I know that I am more than late with this blog post. I would say that I have been “busy” but that would be a lie. I have been nothing of the sorts! My days currently involve eating. Some days I don’t even bathe! Oh how lovely life is when you stop bathing. Not to say that I haven’t bathed. I went to a swimming pool yesterday but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start a couple days before departing for Germany; that’s the juicy part! The Friday before we left, my lovely dearest Abigail came to see us before our departure. We spent the entire time eating at all the places that I was going to miss. Oh yummy foodstuffs. There was Shan Dong in Oakland’s Chinatown, the Trappist for some delicious beer, Frutti Yogi to sate my addiction to frozen yogurt, and more. I forgot where we went for breakfast…OH! That is right, we went to La Note so I could order some delectable semolina with a beaten egg and croisant. Divine! Adam and Erin were able to join us for the Trappist and then breakfast the next morning. After the Trappist, which was a Saturday night, we all came back to our disastrous apartment. Adam, Erin, and Abby went and sat outside on the balcony and drank our wine (Thank god!) while my lovely husband and I continued our assault on the apartment.

After breakfast the next morning, husband, Abby and I all went to get my mother and sister from the train station at Jack London Square. They came up to take the car away. My mother and sister bought it off of us. I hope it is fairing okay in Porterville *gasp*. It’s air conditioning will have better use there anyway. Almost directly after we picked up my family, we went to go eat again. This time it was deep dish pizza at Zachary’s. It was awesome! That’s it. No description because none is needed. After Zachary’s, we dropped Abby off at the airport to head back to Portland and my family drove away. That was sad.

After saying a goodbye to my family, I walked back upstairs to continue to freakout about the state of the apartment. I felt we were nowhere near done. I still feel we didn’t do everything we needed to. Largely, though, because our building manager said to leave anything in the apartment we didn’t want. He was going to donate it to some kids he looks after who live in a less than desired living situation. So I reckon we directly helped out in some way.

Monday came. The air was silent. We did stuff. We went to the library, and to the board game store (Go Endgame!), and the bank, and to get a burrito. Oh delicious burrito! It was from the Taco Truck. It was yummy. The kittens, however, knew something was up the entire time. How could we hide it from them? Our stuff was disappearing at an exponential rate, we got rid of their water filter fountain. They so knew something was about to happen. My Love cut the dramamine into quarters as the vet directed and I administered it to the poor kittens. They didn’t like it. Twenty minutes later, we shoved them in their travel carriers and drove to the airport (oh, we rented a car from the airport the night before).

The airport went insanely smoothly. Jacob peed in his carrier before we got to the airport so we were able to easy change the pee-pad before ever entering airport territory. I was freaking out the entire time, though. I was probably overly concerned about it. What, me overly concerned? Ha, never…you know me…Anyway. Dax peed his carrier about an hour from the airport which was no problem. After a 12 hour flight, we arrived. Hooray! We took a taxi cab from the airport to the hotel near the Hauptbahnhof (central train station). Everything went smoothly. We were there for a few days and took another taxi up to our apartment…again everything went smoothly. Kittens are adjusting still. They are insanely chirpy and making TONS of noise all the time. I think they took for granted that we had carpet in the last apartment.

Life here, so far, is great. There is a mild annoying stress lingering for not speaking the language. I am utterly dependent on my husband to do complex tasks. I have, though, bought shoes and groceries all by myself. Hooray! Next is probably buying bread on my own. I have to tell the bread person “half of that type of bread” or “a quarter of that type.” They make big bread here and you can go and ask for a portion of it. Brilliant! We can’t buy too many groceries though. We have a half-sized refrigerator. Apparently that is all the rage or something here. We do have a dishwasher and a washing machine but no dryer. We have a foldable drying rack that we can put up on the balcony for our drying needs. It is cool, I really like drying clothes au natural. The apartment is beautiful! I will post a video later (probably tomorrow during sunlight) to show you.

All the Germans I have met so far have been really nice. Restaurant culture is very interesting. It last forever. We haven’t been here long but we’ve like doubled the time it takes to eat at a restaurant. We still have a bit to go though. When you first get into a restaurant, you have to seat yourself and wait for the waiter/waitress to come over with the menus. Then wait for them to come back and take the order (both drinks and food at once it seems). When the food arrives it’s delicious and there is a lot of beer. You have to get the attention of the waiter/waitress for the check. Then they give you the check and you tell them an amount including tip back so they know how much money to give you back (they carry around a little money purse to make change). So if the bill was like 23.20 then you would add like a 5 percent tip or something and say “24.50″ and hand them money. If you need change they would give it automatically. It is very uncommon to use a charge card at restaurants. Cash seems to be the norm here.

Omg…the swimming pool place. We live right next door to a public swimming pool called Nordbad. It’s amazing. Hmm…that should be a post all in itself.

We went to Portugal last weekend…hmmm…that should also be a post by itself.

Today we went on a bicycle tour of Munich. That was pretty cool. It was, unfortunately, slightly uncomfortable because the tour guide was constantly making heteronormative comments. He kinda seemed like a frat guy. Overall, though, the tour was fun. We learned a lot of stuff and biked around a portion of Munich. We stopped at a biergarten for lunch. I had a liter. Oh yeah, I’ve been drinking a lot of beer lately. It’s everywhere and it’s good!

So now here I am, sitting in the apartment watching Jackass with German subtitles. Before that it was some MTV video game information show. I haven’t changed it since them. I should do that though, this is all stupid. Okay, changed the channel. Now I am watching some fictional supernatural show. Oh, it’s Stargate! It’s in German so I can’t understand it. I think my ear for German is picking up. I heard the grocery store cashier tell me “good evening.” That was exciting. It took me like 5 seconds to realize what she said but I still heard it thus it counts.

Let’s see, what else? The weather? Sure. It’s been beautiful here. Yesterday was pretty hot but kind of like San Francisco. It rained a lot last week. That was pretty fun. We bought rain jackets while in Portugal; they were really cheap, go figure.

With that, I bid you all a good night.
Love,
alexm