Phase one, in which Doris gets her oats.

WOW!

2011-08-11T21:39:00.001+02:00

I just looked this up, I think I will come back and update this. A LOT has happened since my last post...

Random Things

2008-04-27T21:23:00.008+02:00

I just got done watching "Becoming Jane" Good movie, tearjerker.

My mother and I worked on our balcony garden today. The weather here in Germany is finally warm enough to put out the window boxes of geraniums hanging from the balcony railing. That's almost the end last of the plants we are gettnig. I will take pictures in the next couple of days.

A friend and I drove up to Holland yesterday to see the Keukenhof Gardens. Oh my God the traffic was bad. It was their annual flower parade. 2 hour line of cars to even get into the park. UGH. But fun to see all the license plates from France and Great Britain, of course the Netherlands, Germany.

The gardens were really amazing, here are a couple of pictures of the flowers I toook. Doesn't do them justice, but you can imagine.

Here's a couple of video clips from my camera:

Living in Europe

2008-03-02T21:32:00.003+01:00

OK, til all thoughts get sucked out of my brain I may repeat things. Maybe even after.

I love living in Europe. I miss my kids and granddaughter of course. More, I miss helping Nick out when he needs a place to live and all his roommates have gone back to live with their mommies. He says he wouldn't want to live at home, but what kid wouldn't at least like the safety net of being able to move back in for a bit, especially the way things are in the states these days. No jobs, everything costs a fortune. Grrr.... THAT is the one and only thing I hate about living in Europe. I can send money, but nothing beats stopping by the house, eating dinner, grabbing some food from the fridge, leaving laundry, etc. Nick doesn't have that. For that I get really sad. What else can I say.

I have tried to get him to come with his girlfriend for the summer. Work PT with the army, travel around the rest of the time, just CANNOT get him to do this.. *sigh*

His girlfriend's mother has been really amazing through all of this. I really need to send her a letter or something, thanking her for keeping him from hitting the ground too hard.

I just wish the dang kid would stay at a job.. I don't know, is it like that for all 21 year olds? I mean, I know the answer is no, but is it tough out there for kids trying to make it? I mean, you hear about people in their 30s going back to live with their parents because it's just too damn expensive. Ok, off that subject for now....
doing slow, deep breathing to calm down)

I still really think I have the best of both worlds, living in Europe and working for the army. Well, other than the fact that I get paid in $$ and I have to pay rent in euros. it now takes about $1.55 to = 1 euro. it was like $1.29, maybe less when I first came to Europe. Doesn't sound like a lot but rent is costing us something like $250 a month more because of the euro.

But we can shop off post and find many things MUCH cheap than the commissary, then shop the commissary for things we can't get on the economy.

Ok, I am still way too sick, going to bed right in the middle of this wonderfully boring conversation.. Next time I will talk about something much more exciting, my trip to Spain I took a couple of weekends ago. :-) Later...

Let's try this again, shall we?

2008-03-01T12:21:00.003+01:00

OK, for a while there I really had nothing to say, but I've been feeling wordy again, so here goes. :-)

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.

Things starting to settle down a bit

2007-08-05T10:40:00.000+02:00

I am in a new apartment in Heidelberg, settling into the new job, etc. These next two weeks will be crazy, with my son and mom coming over. I will try to start blogging again. A friend I was talking to on the phone last night asked if I would turn the comments back on, so I did.

That's all for now.

To those I know back in Minnesota, i hope all your loved one are well and were not involved with the bridge collapse.

-diana

updated blog!

2007-06-17T13:59:00.000+02:00

Well, a lot has been happening, and a lot of just the ordinary has been going on also. I know it's been a long time since I have updated this, so maybe no one will even read it! The last few months have been crazy, with Jess pregnant, the new baby, etc. Jess being pregnant was a drain on all of us. Part of that being that she was on partial bedrest a lot of the time. That coupled with the fact that she was not on meds made for a very interesting few months. But is was all worth it when Ada was the end result, even though it took both Leo and I as well as Jess to get that baby into the world! What an experience helping deliver your grandaughter!!!!!!! So now Jess is back on meds and doing really well, but things are still crazy with the baby. I love her to death, but it is somethimes hard to come home from work and then take over Ada's care so Jess and Leo can get a break. I FEEL like a grandma sometimes! LOL But Ada is the most BEAUTIFUL, SMART child in the world!!! I think I have only been able to take two trips since my last blog. One to Lucca, Italy with my daughter when she was pregnant, right before she went on bed rest, and then another by myself to Venice, was was such a fiasco, I HATED Venice. Lucca was fun, it is a little town about 1/2 hour away from Pisa, so we did the whole Pisa thing also. I has always said I would never go to Pisa, but it was actually pretty nice. Lucca is a wonderful little walled town that is one bis maze of little shops. We walked until we dropped..... It was a very nice time, has a nice 4 course dinner, mine with wine.... I felt bad for Jess, she was a real trooper , but she was sore for a week. It probably wasn't the best thing for her to do... Venice, I went there last month, after Jess had the baby. I thought I would treat myself to a trip after all the stress of the last few months. Let's just say it would have been less stressful to stay home. I ended up losing my wallet with military ID card, drivers license, 80 euro (about $100) and my visa check card. AUGH. I walked for MILES in steaming hot weather looking for the police station, and then to find the Western union. My daughter was wonderful, I was back and forth on the cell phone talking to her about getting money to me. I couldn't even take the boat back to my hotel because I had NO money. She was smart enough to figure out I ran out of time on my cell phone, bought more time, texted me to let me know, got money from Leo and his father in law and got me the info to pick it up at western union. Of course evem with the info Western Union wanted an ID. LOL, and I was VERY lucky that the place I was staying kept your passport, so they were able to fax over a copy of it so I could pick up the money. Jess saved my life! Venice was HOT, FULL of places being renovated, not colorful at ALL. I hated it..... There are so many better areas of Italy to go to. So...... Since then and Leo found out they will be going back to the states August 1st, to FT Bliss near El Paso, texas. YUCK!!!!!!!! Jess is starting to know just how much she is going to miss me. Jess, the child I have not been able to hug for like the last 17 years, actually ASKED for a hug the other night!!!!!!!!! There is a God in heaven... :-) I will be staying here in Germany, NOT going back to the states, and on August 8th I will be picking up both my mom AND my son at the Frankfurt airport!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have not seen my son in over two years, I am never go to stop hugging him!!!!! I am going to be soooooo depressed when he leaves.. He will be staying for 10 days, and my mom is MOVING HERE to live with me! Yes indeedy..... She has sold everything she owns, giving notice on her apartment and coming to live with me here in Germany! More about that in a bit. Nick has finally found his spot in MN.. He has a good job, he drives a school bus now! and has had the same girlfriend for quite a while. I am very proud of him.... The only bad thing has been that he did not get picked up for a summer school route, so he is unemployed for the summer. I always try to get him to come stay the summer in Germany, work fast food part time and tavel the rest. Maybe after coming here (this is his first time to Europe) he will think more seriously about staying longer. A person can hope! Anyway.... my mom..... She decided she wanted to be closer to me, and couldn't stand the thought of staring at her same furniture for the next 20 years when she could come live with me and see Europe! ( I think she just does not want me here by myself)This comes at a perfect time, since I'll be by myself once Jess and Leo go back to the states. I think that was also a big reason while my mom came out... You have to love moms....I will also have a travelling partner with her, and she'll even be able to pay her own way!! LOL SOOOOOOOOOO.... come August things will be pretty exciting... Nick wants to go to London, so we will go one or two days there, any longer is just to expensive with 1 pound costing 2 US dollars. OUCH. Then I think we will also take a couple days to go somewherein Italy. Now that my mom and Nick actually have their plane tickets, I am going to ask him what countries he wants to visit so I can set up the cheap ryanair, airfare for August. Oh yes, one other tiny little thing. I HAVE A NEW JOB STARTING JULY 5TH!!!!!!! Hanau, where I live now, is closing the entire base as of next year. It's part of the lovely governments idea to shut down the majority of military bases in Germany, putting so MANY people out of work and killing the German economy. Typical.... Although I have heard some rumbling of the gov thinking maybe they went too far. (you think?) so we will see. ANYWAY, as of this time, the library where I work at will be closing next summer, so I have no chance of going from a 39 hour a week PT job to FT. Which is more secure, and also gets you cost of living pay that can run up to a couple hundred dollars a pay period. So I applied for a Library technician job at the Heidelberg regional library and got it! $5 an hour pay raise, a BEAUTIFUL area of Germany, about an hour away, and it is the main branch that serves all the other libraries in Europe, so it will not be going away soon. (cross my fingers) YES!!!! I start the 5th of July, will have to commute the first month while looking for an apartment for my mom and I to share. The job is also leaning more towards the computer side of things, instead of just putting new items in the system, etc. That is good, it will hopeful bring my computer skills back up to date. i do miss working with computers, not to mention the fact that I still owe an arm and a leg in student loans. LOL Heidelberg is right on the Nekar river, in a really nice area of Germany, quite near the Rhine river, so I will be excited to take some boat and train trips along the river, there are castles that you can see every few miles high up in the hills. REALLY beautiful area. Hanau is almost like a suburb of Frankfurt, it is very industrialized.... Not at all pretty. Once I attend an offbase meeting this Wednesday, I'll actually be assigned someone to help me find an apartment! This is a much better situation than the last time we had to find a place, because this person will speak with the German landlords AND if I am lucky I will get to use an American lease, which lets me give only 30 days notice,which is standard for the military, they tend to move pretty quickly. I am also excited because with both my mother and I paying rent, we should be able to get a pretty nice place.... SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.. that is pretty much everything that has been going on, at least that I can think of. Ann, don't hate me cause I didn't call you back. I keep meaning to, just when I get home I get hit with someone passing me a baby and asking when dinner is. I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo looking forward to back living on my own again... :-) Bye for now! - di

OH MY GOD, look, I've updated my blog!!!!!!!

2007-06-17T13:42:00.000+02:00

Well, a lot has been happening, and a lot of just the ordinary has been going on also.
I know it's been a long time since I have updated this, so maybe no one will even read it!
The last few months have been crazy, with Jess pregnant, the new baby, etc. Jess being pregnant was a drain on all of us. Part of that being that she was on partial bedrest a lot of the time. That coupled with the fact that she was not on meds made for a very interesting few months. But is was all worth it when Ada was the end result, even though it took both Leo and I as well as Jess to get that baby into the world! What an experience helping deliver your grandaughter!!!!!!!
So now Jess is back on meds and doing really well, but things are still crazy with the baby. I love her to death, but it is somethimes hard to come home from work and then take over Ada's care so Jess and Leo can get a break. I FEEL like a grandma sometimes! LOL But Ada is the most BEAUTIFUL, SMART child in the world!!!
I think I have only been able to take two trips since my last blog. One to Lucca, Italy with my daughter when she was pregnant, right before she went on bed rest, and then another by myself to Venice, was was such a fiasco, I HATED Venice.
Lucca was fun, it is a little town about 1/2 hour away from Pisa, so we did the whole Pisa thing also. I has always said I would never go to Pisa, but it was actually pretty nice. Lucca is a wonderful little walled town that is one bis maze of little shops. We walked until we dropped..... It was a very nice time, has a nice 4 course dinner, mine with wine.... I felt bad for Jess, she was a real trooper , but she was sore for a week. It probably wasn't the best thing for her to do...
Venice, I went there last month, after Jess had the baby. I thought I would treat myself to a trip after all the stress of the last few months. Let's just say it would have been less stressful to stay home. I ended up losing my wallet with military ID card, drivers license, 80 euro (about $100) and my visa check card. AUGH. I walked for MILES in steaming hot weather looking for the police station, and then to find the Western union. My daughter was wonderful, I was back and forth on the cell phone talking to her about getting money to me. I couldn't even take the boat back to my hotel because I had NO money. She was smart enough to figure out I ran out of time on my cell phone, bought more time, texted me to let me know, got money from Leo and his father in law and got me the info to pick it up at western union. Of course evem with the info Western Union wanted an ID. LOL, and I was VERY lucky that the place I was staying kept your passport, so they were able to fax over a copy of it so I could pick up the money. Jess saved my life!
Venice was HOT, FULL of places being renovated, not colorful at ALL. I hated it..... There are so many better areas of Italy to go to.
So...... Since then and Leo found out they will be going back to the states August 1st, to FT Bliss near El Paso, texas. YUCK!!!!!!!! Jess is starting to know just how much she is going to miss me. Jess, the child I have not been able to hug for like the last 17 years, actually ASKED for a hug the other night!!!!!!!!! There is a God in heaven... :-)
I will be staying here in Germany, NOT going back to the states, and on August 8th I will be picking up both my mom AND my son at the Frankfurt airport!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have not seen my son in over two years, I am never go to stop hugging him!!!!! I am going to be soooooo depressed when he leaves.. He will be staying for 10 days, and my mom is MOVING HERE to live with me! Yes indeedy..... She has sold everything she owns, giving notice on her apartment and coming to live with me here in Germany! More about that in a bit.
Nick has finally found his spot in MN.. He has a good job, he drives a school bus now! and has had the same girlfriend for quite a while. I am very proud of him.... The only bad thing has been that he did not get picked up for a summer school route, so he is unemployed for the summer. I always try to get him to come stay the summer in Germany, work fast food part time and tavel the rest. Maybe after coming here (this is his first time to Europe) he will think more seriously about staying longer. A person can hope!
Anyway.... my mom..... She decided she wanted to be closer to me, and couldn't stand the thought of staring at her same furniture for the next 20 years when she could come live with me and see Europe! ( I think she just does not want me here by myself)This comes at a perfect time, since I'll be by myself once Jess and Leo go back to the states. I think that was also a big reason while my mom came out... You have to love moms....I will also have a travelling partner with her, and she'll even be able to pay her own way!! LOL

SOOOOOOOOOO.... come August things will be pretty exciting... Nick wants to go to London, so we will go one or two days there, any longer is just to expensive with 1 pound costing 2 US dollars. OUCH. Then I think we will also take a couple days to go somewherein Italy. Now that my mom and Nick actually have their plane tickets, I am going to ask him what countries he wants to visit so I can set up the cheap ryanair, airfare for August.

Oh yes, one other tiny little thing. I HAVE A NEW JOB STARTING JULY 5TH!!!!!!! Hanau, where I live now, is closing the entire base as of next year. It's part of the lovely governments idea to shut down the majority of military bases in Germany, putting so MANY people out of work and killing the German economy. Typical.... Although I have heard some rumbling of the gov thinking maybe they went too far. (you think?) so we will see. ANYWAY, as of this time, the library where I work at will be closing next summer, so I have no chance of going from a 39 hour a week PT job to FT. Which is more secure, and also gets you cost of living pay that can run up to a couple hundred dollars a pay period. So I applied for a Library technician job at the Heidelberg regional library and got it! $5 an hour pay raise, a BEAUTIFUL area of Germany, about an hour away, and it is the main branch that serves all the other libraries in Europe, so it will not be going away soon. (cross my fingers)
YES!!!! I start the 5th of July, will have to commute the first month while looking for an apartment for my mom and I to share. The job is also leaning more towards the computer side of things, instead of just putting new items in the system, etc. That is good, it will hopeful bring my computer skills back up to date. i do miss working with computers, not to mention the fact that I still owe an arm and a leg in student loans. LOL
Heidelberg is right on the Nekar river, in a really nice area of Germany, quite near the Rhine river, so I will be excited to take some boat and train trips along the river, there are castles that you can see every few miles high up in the hills. REALLY beautiful area. Hanau is almost like a suburb of Frankfurt, it is very industrialized.... Not at all pretty.
Once I attend an offbase meeting this Wednesday, I'll actually be assigned someone to help me find an apartment! This is a much better situation than the last time we had to find a place, because this person will speak with the German landlords AND if I am lucky I will get to use an American lease, which lets me give only 30 days notice,which is standard for the military, they tend to move pretty quickly. I am also excited because with both my mother and I paying rent, we should be able to get a pretty nice place....
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.. that is pretty much everything that has been going on, at least that I can think of. Ann, don't hate me cause I didn't call you back. I keep meaning to, just when I get home I get hit with someone passing me a baby and asking when dinner is. I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo looking forward to back living on my own again... :-)
Bye for now! - di

Diana's first annual Christmas letter via blog!

2006-12-16T16:47:00.000+01:00

Stay tuned!! Coming soon! (as soon as our internet get turned back on)!! LOL

Jess and Leos' wedding pictures!!!

2006-10-05T20:46:00.000+02:00

Yes, today, October 5th, 2006 I gained a son=in law!

Here are the pictures:

Date is off on camera... Jess and Leo on their wedding day, doing what they do best. (note Leo dozing off)

The castle in Hanau where the wedding was performed

Leo being Leo... Jess not minding a bit.. Also note the sun... It was supposed to rain all day, Kathy and Papa sent their love via sun... as soon as Leo and Jess were married, the rain came back!! Thanks Kathy and Papa!!! We love you!!

Diana the official wedding photographer..

OK, have you EVER seen Jess hide from the camera?? LOL Leo being Leo again

This picture is one of my favorites

Waiting for the wedding to begin

Right before the civil service began.. rings on the pillow. Bridal cup in front also

Exchanging rings

Doesn't she look amazing??!!!!

They had to hold that kiss for like 20 seconds because, of couse, the freaking new batteries I put in the camera were already failing. sheeesh

BORING blogs

2006-09-05T10:48:00.000+02:00

God, as life has become settled here, this has become a BORING BLOG! LOL
Sory, no changes coming that I know of for a while. I've had to cancel the trip to Scotland ecause my son has FINALLY decided to come visit, which means I am sending the out of work bum (J/K) the money for his passport, then I need to save for his plane ticket. I am soooooooooo happy his has finally decided to visit. Now all I can hope is that he stays a while. We'll see.

The other news, which I have no idea if I had posted or not, so you're getting it again,(I'm too lazy to look at past blogs) is that my MOM is getting rid of everything she owns and moving over next August! COOL! At that point our goal is to make our way down to Italy to live. Starting in Germany will be easier for her, the weather, etc is more like home, plus the whole fact that she won't have to visit the consulate in Chicago. Then since she will be registered as a resident in Germany, she should be able to go to the consulate in Frankfurt to get her permissions to move to Italy. I really want her to make a couple trips down there first before she decides whether or not to move there, it is a LOT different than even Germany, sooooo.

So other than that, I really don't see much else to write about for a while. I think I will take a month or two hiatus(sp) from this and save you all the trouble of checking all the time. If anyone really LIKES hearing about my daily boring life, let me know, but I have already had one friend who told me to stop writing about Taco Bell (while I still worked there) cause she was tired of hearing about it. LOL And I don't really see any trips, even local, coming up for a while, cause Jess will never go with me. Once my mom gets here I know we will go crazy, cause she will have time open and WANTS to spend time with me (jab at Jess)

So anyway, unless anyone really loves listening to stupid babbling, I will be back in a month or so to update you on what is going on. Love to you all!! - diana

Scotland

2006-08-08T13:39:00.000+02:00

Just booked a flight to Scotland from Sept 9th to the 12th. Total cost is $60. Not bad. Now I just have to figure out what part of Scotland I want to go to, Loch Ness? The coast? It looks like there is a big regional food festival in one area, so I am not sure what to do. Research, research, research. Anyway, that is all that is new. Later!

Diana the Library Technician

2006-08-01T20:03:00.000+02:00

Taco Bell display I helped create
And another view
Wild animal on my mother's porch!! :-)
LOL

Yep, second day of work here. It turns out they can only pay me for 20 hours a week, so I am work at Taco Hell on Friday nights, Saturdays form 3 to closing, and one day a week doing their accounting. Nick, my boss has been showign me how to do cash and sales, bills, etc So I can handle that type of thing. Works for me and will look great on a resume.

So anyway, the library. Basically my entire work with this month is as follows:

Mondays - Library from 4:15 pm to 7:15
Tues-Thurs - Library from 3:15 to 7:15
Fridays from 12:15 to 5:15, then from 7-10:30 at Taco Bell
Sats from 3-10:30 at Taco Bell, Sundays off

Then one night a week, paperwork at Taco Bell for probably 2-3 hours.

Honestly, the working at the library is like being sent to heaven. I love libraries, everything about them. It is really wonderful.

Also, not only will I be issued an army email address, but I can use it to register for online lwearning that is available to members of the military.

There are some computer classes (bah) but I am more interested in the German and Italian classes. (Yaye!)

ANNYWAY.. The weather has really cooled off, Inthe the 70s. Another odd thing is getting off at 7:15 at night. I haven't been off that early since last December when I started Taco Bell. I am actually at a loss as to what to do when I come home. LOL
I don't watch TV, new movies are really not that interesting to me....... I am going to try and get back into reading, for a long time I haven't been able to concentrate on reading, of course that could be because I was coming home anywhere from 10:30 to 2 am.LOL

Anyway, things will be slowing down again for me, thank god........ Looking into where to go in September.. Decided not to go anywhere this month, so once again the location will have to do with where the cheap airfares are... I am off on Monday the 14th, so I might take a roadtrip that Sunday, MOnday and be back early Tues. Still not sure, I hate planning that far in advance..... But it would be nice. Maybe Belgium, or actually I was thinking Switzerland, maybe Bern. I am not sure if there are Alps that always have snow on them or not. (pardon my ignorance)I need to do a bit of research on where to go.

