stuff.

So now the house is all quiet, and we are waiting for Mark to get up so we can get cat food and litter. Now it is VERY uncomfortable asking him for money for cat food and litter, we are worried he is going to make a huge deal out of it, pretty sure he will make a bigger deal about it than before. I feel bad, but they have to eat.

Well, I am stopping here for now. Will update later as I remember more about what went on. MOM; DAMN IT GET YOUR PASSPORT SO YOU CAN COME OVER HERE! You too Nick, so you can visit! I love you both!!!!

OK, let's just rethink my goals

I need to be out of here, this place just doesn't have a good feel to it anymore. It was lovely having a bit of a rest, but now I NEED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! Here, meaning the place we are staying.I am applying like mad at Amry, Navy and Air Forces bases everywhere in Europe. Span is the new one I am now trying for. There is also a new type of job I never knew how to look for until the other day, and through this I found an IT job opening at a school technology lab on the base in Heidelberg. The city we originally wanted to live in. The opening closes next week already, so everyons CROSS THOSE FINGER AND DO THE LITTLE RITUALS YOU DO; DEPENDING ON RELIGION:Hi Susan, thanks for the comment, I'm glad you are reading this. I am going to again make an effort to start posting a bit every day, since things may be changing soon, I hope.This place just has too much cigarrette smoke, drinking, problems associated with it. i could handle it at first, but now I feel like one big cig smell, and am hacking from asthma, etc. I want out. But I also feel like changes are coming, sooooo that would be nice.OK, going to go out on a limb here and post a couple of personal pics. The pants one, while is quite true about how much weight I lost, I think they were also stretch jeans and with too many washings, also stretched out a BIT..

Big Pants!

Longer Hair


ok, I haven't been able to get any more pictures on here tonight, something is weird, ok, I am letting you go, will try to get the upload to work tomorrow. BYE!!

Good grief, will this ever end??? AAUUGGHHHH

Time still flying by, but certainly boredom is the norm now.

I spend my days online as much as possible, applying for as many Army jobs in Germany as I can, Jess sleeps a lot, we both end up staying up all night watching movies.
OH yes! People here put out so many interesting things for the trash men to pick up. The other night as we were driving back to the house, Jess saw a television sitting with the trash. She and Mark went back to look at it and ended up bringing it back. Jess and I now have a GREAT TV, something like a 25 inch, with the remote and everything!

Unfortunately this means we stay up all night watching our videos o the DVD player from Italy that we hacked to play region one videos! (from the states)

Somehow we seemed to have left all the good videos back in the US. When I brought all the ones that were my favourites, I never thought that they would be the ones I did not want to watch, now I just want to watch the ones that I had only seen once before.

Note – If you move to another country and can only bring a certain amount of your videos with you, don’t bring your favourites, bring the ones you’ve only seen once or twice before!

Jessica seems to have brought the second disk of every movie she had, that had a second disk! She swears she made sure she had the first disk, but obviously she was on crack or something when she packed. Yeah……… hmmmmm….

We are still waiting for the deposit money from the apt in Italy to be deposited in my bank so that I can get jeans (remember the 30 pounds I lost? (Me too!!)) and a winter coat, and then I willalso have the money to apply for the UK visa (though something else may be in the works as far as a solution, but nothing I can talk about now.)

Rain, rain, rain, every day here, just waiting for it to turn into snow. NOOOOO…..
In the meantime we are sort of suspended in time. I lose one day a week, by Thursday I usually think it is Wednesday.

This is part of the reason that I have not been blogging, pure boredom.

One other thing I have been trying to do, is bake. Believe it or not, this house has no oven! Just a little toaster oven, and with the weather turning cooler, a person just feels the need to cook and bake. I have been able to make my homemade chicken noodle soup and chilli, but not being able to bake anything has been driving me crazy.

Not to mention that the usual baking ingredients that I am used to, simply are not in the stores that I’ve visited. Simple things like baking powder, Crisco, vanilla extract, baking soda. I have not even been able to find CHOCOLATE CHIPS for God’s sake, what kind of country IS this??

They have lots of candied fruit, which in itself is extremely scary. They seem to be really big on ODORS of things. I have found vanilla (real stuff) but it has been too expensive for me to buy on my budget right now, but they have odors of everything, which I find extremely amusing. Do they add it to a pot of water when they bake, because their baking smells so badly? Why would I add the odor of something to what I bake, when the taste of it is what makes it better. Should I be adding odor of butter rum to my chicken noodle soup, just to be crazy? For the life of me I cannot figure out why a person would need these!

I finally found baking soda the other day in a store, just because there was a glass of bubbling water on the front, and by the wording on the box, I thought it was a pretty safe choice. Baking POWDER however, has managed to elude me. I bought what I thought might be it, but it turned out to be something to make I THINK some kind of cream for inside cakes. It might be cornstarch and something else, but I am not sure.

Simply translating here doesn’t seem to work when it comes to baking, at least not so far. I finally managed to find oatmeal at a bigger store, and that I did find by looking up the word oat, but baking powder doesn’t seem to be in the dictionary I have.

