Where to begin? Well I think rambling from subject to subject suits me the best. Germany... what do I think of Germany after living here now for....thinking...wow, 2 years 4 months. I like it. i am not crazy in love with it like i was with Italy, but it is a comfortable place to stay. The weather.. everything is very stable. There is enough of a change in the seasons to not go crazy, yet we really only had maybe one day the entire winter where something even resembling snow came down. NICE.
I like the apartment I am in, my job is cool, though I am looking for another, this one just doesn't keep me busy enough..
OK, rambling about jobs.
Let's do a time line type thing here.
July 4, 2005 - Jess and I fly to Italy from the US. We stay in Perugia with no visas, until we have to leave 3 months later.
Sept 30, we rent a car and drive to Germany, where someone has told us we can live/get residence permits without having to go back to the states. If we had wanted top stay in Italy we would have had to fly back to the US to beg for visas. No way that was going to happen.
We rent a car, jam 4 cats and everything we own (which is certainly a bit more than the two suitcases we arrived with) and drive to Wiesbaden, Germany. I don't remember why we chose there? hmmm.. Anyway, if memory serves me right, we had like enough money to last 2-3 days. WOW.... how the hell did we pull this off? Any way, I remember looking online for anywhere cheap to live, and kept coming upon this pension (kind of like a hotel in your own house type thing, I supposed bed and breakfast you could also call it) was for sale. But something about the wording, I think it said something like you could rent it and run it instead of just buying it outright. I kept thinking maybe that was how we could make money, doing it that way. Also, if I remember it was owned by an Englishman. I called up and asked if he could use some help running it, in exchange for room and board, explained our circumstances and he said yes! So we drive to northern Germany, I drive the rental car from Italy back DOWN to Italy, which took like 14 hours straight, flew back up. hmm... must have had some money left at that point, and then we stayed there for a couple of months.
Late November 2005. - things go to hell at the pension, new owners taking over, we have to leave. Somehow we have heard about getting jobs with the American military near Frankfurt. This is where my lovely mother adds my name to her credit card and we rack up about $5,000 in charges.
We rent a car, find a WONDERFUL hotel where we stayed for almost 4 weeks, at a special $29 a night. We start applying for jobs with several military bases in the area.
Mid December - 2005 I have a PT job at the Taco Bell on post in Hanau, jess has a job with Subway. WE pull out a couple thousand in cash from the credit card, rent an apartment in Hanau, and are able to stay in Germany legally because of our status with the Department of Defense. The rest is history.
July, 2006 - I land a PT job at the Library on post. PT meaning they let me work 39 hours a week and I actually receive health benefits. YES!!! LUXURY...
July 2007 - since I know that the post in Hanau is closing the next year, I am lucky enough to fins a library Tech job at the European Regional Library Support Center in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is amazing, I love it, have stayed there before when I flew up from Italy to check out jobs before we actually moved up. It's snuggled up against a line of low mountains, probably too low to be mountains, but definitely too high to be hills, all covered with trees.
August 2007 - My son (we have the infamous trip to Italy, more on that later) and my mom fly over, my son for 10 days, my mom for ever!
March 1 2008 - I start up my blog again. :-)
In between all of that there have been trips and weddings and babies and Jess and her family moving to Texas, having to put one of my cats to sleep, me even flying back to the states for a few days!
All that and more on our next episode. That may even come today, I've been home sick for a few days now fighting off pneumonia.
For now, here is the latest picture of the future ruler of the universe; my granddaughter Ada.
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