Other than that, all my cats are fine. Gizzy got a bunch of teeth removed last month, and now she is all lovey.... Jess is still a pain in the ass, but what else is new. I love her dearly, but do look forward to not having to live with her....

Well, am off to get in my jammies and look at the books I checked out, maybe even get to sleep before 11 pm. :-O

Later!

A Day In The Life

2006-07-19T12:45:00.000+02:00

I don't know, today so far has been sort of a typical, atypical sort of day, but it sort of sums up my living in Germany, kind of, not so much fitting in, maybe settling in is the phrase.

I was up at 7:45 UGH! First sort of atypical thing about today. I usually sleep MUCH later, but a lot of things have been going on lately at ungodly hours of the morning.

Today I had to go down to HR and get a form in so they could get in sent in with a batch of others. ( I THINK it was for a background check, it was too early in the morning and I just signed what she put in front of me. It could very well have been something to put my mom in a nursing home. (sorry mom, I can't use the giving away my first born anymore, no one will take them))

HR also gave me like a 10 page booklet to fill out, both sides, in order to be able to enter it into the computer tomorrow. 10 years of jobs, schools, relatives, friends, type of toilet paper I use..... LOL

I go in at 1:30 tomorrow to enter it in, I guess the library needs me badly.. (yaye!)

So that was done by 9:00. From there I tried to find the Dr's office to get my prescription refilled. Dr Lomiento, my reg Dr is on vacation this week, and I REALLY need my meds. Soooooo. after heading off inthe wrong direction, getting lost, calling, doing the usual "does anyone speak English?" thing on the phone, I got the right directions, This is of course only if you understand German streets said over the phone.....Kastanalllanaliineeeee which luckily turned out to be something sort of similar I found.... I actually made it there with only one more phone call! Let me tell you, German street names are freaky... WAYYYYYYY to long.

I got there, did the VERY nice refilling of prescription, which basically consists of you telling the secretary what you need, her filling out the form, having the Dr sign it, and sending you on your way.

This is really something almost incomprehensible to me, trusting people enough to have them just tell you what they need, and giving them a prescription for it. I mean, this was a Dr that had never even seen me before, no office visit, just come in between 10-12 when they do the prescriptions, and you are done. Again, then you go to the pharmacist (Apoteke) hand them the script, and then hand you a box of medicine. Simple, easy, no problems. Have I said that I love living in Europe???

Soooo... after that I was supposed to go get brakes for Jess' car. To do this I had to take money out of the cash machine with her credit card. She had given me her pin, well the first time it didn't work, nor the second... and I was having such a wonderful day, the little bad imp inside of me said.. "Go ahead, try it a third time, this is Germany, it probably won't eat up the credit card..."

WRONG!! *rotflmao* It did...

Jessica was NOT amused when i told her she had to take her lunch hour to come try and retrieve her check card.. :-P

She was even LESS amused when they said they could not open the machine and the card would most likely be sent back to the stateside main bank......

LUCKILY there was a woman who worked there that convinced them to get the woman who could actually open the cash machine (something I figured all along) and they got her the card back... I knew it would work like that!!!!

Anyway, this whole time Jess is pretty much telling me how I am on her shit list saying random things like now I owe her $20 (WHAAAAA???) and now I have to mail her stuff at the post office AND pay for the postage (HUH???)

She cracks me up, when she is under stress I alwasy seem to owe her money for some reason...... (Too much bribing when they were young???)

Anyway, the whole time I am just trying not to laugh...... The imp inside was really getting the kick out of it. PLUS now we know that German cash machines will actually eat up credit cards after 3 times wit a wrong pin. A true learning experience.

I evem bought her a whole kilo of the MOST gorgeous red cherries from the open air market inthe marktplatz, along with some outstanding raspberries for myself. Those I ate warm, straight from the container, while I sat on the steps of the bank waiting for Jess to get there.

I love the lifestyle here, I really do.

Now I have to go buy her brakes, and go mail the stuff at the Post office for her. LOL I will be hearing about this for a week. I'll bet she even tries to gt me to do her turn washing dishing, saying I "OWE" her. LOL who cares, I am happy to do it. (she used cold water and I have to redo them all anyway) *g*..

Tschüß from Germany!!(pronounced almost like choose, or cheers with a strong accent, means bye!)

New job with benefits!!!!!!!!

2006-07-18T17:58:00.000+02:00

Woo-hoo! I am so excited I keep hitting weird keys. :-p

I had applied a while ago for a Permanent PT position as a library aid at the library on our base. I never even got called in for an interview, and was so upset. Then a few weeks ago a flex position came up at the library. I had no idea if it was a permanent or if it had benefits, but I applied for it anyway. I went in last week for an interview, and the assistant director loved me, but when I found out it may not have benefits, I knew that if I was offered the job, I wouldn't be able to accept it. Then today I received a call from the HR woman asking if I was intereted in the PT regular library aid job. I asked if it was the flex job and she said nope, it it the regular one with benefits. I told her the story and how badly I wanted it, and she said. "well you really must have wanted it badly because the person they offered it to declined the job, and then someone suggested they hire you!"

YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!

So now I still only have to work PT, will get benefits and even better, will be working in a library. This also gives me the option to transfer within the system when the base closes down, etc.
The woman I interviewed with said I had "mad" computer skills. (LOL) which I think is part of the reason they hired me. anyway.... I have been so depressed lately because I have applied for sooo many jobs, and not gotten anything, but now I can sort of relax and know that as long as I want to be here, I will be able to stay.

(should I get horned rimmed glasses??) LOL

Back in Germany

2006-07-10T18:20:00.000+02:00

The trip back from Sardinia was nothing special. I had to leave about 7 am to get to the airport, etc, and the flight back was no biggy. I did find out the Ryanair has a shuttle form the airport to Frankfurt main train station. This was good because Jess had my car and I wa son my own getting home. LOL.

One of the reasons that Ryanair has such good fares is that they do run fly out of the conventional airports. They fly out of smaller ones, sometimes quite a ways away from the reg airports, which can mean that transportation to and from can be a bit hairy. I had jess and Leo leave with me at like 3 am to get us to the airport to go to Italy, and we got lost several times. Luckily I saw the shuttle sitting outside the airport when I got back, so that sames me several hours of switching trains, buses etc. I was able to go to the main rail stations for 12 euro, then catch a train back to Hanau for 6, and that included catching the bus from the Hanau train station to the stop close to my apartment.

I knew I was going to have to work the day I got back, but it has taken me from Thursday to yesterday to sort of get back into the swing of things at work. My mind has just not been able to concentrate. I am already planning my next trip. LOL

Looks like we are getting another car. Jess is working farther away now, no bus service there, so Leo and I have been taking turns picking her up at night, and I have been either driving her in the morning, or letting her have the car til lunch. But we still have problems when I work at 4 or 5, and she is off at 6. This means we needed to get another car. I"ve been watchign the parking lot where everyone parks the For Sale cars on base, and saw a little Mitsubishi hatchback I wanted to try. I got ahold of the woman today and went down, drove it and really liekd it.... She wanted 975 for it, and I really wanted to talk her down to 70, but I only went down to 800. Jess is paying me 300 for the car I have now, so then it will only cost me 500. Then we will all be able to get back and forth to work with no porblems.

I have still been looking for other work, though now it looks like the store manager will be leaving in just a couple of weeks. If my supervisor Nick takes over the store like we hope he will, he will be talking to "them" W\(We have had long conversations about who the hell exactly IS THEM
In the meantime I actually had an interview for a helper/receptionist at a veterinary clinic! Man I wanted that job sooooooooooooooo bad. But it has been over a week and I have not heard back from them, so I guess that one is a no go.

So now it is back to the PT evenings and FT weekends job of slinging tacos in Taco Hell. LOL I will be glad when the weather cools down a bit, pretty hot in there this time of the year.

Anyway, that is about it. i am trying to decide where to go next, and also checking the airfare to see where there are deals. Seems like you can pretty much always get a good deal going to Ireland, which is one of the place I do want to go... I just want to go to Southern Italy next, though it will have to be before the first of August when all Italians go on vacation..... We will have to see.

In the meantime I SHOULD be going to pick up and register the new car tomorrow...

Later!

Good grief Charlie Brown!

2006-07-05T13:42:00.000+02:00

LOL Well, have been having a hell of a time, the only problems being loack of internet access and the fact that MY FREAKING DIGITAL CAMERA FELL INTO THE OCEAN WHEN GETTING OUT OF THE SNORKELING BOAT. LOLOLOL CRAP... We were in one of those rubber boats like they use when white water rafting, and thinking I would be cool (first mistake) I decided to just slide down the side to get out instead of being a wuss and going down the stairs in the back like normal people do. I lost my balance when I hit the sand and went all the way in. (is this where you stand up, act like nothign ahppened and try to give the look like "I'm cool, I meant to do that") ROTFLMAO. Yeah well I don't think I pulled that look off too well.

Anyway, I did still have the pictures from the underwater camera, soo..... I bought a disposible camera today and am going to go back to the most beautiful view in the world and take pictures for you.... *sigh*

I was going to go snorkeling again today, but no alarm clocks in Italian room (forget the time, go by your own speed, miss your plane). The hotel was supposed to call and wake me up, but the first day it was just one short ring... That may have happened today, or they forgot. My second snorkeling seesion was going to be at another beach about an hour from here, stintino.... but when I woke up and called to ask what time it was they said it was 9:30, that's when the boat left, so no go.

Yesterday's snorkeling was such a blast. It only cost 25 euros, like $30. We left at 10, got back at 12:30 or so.. What a deal! Got to wear a wet suit (suck that stomach in) and they took us out in a boat to a little cove surrounded by HUGE cliffs. I have some pictures of it on my digital camera, but.......

When we first got there we thought, no way, where is the green water we want to be in? But when you got closer there were spots hit by sunlight.

I will always be spoiled by the snorkeling in Maui, I will have to go back some day. Every time I have gone since, I keep expecting the same beautiful florescent fish, etc... and have been disspointed every time. So this time I decided to just relax, enjoy being there and started looking at the boulders themself that were covered wit life. Nothing florescent with the exception of one wildly res starfish, but when you got up very close you discovered a whole new world. Tiny little weird fishes hiding in the vegetation, odd plats, just a lot of cool stuff... I was so into it, I loved it... I decided to take a scuba class the next day, but ended up not signing up because to be able to actually dive would take you the entire day, and I thought I could use my time in abetter way. NEXT time!

A lot of people werein the water only a 1/2 hour or so, but a few of us staying there every second we could. I loved it, though after a bit i had to go get a drink of water, salt in the throat. A few of the people swallowed a lot of water and wanted to puke.

Once we were all back in the boat and heading home, I closed my eyes and just thought of how lucky I was to be there... Sitting on the side of a big rubber boat, boating along on the meditteranean(sp) feeling the breeze on my face, hearing the motor, the people taliking around me, looking at the amazing scenery on all sides. Again I thanked the powers that be for allowing me to be in such a beautiful place.

It turns out we go tto go to a second cove! I mean, I think they undercharge for this..

This second one had HUUUUUUUGE bloders and crevices into the sides of the cliff, it as a LOT deeper and just a little scary.. I forced myself to just relax and then had another amazing time. You could snorkel almost right up to the cliffs, and then you would have the waves goig over you, kind of sucking you back and forth, so sometime you would have to back paddle a bit not to hit the rocks, but was FUN... Again, tons of interesting things attached to the rocks. I REALLY want to scuba next time.

Anyway, after abou 45 minutes there we finally headed back... To be honest I was about as relaxed as I was driving home the day after visiting Amsterdam. LOLOL

That evening I went to the restaurant called Pacos that everyone in the Trip Advisor forums recomends. I was a little upset because they had horse on the menu, but the kind I wanted was only available at lunch. I just didn't know if I wanted to go for a straight horse steak.... I decided to order as an appetizer the fresh tomatoes sliced whith mozzerella on top. with freshj basil leaves you cut up and put on top also. The mozzerella in Italy is NOTHING like it is there. Here is is very watery, bland and sort of rubbery, but very good, just not what you would think of there when you get it.

Then I had gnocchi ina cheese sauce with balsmaic vinegar drizzled on top. I wasn't thrilled with the vinegar, but otherwise it was good. For the second course instead of the horse steak (i was tempted to go there for lunch today to get it) instead I had traditional Sardinian sausages. OH MY GOD were they good. I am going to stop at the store here and get some, though now that I think of it, I may not be able tpo bring them back into Germany. Not sure... Will have to check..

Sardinia in July seems to be nothing but British and French tourists. I mean, we all know not to go in August because that is when all the Italians close down the country and take their vacations, so I guess the rest of the people in Europe know to go in July. L

Anyway, I slep too late today to really do anything, thanks in part to the fact the the Italians won against Germany last night in the world cup games. MY GOD! I was hanging out my 3 floor window watching them all going down the street haonking etc.. The people on scooters were absoultely suicidal, going bewteen cars let and right, down thye sidewalk, everywhere. LOL. I called my mom to talk to her and held up the phone so she could hear. LOL

So the rest of the day I am going to go back up to where I was yesterday, take some pictures for you with a real camera with film (how cute and antiquated and a pain in the ass to develop) LOL and then find something to eat and go to bed early. I fly out at 9 am tomorrow. ;-(

At least I have an alarm clock to get me up on time. (darn it)
Later!

Writing this froman outside restautant in Alghero

2006-07-03T22:16:00.000+02:00

Italy! I made it here. I missed Italy so much. Sardinia,well Alghero is a lot diff fromthe hill towns in Umbria. A lot more run down, a LOT of construction going on everywhere, and HOT! 90 something today. I didn't get any sleep last night because I worked until 10:30, and had to leave at 3 am to go to the airport, so I took iteasy today, got to the hotel, walked around a bit, then took about a 3-4 hour nap.LOL Then got in the car and took off towards the south in the car. Good lord, you would not believe the cliffs youdirve along. The roads are good, but the scenery amazing!

I am heading north tomorrow I think it wil lbe flatter, one of the beaches I want to visit lookd sto be on a penninsula, so my guess is, no cliffs. LOL

Actually first thing I am doing tomorrow is going on a 3 hour snorkeling cruise. YAYE! It leaevs at 9 am, comes back at 11, you get about an hour in the water. Was only 25 euro, I thought that was good.

So I had my melone gelato today, along with coconut and honeydew scoops. When I am done with this will make sure to have another one before I go back to the hotel.LOL

I forgto about the wholeItalian stray cats thing, I hate that, malkes me so sad, I want to take them all home.

The dinner I had tonight was tortellini, and it was actually a microwaveble meal!! I laughed out loud when I realized it. Hey it was only 5€, soo.. But they didn,t even get all the top wrap off the paper dish and didn,t even try putting it on a regular plate. Sheesh.. BUT that meant I was able to take the whole thing with me and go feed it to one fo the homeless cats (what was left of the meal)

After that expereince I went online to the TripAdvisor forums to get some restaurant recommendations.

So not I am sitting outside along the beach at a table, all kinds of peploe everywhere, scooters all lined up. Teens hanging out, kids yelling, it is great! Now if I just had that perfect Italian man, all would be as it should. *g* Anyway, I am having a great time, looking forward to snorkeling tomorrow, and also getting some sleep tonight. I am off to get the promised gelato, and then to bed.

I will try writing again tomorrow, much better then trying to remember it later. Ciao! Oh yeah, the name of the restaurant is Ciau, Ciau where I am sitting, forgot the name of the place I ate. UGH. Later!

Last minute prep

2006-07-03T02:27:00.000+02:00

Well, here I am, 2:30 am, just trying to get everything packed and ready to go in the next 15 minutes when I have to wake Jess and Leo so the can drive me the one and a half hours to the Frankfurt Hahn airport.

I have my underwater camera, bathing suit, sarong, sun tan lotion, towel, sandals, my itinerary all printed out, though I forgot to go get euros out of the ATM, that will be no problem, there should be ATMs at the airport.

Now I have to quickly jam them all into mysuitcase and get the hell out of here! Talk to you in a few days!!!! Italy here I come!

late posts and friends lost

2006-06-26T12:15:00.000+02:00

Sorry, I know that if I don't blog right away that I will end up not blogging at all, which is what happened with London.

Driving on the wrong side of the road was sadly dissapointing. Most of London has double lanes in each direction, or one way streets, so if you kept in the right lane it was just like driving at home. Plus I had a German rental, which meant that the steering wheel was on the side that I was used to. The only problem was taking left turns, where you had to be careful because you needed to stay inthe left lane. I wasn't too bad, and I am proud to have become a member of "I have driven on the wrong side of the road in England" club.

The first day we were there they had a heat wave.. (84) LOL BUT our room had no airconditioning, so we bought a fan just to be able to sweat out the night. VERY hot and stuff room, but a good price for London. BE PREPARED TO PAY ALMOST DOUBLE THE US DOLLAR. Truly horrible exchange rates, I was appalled at home much money we ended up spending. For some reason I came with the idea that for every British pound would would pay $1.50. Try closer to 1.9x!! Augh!

So we shopped and sweated away the first day. All I ended up with was a pair of Van's tennis shoes. LOL Jess got some good deals on light weight shirts for her new job at the Child Care Center on post. Other than that we got lots of exercise walking.

The second day we decided to scrub the walking and go on a bus tour. Smartest move we made while in London. It was a fleet of double deckers, top open (YES) and it made the rounds of all the main attractions in London, you buy a ticket for one day and could get on and off the buses whenever you pleased. We ended up just taking the entire round trip (sore legs)only getting off at Buckingham Palace ( a must!) and Harrods ( a dissapointment)but otherwise was a cool way to see the sights from up high. They had a tour guide on every busm so we got all the information you could ever want. We even got stopped near Parlament(sp) when out of the blue a motorcycle cop comes from another way, stops traffic in all four directions, and then a BUNCH of police, limos, ambulances, chimney sweeps(j/k), you name it came out of the building and drove away. Someone important obviously. So we at least drove by Big Ben and all the other thingys....

I was also dissapointed there were not fish and chips vendors on the street corners. LOL Obviously they don't sell them on corners in the little cons made out of newspaper anymore. NO! And the only way I even got to eat fish and chips was when we stopped in a pub near Buckingham Palace to eat lunch. But no cone, just a plate. They WERE good though.

The last day before starting home we decided to take a short road trip and drive out to Windor Palace. You are able to tour what the call the Royal Apartments. LOLOLOL. Yeah, of Kings from about 1,000 years ago. (I wanted to see the new apartments dang it. LOL. Yeah, but St George's Cathedral was amazing, and they actually ahd a guard out from behind fences, so you could pose with him. I told him that I apologized for everyone who gives him a hard time. (Had to do it, sorry) They are so YOUNG, they all look about 18, probably the only ones who can stand motionless for so long.

We also bought two St Christopher medallions, the patron saint of travelers. (snort) Yeah.. We put them on and headed back to drive down to Dover to catch the Ferry back to France and start the drive home.

I think we hit every traffic jam within 1,000 miles. We ended up missing the Ferry, though we were able to catch the next free of charge. Getting off on the France side we discovered that our GPS navigation system no longer worked.

This was the beginning of a FIFTEEN hour hellish drive through the entire country of France. We should have been home by 3 am LATESt, we got home at 10:30 the next morning, 2 hours before I had to work.. My daughter spent the entire night keeping me awake by telling me not to drive off the road. Oh my lord. (Needless to say, we immediately took of the St Christopher medallions and have not worn them since. LOL)

France seems to be the country of NO largehighway system. Once we got off track, we literally had to go through all sorts of odd roads through small towns, etc, even with a map.

I did however get to dredge up any of the French words most people have heard along the way, in order to talk to the people at the gas stations. I mean, we were in France no man's land, these people spoke NO English. I quickly dug up the words, merci, S'il vous plait , bon jour, oui, the whole bit. Everything else was communicated via shrugs, hand gestures, pointing to things and a LOT of dumbfounded looks on my part. I love how when people know that you don't know the language, they still ramble on, leaving you with a stunned look like "You REEALLY expected me to understand that??" LOL

But hey, just one more adventure under our belts.

I already have my next trip planned, BY MYSELF!

I am leaving Monday, July 3rd to go to the Italian island of Sardinia. Paradise I have been told. Aifare cost $75 round trip, though now I am adding another $50 to it, simply because I found out I can stay another day, and so I didn't get the one cent fare on the second way back. Hotel is $65 a day, 3day/nights on the beautiful island of Sardinia ran me $320 minus food, etc. Not bad! I may also take a ferry over to the mainland which would be Cinque Terra (sp) a place I have always wanted to go.

Anyway, I am pretty excited about this trip.

On a much sadder note, a man I worked with at the State of Minnesota was killed this past Friday in a truly horrible car/motorcycle accident. Unfortunately he was driving the motorcycle.

Karl Boese was his name, and I remember him always having a big smile, always willing to help out when I had problems.

He was only 42 and leaves behind his wife of only two weeks, and their unborn child.

I am not a religious person, but those of you who are, please say a prayer for him, his wife and children.

This was the news report on the accident: News video

Holy Moly!