I did however find out what exactly baking powder IS when I went online to look for a substitution. It turns out to be baking soda, cream of tarter and cornstarch. Now all I have to do is figure out what the hell cream of tarter is in German, then I can make my own.

Thank heaven they at least have unsweetened baking chocolate, which I prefer to use for baking. Unfortunately I forgot to tell Mark what it is, which was a REALLY dumb move, because he has a real sweet tooth and one night after Jess and I went to bed, he tried to put about 2 oz of it into a cup of coffee. BAD move. Just about ¾ of it was still in a lump on the bottom of his coffee cup the next morning. At first I was really pissed he’d wasted it, but then it hit me as pretty funny. If any of you have used unsweetened baking chocolate, you KNOW just how bitter it is. YUCK!

So the two things I baked in the toaster oven were passable, but the problem I have it that they want to brown on the outside WAY before the inside is baked, so I end up turning the heat down and baking them WAY too long, and the just ended up dry. Edible, both nothing even close to if they had been baked in an oven. How the hell does a place that has a dining room NOT have an oven? GRRRRR…


Ok, well I am off for now.

HEY ERIC; WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? PLEASE WRITE TO ME; I MISS TALKING TO YOU!

Better late than never?

Sorry, internet access here is dial up and not unlimited, and Mark is getting weird about us being onine long, even though I said I would pay our share when the bill comes. IThe following post isfrom a few days agao, and no pictures yet, sorry. I am back planning to go to tthe UK. We still have the out of our December 1st tickets back to the states, fromItaly, but we do NOT want to do this, although I am worried about money, etc... anyway..

Time just seems to be flying here, despite the fact that we are living the slow life.

We’ve been in Germany almost a month now, and I think here at Siebertal for about 3 weeks.

A typical day for me lately is sleeping in until noon, getting up, having some tea, throwing in some laundry, checking email…. If there are guests I’ll do the breakfast dishes and if anyone has left, clean the room, etc. Pretty boring stuff. In the even, Mark, the man who owns this place will open the bar up and Jess and I will just hang out, put a puzzle together, surf. I hate to see what the dial up internet bill is going to be. I think I should be going online every couple of days and checking to see is DSL is available here yet.

It looks like the end of November Nick is going to move in with some friends who will be renting a townhouse, so he will only be paying $150 a month, and should be able to afford the car payment and insurance on his own then. YES!

My mom wanted to see some pictures of US, not just scenery, so we took some pictures today, I may put one or two of me online. I’ve given up trying to look good in pictures, PLUS I want to show everyone the picture of me pulling my baggy jeans away from my legs so that you can see some of the 30 pounds I’ve lost!

I’ve decided that I am going to follow through with the Highly Skilled Migrant Program visa for the UK, just because if I get it, I can make a lot of money there, live cheaply and then save some up. Maybe even commute! Hey that would work. Fly back to Germany on the weekends, at least for a bit. Hmmm… Ideas seem to flow like crazy here. Making them happen is a LOT harder!

Mark is driving Jess into Osterode, a nearby town. A friend of ours, Nassir, owns a restaurant there named Ghandi and wanted Jess to come in this evening and earn some money doing some cleaning. The bar here is open when Mark should be going to get here, and he said something about me being able to take his car to drive and pick her up! That would be a big step for him, to lend us the car. That opens it up to the possibility we might be able to use it in the future, which would give us so much more mobility! Right now we are pretty much holed up here with no money and no place to go.

My friend Jodi, who is also my realtor……. by the way, my house has still not been sold! I feel so badly for her, we are hoping it goes soon! It’s been a real nightmare for her. She in effect bought me out of my equity so that we could leave for Europe before the house sold, so we owe her big time!

Anyway, we stand to get a bit more money when the house sells, but Nick is having a problem coming up with the last month of rent at the apt, so I rang her up and she was kind enough to advance me some money. She had mentioned possibly paying me the balance over the next two months. That would mean that maybe next month I will be able to buy a car! I have decided that even with the wonderful transportation system that the EU has, our being able to make it, as well as our sanity depends on getting a car. The transportation system is wonderful for getting to work and back, occasional long trips, but is way too expensive to use solely instead of a car. If I could get a car next month I could drive to the UK for job interviews, we could get to the bigger towns which would mean that we could get part time jobs, and get ourselves to and from them.

I am crossing my fingers that Jodi will make another payment to me next month. That would solve so many problems!!

Other than that, the Harz mountains are fantastic shades of orange and gold, but it seems to be raining non-stop the last week.

I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but Jess and I have moved into the room next to the one we were staying in. The new one is sooooooo much nicer. It has a couch in it that the cats love, and two extra windows with sills that look out over the street so that the cats can sit there and see what is going on. They are much happoer there, though we still let them out to run the halls when possible, they need to stretch their legs.

I have a couple of pictures when we put them in the cat harnesses to let them run on the balcony outside the room, the pictures are pretty hysterical, the look shell shocked. If I had a video camera I would be able to show you what happens when they try to walk in them..It shows just how much they depend on their sense of balance, with the harnesses on the basically stand up, then fall over on their sides. Very funny but sad at the same time. Kitty and Bammy were starting to get used to them, but were still quite off balance. Kitty had taking to walking with one side up against the fence to keep her standing upright. Again, VERY funny, but we try not to laugh out loud and offend them!