2006-06-14T12:34:00.000+02:00

What a crazy last few days. We are heading back to Germany today, but stopped into an internet cafe to check mail, bank balance (gulp) and write a bit in the blog, before we head back across the pond to mainland Europe, Germany, and jobs. (sigh)

We headed out of Hanau about 10:30 Sunday night, drove though Germany, a bit of Belgium, very nearthe Amsterdam border ( I was sooooooo tempted to stop in *wink*) and then through a bit of France to the town of Calais, on the English channel. We got there about 4 I think, and ferry across did not leave until 6:30, so we queued(sp) up with the other drivers in a line to get on, then walked around a bit, hung out in the car, etc. Jess was really nervous about the whole boat thing. I told her not to be, because the English Channel is very shallow, not like a real ocean, etc.

The only thing I was worried about was if there would be enough movement to get seasick. I had only been out on a boat in the ocean twice before, once in the Florida Keys when we went snorkeling, and once whale watching in California. THAT trip I got really seasick.

Finally at about 6:15 everyone started driving onto this HUGE ship. I have pictures, but they will have to be posted after I get home. So they SQUEEZED this three lanes of cars onto the ship, I was the first on in the middle line,and he stopped us so there was NO room on my side to get out, and Jess' door could open between two cars. i thought this weird until I remembered we were driving a car with the steering on the wrong side for England, so usually the other side is where the driver got out. SOOOOO I got to crawl over the shift knob, with visions of knocking it out, the car jumping into gear and the whole first 12 cars dumping into the English Channel. (Hey, what can I say, I have an active imagination. LOL)

So all parked and out of the car, we followed the line of people upstairs. I wanted to go outside to take a look around, and we found the back deck and Jess sat down, begging me not to go near the rail, hang onto my camera, etc. LOL It was funny. I have a picture of her sort of hunched over in a seat, scared to death.

I LOVED it out there, we had picked the perfect time to cross over, the sun was just coming up, seagulls doing their thing and making there noise, you could see out into the Channel from the back of the boat. GOD!!! This is life! I am scared I will never be able to go back to a so called "normal" life ever, after all of this. (thank god)

Finally the boats engines started churning, right under us.. You could just feel the boat vibrating, and see the water behind churning. All the seagull and some tern like birds landed in the water behind. It looked like the boats engines were churning up the fish, so all the birds were hanging out getting an easy breakfast..

I just couldn't stop smiling. Here were were, on the edge of France, with our car on a ferry, waiting to sail across to England. AUUGHHH.. I could barely stand it..

So we back out of the port, then as the ferry started turning around, we headed in to check out the rest of the ship.

It was huge, four decks high, and huge restauarnt area, a coffee shop in the front with windows along the whole front. That was as close as you could get to being outside along the front. There was a duty free store, mostly liquer, a huge cosmetics store, along botht side were windows and nice plish seats to sit in, or sleep in. While we were up front with a couple of cups of coffee, there were several members of a sporting team, still in uniform with the coch snoring like crazy.LOL

The whole journey across the channel took about 75 minutes, and then you could start to see England! It looked like sandy dunes with green gross on had been scooped downword so as if someone had taked a spoon and scooped them. They were high,but looked more like sand from far away. As we got closer we saw a big castel, etc.

People started heading down to their cars so we also did. We docked, the front went down and we all started driving out. NOW I would get to see what driving on the wrong side of the road was going to be like!!

Well, not to be rude, but I have to get my car out of parking, and we need to head out. I will write more tongiht when we get home (hopefully) Hang in there, hope you all are well!!!

Off we go to England!

2006-06-11T21:50:00.000+02:00

Sorry I haven't kept up. I've rented a 2006 Volkswagon Polo, we've booked a hotel, I have bought my gas coupons, my friend has lent me his satellite navigation system (WAY cool) and it it about 9:45 Sunday night, and we aree packing, planning to get out of here by 10:30 to start the drive. Will keep you informed!

Road trip!

2006-06-08T13:00:00.000+02:00

But not your ordinary road trip... We aren't talking Duluth or South Dakota. We are talking London!

Just booked a car for this Sunday through Thursday, though we will be really going sunday night, coming back wed night.

Ryanair didn't have any good specials so soon, you usually need to book a couple of weeks in advance, so what I ended up doing is booking a little Volkswagon (do you know that volks means people in Germnan, so in effect it is called a people car.LOL) Polo (golf??) sized car.

We will drive through Germany, Belgium and a bit of France, park the car on the France side of the English Channel and then ride the ferry for the 1 1/2 hour trip.

Driving will be about 5 1/2 hours, then 2 hours to get to England. WOO-HOO!

That is all I have planned out so far. LOL Will keep this updated daily with more info as I book the hotel, etc.

Car rental is only $214, but I plan to add insurance and probably theft since it will be parked in France a couple of days, so I am guessing about $300. Gas, should only take me less than two tanks according to a friend who has driven to England, so I can get gas coupons from on post to get gas at the US price, not the $4-5 it is on the economy.

YES!!!!!! England!

OK, have to go sling some tacos now. Later!

Landstul Medical

2006-05-23T21:53:00.000+02:00

Kind of an interesting day today, I drove Jess' boyfriend Leo down to Landstuhl. It's about a 1 1/2 hour drivethere, and Leo didn't think his car would make it.

What is interesting about Landstuhl is that is where they take those injured in the Middle East, etc. So any of the people who have been held hostage inIraq, etc have been flow to this facility.

Here is some information from its web page:

In 1938 the Hitler Jugend Schule (Hitler Youth School) was constructed. Several buildings on the Landstuhl U.S. Military post still standing were part of the school.

Throughout the Cold War, the 2nd General Hospital continued to expand its structure and modernize its equipment, thus improving its capabilities. The hospital was a staple in the European Theater, providing healthcare during several high-profile incidents. Some of these included treating U.S. Marines injured during the aborted 1980 rescue attempt of American hostages in Iran and those injured in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Soldiers were also treated at the hospital after being injured in the 1986 LaBelle Disco bombing in Berlin, and in 1988, the hospital treated 500 casualties of the now-famous Ramstein Air Show Disaster.

In 1994, the 2nd General Hospital was deactivated and the center was renamed the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The hospital also received 274 permanent Air Force staff positions. LRMC serves as the primary medical treatment center for casualties of U.S. operations within Europe, Southwest Asia and the Middle East. During Operations Desert Shield and Storm, the hospital served as a repatriation point for more than 4,000 American casualties and more than 800 U.S. Military personnel deployed to Somalia were evacuated and treated here. In addition, the hospital was the treatment point for hundreds of Bosnian refugees injured in the 1994 Sarajevo marketplace bombing. LRMC is a major fixed medical facility assisting in the Balkan operations (Operations Joint Endeavor, Guard, and more currently, now Joint Forge). The hospital treated American and Kenyan victims of the U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi in August 1998 and played an integral part of the three American POWs repatriation. LRMC Personnel treated the sailors injured in the USS Cole bombing. Today, LRMC provides medical treatment to casualties injured during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Other than that, noting much going on. Still applying to other jobs, etc...

Later!

Zoo pics

2006-05-19T21:17:00.000+02:00

OK, I know I have been lagging, but it has still been really boring here. I am almost out of debt, so hopefully in another month I can start to take a few trips. LOL Then again, you never know what is going to happen, do you?

A week or so ago Jess and I actually had the same day off work, so we took a trip to the Opal (Opel??) zoo north of Frankfurt.

This zoo is amazing, not only because of how it is laid out, but because you can feed the animals. I don't mean just the goats, but the monkeys, elephants, even the artic dogs! They sell both pellets and fresh carrots. Obviously people here are smart enough to NOT give them popcorn and junk like they try to do in the states.

Jess even has a baby monkey reach out and grab onto her finger and hold it... This place was great!

I will get right to the good stuff and post a link to the pictures.

Click here

Anyway, not much else new. Still slinging tacos, applying for more army jobs, some even in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, short term jobs to make some money.

Our friend Cari will be passing through Frankfurt on the 30th, on her way to Rwanda with a group. She has a layover of something like 13 hours, so yeah! We will at least be able to meet and and do some catch-up!

Sorry this is another short blog. Later!

Opel zoo near Frankfurt

2006-05-12T12:03:00.000+02:00

Stay tuned, just need to get pictures onto computer and will write blog....

Help for son

2006-04-10T18:22:00.000+02:00

Hi there. The time has come for me to get rid of my Honda Civic. I can't make the payments any longer, and Nick, being 19, cannot afford both payments and insurance, so I am asking for you help.

Does anyone out there in MN know of a decently priced car? I mean a beater car, it doesn't have to be pretty, but needs to be reliable so that he can get back and forth to work. I can't pay a lot, I mean VERY little, (under $1,000) but could really use your help... Thanks so much......

Anyone that has any information can contact me at helpfindcar@hotmail.com. (is a valid email, I set it up just for this).

Not much else going on this week. Just working.. I have today and tomorrow off, and now that I have internet at home, was able to catch Nick online and IM with him for about an hour. YES!!!!!!! Still trying to get home to come to Germany, trying to lure him with free rent, home cooking, an inexpensive car, a PT job paying about $9 an hour...... no go, he still gets really mad, saying he will never move here.. *sigh*

Anyway, am working like crazy trying to clean house, catch up on email, update bookmarks, etc........ Am possibly going back up to Amsterdam in a few weeks, maybe with a tour from post to see the Keukenhof(??) gardens........
Will write more in a day or two......

Amsterdam!

2006-04-04T23:31:00.000+02:00

All pictures at the end of the blog

Yeah! First road trip since we have been here. AMSTERDAM! My poor daughter will never be the same. LOL

We took the car up, had no problems with it all all, except having to use about 40 euros in parking meters. What a waste! We were also able to buy gas along the way at American prices, not the $5 it is a gallon (4 liters) here... Because we work on the army post, we can buy gas coupons to use outside the post, for the same price we would payon post... Pretty nice!! We used porbably less that $60 in gas, thinking more along the lines of $50.. Not bad!

There was really no border to speak of going into the Netherlands, though we took a couple of pictures in front of the sign, coming back into Germany there was not even a sign!

Our plan was to go to the Van Gogh Museum, Ann Frank's house, and to the Keukenhof gardens (link : Keukenhof) south of Amsterdam, hopefully seeing some tulip fields and old fashioned windmills on the way down, then MAYBE head through to Belgium on the way back to Germany, but most of that went down the tubes... or should I say "up in smoke" LOL

We got into Amsterdam with no problem, but it took up about an hour to find the hotel, which was located about 3 minutes from the Van Gogh museum.. The hotel was a privately owned place with only 8 rooms I think. To get in, you came though a door on street level and walked about, no lie, about 80 or 90 stairs! These were not flights, bought one solid libe ofnarrow, VERY steep stairs. Thank god our apartment is on the fourth floor and we have no elevator, I am used to stairs, and made it up these without even being short of breath!

I took a couple pictures of our room, it made me think of what a room in a French hotel would be like. It had a 12 or 15 foot high ceiling, and windows that ran from floor to ceiling, very nice. The only problem I had was that there were no towels! When we first arrived we just wanted to got check out the town, so I said nothing (also figuring I might have to pay for them!!!) And later I was too stoned to worry about it. Lastly we slept until about 5 minutes before checkout time, so I had no chance to even shower. LOL

It was about 6 pm before we got settled in the hotel and found that the pay parking i knew about would either take a geldacard (bank card from a German bank, which we didn't have) or coins. 20 euro worth! Let's just say getting change was NOT the easiest thing to do, and we ended up feeding the machine about 6 times throught the night.

We decided to go see the Van Gogh museum first, it was too late to do that and see Anne Frank's house, and since the museum was right there we picked the museum.

I really enjoyed it, but I know Jess was pretty bored. It cost 10 euro (each) to get in, but I was in awe of the works displayed. Unfortuately Starry Night is not on diplay there, but "Sunflowers" was on display as well as the self portraits, etc, so I was pretty thrilled. It was sort of like when I saw Abe Lincoln's stovepipe hat that was on display when the travelling Smithsonean(was that the museum??) came into Mpls a few years ago. Pretty cool.

After leaving the museum we started walking around, trying to get an idea were everything was...mainly the red light district and the famous "coffee" bars that sold pot. It was cold and windy, raining, and by this time were are getting hungry and grumpy. We stooped at a Pancake house and I had a regualr pancake for 3 euro, and Jess had one with bacon and egg on it.. These pancakes were thinner, more like a panakkukken(sp?) really, but the size of.... probably about the size of a large pizza! GOOD stuff.

So far we are NOT too impressed with Amsterdam, and to tell you the truth, it was not what either of us exp[ected, but it did get better later, and I admit, we were there on the offseason. People we talked to later said that in the summer you can even move down the street in the red light district, it is so crowded, so I am glad our first trip was now. First trip meaning I am definitely going back!!

We finally took the car and went hunting for the famout red light district.
Oh yes, everyone we ran into at the business in Amsterdam spoke great English, but I have to tell you, driving up there, listening to the radio... I mean German you can sort of pick out the words sometimes, but Dutch!!! AAUUGHGHH... I thought German was gutteral, I don't know how they manage to get some of the sounds OUT!.... And nothing sounds even remotely like a language you could ever understand. Very weird!

Anyway, it is dusk now, not dark yet, but we figure that we can just drive around until we find a block where there are red lights everywhere. Makes sense, right"??? Well, one more expectation brought down.. We had such a hard time finding the dang place, and at last when we got there, red lights seemed to be few and far between. Itw as SUCH a dissapointment.. But then again, we figured maybe things got a lot wilder much later in the night. We didn't last that long.. the night before we drove up, neither of us went to sleep at all, and for the last two evenings before, I was up until 3 and 5 am respectivelly, so we were tired...

So we drive and we drive , though tiny little roads and big roads, across litle bridges that span one of the canals (made me think of what Venice looks like) and FINALLy come across and area that looks promising.. not seedy, just a couple of sex shops..

WARNING, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ABOUT THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT AND SMOKING POT, SKIP DOWN TO THE NEXT SET OF BOLDED LETTERS (my disclaimer notice)

We decide to park the car (more money) and get out to take a look around...

BINGO, within a block or two down we hit the red light district. There is no road persay to drive down, it is an all pedestrian area...

We start walking down it one way.....A few of the windows are open, YOUNG girls still in clothing at that time, staring out the windows and doing their little suggestive dances... Kind of funny in a way, sort of sad, but these were not the nasty looking women you see in porn films (NOT that I have ever watched one mom!!) but young really attractive women.. ....But still there really isn't much going on. We continue walking, and look down into a window and see a group of people who look like they are having a MEETING, regular people. with a nun heading it.. Liek a bible study group! We decide that these people will be doing some sort of sordid sex show there later. LOLOLOL...

There is one huge place there, which was the only place aglow in red neon, it was a live sex show place...... Now maybe some of you (and you KNOW who you are) will be dissapointed that we did not go in there and then report back to you, but believe me, it was weird enough going to the red light district with my DAUGHTER, no way would I ever do anything like that with her along. UGH..

This is the honest to god truth, we are standing at a corner, trying to figure out what to do when we are suddenly surrounded by a large group of asians... What the??? Jess suddenly starts laughs and shows me a man at the head of the group, who is holding up an unbrella like our tour guide in Italy did!! They were actually running TOUR groups through the place, all of them oriental...... That was pretty bizarre!

Now some of you may judge me at the point, most I am sure won't care, but i thank god comments are off now, because we then decided to stop into one of the coffee bars and smoke some pot.

Jess had only smoked once before, actually just a week or so ago, and had not even gotten stoned.. That can happen the first time you smoke, so she wasn't really sure what she was getting into. Me on the other hand.... well that is all I have to say about that.. *g*

I had read online about the coffee bars where they have actual menus of different types of pot and their prices... Now I thought everyone knew it was legal to smoke pot in Amsterdam, but obviously my mother didn't know, because when I spoke to her this afternoon after we got home and told her about it, she was NOT happy I smoked with my daughter, etc... and then she asked me when I was going to grow up??? LOLOL I told her I had been grown up for the last 23 years, and now I had come here to NOT be grown up.

Anyway, we go into the bar, and up to the counter, tell the man it's our first time in Amsterdam, and asked what he could suggest. He showed us the menu with all kinds of diiferent typpes.....and jess picked out a little bag for 15 euro, I decided to go for a single joint. He asked if I wanted it pure or cut with tobacco. i decided to try with tobacco, because I had no idea how strong this stuff was....

I also bought a space cake (this was pound cake with THC or pot in it) and we got two waters and sat down.... Jess had bought a little pipe, but I think smoking from a pipe is too harsh, and so did she once she lit it up.

My prerolled joint was kind of weird to get used to. It had like a mouthpeice on it, which made you want to hold it like a regular cigarrette, which is truly dumb, but you couldn't really squeeze the end to inhale it, so... anyway, I wasn't too impressed with my choice of pot, and after we had been there a half hour, I was a bit fuzzy, but nothing great. we decided to buy one more joint, not cut with tobaccao, and walk around outside and smoke.

Where the first joint had cost 4 euro, this one was 7.50....... We went down the street to a place that sold all sorts of candies, cookies etc made from pot or hashish, and they even had mushrooms! i couldn't believe that.. They also had muchroom tea, etc... Maybe another time.. LOL But, jsut bought a couple of "Bob Marley suckers" and we sucked on those while we went back to the red light district...

OK, second joint was a winner, poor Jess was NOT liking being stoned, and liking even less that fact that I was having a hell of a time!! ( I am her mother you know, how embarrassing)

After driving her crazy for a while, and going back to put MORE money into parking, we decided to go back to the first coffee bar and sit for a while....

At that point the laughing part of being stoned hit me.... Oh.... my.... god...... First Jess was appalled, then she was laughing as hard as I was at things like me saying " I can't look over at the rest of the people here, they know I'm stoned... Oh wait, this is a place where people GET stoned, and they are all probably as stoned as WE are!!" This statement was followed by hysterical laughter by both of us,....... The problem is, Jess came down WAAAAY before I even started to, she had barely smoked any of the second joint... so after a while she was just going.... Oh my god, I don't think I can handle this... being stoned with my mother... this is freaking me out.... which of course put me right back into hysterics.........

FINALLY I tried to compose myself so we could drive back to the hotel.. We had a parking place next to and parrallel to the canal.... Now I had a hard time not getting nervous getting out of the car when I was straight.. but stoned.... EEWW... I am not sure why Jess let me drive, but after I got in, started the car, and inched forward a foot or so... I panicked and said oh my god, I will accidently drive this car into the canal... I CAN'T DRIVE!!!! I was so scared that I was going to get out of the car and fall into the canal just going around to the other side, I had to climb across the front seat while Jess got in the driver's side.

Now anyone who has done drugs at all KNOWS that even though you ask someone if they are still high and they say no..... don't believe them... So when I asked Jess and she said no she was fine... I didn't beleive her. At that point I started panicking about HER driving us into the canal, at which poiunt SHE started panicking about driving us into the canal. LOLOL

I waould have been very happy to just sit in the car a few hours... but she decided to start driving.

Now she swears she was still not stoned, but I tell you, it took us over an hour to get back to the hotel. Not that I think we were lost because she was still high, but that she just got lost, and was the worst FUCKING driver I had ever seen. I swear we went over curbs, she would change lanes in front of people.. I was just waiting for the police to zoom in and take us to stoners' jail.... Then again, I may have just been really stoned.. LOL

Anyway, by the end of the hour we drove, i was now down enough to help decipher the map of Amsterdam we had, and she finally found the way back to to hotel....

At which point we plugged MORE moeny into parking. Jess now decides she is hungry, and it is like 11:30 at night.. We wonder down the street..(ok, I am stilled stoned, just not stoned silly anymore) looking for food... Everything was either closing in 5 minutes, closed, or had expensive food or nothing we liked. We wandered back and forth between three blocks I kid you not, 3-4 times and finally went into the last restaurant open. It was way too expensive and by this time we are pretty broke, so i do the old "We are going to keep it light tonight" to the waiter and we ordered two appetizers(sp), a dessert and a big bottle of water. (I love Europe and the big bottles of water you order at restaurants.)

The food was good, a shrimp spring roll, some penne pasta and a dessert that was apple slices,with a few walnuts, covered with a sort of thin custard sauce, and had ice cream... unfortunately there was no vanilla in the sauce, and an abundance of rum, YUCK...We were so hungry we didn't really care.

We walked back tothe hotel. Jess was pretty down (depressed) now, it wasn't as she expected and she would never get stoned again (i can hear my mom saying "GOOD" out loud as she reads this) and she wanted to go home, drive back down to Hanau right now, 12:30 in the morning.. Well, I would have almost said ok, except I hadn't really slept in like 4 days, and just needed sleep. PLUS I wanted to keep the option open to go to the Gardens the next day, with the possibilty of going through Belgium on the way home to check out the chocolate. (only one extra hour driving to do this) Ann Frank's house has gone the way of the wind (or smoke) a long time ago.. I convinced her to stay there and get some sleep, also reminding her that they bring breakfast right to our room in the morning helped her. LOL

So we went back to the hotel and were asleep in like 5 minutes flat.

I woke up inthe morning long enough to let them bring in breakfast, then went back to bed until 20 minutes before we had to check out.
We got dressed, though our stuff back into our backpacks, scarfed breakfast and headed back down to Hanau.

Breakfast was a typical European one..... toast, jam, a couple of boiled eggs, coffe, tea, some extra bread and a couple of slices of both meat and cheese. You can eat all, or a normal way of doing it is to makes sandwiches of the meat and cheese and take them with you for lunch... Which is what we did, though we eat them in the car about 10 minutes later. LOL

Going home was fast! Anyway, I have to get back there by early May to see the gardens in all their glory, and to go see the Ann Frank House. Ok, I am tired now, going to upload the pictures and go to bed!!

PICTURES

Me by the Netherlands sign

And then Jess!

Although this is not MY car, it is the same make, model, year and color, so you can see what we are driving on our trips across Europe.LOL

Old style windmills

New style windmill!!

Amsterdam

One of the canals running through town.

Our hotel room

MOM, DO NOT LOOK AT THE NEXT PICTURE!! (I love you)

Jessica

damn computers

2006-03-30T12:52:00.000+02:00

LOL We are online, but only on Jess' computer. Mine doesn't have XP, so am having problems. Then bought a wireless router yesterday and blew out the power adapter using it on German electricity. GRRRRRRRRR... have to bring that back and also going to thrift store to look for hub and or cheaper router. i don't even care about wireless anymore, just want MY computer online.

internet

2006-03-29T16:22:00.000+02:00

We now have broadband internet at home!!!!!!!! Yessir.....
I will now be online with Aim or Yahoo or MSN Messenger at times where you are either sleeping or in the evenings after you work. LOL

Off to work..........

Stuff

2006-03-28T15:56:00.000+02:00

It's 9:30 in the morning here in Hanau and i have been awake for the last hour. Almost unheard of in my world to be up this early, but I had to give Jess a ride to work, then I stopped at the US mailboxes to check mine, I am waiting for a couple of movies to come in from Netflix. I was walking from my car to the Post Office and thought how weird it is to be in Europe yet be surrounded be in a US Army post. My life is a strange concoction of US and European lifestyle that is not always pleasant. A large part of the reason I left the US was because of the people. Not all of them obviously, but the general population. And now I find myself spending a good portion of my day working with them, Mind you, I am so grateful for the work here that allows me to stay in Europe, yet having to deal with them can be very wearing.
For example yesterday (Monday). I don't usually work Monday and Tuesday, they are the slowest days of the week and therefore I usually have them off, but the restaurant was short a closer, and since closing is what I do best (5 of 7 days) I was asked to come in. The people who visit the restaurant on weekends are in a vastly different mood than the Monday people. Maybe it is because, obviously, it is the weekend. But yesterday the people I served were so rude, I had a difficult time even putting on a smile after a while. They were, to me, typical rude Americans. They wanted what they wanted NOW, and their looks of disgust made them very unattractive. Everything they ordered had 16 modifications, etc. The men, especially the young soldiers, never seem to be the problem. They are always smiling, joking, polite, ma'am is used etc. It is the wives who are PAINS IN THE ASS. Rude, condescending, impatient. I thought it was funny at first to be looked down upon. I mean, I CHOSE to leave a very comfortable lifestyle to come work at this dinky Taco Bell in the middle of Germany. OK, so I didn't exactly CHOOSE this part, but I chose to take the chance that I might end up at a job like this. And I don't mind at all helping the soldiers, regardless of what I think about the war, America etc, these are the guys who are coming and going from Iraq that I am helping, and I am very proud of that.
OK, I have sort of drifted off the main subject that I wanted to write about, but hey, that's the fun of having a blog (where no one can comment), I get to wander in any verbal direction I want to and no one can complain. Read it, or go away. LOL.

Anyway, what I started out wanted to write about was the weirdest of being caught between two different, VERY different cultures. Especially when one is the military.
I find it fun and different to have one half of my life lived out on an Army post, without actually having enlisted in the Army! You have the typical army type buildings, vehicles etc. Shoppettes, post offices, PXs, dining halls, laundry facilities, libraries etc. Even a thrift store where we have managed to come away with some pretty neat free things, including my daughter's 19 inch color TV with remote. ( she wanted a TV of her own so badly but could not afford even a used one in the thrift shop), then one day we walked in and they were giving one away ( too many TVs for sale) what a deal. LOL.

Anyway, so we come to work, show our civilian Department of Defense IDs to the German guards in uniform outside the post, go and do our jobs with Americans, then leave post and drive home to our apartment in the middle of a German town. Weird, but interesting. I really do try to stay away from buying things on post, especially food, but sometimes you need things not available on the economy (off post).

I have probably taking way too many words to say what I wanted, but again, it is so early in the morning. I don't usually get up until at least noon.

I work til at least 10:30 pm, and have been known to be there until 2 am, helping out my supervisor until 11 or midnight, then standing out in the parking lot talking for a couple of hours. In our parking lot at night there are always at least one or two deer walking around. Midget deer, at first I thought they were fawns, but they are actually full sized deer. There are also always bunnies hopping around in the grass by the dumpsters. Being the weird person I am, I always say “Bunny, bunny, bunny!” to them, knowing damn well they have no clue what I am saying, that I should probably be calling out the German word for bunny, which of course they would still not understand. LOL

Annnnyway... Next week we are FINALLY taking our first road trip to......... (cue drum roll) ..... Amsterdam! Yeah, party on Garth..... We intend to have a hell of a time. Jess and I are driving up with a woman who works at the bowling ally on post, where Jess' Subway (where she works) is located. It is Amber's birthday, and she wanted to go up, so we said lets go! Yes, I intend to smoke the reefer and do any other slightly illegal thing possible to do in Amsterdam, damn right!

We are driving up Monday morning, coming back Tuesday sometime. It is I think a 4 hour drive away, and with the three of us sharing expenses, shouldn't cost too much. AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands.. YES SIR! Should be a lot of fun. Just hoping I don't land in jail or anything.. (just kidding mom..)

We finally decided to get landline and Internet at the apartment. The phone is up and running, but we have to get a DSL modem from the company today to get the Internet going. OH MY GOD, one of life's luxuries back again, Internet at my actual home. I mean, I will be able to be on the internet any time day or night. WOW! LOL... Been almost a year without it. Been almost a year since this whole adventure started. I think I gave my notice at work on April 18th, a year ago. Seems like forever.

The anniversary of my sister's death was just a couple of days ago. NINE YEARS she has been gone. I still think of her every day. Funny how that is, and strange how she will never age or be old in our minds. Eternally young, as she should be remembered.

Well, I have to get up in two hours to return something to the thrift shop, we tried getting a used DSL modem there, but it is not working. So I need to get back to bed so that I can wake up in two hours. (note – later found out that DSL: will not be up and running until tomorrow (WED))

I am guessing you will be seeing way more rambling blogs once we are connected at home. I am not sure if that will be good or bad, but will certainly be a fact of life. Later......

pictures

2006-03-22T15:20:00.000+01:00

no time to write,late for work. I decided to actually move into a bedroom like i was going to stay for awhile. pics below.

Picture time!

2006-03-09T13:48:00.000+01:00

OK, going to post some pictures. I am sacrificing my dignity and putting two of myself on here also. Hope you can tell I lost 50 pounds, I did not however, get any more photogenic. *LOL* Here goes.

Our apartment when we first moved in. When they say unfurnished, they mean nothing on the walls and floor, no light fixtures, NOTHING! Luckily after a month they installed a kitchen, that is unusual. We have done nothing to the floors and walls yet until we decide if we are staying in Hanau or going elsewhere. We are leaning towards the staying in Hanau.

Same view, a bit better with our obligatory cat climber we made.

Shot of the plants I have gotten.They will probably be dead in a month or two.I try so hard, but cannot keep a plant alive. *sigh*

Bammy on the cat thing. Even though she doesn't look it, she is much happier since having 6 teeth pulled last month.

Miss Kitty sleeping

Karnival in Hanu. (coincides(sp)with Mardi Grasin the States)

The view down the street from my window.

Me,50 pounds lighter. I didn't realize my new pants were already baggy again. YEAH!

Closer view(for my mom) to show her my hair, etc...

That's it! Nothing much else new....... Later!

The car

2006-03-08T14:31:00.000+01:00

Yeah, yeah. i know, who wants to hear more about the car..LOL Too bad...
Actually not much to say, we have gone through a lot of gas, Germany is SUCH a pain to get around, well at least the city of Hanau. We end up going in circles forever to find NY PLACE, SHEESH. So we have gone through 3/4 of my $35 of gas in just 3 or so days. We did drive about an hour away to Wiesbaden, but of course got lost. What should have been a 57 km drive ended up as 135 km. *g* We also ended up eating at a Persian restaurant and i finally got a chance to smoke a hooka(spelling??) We had melon flarvor, they were out of orange, and apple didn't sound very good. Even JESS smoked it after a bit of prodding!!!!!!

Anyway, it is really wonderful to have a car. We are parking at the very ends of lots so that we have to keep walking. Also, if we go into the marktplatz area of town to shop, you can't park there, so we leave the car at home and walk. I am doing my best to make sure I stay at this weight, as well as loose more.

Well, Jess is sitting at the computer next to me, staring at me, she wants to go, we both work this afternoon, so I am gone. Take care!!

FINALLY got the car in my name

2006-03-06T15:03:00.000+01:00

Woo-hoo! 1987 Audi 100, is BIG for cars here, holds a whopping 80 liters of gas, which I THINK is only 20 gallons. Thank god I get a gas ration card so that I can buy on post at 68 cents a liter vs $4 a liter on the economy.

Well, am paying big bucks for this time online, on on post, the computers at the library are down. We are going to take a hour drive to the Wiesbaden Amry post after Jess gets off work at 4 today. There is a big bookstore there she wanted to go to, so SINCE WE HAVE A CAR we can go... A permit to park on the street in front of our apt only costs 25 euro a year, so that was great. The car also needs an oil change badly and a new air filter. I have a feeling it might also need brakes, but there is a man who works at the shoppette which is connected to Taco bell that says he is a certified mechanic. (He also likes me, so that might be of help too) *g*

Ok, will write more when I get onto a computer that is free or WAY cheaper. Take care.

Driving times

2006-03-01T12:54:00.000+01:00

I did a bit of checking online today for driving times from Hanau, Germany. (If the car can make it long distances.) A couple of places it would be better to fly, but below are the results. Amazing the places you can drive to with gas bought with the money you made at Taco Bell. LOL

less than 4 hours driving time to Brussels, Belgium
6 hours to Paris, France.
6 hours to Vienna, Austria
9 hours to London, UK
3.5 hours to Holland, Netherlands.
8 hours to Venice, Italy
16 hours to Madrid, Spain
4 hours to Amsterdam, Netherlands
4 hours to Zurich, Switzerland
3 hours to Luxembourg
3.5 hours to Munich, Germany
5 hours to Berlin, Germany
5 hours to Prague, Czheck(sp) Republic
15 hours to Dublin, Ireland
9 hours to Monaco (French Riviera)
A whopping 24 hours to Athens, Greece
24 hours to Lisbon, Portugal
15 hours to Stockholm, Sweden.

That is all I have to say today.. :-)

Sing with me now!........

2006-02-27T15:49:00.000+01:00

Diana's gonna have a caaaaar... Diana's gonna have a caaaaaarr.

Yes people, I will be buying a 1982 Audi something or other with 149,000 miles on it. *LOL*

The woman at work whose son is going back to the Phillipines (sp) keeps offering it to me, she says she won't sell it to anyone else but me. (i remind her of her grandmother whom she loves very much!!) I don't know whether to take that as an insult (do I look that old?) or not, but I am secretly very proud. PLUS even though I was going to buy it before, but then I lost all my state tax refund to the kids student loans that I cosigned for.. she still keeps offering it to me, even saying i can pay part now, part later. Also my supervisor, Nick, who is is also Philipino(why does that spelling look SOOO wrong??), and is going to see if she will bring the price down a bit.. Soooo.....

I think that means no flying trip to Spain, but I am now researching road trips. We are only a couple of hours away from France I know, and probably only 4 or so from Beligium, and I think the Netherlands too, Plus Austria, Prague, etc... We will just have to see if the car will hold up to long trips....

Anyway, not much else new. (NOT MUCH ELSE NEW?????? I AM RESEARCHING ROAD TRIPS ALL OVER EUROPE, HOW COOL IS THAT????)

I am getting to really like working at Taco Bell, I JUST NEED MORE MONEY!!!!!

I like that the work is physical, it feels good to be moving around, bending lifting, etc.... and the people I work with are pretty amazing, with the exception of the manager of the store, but what else is new there, that is the ancient curse of working at all. LOL

So I am getting into pretty good shape I think. I am still down about 52 pounds, so that is good. I really need another 20 pounds I think, I will be so thrilled, you will have no idea. HOT 48 year old woman. *g*
I really wouldn't mind working here for a while, but I know I need more money to survive. For now though, I am pretty frigging happy where I am, thank you. Maybe my goal in life WAS to work at a Taco Bell.. *g* I am sure I will move on to something else, but as I said, i am pretty happy where I am right now.

Well, off to look up road trips, find out about changing my MN license into a German one, etc... Hope you all are well in Minnesota!!!

Some exploring

2006-02-23T14:46:00.000+01:00

Well, I have decided to take $150 of my tax money and take a three day trip somewhere, probably the south of Spain. It is warmer than here and I can speak Spanish, and the food??? Do I have to say anything? YUM..

Am still not sure though, I may do southern Italy or the Island of Sadinia off Iitaly.. Ryanair has flights for about 1.99€ plus about 20 in taxes, each way.. The places I am looking at also have youth hostels where you can stay for about $20 a night... sooooooo.....

Half the fun is in the planning I think. *G* Jess may or may not go, she has not said. If she goes I will see if the landlord/Vet's secretary might stop up and feed and water the cats and plants in the apartment since the office is right in back of us.

So I can go to london, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain., Portugal, Switzerland, France, you name it. Maybe I should save Spain for when it is warmer and do London or Paris.... AUUGGHHH... Don't you just love that these hard decisions are so FUN?? not bad for a Taco Bell worker.... :-p

I decided I need to get off my butt and start taking some short trips. Actually London or paris I could probably do in two days......

Hmmmm..

OH! I finally got my hair dyed back to blonde.. It was almost completely the natural, dull brown color before I had the money to dye it back blonde, it was such a shock, I didn't know if I even liked it, but now I am glad, makes me look younger again, not so old and haggard.

I am helping to pay off my mom's credit card now, so i feel a lot better about that. Living with the minimum amount of things and costs allows me to be able to start paying her back...
Anway, i work at 5:30, so I need to run home and get my work clothes, stop off at the market for some fruit and yogurt. I'll keep you updated on the travel thing. I plan to go mid March, I always have two day off work in the middle of the week, so I will take those and maybe one other day. Not sure yet. Hope you all are fine there in Minnesota!!!!

maintaining

2006-02-20T16:43:00.000+01:00

Sorry it has been a while, I couldn't get into blogger the other day to give an update. I got my federal taxes back and was able to get my hair dyed back to blonde. YEAH! Also was able to buy jeans and topes that fit me.. For those of you who know me, you know I used to wear big mens shirts over tops. NO MORE! I bought a bunch of knit shell sort of tops, short sleeved scoop necked close fitting tops. GRIN. 50 pounds and a person can definitely wear things they could not wear before.

Otherwise not much else new, just haunting the UN and military job boards, putting in for all the IT jobs I can, waiting to hear back. I haven't heard back from the UN, but it is still possible, has not quite been 4 weeks since the interview.

Flower shops are awesome here. I bought a little bonsai tree, would run about $30 in the US, for 6€.... and a few flowering plants, most about 99 cents, the most expensive was 4€.

I had to take my cat in a few weeks ago to have her mouht operated on. She is older, had to get about 6 teeth pulled. OW.. Luckily the vet is our landlord and her office is right behind the apartment! Bammy is doing great and you can tell feels soooo much better with the teeth out..

Jess and I were going to get a car with our tax money, but decided to wait until we know where we are going to be permanently, plus I am paying back my mom at $100 a month, so car insurance would be too expensive to pay with everything else, on our pay.........

Weather is great, springlike, getting more sunny days, I was able to walk across the comples where I work without a jacket the other day.. Woo-hoo!

Well, I need to hit the shops in town before they close at 6, this is one of my days off......

Hope everyone is doing fine........... Take care!!!

Thunder and snow

2006-02-09T15:37:00.000+01:00

Strange weather here in Germany, been windy and rainy, then suddenly snow and thunder, and then by 1 pm sunny and everything melted. *L*

Still not much going on, waiting to here about jobs, that's about it. Jess and her boyfriend broke up, thankfully before she left to go live with him in Portugal, so she will be following me wherever I get a job. (YEAH)

We went to the movies the other night! On post, Jess wanted to see Harry Potter, it was the last time it was playing. I had gotten a couple of free passes from my supervisor for being so wonerful *blush*. We had not been to a movie since the US.

NICE, high backed chairs, etc. We bought a bag of popcorn, smooothered it with fake butter and salt, and a drink, also some chocolate, what a treat!

As soon as we sat down I had flashbacks to when I was in the Air Force, and I told Jess to be prepared for the National Anthom, that we would have to stand up during it. She didn't believe me, said that was a long time ago. But I said we were on a US military base, trust me, they will have the national anthom before the movies starts. Sure enough, it played. I should have bet Jess money. *g*

So that was a nice treat. I think I gained 2 pounds from all the butter and salt I consumed.. (American food, evil, fattening!) LOL

Work is the same, i have gotten into the swing of thing really well with one particular supervisor, so when we work together, it's not too bad.

What else?? I know I had things to talk about, but once I get online, my mind goes blank.

Well, going to go, am just hanging by a thread hoping to get a call about one or another job in Geneva.

Take care!

United Nations interview.

2006-01-25T16:49:00.000+01:00

Shew.. that is over... I spoke with a man named Anders and another gentleman whose name I did not understand. He may have been from Nigeria or some such place.

They asked me a lot of questions about my work background. Very straight forward, none of the "How would your best friend decribe you" types of questions.
They wanted to know how I felt about traveling. It seems the job will be based out of Geneva, not the Hague, so scratch the Hague link from yesterday. When he asked me about traveling, he said the places they go to were not the usual tourist spots, he actually said it could be "deepest Africa" or southeast Asia. LOL.

I am not sure how I did, i know I am weak on a couple of things they are looking for, such as Zenworks and any programming. BUT, it also sounds like they use Novell, because one of them was asking me about my GroupWise experience as well as asking if i had any Novell certifications, so that is a good sign.........

We spoke about 1/2 hour. The human resources person that was supposed to be there got lost finding the place, so they just went over a bit about the hiring process. That they had more interviews, and that I would probably hear nothing until about 3-4 weeks from then. Then if I got the job an HR person would contact me with an offer.

Another thing they asked was that if i received an offer, how long before I could be in Geneva. I said it would take no more than two weeks, that I was renting month to month and would just need to get things together back here and go. AAUUGGHHHH... :-)

Pretty cool huh, being called up by a couple of people from the United Nations in Geneva about a job where I could be traveling to "deepest Africa" and Southeast Asia??? *G*

Well, I will just be keeping my fingers crossed. I am going to have to talk to Jess and see if she would move to Geneva with me (and Rob could come) so that they could share an apartment and take care of the cats for me. Otherwise i am not sure I can take the job, depending on how often I travel.....

Not going to plan too much though, since there is no promise that I will even get the job, but it is nice to not be sideblinded if I get it, by having made no plans.

I am also kind of hoping about the AF job in the Azores. The waiting 3-4 weeks for a reply from the UN kind of gives me time to hear from the other job.

So things are looking up at least. more sun in Germany..... i was standing at the bus stop waiting to catch the bus here (I am at the USO on post using a computer at the library) and I was just watching these three boys play football (soccer) in the street, and the bells from the town square started ringing at the top of the hour, and I have to tell you, I was pretty frigging content with where I am right now.. So that it good.... Much better off then I was a month ago.

Anyway, i need to get going and get some other things done here before I go to work. 6-10:30pm for the next 3 nights.

Bye!

Things are looking up

2006-01-23T17:05:00.000+01:00

Well, at last some interesting things to put on the blog. I was at the vet today with one of the cats when i received call from the united Nations in Geneva wanting to do a phone interview with me on Wed about a job I applied for a few months ago.. It is for a computer assistant job in the Hague (Netherlands) at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia! (try saying that three times fast.. Here is the site for those interested: http://www.un.org/icty/

I also checked on the status of a computer job for the Air Force in the Azores, Portugal, and I am eligible for it, so we will see if I get a call or email from them! Here is a link to the Island that the base is located on: http://www.destinazores.com/index.php , The job would be on the island of Terceira. The islands are actually about 900 miles west of Lisbon, it is the most Western part of Europe. See what you think! I just started checking out the two places myself, though obviously there is no guarentee I will get either job..

Something must be in the air because I just got a call from Heidelberg asking if I wanted a job in the commissarry. that one I said no to, i don't have a care right now, etc, and it is an hour train ride away. i would not make enough money at that job to justify going.

Well, cross your fingers that one of these jobs comes through (I personally want the one in the Azores.) It is only a 5 hour flight from there to Boston, so the US would be closer, and maybe I could get my mom to come over........ Now if I was in the Hague, Nick would be more likely to come, he wants to visit Amsterdam, soo..... Either way both pay about the same money, obviously the UN one would look better on a resume.... there are porbably a lot more perks to it also. Well, we will just have to see if either pans out. cross your fingers!!

OK, Holland itself looks pretty fricking interesting... *sigh* Here is a link: http://www.holland.com/us/

New direction maybe?