Short, sorry

Ok then, yell at me, I know it´s been a long time since I´ve written, but I´ve been staying in a bed and breakfast in the Harz mountains,in the middle of Germany! Internet is dial-up and the man who owns the place only has 30 hours a month time online, so we have been trying to minimize the time online. We are out of money right now, so going into town ( a 4 mile walk one way) and paying 3€ an hour for an internet café is out of the question. Anyway, I am writing this offline and then going to paste it in, seem so it seems to be the only way to get this posted.
We are staying with a man who owns a bed and breakfast (excuse me if I have said this before) and I have been working hard cleaning (we all know how men clean!) and cooking in exchange for our room, but are not really making any cash, although I just made 10€ for making spaghetti, fries and a pizza for a couple of guys who live in the apartments next door. YES! Never did I think a 10€ bill would look so good! It will go for cat litter and food, and shampoo and conditioner and SODA!
Don´t feel sorry for us, we are having a heck of a time, other than being REALLY bored and wishing we had internet 24-7!
Right now we are torn between working temporary jobs in German companies or waiting to see if any of the army jobs we applied for come through. They say that if you make any money from a German company you will not be able to work at a military base, and the opposite as far as German companies go. I checked online the other day and one of the IT jobs I applied for in the army said I had made the first cut, so that is good news. Stuttgart is way south of here, but that is ok, anywhere in Germany is fine, preferably near a city please.

So things have been slow and lazy, which was fun for the first week or so, but is now starting to get old. I wish there were more people coming to stay here, I like being busy.
We are still waiting for the refund of our deposit from the apt in Italy to come through via wire, and in the meantime something I charged back in SEPT just came in, so I am minus.
We won´t even talk about Jess´ account…. UGH!
I wish the house would sell, that would be about $3500 and we could just go out and rent an apartment near a city and start looking for work locally.

Anyway, I have been sick the last two days, and now that I am actually writing, I don´t have much to say. BAD, I wanted to keep such a close tab on everything we have been doing.

Well, this is the best I can do for now……. I will try to start writing more.

Wow, posting two days in a row!

Ok, where were we?

Oh yeah, at Amsterdam.... so basically I flew out of Amsterdam and into Hannover. By the time I got there, it was after 9, and Hertberg and Siber being the samll towns that they are, there were no more trains or busses going there that evening. Grrrrr..

I managed to get one to a town sort of near, and then called the place we were staying and the woner was nice enough to find me someone to come pick me up at the station and drive me back in exchange for gas money. Yeah!

The place we are staying is in a little town in the middle of Germany. we want to own this place badly, but it isn´t going to happen. We have a room with a balcony, and our own bathroom. A double bed, which in Europe means two singles put together. The Eurpeans obviously know the meaning of a good nights sleep, not feeling the person next to you tossing and turning. The place is old, when the owner said over 120 years old, we had to laugh, saying that in Italy that would be new, but then he reminded us that most of Germany was flattened in the wars, so this was pretty old for a house. That shut us up!

We have no transportation, the bus one way into town costs about $5 American, so we are walking, it´s about 8 km into town, takes us a bit over an hour to walk it if we need to shop and use the internet. We finally got on the internet yesterday, abotu a week after the owner of the place we are staying kept promising his would be up and running.

Yesterday we started applying for the civilian PX jobs at all the Army bases in Europe, Jess already got one reply saying she should stop in to get interviewed. Only problem is that it costs €30 one way for her to take the train. We should have stayed closer to the part of Germany we were job hunting in, but we couldn´t turn down the offer to stay here, we had no place to go at the time.

i also received a great email from the rental place in Italy. They were suprised to get the keys in the mailbox slot, but the woman was able to rent the place within a week, so we are getting a €314 refund!!!! yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we are just a little less close to being broke.

Anyway, that is sort of up to date on everything, plus I am tired of typing. I will try to update this every other day, or if jobs happen, etc.

Love to you all!

Well hey there, long time no see!

Good god, what an interesting life Jess and I have been leading the last couple of weeks.

We have been just about homeless, I´ve been flying aroung Germany via Amsterdam, we are pretty much broke, but I did manage to steal a bunch of money from Jess´ account via the ATM so that I could get back fropm the airport, etc.

Anyway, I will just start typing like crazy to make up for lost time.

Oh before that, congratulations to the people from DEED! They won $4 in the lottery (with $75 worth of tickets)

Well, last I remember I was renting a car from Milan to bring Jess and I into Germany.

We drove up and decided to go to Wiesbaden instead of Darmstadt, I just had a feeling a really wanted to see the city. It was a LONG ride and the cat´s cages really didn´t fit into the rented car, but we managed. We ended up leaving Italy at about 11 pm, quite a few hours later than we wanted to, but we really wanted to leave the apartment in Italy clean. Well I did, Jess just wanted to leave. We did the cowards way out and slipped a note with the keys through the mail slot of the rental place. I haven´t heard back from them, so I am guessing they figured the one month deposit would cover everything.