2006-01-16T14:18:00.000+01:00

Well, that old travelin jones is hitting again. Looks like we will be trying to get to Portugal in the next few months. Jess' boyfriend is living there and she wants to be closer to him. To be honest, warmer weather sounds wonderful. I have been watching the military sites for job openings. I just applied for a computer assistant, it closes the 20th, so we will see if I hear anything after that.

The other thing we have decided to do is buy a car if we get enough tax money back. It's really needed, esp when you first get to a place, looking for apts, applying for jobs etc. So we will se how much we get back.

Been working, working, working. Still only getting about 30 hours a week, no benefits, but it is enought for the apt and utilities, and some spending money.

I have been working closings, so I come in around 1 or so and work til 10:30 a couple of days, then come in at 5:30 or so and work til closing. I LOVE sleeping late, man how I love it.

My weight loss is now up to 40 pounds!!!!!!!!!! Yes, that is the happiest thing of this trip, losing all the weight.

Living in Germany is OK, the weather in the winter sucks, a bit of snow here and there, in the 30s mostly, but no sun most of the time, and to me it look slike MN in the spring when everything is sort of dirty and no leaves on the trees yet.

Living in Dt Hanau has been nice, you just walk into town to do your shopping, etc.... The main downtown blocks are all paved and cobbled, with blocks and blocks of stores. I still have not been impressed with the cooked food available. pork mostly, and sandwiches. There is this one butcher shop where you can get a leg/thigh of chicken roasted with paprika for 1.7 euro. YUM, but not a lot of other places to eat. We still have no kitchen in the apt, so we are unable to cook. This means I am eating a lot of Taco Bell. YUCK...

So now it is just work work work while we look into going to Portugal.

Note: Visit to a local dr here cost TEN euros, about $11!!!!! Can't beat that.... :-)

Back

2006-01-15T12:45:00.000+01:00

Sorry, I was deciding whether or not to keep doing the blog, which is why I haven't updated this for a while. I had a rough time during Christmas, and am just now getting back on my feet and up to speed. I only have a minute before work, so I can't go into everything now, but I have Tuesday off so then I will have time to hit the computer and update you all on what has been going on. Take care until then!

Life in Germany

2005-12-22T14:32:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-16T18:12:00.000+01:00

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!!!!!!!!

2005-12-15T18:21:00.000+01:00

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?

2005-12-13T22:52:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-12T20:21:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-09T13:55:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-06T13:33:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-04T21:49:00.000+01:00

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?

2005-12-03T10:14:00.000+01:00

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

2005-12-01T23:09:00.001+01:00

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

2005-11-26T16:13:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-26T00:57:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-22T09:33:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-11-19T22:07:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-11-17T21:17:00.000+01:00

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!

2005-11-16T21:35:00.000+01:00

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!!!!

2005-11-15T15:38:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-12T23:27:00.000+01:00

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

2005-11-07T17:31:00.000+01:00

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?

2005-10-30T12:46:00.000+01:00

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

2005-10-16T20:21:00.000+02:00

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!

2005-10-07T15:31:00.000+02:00

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!

2005-10-06T16:54:00.000+02:00

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

2005-09-27T12:31:00.001+02:00

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

2005-09-27T12:31:00.000+02:00

I feel like a yo-yo

2005-09-26T20:09:00.000+02:00

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?

2005-09-25T22:42:00.000+02:00

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!

2005-09-23T22:19:00.000+02:00

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

2005-09-12T18:05:00.000+02:00

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

2005-09-11T12:06:00.000+02:00

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!!!!

Part 2 of first day in Germany and other assorted ramblings

2005-09-10T16:10:00.000+02:00

I think I am going to do the assorted ramblings because they are fresh in my mind.

Note: If you take a train in Germany, DO NOT go into the first car behind the engine unless you are a smoker. And also know that this car has VERY TINY windows and as soon as it takes off, everyone (including the 33 kids under 16 yrs old) lights up at once. *cough, cough*

Note: If you buy a "Go Bananas" calling card for 25€ in Germany, to take advantage of the 2 cents a minute calling to Italy and the 1 cent a minute calling to the US (I KID YOU NOT) be aware that you have to call from a land line. If you call from your cell, that 25€ gets used up in about 14 and 1/2 minutes. I learned this personally, yesterday.

Note, everything seems cheaper when you buy it in euros, until you get home and add it up, and then pass out on the floor when you realize just how much you spent in dollars.

Note: I have had more people do amazing things to help me in the 4 days that I have been here, then I had in 10 years of living in the USA. (sorry, but it is true)

Youth hostels in Germany.... I know, I even heard some of you groan out loud when I said youth hostels, (and that does include you, mom)

Youth hostels in Germany, well the majority of them are run by the government which, now that I think of it, explains WHY you have to pay for everything there.

Anyway, I am staying at one in Heidelberg since last night and until Monday morning, when I will have an apartment in Darmstadt for the rest of the month. (and that too is another story waiting to be told) The hostel is a pretty amazing place, but has its good and bad, that´s for sure.

The rooms are CLEAN, beds nice, food good, though I think I did a non-no by putting peanut sauce on my fish last night (it sounded good to me, but I think it was for something else by the way the serving girl looked at me ((those crazy fat Americans!!))).

The room I am staying in houses 4, there are two sets of bunkbeds, they look like they would come from IKEA, light wood, very plan, but nice.

There is a table with 4 chairs, a shower, sink, toilet room, and cabinets that lock for 1 € a time.

GERMAN WINDOWS ROCK! One more thing the US should really be picking up on. Ok, you have these huge windows, maye 4 feet high. When you turn the handle one way, it swings wide open, ( letting in the damn fly that kept landing on me all night last night) and when you close the window and turn the handle the other way, the window opens out FROM THE TOP about 8-10 inches. This way you get air coming in at night, but no one can break in. I am truly amazed at what a simple idea this is.

Anyway..... I checked in to the hostel yesterday afternoon, after catching a train from Darmstadt to Heidelberg. Staying there 3 nights cost me 81€, and would have cost me about 20€ less, but I had to buy a Hostel International card in order to be able to stay there.

Hostels in Germany, i mean there are businessmen staying there to save money! LOL
I saw several families (and heard there kids yelling and running up and down the halls) saw two or three of what looked like travelling youth sports teams, assorted bikers, kids with backbacks etc, and then there was me. I have to be honest, I pretty much look like I am homeless right now, which is kind of fun for me, playing the middle aged, homeless woman, when in fact it looks like I have a god shot at a nice job in Vienna, Austria. (YES)

I had no towels with me, 1€ each, my clothes REALLY needed washing (about 5€) I had no shampoo or soap, cause they are in my suitcase that is sitting at the last hotel I stayed in, in Darmstadt. (that too is another story) So I had to go buy that, cause they were out of soap to buy at the hostel. Sheets and breakfast IS however, included in your daily fee.

Let´s talk comforters and hotels in Germany and I am guessing the Netherlands. You know how the US always has those exposes on the news about what is on the comforters in hotels? Well, there is another great idea here. You have the comforter, you have a cover (duve??) they put the cover on the comforter, then when you leave, take off the cover, and put a clean one on for the next person. Shockingly simple, isn´t it???

Anyway, i had two roomates last night, but they both left this morning. One from Asia, the other from Germany, she looking for an apartment in Heidelberg because she is going to school here starting October. I love traveling alone, I think I said that before, but it is still true. I make myself sit down and talk to people, and you learn so much about the country you are in that way. Like The green bottle of water is fizzy, the pink bottle is sort of fizzy and the blue bottle is not fizzy. You don´t even have to know German to read the labels!

Last night the German girl and I sat in a side room watching TV and talking. German TV is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than Italian. There was a show on, the same stle as a couple of American one. The dufuss husband, the in Germany, was hysterical. A lot of the time I didn´t even know what was going on, but it didn´t matter, it was just fascinating watching the expressions on his face. i mean, this was a GOOD show, you could tell. Pretty cool.

The German girl and I got into sort of the standard conversation I seem to be having with people here. The differences between America and Germany, what a dumbutt Bush is, etc. Fast food and how Americans are all though of as fat, which I found interesting cause there are some WIDE people here, in fact I love the clothing depts, because regular sizes go up to a XXL, and THEN there is the fat section, which is called Grosse, which to me is hysterical.

Wireless internet, cost me FOUR € for an hour. Now that is just highway robbery. It´s like 2 € or $2.60 for every 15 minutes. AUGGGGHHHH. Times that by how many hours you there surf per day... YEAH, right... Internet cafes cost between 1-2 € an hour.

OK, enough of the hostel. It was nice, room was stuffy, fly bugged the shit out of me, I am going back tonight. :-)

OK; I am tired of typing, going to play pogo for a bit and then write more.

OK, I am back, I need to just push myself to get it done before I never do it.

Sooo.. let´s see, first day in German, I have managed to get myself onto a train, and the gentleman with a bike say he will help me at the next stop, he is going the same direction.(get your minds out of the gutter, this man is NICE)
Since he is staying in the bike section of the train,(YES!! so many people ride bikes, there are cars that have two levels, top has seats, bottom is open for the bike riders to store their bikes)and he wil meet me at the next stop and point me in the right direction of Darmstadt.

Well, he was such a huge help. showed me how to use the ticket thingy (ok, i admit i knew how to, but he was being so nice, i let him think i didn´t know how to get my ticket)

He got directions from the conductor on what stops to get on and off, what trains to catch, etc for each of the three or for connections I had to make. That made it so much easier on me, I wouldn´t be forced to make the dreaded "anyone here speak English?" shout again.... *grin*

While we waited at the station for the next train. (it left in like 7 minutes, and he sits down and starts to smoke a cigarrette. I guess the trains are pretty timely here, we got on with like 2 minutes left, and I was sweating bullets thinking we were going to miss it)

This man was the first person I had the America vs Germany talk with, so it was themost interesting. We talked about Prez George W, transportation systems, Europe´s vs.... well the US has none, so..
Gas prices, fitness, fast food, the whole nine yards. See, if I had written this the day after there would be more information, but now it´s sort of old for me.

Part of the train ride was along the Rhine river, and let me tell you, there must be a castle up on a hill ever 3 miles! pretty awesome, big old castles just sitting alone up on hills. pictures will follow if I ever see Jess again, she has the cable that we use to transfer from the camera to pc, to burn the CD...

Another thing that I have noticed every time I have taken a train, there are plots of land along the tracks. Long plots that are perpendicular(sp) to the tracks, that are gardens! No one living nearby, just all these amazing gardens, with little sheds and fences and one even had a table with the umbrella and chairs!

When I old my mom about it, she was suprised and said they used to call them "Victory Gardens" during the war. I had no idea that´s what a victory garden was, but what a smart way to use land by the railroad, where no one wants to live. I saw quite a few along the rivers´edge also.

Anway, it was fascinating to hear a European´s point of view on America. I have to tell you though, i think quite a lot of people think that America is this amazing place and would like to go...

Once my friend got off at his stop, I went the rest of the way into Franfurt and then down to darmstadt. OH! I don´t think I wrote about this yet, maybe I did,. but I am nt going back to check in the blog.

MAPS and Germany. HA! On the map I got offline, it showed the airport to the southeast of Frankfurt, and closer to Darmstadt than Franfurt. I guess Darmstadt is considered a suburb. Anyway, faced with the choice of a hotel close to the airport, or to the train station, I chose train station.

In turns out than in reality, the freaking airport is reall on the southWEST side of the city, WAAAAAY far away from darmstadt. It would have been smarter to take a train from the airport to Franfurt and spend the night. But then of course I would not have met the people I did, but damn it, it took me 4 hours of rain riding to get where I thought I would be able to go in about an hour.

WHICH brings me to the next part of the adventure. The reason I was going to darmstadt was to check out an apartment to rent. I put an add out on a student rental place and this person had responded about an apartment they had, it sounded perfect! I was supposed to meet them at 4 pm that day. Well, with all the train riding, I wasn´t able to get into Darmstadt until at least 4:30. AUGH. AND of course my cell phone with an Italian SIM card in it was not behaving, and I had no clue what numbers to dial from Germany, I mean phone numbers here are confusing to me. I am slowly getting the idea of what to put and when, but this person´s number was this:017627217288and then sometimes number have this extra number- 0176(0)27217288 and I have NO clue what THAT thing is for... GRRR..

i was calling back and forth with Jess and she was leaving messages, etc...a mess.

So I get into Darmstadt and grab a taxi to meet this person at the apt. This is when my second hero comes in. The cab driver was Iranian, and spoke German and 15 other middle eastern languages (honest, he told me) but was a bit behind in his English.

I hand him the address and he heads out, we start talking, most of which he understood, MOST being the key word, as I find out later.

He asks if I am a tourist, blah, blah, and we end up in rush hour traffic, so I am telling him how I am going to meet someone about an aprtment, etc... We get to where the place should be, but it is a block of all sorts of building, we see number 13, 11, 10, 15, no 12. At this point he decides to pullthe car up on the sidewalk and drive between the buildings. Oh yeah, and his favorite English word is shit. the German people treat him like shit, Taxi driving is a shit job, shit! when he almost hits a lady walking her bike across the street. (the only reason he didn´t is because I screamed AH!!!!)

Anyway, we can´t find the building and he tells me to stay in the cab, (which is parked illegally in the middle of a walkway between like 6 apartment building)and he gets out and looks around. AHA! he finds it, so we take off and go along a pathway that I don´t think was really big enough for a car to go through. He manages to get to a more open spot, and then to where you can leagally park a car, and we are there!

I tell him, "wow, you can REALLY drive a car" Thank you, he says.

We are at the building, but there is no one there we are about 45 minutes late, so.. I tell him I have no idea which apartment and the person who is going to rent to me does not live there. I show him the piece of paper with the person´s email address on it. We have no idea if it is female or male, but by the last name we have both deduced that the person is also Iranian.

He proceeds to go up and check all the names on the mailboxes. Nope, no person by that name. I have no idea what to do and I´ve decide the person left and I´ll need to email them, cause I can´t dial the damn number correctly on my Italian phone.

Now he is telling me that this could be a crazy man, just hwaiting to rape or kill me. OH GOD!!!!! By the time he was done, even I was worried.

I ask him to just take me to a decent, cheap hotel and I´ll deal with it later. I am tired, it is HOT, been travelling like5 hours and I just want a shower...

No, no, let me try to call. He calls the number using his taxi hone, and can´t get through.. PLEASE, i am saying, a hotel.... Finally he say the one right next door is good and how much do I want to pay? I say 70€???? not knowing what the hell that will get me in this town.. Ok, he decides we will go to the hotel next door and he will personally check to see what the prices are.

OH!!!!!!!!! also, and unheard of thing, every time we stop, he actually stops the meter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

S I wait while he goes in, meter stopped. He takes about 10 minutes, and he has me so worked up I am thinking, ok, what are they plotting in there for me??

When he comes back out, it turns out they didn´t have any available rooms and he made them call other hotels til they found one with a room that I could afford. Do you believe that?

So off we go to the other hotel, and he is still trying to call the rapist murderer. He finally gets through and a woman answers. He starts talking to her in whatever language, and doesn´t seem to get the right information from her, so finally hangs up. NOW he has decided that the evil rapist murderer lives with a woman and she has no clue what he has been doing on the side. (NOT making this up)

He takes me to the hotel, brings my bags in, and insists on talking to the people at the desk first to make sure they know just who I am.. LOLOLO

I thank him over and over, shake his hand, give him a big tip because of all the times he turned the meter off, and he leaves.

I get into my room, basement floor, cell not really working, hoter then hell, no air or fan or anything, and decide to go up to the lobby to the computer to check mail.

All this took about 45 minutes til I got to the computer, and after about 3 minutes a well dressed, Iranian woman comes around the corner and asks if I am Diana.

YES! I say, and this woman turns out to be the person who was going to show me the apt. For some odd reason she said she had been waiting in the underground parking for me. Here Englis is prety dang good, but this is just the first of MANY misunderstanding we have.

She tells me that the taxi driver had called her and told her to rent out the apartment to me, that I was a VERY nice woman and should have the apartment. Along the way he also told her I was scared of terrorists showing me the apartment, and that I was a man from Iran. LOLOLOLOLOL Ok then!

The woman wants to know if I want to go see the apt now. Again, I am amazed. I mean she sat there waiting for me for like an hour, and after a crzy Iranian taxi driver calls and chews her out for her behavior, she gets in the car and comes over to see if I still want to look at the apartment! Life is weird.

OK, getting tired of typing again, so I am going to stop for the day, and you will have to wait to hear MORE of the great, ongoing adventure. Trust me, I can pretty much going over the entire day, every minute somethign seemed to be going on!!!!

Will stop back in tomorrow if this place is open. If not, then Monday. Guten tag

well this day has certainly been an adventure.

2005-09-07T23:56:00.000+02:00

I am sitting in the lobby of a Darmstadt hotel this evening, exhausted.. homesick... not so much for the US, but jess in particular... she is still in Italy and probably will be until the end of the month.

I flew out of Pisa last night, into Frankfurt Hahn airport in Germany at about midnight. Paid a taxi too much money to bring me to a little hotel sort of near the airport. I picked it because it said it was near a rail station and it only cost 36 euro for the night.

I got there about 12:30, took the room key, washed some of the grime off me and fell into bed.
About7 am I wake up and start worrying because the clock radio they had said it was an hour later than my time. I call the front desk, wake up someone only to find that my time is correct. I wanted to sleep as long as I could before I had to wake up... Sometime later the maid knocks one time on the door, then opens it! I heard her say something in German and back out the door. I didn´t even move my head out from under the covers, I was too tired to worry about it. At 9:45, I get a call from the owner of the hotel asking if I wanted breakfast because they stop serving in 15 minutes. UGH! yes, I say, thanks, not intending to make it down. But guilt gets the best of me, and I don´t even brush my hair, I just stagger down, grab some museli and some bread and ask for coffe. 15 minutes later I am back in my room showering, then checking out by 11.
I ask how to get to the rail station. The owner´s wife, who looks just like a German family hotel owner would look like, gets a quizzical look on her face. OH NO... I think..

AH! you´ll have to take the ferry across the river. She calls to make sure it´s running today!!! AAAAHHHHHH
She says that it´s about 3\4 mile away down the road. Just go to the river and wave him down and he´ll come get you. I ask if it´s a big or small boat. She laughs.. Oh no, no... It only holds about 4 people. I now have this vision of me hanging on to the side of some little dingy, big waves rolling by, and the guy stopping in the middle of the river and demanding all my money. (shades of Brad Johnston)

I head out down the road, and this is a BEAUTIFUL German town. It´s in the wine section of the country, gravevines everywhere! Bavarian style houses, the whole thing.. I will post pictures later.

Cool, I´m thinking, I can do this....

I end up getting lost, going into a local food store and saying loudly. DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH? (I kid you not. I know this is why jess hates me)

They point me in the right direction and I cross a big lot full of campers. I later can tell, when taking the train, the Germans LOVE to camp on the river.

Anyway, the ferry turns out to be a decent sized flat type of barge looking thingy. I wave him down and he comes over, talking to me in German... I try saying something like no sprekken deutsch, but he has no clue. Finally I point to him, to the shore, to me, to the shore, to my suitcases and back to him a couple more times and he gets it. ( I mean, THIS is what the guy does, do we have to have conversation too???)

We head across, it´s a pretty small river, which I later find out is the Mosel(sp)
and sure enough there is a train tracks on the other side. We get to the other side, I pay him 1 euro, and lug my two HEAVY suitcases up about 400 stairs... 2 suitcases, THE dumbest thing I have done since sticking my tongue to the frozen pole in winter when I was little.. (Okay, maybe I have done dumber things since, but we aren´t talking about those today, so just pay attention to the story, will you?)

I get to the top, and there are.... tracks..... no station, nothing. There are houses, businesses, but all closd, not a soul in side.

what the hell do i do?? i sit.... the tracks are rusty and i think, what if this train comes like once a day, and it was at 8 this morning? i mean, if i have to cross a river on a ferry, this is one SMALL town......

So i sit, and i sit.... and suddenly there is a train coming at me!!! I wave and wave, and it passes me by..

OK... now i know I must be doing something wrong here.....

I see a woman coming out of a shop to put out her sign.. i go over... I know NO, NEIN German, and I am saying, excuse me, excuse, me.. Finally I say it loud enough and she spots me... All i can do is show her the map of the Germain rail system i printed out. (SMARTEST thing I have done in years, it saved my butt today more than once today.)

Anyway, i wanted to know which direction to take the train so once again, there was much pointing and german and english spoken that no one understood. Finally she pointed which way to go, then amazingly somehow she communicated something like, hey dummy, the train doesn´t stop here, go down the road some more. WOW!!!

Off i go, dragging the luggage, and sure enough a train station... well, it´s like a plastic bus stop building bu that works for me. Even better is near to it, is one of those fountains like they have all over italy where you can fill up your water bottle with cold water.. there were some german words on the front, i figured it to say something like... drinking water.. I pour out my half bottle of warm water and start filling. an old man appears out of no where! No one else for miles and suddenly he is there yelling something in German.... I heard NEIN, so i figure that he is trying to tell me not to drink the water. oh CRAP.. so that´s what the sign said. and now i´ve dumped my bottle of water out, and no water.

I thank him and go over to the train stop. A schedule!!! I see my town on the list, 15 minutes. YES! I start thinking, should i be buying a ticket somewhere?

Across the tracks I hear rustling and see a woman watering plants. EXCUSE ME! Where do I buy a ticket for the train? I ask, waving a 10 euro note around and pointing at the tracks..

I just want you all to know, I am not even embellishing this a LITTLE, it really happened like this.

She says something in German about floof. OK, no clue... she might have even said buy ticket on floof, i am not sure.. i mean in english... FLOOF? I ask.

FLOOF, she say, then makes the sound of a train, laughing.

AHHH,. Floof means train, though I know it is not spelled that way. Now i know to buy the ticket on the train.. i thank her and sit back t wait for the train, right on time it comes.. YEAH, it even says the next town on the front.. cool. i get on, it is like a the size of a regular train engine with seats... places for bikes in the middle.. oh yes, EVERYONE bikes, there are millions of miles of bike trails along the rivers, and the train accomadates them.

Anyway, I needed to go to a town further than what the train said, so again, more flailing of arms to find out no, it stops at this first town only, i´ll have to change trains..

Next stop, a few bikes get on.. by this time i am wondering about how i buy a ticket..... I see a machine... ok, BUT something about the message worries me. one line message, about 10 buttons on each side.... I take a chance, wave at the ticket machine and ask one of the men who just came on.. ticket???

ENGLISH! THe older man speaks english. I almost fall on my knees to thank god.. (ok, for those of you who wonder why i came so unprepared, YOU try buying a German to English dictionary in Italy. They don´t exist.. only italian to german... and for those of you who have heard my Italian. HA!)

He says the ticket machine is broken.. i ask how we buy tickets? He says, you don´t! Works for me.

THIS gentleman became my first savior of the day...

AND i am going to bed, so you´ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear more... :-p

Countdown to Germany

2005-09-04T20:09:00.000+02:00

Well, only a couple of days until I leave for Germany. I looked at the Trenitalia site for strike info on the day I leave and first it said strike, then it said trains run regularly, then something about only certain trains running. Typical Italian.
I decided I'd better get on the ball and go to the train station tomorrow and get some information.

Jess still hasn't gotten ner Mbag with books from the states. She is staying behind until ashe does, or until the first of Oct, or until she gets tired of waiting. Either way I'll be on my own in Germany. A little disconcerning, but I will be fine. I'm just so used to being joined at the hip to her. I might just find I like traveling alone. GULP

Tonight we are going to eat at the 4 course restaurant again.We were going to tomorrow night, but it is filled. No bookings. This is a nice little restaurant.

Tomorrow we do laudry like crazy. All the sheets, blankets, the rest of my clothing. The I will need to start packing. Or maybe I'll just do it Tuesday. We are still wondering about whether or not I should take Jess' laptop with me. Mine seems to have dies. I can' format it. I can fdisk, but that is it.
It was such a nice little computer. Oh well..... sigh.

Short post tonight, as we have to head down to the restaurant.

My Family Tree

2005-08-30T18:20:00.000+02:00

OK, as I said yesterday, forget the web page, I am now making my family tree.

I always knew my great grandfather came from Ireland, but couldn't get any info from my dad, and my grandfather is gone.

Anyway,w as doing searches, and through the death record online that I can buy, I found my grandfather's mother's maiden name, which open up a whole bunch of new information. I got the passenger list when she came across.

Anyway, am getting info on my dads side in, then my moms side (sorry mom, all the dad's side is on slips of paper , need to get them down first, here's the site.

family tree

Random thoughts

2005-08-29T20:57:00.000+02:00

Even though I love Italy, I really don't mind leaving to go to Germany.

Chinese food tastes good in any country.

It's easy to get Jess mad, just flick toothpicks at her when out to dinner.

I'm really not much of a wine drinker.

My son Nick, with his first piercing. He just got it..... GRRRRRR

I miss wireless internet, or any kind of internet at home.

I've just discovered that I am lazy and I DON'T WANNA GO BACK TO WORK!!!!

I'm worried I will stop losing weight when I get to Germany.

I have applied to about 30 jobs in Germany.

This whole writing in blogs thing kind of comes and goes. It's fun to do when I have done touristy things, otherwise it's not so fun.

Oh yeah, forget my new web page, I am already bored with it.

I like to sleep until noon.

I'm bored. A whole week til I leave for Germany.

Night.... :-p

web page

2005-08-28T19:03:00.000+02:00

ok, I have been farting around for the last few hours while downloading Linux for my computer, it's hosed..

So I decided to create a webpage. Hey mom! (or anyone else for that matter), click on the link below to go to my webpage, then click on Live chat. If I am online, we can talk!! And if we get Jess on too, all htree of us can talk to each other.

http://www.dianaleavesamerica.bravehost.com/

Keep an eye on it, great things will be coming.. I will have chat on it, so maybe I can even talk live to someone!

Weekly poll, etc. Should be fun, or it will die a sad death if I never have a chance to work on it... YOU decide..

tomorrow

2005-08-27T21:45:00.000+02:00

Getting late today, but just wanted to post. I've been online trying to come up with a way to fix my pc that doesn't want to boot.

I've been spending HOURS finding the cheapest way to get to Germany.
I also deceided to go to Tues Sept 6th (6th??) because Ryanair had airfare to Frankfurt for 4.99 euro. Can't beat that with a stick. Ends up with taxes being 25 euro. I'll need to take a train to the Pisa/Florence airport for about 10 euro and from Franfurt to Heidelberg for about 13 euro. So for 50 euro or about 65 US dollars I can get from Italy up to Germany. Not bad. Train fare WITH a special through Munich was going to run 144.00 euro.

Anyway, a week later than I wanted to, but that's ok.

Will make a HUGE effort to remember to write a decent blog here tomorrow. - di

Phase Three

2005-08-25T21:57:00.000+02:00

Ok, no question mark on this keyboard, well at least I can not get to it.

I kind of ended in the middle of the Germany trip, last time I blogged.

Basically we headed back through Austria this time to avoid the traffic. No such luck, then it rained so hard, it flooded Germany, Switzerland AND Austria.. I didnt do it!! *short version*

Today was the last full day we had the rental car, so we went back down to Naples to see Pompeii.. We actually got in this time!

The joke of the day for me was.. Hey Jess, look over there... MORE RUINS!!! She was pretty mad after the first 30 times I said it to her..

Trust me, once you see the people they dug up, it-s no fun anymore, at least to me. But Jess loved it, it is HUGE, the people in front of us were Americans, saying they had an hour and a half to do it... Fools.. We were there like 3 hours, it was too hot, no water anywhere to be found, etc, so we left. But you could spend way more time there....

Of course Mt Vesuvius was sunny, but we had taken too long at Pompeii, so no looking into the volcano.

Pictures will be online tomorrow.

Right now we are in a mini crisis. Funds getting low.

Jess is waiting in Italy until her books that she shipped from the US come, that could be another week or two. We have the apt until Oct 1st, and can legally be in Italy until the 3rd of Oct, but I need to start making money.

The plan is for me to fly up to Germany this Sunday night. You can fly Ryanair for 40 euros, takes two hours. Then I can stay in a hostel and look for work and a place to live.

Ryanair is one of my friend Eric-s airlines.... YEAH!

Hopefully getting that will coincide with her, then I will rent a van, drive it down to Italy, pick up the gang, and drive back up to Germany.

Boy, it is getting interesting now!

I have applied to a ton of civilian jobs at the military bases in Germany, and about 6 private companies.

OK Wayne, before you say anything about how come I would work for the US if I want out of the country, hey. We get paid dollars and spend them in Germany...... Plus we are not in the US......
Though I would much rather have a German job that gets paid in euros, I will take what I can get right now!

Ok, going to do some job searching, will post photos of Pompeii tomorrow.

BYE!

On to Germany

2005-08-22T21:24:00.000+02:00

A couple of shots of when we took off to Siena last week for the Palio (horse race) We never stayed for the race, the crowds were too intense.

Siena

Siena

Siena

On Satuday morning I even managed to get up at 4:00 am to start off for Germany! We left about 5:40 am and didn't get to Heidelberg until about 10:30 that evening. the drive should have taken 10 hours, I added on another 2 for us stopping, but it took about 15 to get there because of a traffic jam in Switzerland. Everyone was coming home from their vacations. There is a loooooong tunnel in Switzerland when the road goes form 2 lanes into 1. That was what hung us up for two hours.

I really hated that tunnel because it pretty much cuts right through the Alps, so we missed seeing so much, though I am sure I would love it if I had to travel through Switzerland in the middle of winter when it was snowing like crazy.

Below is a picture of the border of Italy and Switzerland. They pretty much waved everything through. Of course when it came to our turn they waved us off to the side.. I swear, if there is any kind of security check, they see me and grin.

Luckily it wasn't a security check (though I had nothing to hide). Unluckily we had to buy a 30 euro sticker to to put on the windshield to allow to drive through Switzerland.

We were also mad because not ONE border stamped our passports. We were going to ask them to do that on the way home, but neither the German or Austrian border even had people there. Grrrr.

The border between Italy and Switzerland.

I could barely stand it once we got into Switzerland. I had been dying to see the Alps since I first started planning the trip to Italy. I was even considering flying into Zurich so that we could drive or take the train down into Italy when we first arrived in Europe. No wishy washy hills for me, I wanted to see MOUNTAINS!

One of our first glimpses of the Alps

A peek at some of the higher mountains in the distance

I love how the clouds hang

You would be driving and suddenly there would be littles waterfalls coming down the sides of the mountains!

As luck would have it, all of the peaks were covered by clouds that day, no sun or anything.. I missed the ALPS!! *LOL* I never used to feel like an unlucky person, but I have to tell you, I am starting to wonder if I left my luck in the US.

Unfortunately the day we went (and came back) All the peaks were covered in clouds. I was so mad!

A little village at the bottom of one of the mountains

We passed by an amazing lake, the water was green like you would see in the Caribbean. I would love to see it when it was sunny out.

It is starting to get late tonight, so I am going to just leave you with some pictures for now. I will get more into the adventure tomorrow. Enjoy!

What I am assuming was a glacial lake along the way. Unfortunately with the long drive we really didn't get a chance to stop and find out about any of these places. Next time!!

Any kind of open area was beatiful and green. This was the same in Germany. The color doesn't even begin to show how bright and green it really was.

I know this is blurry, but each one of the rectangular shapes was actually a window box shaped planter actually embedded in the side of the highway with plants or flowers growing it it. This was in Germany.

A sign in Germany.

Jess caught an amazing German sunset on film!

The view from the window of our hotel in Heidelberg, Germany. This was on the Neckar river.

Again, the view from our hotel window.

Amazing view!

A shot of our hotel room (for mom to see)

We saw several groups of people rowing against the current on the Neckar river.

A view of the front of our hotel. Our room was a floor highter, which was made up of soffets (sp?)

The view to one side of our hotel .Beautiful! Cobblestone streets everywhere in the town.

The street on the right side of our hotel

We were laughing when setting this picture up. You have the beautiful architecture and then this "Sex Shop" sign!

A beautiful hotel.

I took this picture to also show the flowers the run along the mid section of this. They don't show up here, but were bright red and looked wonderful!

Looking down the main street. If you like to shop, this place is for you. It is FULL of great shops.

This building had a lot more gold on the upper part, but I was shooting into light and if I tried to get more of it, the picture would black out.

From a Christmas store. Mom, maybe you know of this person? There were so MANY beautiful things, but these were all I could afford, they cost .75 euros each!

A picture across the square from where we sat and ate lunch.

A slightly different view. Mom, they all ride bikes here, you'd love it!

The castle up on the hill. We didn't have time to visit it. Next time.

Jess loved that the radio stations in Switzerland would show the name of the song and the artist. Pretty slick!

WOW

2005-08-21T12:42:00.000+02:00

That´s all I have to say about the ALPS, and we didn´t even get to see the good ones. 2 hour delay on the road, we thought there was some huge accident ahead, turns out to be everyone driving home from vacation and going from two lanes into one to get into this tunnel the was like 15 miles long. You bypass all the good stuff.
Anyway, the 10 hour trip we thought would take 12 for us turned into something like 15 hours! we got in at 10:30 pm. Luckily, since I didn´t have to secure with a credit card, I had written to let the hotel we would be in by late afternoon, but that we would be there.

Anyway, we xhanged the route and are coming back through Austria. Dang it, I plan to hit as many countries as I can.
Anyway, I am sitting at an internet cafe in Heidelberg, WE WANT TO LIVE HERE.

Man, stores like crazy here, siyes we can wear, even a couple of Subways!

Mom, you will go nuts with the Christmas stores. It will give you TONS of ideas of things to make. Will keep tou busy for years!

Anyway, it´s already almost 1 pm here, so I will be driving til like midnight. I am going to stop here and will write tomorrow sometime and have pictures of the trip too.

Bye!! Love Diana

Just a bit sidetracked

2005-08-19T15:57:00.000+02:00

I received a nice comment about people rooting for me back there, and not to give up the dream of living in Italy.

I just wanted to let you know that in no way I am giving it up. If I was, I would be heading back to the US.

Unfortunately the dream hasn't quite gone as I had planned. Money, as usual has gone much faster than I thought it would. I had also planned on getting a year student visa, which would allow me to work PT to supplement my money.

Well, the reality is, no student visa, which means that for now, we have to leave Italy by the 3rd of October. Also, since no student visa to work PT, no extra money. Going to Germany is only a temporary situation, to recharge the bank account etc. We were lucky enough to find a country where we could apply for a visa without going back to the US.

So don't worry, the dream is not even close to dead, it's just including some travel time to Germany!!!

Speaking of which, tomorrow morning, early, we are heading out to drive to Heidelberg, we'll be staying overnight in Germany, and driving back to Italy some time late Sunday. The hotel we are staying at has a wireless LAN, so hopefully we can get some pictures online of the trip.

Anyone that knows someone in Germany that can rent us a place to stay temporarily, speak up! I just spoke with a temporary housing agent from Heidelberg, no rentals for us unless I have a job and no places for cats. (Good grief, must EVERYTHING be so hard??) *LOL*

Here is a picture of Heidelberg in the fall (from an online site) :

Heidelberg - amazing!

Blockbuster Italian style!

2005-08-14T15:48:00.000+02:00

Yeah!we went to Blockbuster today!

Before I write any more,make sure to read the entry under this one, it has pictures from the cemetary, etc.

Anyway,Blockbuster!!!We have movies. Ok, they are olderfor the US but I don't care,they are movies.... We rented Hostage, Hide and Seek and Alien Vs Predator.

Even though I knew my card number, it didn't work, as I figured. I had to start a new account which was just your name and address, and my drivers license showing I am who I am. Forget needing a major cedit card, she didn't even want proof of my address here.

They keep all movies behind the counter, all boxes on the wall are empty. We spoke with the girl behind the counter, she knew some English. She said they have the same problem with theft so they don't even use the locks, they just keep all DVDs in the drawers.

We bought taco chips, salsa and guacamole! (in a jar) who cares, it was great!

They have the same junk food by the counters, etc. The movies we got all said they had some sort of english version, hoping it is the audio and notjust subtitles. We will only be able to watch them on Jess' computer because they are region 2, so our DVD player will not be able to play it.

Jess is so happy she is even talking of coming home early and not partying all night, so she can watch movies... (sheesh!!)

EVERYTHING is closed in this town, with the exception of this internet cafe. Even the gas stations, you can get self serve, but the inside is not open. Tomorrow is a huge holiday, Ferragosto.

When we got gas, I used the wrong credit card and overdrew the US bank account. AAUUGHHH: There goes $30-$40 down the tubes.
Cats will also be eating spaghetti or something, we only have one can of food left for them, but a couple of cans of tuna. Poor things..

Ok, just rambling now, am going.

Yes! Just made a hotel reservation in Heidelberg for next Sat night. Here is a link to the hotel:
hotel in Germany

15 minutes late to the end of the world

2005-08-13T19:02:00.000+02:00

That's what we will be, when it happens.

Yesterday was our trip down past Naples, to the coast. I wanted to drive to Salerno, then bus toRavello, see the town, the Mediterranean(sp) and have a nice day. *LOL* Didn't I say that after the fiascos in Rome that I would only take tours of places, not try to do it on our own?? Yes, yes, you can call me all those names you are thinking of.

We were supposed to leave at 6 am, but there was no way I could crawl out of bed that early, so we ended up leaving about 9. It is about a 5 hour drive to where we were going, but I figured with the way speeds are on the autostrade, we could make good time.

Those of you who know Jess and I well are probably laughing. Driving anywhere always takes at least a couple hours longer than it should for us, we like to stop to see things, etc.

First stop, gas for the car. I was on half empty, and diesel cost me about 33 euros for that half tank, about $41 US dollars for 1/2 tank on the tiniest car known to man! (be glad you are only paying $2.40 a gallon, it costs at least $4.8 for diesel here, though the cars go WAAAY farther than American cars go on a tank of gas.) I grabbed a cafe (espresso) also, and water.

As we were passing Naples, I said to Jess, "wow, look at that mountain, that looks like a volcano!" "No, no, no, that's not a volcano." she says.

"YES! I remember reading that Naples lies in the shadow of MT Vesuvius(sp)".

After almost passing it, she agreed that maybe it looked like a volcano.

We managed to get lost getting to Salerno, and by then were bickering. We ended up taking a windy road down into some town, and parking on a hill and walking to the beach below.

It wasn't sunny, and you couldn' see too far out, and being grumpy, we weren't too impressed, which is bad, because I usually love everything about Italy. Either way, we went in and did some splashing in the water. We didn't have suits, but got our feet wet. Still, at this point we were pretty grumpy.

We started driving in the direction of Salerno, hoping to come across a sign to Ravello, but nothing. My first complaint about Italy, it can be so hard to find places. Even tourist spots, there is like one tiny sign on some side street, and that's it. Minimal advertising of some of the wonders of the world. *G*

We ended up giving up, and finally found our way back onto the autostrade, and back towards Naples. It was only about 4 pm, so I stopped to take a look at the map we had. I thought we could go to Pompeii, we should still have enough time.

I found the general direction to go, and off we went. The way we went ended up going north and the west around what we now knew was Mt Vesuvius.

Trying to find Pompeii, I noticed a sign pointing to the volcano. No way that I was going to pass up driving up a volcano! Of we went, with Jess mentioning that she really didn't like volcanoes too much, and when we started up the side of it, along twisty turny roads, she was NOT thrilled.

Before we had started up, we had noticed that there was a pretty big cloud (or fog) starting to cover the top of it, but figured that as long as we were there we'd keep going.

After probably 15-20 minutes of driving in second gear most of the time, and first around the corners, we got as far up as the road would allow us. This was like a major tourist trap area, figures of tiny volcanoes made out of what looked like lava and spray painted luminous colors of green, orange, red. Books, calendars, you name it. Preeeetttty tacky.

Even an ashtray made out of what looked like volcanic ash or rock, with a marijuana leave painted on it he inside in glow in the dark green paint. (Sorry Nick, I was going to get it for you, but I was pretty sure that you had outgrown that phase.) :-)

After parking, we could see that there was a path leading up to what we figured was the mouth of the volcano. You couldn't really see anything unless you went up there, so we went to buy tickets.

"Sorry, the man at the gate says.. We're closed."

"What time is it?" I ask him.

"6:15." he says.

"What time do you close?" I ask?

"6:00" he answers.

Groaning, we head back to the car, by way of a gift shop where Jess buys a book about Pompeii that has clear sheets that go over pictures of the now ruins, that would show what Pompeii looked like before it was covered with volcanic ash.

Did I mention that we paid 2.5 euros to park? UGH!

Anyway, driving back down the road there were a couple of spots where you could pull off the road and see where the volcanic ash/mud/ whatever you called it was, which was pretty cool as the clouds/fog was moving down into the valley. Also driving down you could catch glimpses of the lava fields, but I was really dissapointed that I didn't get to go up to the mouth of the volcano and look in.

Anyway, again, I should know by now to book tours to these types of things.

After stopping along the road, we noticed a tour bus coming down that said Pompeii on it.

"Follow that bus!" said Jess..... and we did.

It ended up stopping in the middle of some suburban street where we almost hit the back end of it, and were forced to pull back, and keep going down the street. We finally gave up trying to find Pompeii... no signs anywhere, and went to get back on the autostrade. While paying our 15th 1.40 euro toll of the day, we asked the man at the booth where Pompeii was. He said to head back towards Salerno... UGH....

So back again we went, and low and behold, a SIGN that said here was the exit to Pompeii. YES!

I had heard somewhere that it was open until 1/2 hour after dusk, so I knew we had time.

We actually found Pompeii! We parked along another really touristy road of souveniers(sp) and walked up to the entrance. They had audio tours you could rent, and I figured that would be the way to go. We went up and I asked the man in the booth how much for the audio tour, and he said 6.50 euro, 10 for the both of us. Great! I asked Jess if she wanted one too, because at first she said she didn't want one, and she said "sure, why not."
"We'll take two!" I told the man.

At which point he says. "Oh, but the site is closed for the evening."

"Excuse me?" i said.

"Yes, can't you see the ticket office is closed?"

I said. "Ok, but I know for a fact that you are open until 1/2 hour after dusk."

"Sure," he said but the entrance is closed at 6 pm and everyone has to be out of the site by 7:30.

With a sigh I ask: "What time is it now?"

"6:15" he says.

I figured it would be.

Off we went, to drive the 5 hours back to Perugia.