Driving wasn´t bad, i had Jess as the navigator, so I was set. We got to Wiesbaden about noon, and I had made a hotel reservation, we were allowed in ealry, which was good because I was dead on my feet.

I decided that since the hotel had advertised as pet friendly, I was not going to ask if we could have four cats in our room. Of course that meant having to feel REALLY guilty (thanks mom) trying to get them into the room with a miimal amount of noise.

We managed and asked where an internet cafe was and walked down. Wiesbaden is a NICE city. Clean, cute, big enough but not too big.

We seem to be camerally challenged the last couple of weeks, so no pictures, sorry.

We had gone to try and find an apartment rental, then apply for jobs at the local Army base. we true to forom, the Ortega luck was running as bad as usual, we could NOT find anything.

we ended up staying a couple of extra days, and then our luck changed. Everytime I looked online for apartments, in Germany, I would run across this site for a hotel/hostel for sale, but it could be rented for €695 a month and you could pay €15,000 for the furniture. Well, in the back of my head I´ve alwasy wanted to own something like this, (no, we have not bought the place, at least not YET! ) BUT i kept thinking that maybe this guy would rent a room to us where we could have our cats.

Turns out he answered, said give him a call. I called an spoke to him, an Englishman, and he said that although he was closed for the season, we coudl come up, rent a room, have our cats with us, he could earn a bit of money, we could get the job and apartment business sorted out, etc. YES!!!!

We ended up driving up to his hostel in Sieber, Germany, kind of the middle, in the Harz mountains, which are really just BIG hills, but beatiful, all the trees have been turning wonderful colors, and the weather is perfect Indian summer.

It sounds peaceful, but lots of things have been happening during the last week or two.

I dropped Jess and the cats off and then had to turn around at 2 am the next morning and drive what Mapquest SAID was going to be a 9 hour drive down to Milan to bring the rental car back. Yeah, RIGHT! I even padded the driving time by couple of hours and was late.

The night I started out, I was having problems with one of my eyes and had been wering my glasses. I was going to bring the contacts with me, but forgot. Well about 2 miles I realized that in my old age, my eyes ahd REALLY changed since I had gotten my glasses about 9 months ago, I could not even read the road signs unless I sort of tipped the glasses forwardwith the ear pieces riding high on my head. By te time I realized this I was about 20 minutes away from Jess, and decided I would wing it, that it wouldn´t be too bad.

What followed next were about 15 of the most excrutiatingly HORRIBLE hours of my life.

The entire way down to Italy was horribly foggy, and I could not see the signs at all. I was probably a major danger onthe road, but I didn´t want to add another day´s rental to the car. (Everyone PLEASE give a HUGE round of applause to my mother, who was willing to pick up the rental car bill on her visa so that we would have a little cash. YYYEEEAAAHHH mom! I love you!!!)

I had booked a flight backup to Germany using my emergency frequent flyer miles because we truly did not have ANY money. I ended up bringing the car back with an empty tank, which I thought would go on my mom´s visa, but which went on mine, since it was the visa that I reserved the car on. i was TRULY lucky that the were reversig the charges for the rental and putting them on my mom´s visa, and that the reversal actually came in time so that nothing bounced.

Anyway, the directions mapquest gave me had me driving THROUGH the Alps, which has just received one of the first snowfalls. It was so amazing, (what I could see of it) it brought tears to my eyes. I could only imagine what it looked like had I been able to see clearly! I was so happy to be drivgn that way.... that is, until I realized that mapquest did NOT make allowances for driving through mountains behind very slow moving cars.

After a while I could tell that making my 1 pm flight was going to be too close for comfort. So close that I was pretty sure I was NOT going to make it.

With 45 minutes left, and being half blind, I saw a sign for an airport, and HOPING it was the one I was looking for, in desperation followed it. i found terminal 1, which was where the rental car place was, screached into a parkign spot and looked for the rental place. I asked a man in the lot and he said inside the terminal. I asked if he knew if the KLÖM checkin was in terminal 1 or 2. He gave me a funny look and said something I couldn´t understand, so I just ran for the termial, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, stopped the first person I saw and asked if this was the Malpensa airport near Milan. She said no, this was on the Swiss side of the border and the airport was probably an hour away, maybe less.

CRIPES! I have driven all this way UNABLE to see a street sign clearly, and now I am goign to miss my flight. SHIT! I may have said FUCK, but either way I was not happy.

By now the car has had the gas light on for about 25 minutes, and I knew I would have to put some amount of gas in it. I has stopped a couple of times to put €5 in just to keep going. I had no idea how much was in my bank account now, but was pretty sure it was close to zero, the same with Jess´ account. I drove into a gas station, and on the pump it said something about visas, and what I thought was after hours. i mean, I am so frazzled by this time, I assume it say you can pay by visa after hours. COOL! Maybe I have €5 still in my account.

I put 5 in the gas tank, and go to pay. The man behind the counter looks JUST like the Mr Bean consulate guy. UGH. Even worse, he is Italian and when I hand him my visa say, "DID you not read the sign outside, it says that we do NOT accpect visas!"