Did I mention that we would only go places with a tour guide from now on?

Did I also mention that we are driving 6 hours up to the border of Italy and France tomorrow to ride up on a cable car thingy to the top of Mont Blanc which is on the border, and you can see the Alps from there?

Wish us luck...............

One thing that happened in Perugia while we were gone. I guess about 6 police came into the internet place we used, were checking what was on the computers, asking people for papers etc. I would have been pretty scared if I had been there. They had their big uzi(sp) type guns out and everything. They want the owner to copy down the name and address of everyone who used a computer, but I don't know if he will be doing that. Can you imagine what a headache that would be and how it could drive business away. But then again, the police have a very legitimate reason for doing this. My guess is that many internet places have been where people involved in terrorism have gone. It would make sense.

We also have some pretty big news about us. It looks like we will be heading to Germany to live next. I don't see anyway of staying here after our 90 days are up on Oct 3rd. The questura (police) says no to extending our tourist visas, plus I see no job in sight and our money is starting to run out fast.

Our sources tell us Germany is a good place to be able to stay, looks like we can get a one year visa. Also, both Germany and Austria allow you into the country first, and then you can apply for a visa, so we won't have to go back to the US like we would if we wanted to stay in Italy. There is some sort of agreement that we can do it from within the country, so that rocks.

I really wanted to go to Austria, but I kept reading about the muggings in Vienna, and the crime etc, it made me nervous. We have gotten REALLY used to being able to pretty much walk around Perugia any time day or night and feel pretty safe.

I don't think Salzburg will be a big enough place for me to be able to get a job in IT. So Germany it is, at least as of today! :-)

Heidelberg Germany has two huge companies that hire IT people, I THINK at least one of them American, one a huge software company.. I put in my resume there yesterday. I just started reseachign the whole Heidelburg thing a day ago, so things could change, but as of now, that is where we are planning to go.

I know Heidelberg has a big US military presence there, which does not thrill me in the least, but I really need somewhere we can settle for a bit and replenish our funds. Plus the rent here Perugia is killing me, about $750 US a month, I know we can get places for much less.

Anyway......

Here is the picture of my snail from dinner a few nights ago:

Now this is a slow trav meal

Some other odds and ends of pictures we've taken:

Kitty - AKA "Devil Cat" (note mom, she is in the fountain that is up in our bedroom of the apt.)

A now demure, unpossessed(sp) Kitty in the fountain.

Gizzy, only half possessed in the fountain.

We finally got back to the cemetary with cameras this time. Jess took some in black and white that need to be developed, these are some I took with the digital. Have I ever said how much I love that little camera? It takes great pictures.
Please make sure you double click on these pictures to see larger views, they are beautiful.

One of the walls of tombs. Notice all the flowers, both fresh and silk. People come every week and replace flowers, clean graves etc... Pretty amazing.

A row of above ground tombs. Again, notice all the flowers!

An example of the statues all over the cemetery.

An example of one of the family crypts or mausoleums(sp)Many have figures carved into it or statues outside, in the middle is the gated door into it. There is usually an alter for candles, pictures of the deceased, flowers etc. I have seen praying benches inside also.

the inside of the previous picture

One of the beautiful carvings.

A closer loook.

The view along one of the walkways.

Inside another, to show that many of the tombs have pictures of the deceased, obviously before they died.

Some of the plainer graves that are in the center of the cemetery. In the background you see part of one of the long covered walkways that have some of the ornate tombs.

Some of the carvings, though beautiful, also have a haunting, even scary feel to them, like this one.

A view down the walkway, there is one on each side of the smaller graves in the center of the cemetery, to the right in this picture is where each family has their vault and carvings, etc.

The ceilings along these walkways are painted blue, with gold stars.

One of my favorites. It looks like part of her gown had been painted at one time.

A different view of her.

Although still amazing to look at, the carvings of the people themselves who had died are sometimes a little uncomfortable to look at, not sure why, but they are.

You can see how ornate the whole area can be.

A closer view of the last picture, notice how the angel is repeated and fades out along the marble next to it.. Amazing....

These stairs lead down to an underground room the length of the walkway, with tombs in the wall on both sides, nothing ornate, but like the ones outside (the first picture I showed)that just have urns for flowers on them. It was too late in the day for the pictures I took underground to show.

A closeup of another of the beautiful statues

Another view down one of the side paths.

Amazing tiles on one of the outside mausoleums.

Some of the "less ornate" graves. Jess said they belonged to miltary, but I am not sure where the information came from....

No words could do this justice.

The whole view of the previous statue

Again, beautiful in an unnerving way.

Any of the pictures not shown here are on Jess' photo album. Here's the link:

http://journals.aol.com/itvixen/RomePictures/

Make sure to click on guest if you want to see larger images of her photos.

Neglecting my duty as a blogger

2005-08-08T17:17:00.000+02:00

Sorry, there have been things going on here, just haven't felt like blogging them.

We went on a drive last week and ended up taking the scenic route, up long very windy roads into a mountain and back down, it took us a couple of hours and it had breathtaking views. We ended up coming down only around 40 miles fromwhere we started. I was SURE we were going to end up at the Adriatic sea or something. But noooo, we ended up back into...... Umbertide! This time we passed up the restaurant in the town square and found a restaurant in a hotel along the main road..

We understood absolutely nothing in the menu, except the word green and gnocchi. No handy English explanations under the Italian dishes so that we knew what we were ordering, so we ordered the gnocchi and the dish with the word green in it. The house red wine was one of the first wines I have really enjoyed here. I don't know if it is this area of Italy or what, I have expected so much more, but will try the wines north and south when we go in those directions to see if there is much of a difference.

The gnocchi was amazing, in sort of a butter sauce, and tasted like maybe it had scallops in it, but as we ate, we noticed these weird shaped things in it, sort of long red thing with a white round thing, sort of a head and......antenna????

Picking one out, I looked at it, and it was a cooked snail! I mean this perfect little round part where the shell should be, then the long redish thing that was the part of the body outside, with a head attached and little cooked antenna. I couldn't believe it. I was able to set one standing up on my plate and had it staring at Jessica the whole time we ate. I ended up putting one in my pocket wrapped in a napkin, took it home and took a picture of it. We haven't transferred the pictures yet to the web, hopefully I'll have it for you in the next day or two.

We really didn't do anything all weekend, a real shame, we've been so lazy, BUT we have a 4 day weekend this week, our reg Friday off and next Monday is a holiday here. We only have the car for one more weekend after that, so we are planning some trips IF people will make sure I wake up in time.

After writing in here, I am going to check out driving to Venice, then on to Zurich. Possibly as an overnight trip, then a day break and then I would like to go to southern Italy maybe.

Our classmate Ruth should be going with us, this way we can split the hotel costs 3 ways.

After school today we made a run to Deruta, only about 15 minutes away by car. I either missed the main part of town or there isn't much to it. We were hoping to be able to go into a factory setting and see how they make the ceramics.

School is going well, I am actually able to understand more on TV already. Amazing!
Lots of fun in class, the teacher is really fun, makes it so much easier to sit in class up to 6 hours a day.

We ate at the University cafeteria for the second time today. Food was NOT as impressive as last week, but for 1.80 euro, it was great.
Only choice of pear or peach, then depending on what they had out, either spaghetti noodles or shells with a white cheese sauce, or shells with a red sauce.

Today they actually had carrots!!! Carrots in a can are hard to find, at least they have been for me, and since cooking at home here will only consist of heating things up, no boiling fresh veggies for me, thank you. So I was happy to get the carrots for lunch. (hey, simple pleasures in a beautiful country)

Salad and only one choice of bread, so it was a plain meal, but was cheap, healthy and filled you up. Who could ask for more!

Before oging to Deruta, we finally stopped in at the local cemetary. I mean, this is not JUST a cemetary, this is an Italian cemetary, chock full of crypts and beautiful statues, underground crypts(maybe not crypt, but you are able to go down stairs and look down a long hallways with I am guessing bodies encrypted in the walls.)

EVERYWHERE are fresh flowers in set in urns attached to the walls. I have never seen so many graves decorated with fresh flowers. You know people visit because there are candles lit in many of the family crypts. The majority of the sites have photos of the deceased and many of the larger monuments that are built into a long building actually have carved likenesses of the deceased in stone or marble, as well as huge angels, Jesus, you name it. The place was truly amazing. Of course we had no camera with us. GRRRRRRR.. But we will be going back in the next couple of days to take some pictures. You could walk for hours there, and of course there was the beautiful view over the valley into the hills. I could die there, no problem. :-)

Other than that, I just keep getting up every morning, looking out the window and thanking GOD we are here in this beautiful country. Everything sacrificed has been well worth the trip.

Things are picking up....

2005-08-03T20:24:00.000+02:00

Thanks to the car. Ok, we were lazy today and even drove it to school instead of walking, but it was raining, so I think that justifies it!

Yesterday we made a friend in class. Her name is Ruth and she's from Australia. She's only 18 but jess and I get along really well with her, nice to have a third party around.

We finally got to go to one of the main University's 2 cafeterias for lunch. If I am not mistaken, it is pretty much open to anyone. they never asked for student IDs and we saw older people, workmen etc.

For the amazing price of just under 2 euros. about $2.40 American you can have a very filling, really decent lunch. It consists of four what they call "courses" here.
You get bread, one fruit, which consisted of your choice of banana, plum, apple, peach or a big slice of watermelon.

Then a piece of pizza (more like 1/2 a pizza) and/or a bowl of a pasta or rice dish.

Then either a vegetable like zhucchini or mixed veg or a fresh salad.

Then and empty large plastic cup for either water or pop at a fountain.

WOW! when you are on a budget, this is a real find. We got in there about noon, and there was a small gatheirng of people. We saw food inside, but it didn't open when it said it would. After about 15 minutes, someone banged on the door and asked when they would open. They said in 45 minutes, but something was said, and they very quickly opened the doors. (threat of a riot from hungry students??)

We sat there the entire two hours, and when we came out, there was STILL a huge line. I think they feed the entire population of people under 25 in Perugia as well as some older.

After eating we headed back to class from 4 pm to 6, then walked back to the apt to pick up the car and headed off to Assissi.

Just a disclaimer, although i always try to be accurate, I make no guarentees that anything i say is true when it comes to any area of Italy we visit. I try my best, but that is all I can do.

When we entered the part of town that was not up on the mountain, we noticed a LOT of nuns and monks walking the street, and then on the right a duomo with a LOT of people singing. All excited, we parked and walked back, noticing a line of people slowly walking into the Basilica with a sring of people surrounding them. A lot of them had peace signs, or PACE signs. That was then I realized that wahat we were watching was the end of the Peace march that I think had been from Perugia to Assisi.

We watched for a bit and then decided to go in to see the inside. Normally they would not have let us in, I had shorts on, Jess a tank top, and Ruth a skirt that was not to her knees, but we lucked out, being that so many people who had done the walk was dressed similarly.

Now this was the first time I have even been inside something like this since coming to italy and I had no idea what to expect.

Let me tel you, i am certainly not much for organized religion, etc, but when I went inside that church, as corny as it may sound, I was honestly moved to tears.

I have never seen anything that even came close to this. It's almost impossible to describe and pictures don't even come close to doing it justice. The paintings, the arches, the..... heck, I don't even know what to call them. Angels heads out of stone, beautiful marble everywhere. Beautiful carved wooden confessionals. I mean, it was everything you think the inside of an Italian church would be, plus so much more. You can check Jess' blog for some pictures we took of the outisde as well as some pics of the inside that she got off the web. We didn't dare take pictures inside with all the people.

We stayed long enought to listen to the beginnning of mass in Latin before taking off for the part of Assissi up on the mountain.

Just a note, anytime we talk about me driving into a city that is up on a hill or moutain, just picture us in a tiny car, careening(sp) around the corners with Jess hanging on for dear life to the "oh shit" handle of the car, yelling "Slow down! MOOOOMMMMMM... SLOW DOWN!!!!!!"

I love driving the roads here, but it makes Jess absolutely nuts.

Anyway, up into the town, as far up as we thought we could drive, then parked the car in a space that was realy too smal for the car, but was the beggest spot I could find. It was outside a little bar/cafe, and we decided to see if we could walk to the top of the city, which had what looked like a fort or a castle. I am not into the history lesson tonight like I was about out trip to Rome, but we had guides then. Without them, I'm just making wild guesses about everything.

The first thing I noticed that was interesting is that all the building were made out of a different type and color stone them Perugia, and the apartment/houses we walked by seemed to have so many more plants and flowers outside, it was really lovely.

We found the road leading up to the highest part of town and started hiking up, t was pretty steep.

By my calculations, the amount of stairs and steep hills I have climbed X the amount of healthy food I have eaten since coming to Italy, I honestly think I should weigh something like 98 lbs by now. No such luck. I have lost about 12 pounds, but most of that was when I was sick. I still have hope though, we have only been here a month. (and don't you DARE say I am not losing weight because I am gaining muscle. Say that and I will clock you upside the head.)

The walk up there (as well as down), you had to stop about every 15 feet and make every come over and see. The scenery changed into something more magnificient every time we looked.

You could see down across the entire valley, and byt the time we got to the top, you couild see everything within almost 180 degrees. You had the valley infront and to the left, and the right. OH MAN! On the right was the first time we had been close to proper hills and valleys/mountain range valleys.. Unbelivable.

I was going to have so much to say to describe it, but nothing I could tell you would make you understand how amazing the view was.

I AM SO FREAKING GLAD I QUIT MY JOB, SOLD MY HOUSE AND CAME HERE. I don't care if I get sent back and have to live on the street. Everything here I am seeing and experiencing is so worth it.

And that's all I have to say on that subject... :-)

New subject.... The bathrooms at school. I found out yesterday that they are coed when i went in and there was a man standing at the sink washing his hands.... Oh! hmm.... I looked at the door and there was a stick figure in a dress, so I knew I was in the right place. Obviously he didn't knkow he was in the wrong place, and being that I really had to go to the bathroom, I decided to have pity on him and just go use a stall. thats when I saw something along the terms of the word MEN on one of the stall doors. Hmm... coed.... okee dokee then.

To be honest, they are more like enclosed little rooms, each with a window, at least the bathroom I use.

There is one stall there, that has the most beautiful view of the coutryside out it, it's like a picture postcard. Amazing. Everything here is amazing.

Well, almost everything. Today after school Jess and I decided to take a drive out of town, to one of the nearby towns to find a different place to have lunch. We ended up driving about 40 miles out of town, to a place called Umbertide.

It had been pouring all morning, rain is seriously needed here, even thought everything is still green, we hadn't had a good rain in several weeks.

Anyway, the rain had also cooled off the temperatures a lot, which was wonderful. As you drive down the hill to get out of town, you have this amazing view of the valley and the moutains to one side of you. Today along several of the ridges was a line of clouds that sort of hung onto the lines of the mountains. i have never seen anything like it, it was....... you guessed it.... amazing!!! LOL It was like someone had erased all the color of the background up one side and down another. As we were drving towards Umbertide, one moutain even had a little top of fog, looking like there was snow on it. there were also very low clouds, or fog in the valleys between the moutains... Dorothy, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.

We found a hotel restaurant in Umbertide that served full meals, not just panini or little sandwiches.

We went in, the waitress seated us, gave us menus and were deciding what to order, when the waitress seated a couple at the table next to us. Jess and I were discussing had just ordered when we noticed the couple had asked to be moved to another table, next to some other people.

What? Do I smell, I shower every day, etc..... I was truly offended. It wasn't like they wanted a table away from people, they still had a table next to others. I'm reasonably sure that neither Jess nor I were drooling, yelling or picking our noses. Maybe I was being too sensitive, but I honestly thought they asked to be moved because we were American. (filthy beasts that we are)

I felt a little better when I saw they were not Italian, but were German. I'm not sure why i felt better, but I did. i spent the rest of the time wishing I knew the owners of the restaurant so that I could make some sort of American spectacle of myself to justify the Germans' imagined or real opinions of us.

But of course, being freaking Minnesota nice (grr) I made sure jess and I were meticulous in our manners so that they could not go back to Germany supporting my imagined opinion of American's being pigs at the very least.

Ok, I seem to be rambling, so I'll just get on with it and tell you what we had for lunch.

Neither Jess and I could pass up the first of a pasta with a marinera type sauce with wild boar in it. This was the first time we had seen a dish offered that had wild boar in it. It's very common in i THINK quite a lot of parts of Italy, and the dish was reaaaaaaally tasty. Very good. We had also ordered a quarter liter of house red wine, which was just enough for both of us to have a glass (yes mom, I did not drive drunk) as well as a bottle of water.

Second, Jess had steamed green beans, and I had zhucchini which tasted like it had been grilled.Not bad.

Third, jess had pork chops, which were really more like riblets sort of, but longer. Again, cooked like they were grilled over an open fire, really great. I had what I though was just going to be chicken breast (which when i pronounced pollo the Spanish way when ordering - POY-OH instead of what I think was simply POLO, I made the waitress laugh. oh well)This too was smply grilled over what must have been a wood fire or something, honestly it was great.

Last we decided to order dessert because there were items we didn't recognize, so of course we needed to find out what they were.

I asked the waiter if he spoke English, he said he spoke a little and asked him to explain to us what they were and Jess and I both ended up ordering the same thing. We still weren't sure what it was, but somewhere along the way the waiter had said chocolate and cream, and that was good enough for us.

What we got was a plate with three round, puff pastries filled with a white cream. These had been dipped into a sort of chocolate mousse. Our experience with italy and sugar is they do NOT make things overly sweet, which really is a nice change. This dessert was the same, we could eat all three and not feel like the whole thing was just too rich. Oh man... all in all the meal was a real treat for us. Perugia seems to consist of mostly pizza places. UCK.

Anyway, back home we came, and now we've just finished laundry and jess is going with Ruth to the outdoor movie that we have right by our apartment.

You go down this back alley, and out a door in the wall surrounding the town, down past a little outdoor bar, and over to a screened off area. When you pay your 4.5 euro you go inside to small, ancient ampitheater(sp) built into the hill outisde the city. There are only about 10-15 rows built out of stone, but it's amazing to sit there under the stars watching a movie on a nice movie theater screen. (small theater screen)

we went this monday and watched "Finding neverland" It was the first time we had gone there, annd what a feeling to be out in the night air sitting in an ancient ampitheater under the stars in Italy. You could see the lights in the valley, and there were even lightening bugs in the bushes on the walk down. Truly wonderful.

Have i mentioned that I am happy we came here?? :-) :-) :-)

Well, I am off to the apartment to get some sleep. School at 8:30 am tomorrow.

buona notte.

OH wait! Jess posted pictures of Assissi on her blog, check there. I'm posting pictures of Gizzy on mine...

Gizzy from under the bed

Gizzy foot!

Gizzy nose.. Gizzy feet!

Footses

Busy, busy day!

2005-08-02T22:34:00.000+02:00

BUT you will have to wait until tomorrow to hear about it, the computer place is only open a bit longer.

Preview: school, new friend, lunch, ASSISSI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Duomo (church) VIEW!
Come back tomorrow! :-)

WE ARE IN ITALY!!!!!!!

Some luxuries are nice!

2005-08-01T21:53:00.000+02:00

Ok, first things. Wayne emailed me! :-) and Annn said she would call after we have been here a month (That is the 4th of August) Yeah!

Ok, I picked up the car today, and as much as I love the Italian way of trains and busses, which work for every day to work travel, and even going into places like Florence or Rome, I LIKE HAVING A CAR! (we put the air conditioning on full force for the first 1/2 hour, then had windows open afterwards.

I don't have to wait for busses, I can drive in the countryside all I want, I donàt have to be back in town by 9 pm in order to catch the last bus up to the apt. i like having a car!

I am scared I'll never get over it when I have to bring it back in three weeks. :-(

But for know we plan on going somewhere every day after school. We ha dour first day today. We love the teacher, and there were only three of us, because others were testing to see what class to take.

It is challenging because the teacher will not speak English, but lots of fun to get around the language to explain your question etc. We have class Monday thru Thursday and have 3 days off. (road trips!) Tues is the tough day, we start a little later, 10:00, but the go to 2, then have a 2 hours break, then back at 4 and on til 7 pm! Ick!

Every other day we go 8 - 1, that is more like it, though I hate having to get up at a certain time. Being unemployed has been NICE that way, sleep as late as you want......

Anyway, we finally started school, and we will be taking more trips, so things should pick up on the blog soon!

Oh, I was even able to navigate this car (we rented the smallest one they had) down our street that is blocked off, turn it around, and park it without hitting anything! I like what the rental guys says when he showed us the car. He goes "don't worry about those scratches on the front, you can even make more, no problem!" They have a special waver (CDW??) where basically you don't have to worry about scratches, NO one gets away scratch free inthis hill town. Yeah! ok, later. Ciao.

We may even move about, tomorrow

2005-07-29T20:49:00.000+02:00

Stayed inside today, in front of fans. Only moved this even when things had cooled down to 96.

There is an antiques market tomorrow as well as a market that we plan to go to EARLY in the morning, so should have something to write about tomorrow.

Ann, why haven't you called me with the phone card?

Wayne, how come you never email me??? what's up?

Bye

Hot time in Perugia

2005-07-28T21:51:00.000+02:00

It got to over 100 here today, too hot to do anything. Even the coast is topping out in the high 90s. There is nowhere to hide. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Going back to sit in front of my fan now. ciao
:-)

When in Rome.......

2005-07-27T16:05:00.000+02:00

Woohoo - finally got to see some of Rome. Didn't get to go in anywhere, except to see the resting site of the Pope! That was awesome, but at least we got to know where everything is, so it will make it easier when we go back.

I'm going to start with some stuff that I wrote down in the morning before we went, then will just start to ramble about the day.

Oh Wait! I think I am going to start a word of the week, at least for this week. It is allora. I think that is how you spell it. I am calling in anyone who lives in Italy to see if I am right when I say they use this word when we buy something and are done. I THINK they say a lot of times, "allora?" If this is the right word that I looked up, it meant, then or well then or even so.. I never know how to answer, when used in the context of like "is that everything? I think I just end up lamely saying "si." Is there a correct response for that?

Ok, enough rambling about allora.

Here is some stuff that I wrote down yesterday:

I know this will be hard to believe, but it is 6 am and not only am I awake, but am showered and dressed, and even waiting across town at the bus station.

Just what do you ask could make me get up this early? Money? A man? no, Roma! Today is our spoon-fed tour of Rome. We've been there several times and not once seen a monument, etc. I decided it was much safer to let someone else do the driving and show us around. I just want to sit in an airconditioned bus! Especially because it is supposed to be in the mid 90s today.

Waiting at the bus station, Jess and I had our first stand up at a coffe bar coffee today! Long overdue, but in a way it is sort of intimidating, all the men elbowed up against each other, and if we were going to make a stupid mistake, better to do it with less people around. Since it was so early, we decided to go for it. We belly up and Jess says "Due cafes" (doo-ay) and lo and behold, he gets us two espressos! They are simply called cafes here, I think if you want a cup of american coffe, you ask for american coffee, but I have been told they just water down the espresso for you and put it in a bigger cup. NEVER would I dare order, or want to order that here. Instead the cafe here is in tiny cups as you probably know, with a little spot of almost foam on the top. I have learned to put a lot of sugar in it, and Jess decided to ask for "latte" (milk) in hers after she tried it. Very strong stuff.

So now we are very proud, no longer cafe virgins. :-)

A few minutes later while we wait outside, a young, CUTE, blondish guy comes up and asks if we are here for the tour. We both say yes, thinking he is here for it also. Well, he is in a way, he is our tour guide. (God has smiled upon us)He was from Belgium and spoke French and English. His name was Antonio, but the tour guide place I had called had said his name was Antonino. When I mentioned it to him, he sort of scowled and say if we preferred. But we could tell it must be their pet name for him, (like little anthony) so we chose to call him Antonio.

We walked around the corner and there was our bus, sort of a short version of one of the huge tour buses. Yeah! Airconditioning. We sat it the front two seats and until I figured how to bring UP the armrest, every time we took a right turn I was trying to nonchalantly hang on to whatever part of the seat I could, to keep from falling off it and onto the floor. First I put the seatbelt on. I felt stupid, but hey... Then after we had picked up a few more of the people going I saw how someone brought up the armrest, and then all was good!

My memory may be a bit different from Jess' as far as the people we picked up and what countries they were from, but...

I knew the place I had called to reserve this trip has said they usually pick up people at Lake Trasimeno, but they would have the bus come to pick us up in town.
Now we went in that direction and stoppped three different places. The first in a tiny little town, we picked up a man and his wife who I think were German. Second stop A family that again I think was German. Somewhere in here was someone French because I remember Antonio taking that group aside to explain things in French. Anyway, the third group again was a family and I know the two girls were from Holland because we talked to them quite a bit on the trip, they knew English well.

After picking everyone up, we head to Rome, via Tuscany, which was fun. We saw LOTs of sunflower fields, which I never managed to get a decent picture of, sorry.

At about 9 am we stopped and everyone got something to eat and drink, went to the bathrooms etc, then on to the city.

Last time we went to Rome there was a bus strike, which is what caused all the problems on our Ikea trip. We should have just gone home when we knew that.

This time there was a train strike. Luckily we weren't using the train, but traffic was really bad, and we unded up getting there 1/2 hour late, which is when we found out this was a walking tour.

DAMN! There goes the air conditioning.

We met our other tour guide that would be staying with us for just the morning part of the tour. She had a closed up red umbrella that she would hold up in the air and we were to follow that. I felt like a first grader following Mary Poppins, and asked Jess where the rope was with the knots in it we were to hold onto. The umbrella turned out to be not such a bad idea. Not only because in huge crowds it became a very good way to find her, but also because it was the norm for a tour guide to have something to stick up above the crowd for the people to follow. We sow scarfs at the end of wire pointer sticks, sunflowers, just about everything you could imagine.

I still felt dumb following this lady inside the Termini station and down to the subway. We stopped there to go to the bathroom again, but out of two bathrooms, only one was working, and after the second person went in, the light about it started flashing and there was a loud beeping, it too was out of order.

It was another bathroom you had to pay 50 cents for, BUT it was a self cleaning one! After every person it would close, and the entire thing was sprayed down inside with water and cleaner, when it opened up the entire thing had been sprayed down, pretty nifty!

We found out we would be taking one of the two subway lines in the city over to the Colosseum. This (the subway)is where they told us to be wary of gypsy children, that you should hang onto your purse, etc not to get pickpocketed.

Of course me, who never wears a purse, had decided to carry my huge Indian purse so that I had everything I needed. Now I had to figure out a way to keep it safe from those dang gypsy kids that I could just picture would wrestle me to the ground, tearing it out of my arms while I screamed for help.

Anyway, Mary Poppins marched us onto the subway train with her red umbrella, and we are all clutching everything we brough to our breasts looking scared. All the regular people on the train were really trying not to laugh out loud at us, and I saw quite a few smiles when they looked at us.

Of course it turns out there was not one gyspy child or pickpocket on our train (Mary Poppins said it was proabably due to the bus strike, or they were all on vacation with the Italians) Either way I kept a veeerrrrry close eye on the old lady sitting down next to me (I was standing) and I was ready to smack the life out of her if she even tried to get her old bony fingers on my purse. (poor woman)

Finally off, safe and sound, went outside and right there was the Coloseum. WOW!
Mary Poppins walked us across the street and into the shade (which she said was free) and started to tell us about the history of the Colosseum.

Where we found out there was no mass slaying of Christians. Turns out that is not true, that Nero who supposedly did that, was dead by the time they had even started to build it.

More facts (hopefully I am giving you correct information!)

The Colosseum used to be covered in marble, but along the way one of the other civilizations was into recycling and stripped it of the marble as well as the steel pipes that held the marble on. What was left was pitted with holes where they had pulled out the pipe. We also did not get to go inside, which was a big dissapointment, but is ok, for 42 euros we got the whole path of where we needed to go to get to these sites, plus a HUGE amount of information.

Anyway, no massive killing of Christians, and everything stipped off the outside, which turned out to be true of a lot of the places we visited.

We also saw our first gypsy beggar woman. Just like you would think, hunched over and in rags. I wander if it hurts to hunch over like that all day long? Jess got a picture of her. Jess has uploaded all our pictures, to another site. I'll give you the link later. Also there were men dresses and Roman gladiators, and they invite you take take a picture of them, after which you'll need to pay them money. We were warned in advance not to do it unless we were willing to pay. Several people were taking their pictures while they weren't looking. I'm not sure if Jess got one or not.

We went on to the Roman Forum, which was in effect a small city, showing different aspects of Roman life. The path the Emperors went down during their victory parades when they had conqeured(sp) somewhere. An interesting thing our guide told us of was that during these victory parades, there was a young boy who rode with the Emperor and held a crown of flowers over his head and was to whisper to him things like "You are mortal, you are just a human, you too can be killed" Which I thought was cool, so that he didn't start to think he was so much better than anyone else.

Hrere again most or all of the marble stripped off, and what was even more interesting that a lot of it has been colored in its day!!!!!!!! I am going to have to look online now for artist's renditions of what they all loooked like intact. It must have been amazing.

It was getting pretty darn hot by now, and I was really longing for that bus, but....
She told us that of the many fountains, you could fill your water bottle with fresh spring water. We ended up doing that several times during the day.

Another piece of information I though really fascinating was the fact that all these different empires ended up builing on top of the empires' building. She said in many spots there were 8 or 9 layers deep of things that could be excavated, though most would not be. I could just pisture all the amazing things that we could possibly be standing on top of. Amazing! There was one spot where they were doing some excavation, but she said doing this was really expensive.

Next stop was the Capital building, which we told was actually one of the newer places. I guess the unknown soldier is buried there. Again, we did not go inside this trip.

Alao there was a fascinating tall column with pictures inscribed in circles around it fromtop to bottom. It was standing by itself. What the encriptions were, were telling the tale of going out and conquering a place, the story from beginning to end.

In the past there had been a building around it that had openings on each floor facing the column so that you could read it all by following the nuilding to the top. Again it had been colored before. It made me want to get out some watercolors and just wash over it so that you could see better.

Next we were walked through a bunch of streets to the Trevi fountain. Tons of people at the fountain, as well as street vendors, gypies and more Roman galdiators. Mary Poppins said to throw a coin in you had to do it over your right shoulder with your back to the fountain. Jess and I dissagree on whether or not you are supposed to look to see where it lands in the water. We both did the coin toss and got water from a fountain. In the pictures there is one of how big the crowd there is.

Next we walked thorugh a lot of back streets where a ton of little shops were as well as people selling outside. About every 5 feet was a place to get your name written in Chinese. We didn't get to stop to look, Mary Poppins was going at a pretty good clip during this part.

We came out at the Pantheon, which is a pretty amazing building, the top half is a perfect dome, that if you were to turn upside down would just touch the floor. The very top is open because of the way it was made, anything put there would collapse. At noon the sun shines right in, in a circle and of course when it rains, it comes in. They had built the building with little drainage holes in the floor.

There was some restoration going on, so we had to go back outside to talk, but there was some amazing frescoes, or maybe they were just pictures, inside.
By this time I was a little overloaded with information, but I remember that everything was spaced perfectly. The columns outside were probably 20 feet high and they were spaced the exact distance apart from each other. The were made out of single pieces of granites, some coming from one of the Italian island, weighing tons, ferried over and brought across land etc.

Also, the dome itself had squares inside squares. The most inside square had been colored blue to represent the sky, the others had been covered with bronze, which had been removed at some point and put onto the ceiling in one of the arches at the vatican buildings. St Peter's arch????

Anyway, by then we were just hot, hungy and tired. We broke for lunch. They gave us about an hour and 1/2 to eat and Rome around. Jess and I found a chinese restaraunt that said it was airconditioned, but airconditioning in Italy is just NOT the freezing cold it is in the states. In fact alot of times you go outside and outside feels cooler than it was inside. I keep hoping one day I will find a freezing cold restaurant.

Anyway, we found a chinese restaurant that offered the four course meal for 6.50 euros.

Jess had a chinese pizza for first. a ball of dough with I think mayo and broccoli inside? I had wontons for first. Second we both had Shanghai rice which was delicious, no soy sauce needed for pretty much anything we have ordered in Chinese restaurants here.

For third I had sweet and sour chicken. I THINK there were tiny bits of chicken in the dough someonwhere, but it tasted great. Jess had a chinese omlet? it was almost like a panakoken, but small, and I think had chicken mixed in. She'll have more details in her blog.

Fourth we both had fried fruit. bananas and pineapple deep fried in a dough.

It may sound like lot of food, but really, with the exception of the rice, the portions were perfect sized.

Water to drink and we were off again.

Next stop, the castle of St Angelo. Looks like a big Noah's arc to me, but was brilliantly beautiful to walk up to. You cross a bridge that has huage stone angels on both sides.

The story behind this was that I think an emperor built is as a mausoleum for his wife, and then future emperors etc started buying their own there.
At some point it was used as a fortress, and even one of the Pope's lived there, hiding all the richest of the Catholic church inside and even emprisoning poeple trying to bring down the church. There is also a tunnel that goes from there to under the Basilica!

Next stop, Vatican city! yes! That was awesome, to look up and see thewindows of the former Pope's apartment, to be able to go inside and see the cryptsof all the Pope's including Pope John Paul! Jess andI both loved this. You did have to go through metal detectors. And the place I really came to see, the Sistene Chapel, we didn't get to see. That's ok though, I want to spend a LOT of time there.

Anyway, that was the end of the tour, got back on the bus, and drove back, getting home about 9:30, when our bus didn't run any more. So we took a taxi and put up our aching feet and went to sleep! Day off today, Going to a local town, Assisi tomorrow, early in the mornign Ihope, temps up in the mid 90s again.

Here is the link to all the pictures. Enjoy!!!

http://journals.aol.com/itvixen/RomePictures/

The lost blog entry!

2005-07-24T15:01:00.000+02:00

I wrote this in a journal at 3 am when I was the sickest, I think it was arounf July 7th, about 3 days after we got here.. I kept meaning to put it in the blog. It may not be the most interesting, but it really should be in here. :-)

Three in the morning here, I really need to move my bed upstairs. These college kids never go to sleep. The lower level of our apartment is facing the alley and street. Upstairs we face the roof tops and valley. Much less noise.

About 3 am, the wind started blowing like crazy! Storm coming I think.With the screens in the windows you can hear the wind howl, and I swear the more I listen, I can hearmen singing either a soccer song or "Ric-oh-lo!". Maybe my fever is higher than I thought. For some unknown reason I decided to wrap a scarf around my neck and it's like 90 here. It just feels good for some reason. I wanted something to clear my nose up so that I didn't sleep with my mouth open. I think that is part of what is giving me such a bad sore throat. The only thing I could find for my nose was Icy Hot.

So it's 3 in the morning, the wind is howling and I am laying in bed with a scarf wrapped around my neck with icy hot under my nose listening to men sing Ric-oh-lo down the hill. hmmm...

Finally a few pepl make it up the hill towards our apartment. They are singing "canta, canta, canta" (sing, sing, sing) then Dove Maria in time to a drum they are banging on. I swear I am not making this up!

I think Italian men love to sing, it's so cute. Maybe it is something that they only do when they have been drinking (i have since learned that they seem to do it anytime, esp to the women they are with.)or maybe they are just happy. But I always hear them coming up the street singing little songs. They seem to have pretty good voices too.

Jess and I both have a crush on the pizza guy at the pizza place down the hill. He is one of the few people here who speaks to us in English. Last time we visited he made a point of doing some sort of rap dance while he was heating up our pizza. They use the big brick ovens at this place, and they use the paddle with the long stick to get things in and out of the oven. It was nice to have a guy paying attention to us, we were both laughing at how silly he was, but the girl who was working with him wasn't very amused. Oh well, what is life without a little flirting!

Anyway I need to get a couple of hours sleep before the church bells wake us up at 7:30 or so. We are still trying to figure out what all they ring for. Of course the time, but there are many other times they are ringing. I haven't been able to figure out why yet.

The medicine we got at the farmacia is just not working. I think I may have to go to the dr and get an antibiotic.

Anyway, when we went to the farmacia it was kind of cool. I had learned the words for sore throat. fa male golah, so they were able to give me some pain medication. I made sure there was no aspirin in it, because it had the Bayer sign on the box.
The layout there is cool, they have about six or seven very thin doors in the wall behind them that they pull out and have all the medicine there. They ring up your stuff and then srap it in one little piece of paper folded like a present. I was so proud I was like trying to show it off as we went home, as proof I could handle myself in a farmacia. LOL

Another thing I have noticed in a lot of the stores is they have a large ceramic plate that they put you items on as well as change you get back. Kind of cool.

Well that is is, going to bed now, hoping I feel better in the morning.

Italian TV

2005-07-24T02:49:00.000+02:00

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but never seem to think of it when I am at the computer. Since we have taken the day off from life and been sitting at PCs all day, I suddenly remembered it.

Besides the fact that it is all in Italian, with the exception of CNN at 3 am, there is not a whole lot to watch. We seem to watch MTV when we have it on, and have found that after a certain time of night about 5 stations show nothing but soft porn, well i think it is soft. There was one the other night when I switched stations that was like some old balck and white porno where the woman had HUGE underpants on, and the guy came over and gave her a spanking. (Oh yeah, very tittilating!) HA!

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was the fact that we found the equivalent of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on tv the other night! Very interesting. The same music, format everything, except the name of the show was I Fantastico V, i think that was the name of it. We watched the whole thing, didn't agree with everything, including the fact the the guy being made over had to style his own beard into a goatee type of thing AND color it himself. i thought that was kind of funny. But they even had the same poses in the beginning, the guy with the hairdryer, one brandishing a cooking utensil, etc.

We were SO hoping that they would play the show "Blow Out" afterwards, we got hooked on that show right before we left the states.

Anyway, it's also fun to watch things like My Best friend's Wedding in Italian, because with movies like that (i have watched about 50 times) at least you have an idea what is going on.

To be honest, we watched more when we first got here. Now we have more of a tendency to hook up the portable dvd player we brought to the TV. It will only play in black and white, but hey, it's better than nothing. I anticipate that someday I will be able to turn on the Tv and actually understand what is being said on the truly horrible game shows, before I turn the channel. *g* ciao!

The dog days of summer

2005-07-23T23:01:00.000+02:00

It is sort of like that here for some reason. Not a lot going on. There is a bus strike today, so we are doing laundry and hanging out on the internet. Are still planning to take the tour to Rome on Tues, but am not sure about when we can do Switzerland. Most evenings are booked, but I somehow only has to pay 18 dollars for car insurance this month, so i may well just pay full fare to get out of town and have some fun.

Yesterday we went to Lake Trasimeno via train. 2.10 euros each way, not bad. I will post some pictures in a bit. Jess posted them on her blog too.
I thought it would be really crowded but the place was dead. We took a boat out to Magiorre (sp) but it was one of the last boats, so we did not really get to walk around much. Saw a couple of stray cats. I know, I know, just too much excitement. We are just taking it easy for now. It was nice. I hate to say how nice it is to sleep late and wander. We have to watch it, we will get too complacent and end up seeing nothing of this beautiful country!

I also bought a present for my mom at one of the stores, but left it on the train. Sheesh. We called the train station in town and they said it would be at the lost and found at city hall, god only knows where that is, but maybe someone found it and was nice enough to bring it in.

Here are some pictures

The city of Passignano from the boat. (just a note for Wayne, the nitpicker. After these were taken I had Jess change the date on the camera so it is now correct. sheesh.)

We went in a smaller boat out to the island, but came back on a bigger boat. This is a bit of the seats on the second level where we sat.

A little restaurant on the island of Magiorre.

Coming up from the boat, little souvenier(sp) shops. Of course we went over with no money, or I could have gotten a cool bright blue dolphin or something similarly touristy!!

The shoreline

A picture of kitty. I know, she was not with us on the boat, but Nick will like this.

Silver on the windowsill at the apartment.

Just a note for those of you who have to wash your clothes at a laundramat(sp) prices here are crazy. 3 euros a laod, which runs about 3.6o in dollars. 5.50 to dry a large load for 21 minutes, towels do not even get close to dry. so about 6.40 to dry one load. Ouch!

Yeah, trips to Switzerland and Rome next week

2005-07-22T05:02:00.000+02:00

We've been laying pretty low the last few days, but I just realized that school starts in another week or so, so we need to get off our butts and make a couple trips.

Tomorrow we are taking the train to Lake Trasimeno, about a 25 minute ride away. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we'll have to see. But for 2.10 euros one way, we should be going out to the lake more often, especially with this heat.

I was going to rent a car and take off driving, but everything in town is rented out, I'm guessing for peoples' August vacations. So that is down the drain for now. Jessica heaved a sigh of relief, she HATES my driving here.

Next to one of the two bus stations in town is a little tourist information place we stopped into today. They do bus trips all over, Florence, Pisa etc, but not until September. We are looking forward to that, they go all over, art trips, cuisine trip etc.... looks awesome!! The only trip they have this time of the years is a weekly trip on Tuesdays to Rome. 42 euros, includes the bus, tour guides, etc. A really good deal, we can take our cameras, relax and play tourist and let someone else do the driving!

Then when I was at the Trenitalia site looking for places to go, since car rental is out of the question, they showed a special to Zurich! Yes! You can leave Florence at 11 pm, get a 2 sleeper compartment, sleep all night, get to Zurich around 7 am. Then you have all day to wander around Zurich, get back to the train by about 8 or 10 pm, then sleep all night and get into Florence about 8 am, then take the train back down to Perugia! That will be our big outing before school starts. We will have to leave the cats alone a day and 1/2, but they should be fine for that amount of time.

I'm pretty excited to go see the Alps, the weather is only in the lower 70s now, which will be wonderful! We can go, have breakfast, yodel a bit, see the Alps, sing a song from the Sound of Music, buy some Swiss chocolate, maybe a watch or two, dinner, then head back home. Yes! It will be nice to get out of town, I have to admit.

Well we are running late tonight, mom just called and I had to tell her to call back in 45 minutes. Going to end this here. Ciao!

Taking a breather

2005-07-20T03:21:00.000+02:00

Not much going on today, slept late, went to the post office to pay our insurance, by then the questura was closed so we couldn't finish registering. We decided to try to get out to the mall outside of town, but started so late, ened up riding busses back home. Planning a trip in the next couple of days, not sure where yet, maybe Sorrento, but not sure how busy those places will be. we need to get out of Perugia for the day, I'm starting to go crazy here!