Yeah well Mr, I thought, that´s the way my luck is... But that´s ok I think, I have €5 on me. I hand him the money and he say no, it´s in Swiss Francs. SHIT!

Ok, how much in €? It was somethign like €10. I didn´t have it. Here! I say, I have €4......... No go... Well, what do I do? I could just TELL he was going to call the police. I FINALLY convinced him to let me go to an ATM to get cash (like I HAD any in there) by giving him my license, which he was NOT impressed with, he wanted the rental agreement from the car place.

TAKE it, I though. After roaming around 15 minutes liking for the bank, I finally find it. By now it is a little after 1, and I am hoping for some sort of mechanical failure on the plane I was supposed to be on, and that I would get there an hour late to find the flight had been delayed and everything would be wonderful.

I fnid the bank, and there were two ATMS. Oh, by the way, this bank was in the World Trade Center building, which was either 3 or 4 stories high. I thought this was hysterical, but when I think back on it now, they were VERY smart, should someone fly a plane into it, hey, only three stories go down in a blase. hmmmmm.....

Anyway, the one ATM will only let you take out like a minimum of 250. crap, then I notice it only dispenses Francs. SIIIGGHHHHH....... I want my MOMMY!

I ask the man at the other ATM, hoping to God he speaks English, how much 10 francs would be in Euros, he says about 15. ok, these numbers may be a bit skews, but you get the general drift. So now wait until he is done, and try to take out 20 francs. YES! some unknown God has let me do this. i´m pretty sure I don´t have that money in there, but you think I am going to question it at this time? NOOOOO..

So now, instead of 10 francs, (that was the amount now that I think of it, I have 20)
Being the smartass that I am , I drive up to the pump, go in, flash the 20 franc note at him and say. "ok, I´m going to go ahead and put another 10 francs in the gas tank!"

I know he thought he was never going to see me again, and trust me, I was thinking of the odds of getting to the border before the police caught up with me..

So now I´m set, 20 francs worth of gas in the car I head towards the border, and there´s aline there. There is no way in hell I could have ever gotten tot he airport on time. I get through, head towards Milan and pray to the gods that there are signs to Malpensa airport.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say, when i was getting the directions, the airport didn´t really have a street address, or I couldn´t find it, so I used the zipcode of it, and those were the wrong directions, I had even gone the right way according to the directions I had, they just weren´t the right directions.

So now I had no directions, but was really lucky and found the airport by going towards Milan, there were great signs, and managed to get to the airport, to the Europcar rental place.

I drop the car off, argue with them for a while, they want to charge the whole thing to my bank card. I explain that I had changed the billing with the US office to be on my mom´s card, and if they charged mine, they would not be getting their money.

I finally had to make her cal the US, I spoke to them and they were kind enough to send a fax to Milan saying the retal was on my mom´s card.

Unfortunately they had to charge the gas to my card. Whatever I thought.

I eaded to the terminal, thank heavens I had no luggage, etc. Squinted my way in trying to find the KLM desk. When I get there I explain I missed the flight, what can I do. I was soooooo lucky, there was another flight goign to Hannover at 4 something.

BUT there was a €45 penalty for changing the reservation. "Charge it to Mapquest" I thought, and explained to them i was broke and that was why I had used my frequent flier miles. Well, he said no exeptions. I told him that if he didn´t issue the ticket to me I would me forced to live in his termial like Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal" I kid you not, I actually said that to him.. He wasn´t to impressed, but did send me to their account dept to talk to them about the fee.

15 minutes later, after saying the same thing about having to live in their terminal forever, as offering my mom´s credit card number even though I didn´t have the card (sorry mom)I had a boarding pass in hand. YES! I did not have to live in their terminal.

So off the Amsterdam I fly. From Amsterdam I switch planes to Hannover, Germany.

While waiting for them to say that boarding will start, i realize that I have no money to take the train down from Hannover to Siber, where the hotel is.

One note, in the Amsterdam airport, you wait to board, then you go into a bus and they bus you over to the plane out on a waiting area where all these planes are lined up.


I think, I NEED cash, it will cost around €30 to get from Hannover to Sieber. I go to the cash machine. I start with trying to pull out €50. No go. €40? no go. €20? No go.. I pull out Jess´ card and try €70, just for the fun of it. HOLY crap! It gave me money! Now I know for a fact theat there is not that much money in the account, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.. I try taking out another €50.... It gives it to me. I try another €70. It gives it to me, but by bnow I am looking over my shoulder and have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I´m trying to remember just how much money will make it a federal offense, and once again the guilt my mother instilled in me wins. i stop.

Standing in line waiting for the train i honestly feel like I have killed someone.

This will ahve to be continued in another day or so, sorry, almost out of internet time.

we are fine, out in the middle of the boonies in Germany, but will try to get back into town tomorrow. Buses stop running here at 6:30, so I have to run... LATER!

Why renting car in Milano

Just a quick note, I am renting from Milano because then I only have to fly from there back to Germany when I drop the car off. I can drop it right off at the airport Ryanair runs out of. There were no cheap fares from Pisa or Rome going out back to Germany on that day, but I got a €22 fare out of Milan.

It reall ends up the same mileage no matter where you start from, because you have to end up there also. It was the cost of getting back to Germany that made me rent it from Milan. The rental price was exactly the same no matter where I rented from. Trust me, I spent HOURS looking up the best way to go...

Why renting car in Milano

Just a quick note, I am renting from Milano because then I only have to fly from there back to Germany when I drop the car off. I can drop it right off at the airport Ryanair runs out of. There were no cheap fares from Pisa or Rome going out back to Germany on that day, but I got a €22 fare out of Milan.

I feel like a yo-yo

Back and forth, back and forth.

Well, I couldn't wait any longer to make a decision, time and money are running out. I booked a little station wagon from Milan for three days.

I take the train up to Milan, drive back to Perugia, we load it up with assorted boxes, luggage and animals, and head up to Germany the next day.

Oct 1st I drive back down only to Milan, grab a Ryanair cheap flight to Hahn Frankfurt, and train/bus it back to Darmstadt.

We THINK we have a place to stay.

A 2 bedroom apartment, we can't afford the rent, but I just emailed him to ask it if was indeed 2 bedrooms, and that if he would let us pay one week's rent, we would look for a quiet female student who needs a place. The place is 80 sq meters, which is like double the size of our apt, with a small basement, etc. It is in a house.....

He sort of said yes to the cats, and it's right by the rail station, so that will be nice.

Soo..... cross your fingers again.

OH, the United Nations job in Vienna? I emailed the woman last week sometime to ask about it, said I had an interview in Germany, and needed to take the first job offered, but WANTED that job. She didn't even bother to email back t say he wasn't interested, etc... GRRR.. not very professional.

I have still been looking for UN jobs around Europe. Why not?


Soooo.. tomorrow we have to get on the stick, pack everything and CLEAN like crazy..... because we all know that while I am going up to Milan to get the car, and driving back, I would NOT be able to get Jess to clean.


Well, keeping this short, am hungry and cold.... will write more tomorrow.

HMMMM........ WHERE are we giong?

Good question. Things seem to be changing minute by minute, amazing but true.

Yesterday, well actually even today we were planning to go to the UK, all Novell and GroupWise systems there, I can make good money..... But you need a visa.. I could apply for the Highly Skilled Migrant Program and probaly get the visa, but the fee is about $500, and that's about half of all of our money in the world.. Uh-oh. So now we are back going to Germany at least temporarily. Trying to get a handle on a place to stay, I mayhave one if I can convince him to drop the rent, the deposit and let us pay by the week. (Hey, I did that before, though I probably didn't write about it, maybe I did, the whole Darmstadt fiasco!!) and a cheap way to bring the cats up. Then we park outside an army base and beg for cashier jobs.
LOLOL Gawd.....

I will write more tomorrow, I do promise. I have about 10 minutes left here, then the place closes down.

Damn, I should have gone to Germany to apply for the job handing out badges I was supposed to go interview for last Thursday.. well, live and learn, maybe I will get a head cashier job, or a BK job! yeah!


Things have been pretty crazy the last couple of weeks, just trying to find a way to stay in Europe. Money is getting MIGHTY low, which of course is the main problem as usual. Anyway, i will write more tomorrow, nothing too interesting so you haven't been missing much!

HA!

Fooled you!You thought I was going to write today. Nope, sorry. BUT I promise I will tomorrow. I have been sending in crazy amounts of job applications to everywhere in Europe, but I need to look for a place for us to live, so tomorrow should be less crazy and I promise I willwrite!

Freaking Blogger

I started typing today´s blog, only did about 10 minutes worth, but this was good stuff! I went to save it before i wrote more and the dang thing dissapeared on me. That´s it, I´m going back to the hostel. Will write tomorrow.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Believe it or not, I am actually BORED today. Which for me is a wonderful thing to be. I hopped the bus into Heidelberg and I am just going to surf all day.. I guess that means I have to update the blog. Sheesh, you guys are sooo demanding! :-)

Cell phone service when you are moving around Europe SUCKS!
I have wasted more freaking money farting around trying to be able to call Jess in Italy, and THINKING I had great minutes and calling mom. NOOO. So now my mom is going to buy a German or International calling card, hopefully from Sprint with the same 5 cents a minute deal as she has to Italy, then she can call me and I get free incoming, so that will save money.

Jess and I are still struggling to find a way to communicate without it costing a fortune. I am hoping I will have a land line soon and then it will be cheap for me to call her from that with a calling card.

Before I get to the next chapter of the adventure of on my first day in Germany. (MAN that day was long)I want to tell you about my latest roommates in the hostel.

Yesterday afternoon I came back from the city and there was someone sleeping in the top bunk in my room, so I put my stuff away and tiptoed out to watch TV in the TV room to let them rest. I had bought chicken tikki masala from a place in Heidelberg, OH YEAH, good stuff. Makes me drool to think of it, unfortunately everything is closed today. Anyway I sat and ate that, and watched "Double Jeopardy" in German, which worked fine because I practically know every word, so I knew what was going on.

The only thing that bugged me was that the person dubbing Tommy Lee Jones´ voice, his voice was too high and it was making me crazy for some odd reason. Most of the time they really get people who sound similar when they dub movies nowdays, and I have been realy impressed at how there is no longer the old stereotype of the lips not moving even close to what is being said (somehow that brought to mind some sort of Saturday night live skit where they were making fun of the old Japanese films dubbed so badly....). They do a GREAT job of starting at stopping at the same time. That´s got to be tricky, but it really helps watching a dubbed show, it isn´t so distracting.

I came back to my room later and there were two girls there. One from Berlin, who had just been visiting her parents in Singapore, and one from.... ITALY! We talk all the time of missing the cafe (espresso there)

Then as we were introducing ourselves 4th girl came in. German also.
Don´t ask me the names, I have a horrible memory.
But I was impressed at these girls. The last one to come in, when I spoke to her, is ging to Boston in a couple of months to finish her PHD in medicine. She is doing research on alzhiemers (i forgot how to spell it - yes that was a lame attempt at a joke).

When I asked her why Boston, she said they have different ways of doing their reseach and she was interested in watching and maybe learning them. VERY smart.

The girl from Italy is looking at coming to Germany to finish her Masters in Social something, I forgt. But again, very intelligent.

Makes me feel dumb with my two associates degrees. But the difference is that many countries in Europe offer college education for only the cost of books and living expenses. I mean, can we say SMART? Then you have educated people who are able to help the economy by being able to purchase more since they are not up to their necks in student loans..... Ahhhhh... a simple but effective idea. I think in America we are so caught up in the NO DO NOT RAISE OUR TAXES that we will never get the point of being able to do this. Oh well......

Anyway, the third girl, for some reason I cannot remember why she was at the hostel, but I´m sure that she was really intelligent too. LOL

OK, i need to look at my list of things I wanted to say...

Oh yes! There is a late night talk show host that tries to be Johnny Carson! It is the weirdest thing to watch and slightly agravating. It first I thought it was just a fluke, but he does ALL the mannerism. I wonder is anyone else realizes that´s what he is doing? He has probably been called "The Johnny Carson of German television" by the press a some point.. LOL

Ah, his name is Harald Schmidt. I tried to find pictures of both he and Johnny in the same sort of pose, but couldn´t.........

Okay, okay, I have put it off long enough. I´m taking a quick pogo break and I will start the next episode of my first day in Germany.....

OK, back...

OK, where were we, Iranian taxi driver... terrorists, apartments, driving on sidewalks....

So the landlady tracks me down and asks if I still want to see the apartment. I say sure,and go over with Madjedeh, (that is her name) and see the apartment. It is big, but nothing amazing, just like an apartment in the states, except that you turn the hot water on and off from under the sink and over the sink in the bathroom to save energy, and turn the water off completely when you leave the apart. It´s furnished, has a nice balcony where you can dry clothes, blah, blah...

We sit down and talk, and decide that yes, i´ll take the apt but not until tomorrow since I have already paid for the hotel and my luggage is back there. Plus she does not have the rental forms with her, she lives up in the city part of Frankfurt.

I can have it for the rest of the month, but Jess and the cats can´t come up, because there is carpet and they are trying to sell the apt, etc, etc... I am really dissapointed by this, but it´s only one month and will give me time to look for a job and apt.

Since I am going to meet her the next day by jumping a bus from the hotel, she suggests that when she brings me back to the hotel, I can give her one of my pieces of luggage, so I only have to drag one around. (Yeah, yeah, I know, being an American, this immediately rings warning bells in my head, but the thought of not having to drag the second danmn piece of luggage around me sounds too nice. Besides, she is very well dressed, her husband is a German scientist who had been at the university, but they just laid him off, and now he is in Africa looking for a job)LOLOLOL

We go back to the hotel and I get what I need out of my second piece of luggage. To be honest, I had packed the piece I took with me on the plane from Italy with everything important, papers, etc, and the second bag with clothes and odds and ends, knowing it would be checked baggage. This means I only had to take a couple of things out and there was nothing of importance. (see, I´m not THAT stupid, you have no confidence in me)

I brought it back out and gave it to here, we said goodbye and went our ways for the evening.

It was VERY hot that day in Darmstadt and as my room was sort of half underground, it was a bit cooler, but I couldn´t really open the windows all night.
I checked email and went to the in-house restaurant to get some food to go.
He said they would call my room in about 20 minutes and I could come pick it up as there was no room service.

That worked for me, so I checked mail again and went down the room to sit very quietly in one spot without moving so that I could sweat as little as possible.

After a bit there is a knock on the door, and there is one of the front desk men with my dinner on a tray! Very nice (but I wasn´t going to tip, sorry)

This was what my dinner consisted of, and this is why I am thankful I may not be living in Germany...

Main course was pork, i forgot the word for the way they were cut, but call them in the size and shape of chicken nuggets, though no breading. These were covered by an amazing dark brown gravy. On the side were fresh green beans. There was also a side salad and wonder of wonders..... potatoes sliced up into little round pieces, cooked with cabbage and butter.

AUUGGHHHH. I have been starving myself to lose almost 20 pounds in Italy, and I will now gain it all back in one evening. (you thought the food was going to be horrible, didn´t you?)

The food here is amazing. POTATOES!!! You don´t get potatoes in Italy, thank GOD.. Lots of pasta in Italy, but somehow pasta burns off way quicker than potatoes. Also in Italy, EVERYthing is cooked in olive oil, you will very seldom if ever get something with butter on it. I cooked zucchini once in olive oil and onions, garlic and honest to God, you would think it was cooked in butter!

I now regretting that I had ordered dessert, but it was fresh fruit was some whipped cream on top, so not too bad, but man, those potatoes and cabbage.. My stomach is growling just thinking baout it.

Anyway, I watch CNN in English and catch up on all the Katrina news, then go to bed in a sweltering hotel room.

Sometime during the night, the TV switches on by itself and wakes me up. There is a mesaging system in the hotel that goes through the TV instead of your phone. Very freaky and a little unsettling to be woken up in the middle of the night by the freaking TV turning on.

Anyway, it was a message from the landlady about the next morning. For the life of me I can´t remember what it said, but i think that it said that if I was going to be up early, to come to the apt by 9:30 before she went to work and I could get in then.

No WAY was I going to be up and about by 9:30, I was exhausted from the midnight flight the night before, all the trains, planes and automobiles from the day before.
So i figured i would just ignore it and meet her at 3pm as we had arranged.

I get up the next morning with just enough time to shower and check out by 11. Now I have several hours to kill.

OK, this part is boring even me. Here is the quick version. I check mail before going. There is an email from her saying she will pick me up at the hotel at 11 am.. i wait, and wait, and wait, finally another email, now it say she will be there at 1 pm. I wait and wait and wait. Finally at 4 pm, feeling VERY foolish, i book a cheaper hotel online and ask the desk clerk to call a cab for me, hoping to hell it isn´t the same man from the day before. SHIT!

Thank God it isn´t, and I go to the new hotel... SMACK in the middle of an incredible shopping area. CRAP!!! :-)

By now I am figuring my luggage is gone and good riddence to it, one less thing for me to drag around in the heat. I ask the desk clerk at the new hotel if they are allowed to give my name out if someone were to call there looking for me.

There is just a millisecond of fear in his face, so I assure him i am not running from the law or anything. this actually makes him look even more worried, and I noticed he puts me in the second part of the hotel, and there is no one else in any of the rooms. (expecting a shootout maybe??)

OH! One thing I may not have explained well enough is that half of the problems here are because I still have the Italian SIM card in my phone and no one seems to be able to contact anyone else by phone, and we both have limited internet availability. This is fixed later when I get a German SIM card, and then can no longer talk to my mom or Jess.

So I get settled in the room, go out and see what there is to eat. I can´t stand it, I NEED Burger King...There is actually a BK there. I go in, and being the good, healthy person I now am, only order a cheesburger, fries and medium coke. LOL


THE COKE HAS FREAKING ICE IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, but there is no ice in the entire country of Italy, and I practically have dream of it at night, so this is just about better than sex for me. (sorry Jess)

When I´m done eating, I smoke a cigarrette (just joking) and go back to the internet (God, sorry this is dragging along and is not really funny) and there are several messages from the landlord askign why I didn´t make it to the apartment. She had waited there for 4 hours, then called the hotel and they said I had just left. Did I want my luggage? It was obvious that were not gonig to be able to communicate effectively to each other. (slight understatement)

At this point I was just plain TIRED of the contact the landlady game. I wrote her back and said she was supposed to pick me up at the hotel and never did and I waited 4 hours, etc....

Ok, that´s it, I am skipping the rest of the story and getting straight to the end..

Landlady goes out of town for weekend. I go to Heidelberg to stay in hostel. We email and she asks if I still want apt, and tells me she left luggage at hotel for me. i call hotel and they will hold luggage til Monday.
I tell landloard I want apartment but can´t afford to pay deposit because will need money to find other apt.

She says no problem, no deposit necessary, meet monday (tomorrow) at 1 and I can have apartment, she´s been in same situation. The end.

God, that was PAINFUL to write it was so long and boring.

SOO.. starting tomorrow I have an apartment for the rest of the month.

NEW turn of events. I wasn´t going to talk about it so that I didn´t jinx it, but daughter wrote about it on her blog already, so....

When I was online at one of the forums on living in Germany, an IT recruiter told someone else to email their resume to her.

Taking a chance, I sent her an email with mine, asking if she could help me.

Turns out she said she might have something for me, but to make my resume bigger. In Europe resumes are called CVs and can be quite a bit different. You don´t just put in what your job duties are, you talk up how good you were at them! I can do that, so I did. After a couple more contacts via email and one chat on the phone with her, I have a lead on an IT job at the United Nations in Vienna!

I do NOT want to jinx it, so I´m not giving any other details for now, but please, wish me luck, pray for me, whatever it is you do to help someone, I can really use it right now.!

Sooooo...... now we are up to date I think. Shew......... I´m worn out and I think my carpal tunnel is starting to come back in my right hand!

Ok then, i am going to hang out here and do some fun stuff on the PC, and will let you know if the landlady and I actually connect and if I get my apartment tomorrow..

I miss you all, take care!!!!