Almost 6 Weeks Into The Move

It’s hard to believe we’ve been in Germany over a month now. Sometimes it seems like it has been longer and other days not. After our quarantine time we’ve been able to settle in, venture out to walk among the people (while wearing masks of course), go into stores and most importantly get Eis. 

We’ve gotten all of our furniture needs (thanks to multiple Amazon/IKEA orders!). It’s been a lot of putting stuff together but I think we are finally complete. Everything is relatively organized. The only item left will be a sun umbrella for the terrace. As the summer gets hotter we need it!  We will just put it out of our minds that mostly all of it will have to be sold before we return to the states since we would be way over our original container weight. 

The kids love exploring, although we need to build up their stamina a bit to endure the amount of walking we do. The big challenge I feel for the kids is the street safety. The streets are narrow and the sidewalks small, cars drive so close to where you walk and pull out of blind drives every next building. Every time we are out we have to keep a careful eye and be very cautious at our littles who like to race ahead.  Now we are incorporating scooters for the kids when go out to help them keep up a little longer.  

Well it helps a little bit. 

The kids love window shopping and looking around in stores.  We need to learn that we can’t expect to go into to a store and buy things. It’s just fun to browse!  It has been so fun going back into the supermarkets to see all of the things available.  I’ve taken the kids a few times but with their short attention spans it’s usually a quick trip and not one for browsing. Half the time we are checking out from someplace I end up finding things that mysteriously ended up in the cart i.e. Smurf gummies, Spider-Man collection cards, dino shaped puffs- the list goes on but it is fun to try new stuff. 

It is overwhelming with the amount of yogurts, cheese, meats, bratwursts and breads to try! All so good, still trying new ones and finding favorites.  Some of the small wursts the kids have found they like to eat them cold, a mini frankfurter like a hot dog!  We’ve definitely found some of our favorites like cheese sticks, Danimal (like) smoothies, different chicken nuggets and of course tons of pommes frites - french fries! 

No Iowa State Fair this year? No problem! 

We can still eat on a stick!

Coming back to Deutschland for me did not seem strange by any means, there are so many things I just need to get used to again.

1. Heavy wallet - with 1¢, 2¢, 5¢, 10¢, 20¢, 50¢, 1€, and 2€ coins it adds a lot of weight to the zip portion of the wallet or god forbid you don’t have a change pocket you need to carry a change purse too!   It takes time to dig through all of those coins, and you MUST have patience in stores because as fast as the clerk speeds through your order it takes a while to find the EXACT change. Or use your card - cards are widely accepted more now than when we were here before. 
2. Quiet Hours - yeah, hard to do sometimes with a 5 & 3 year old. 
3. Recycling - How many bins? What goes where? Oh my, the first week was a brutal reminder of ultimate kitchen organization to accommodate all of the different garbage bin!
4. Cleaning - If you know me you know I’m a clean freak anyway. It was a good thing we used the shower squeegee everyday in our last house because it’s a must here. With the hard water you basically have to wipe down the entire shower, glass, walls and fixtures or the residue is super hard to remove. We don’t have screens and half our wall space is usually open to the outside so cleaning the floors almost daily is a thing now. I have a great steamer!
5. Traffic - I remembered why I liked walking/taking the train everywhere because it just seems to take so long to get anywhere in a vehicle!
6. Little darkness - in the middle of the year the sky is still light at 10pm and the again at 4:30!  We had complete blackout (manual) shades before so our rooms were always pitch black but our electric shades now do not block all the light and that makes it hard to fall asleep some nights and hard for some little people in our house to stay in bed!

It’s been so lovely to hear the church bells ringing everyday, the peacefulness and quietness of our penthouse is wonderful!  We do get quite a lot of traffic on the street below but it’s not bothersome, in fact sometimes it’s fun to to listen and people watch!  We are right next to a doctors office and high school as well as many businesses on the Bismarckstraße so there are quite a few people around all the time. 

We’ve also experienced the ease of delivery - something we definitely didn't have before. Lieferando is a food delivery service that offers over 25 different places we can order from. From a Döner to Schnitzel to Pizza, Gyros, or a delicious Salad - we can get anything. Honestly it’s the best thing. Ever. We loved dining out before but remembered that service was so terribly slow and with two small kiddos it’s just not as peaceful to hang in the bier garten any longer with impatient/hangry littles!  Plus we save a ton of €€ not ordering drinks 😉. 

AND grocery delivery - REWE service is wonderful and again so easy! 

From Janni - right around the corner 5⭐ yum!

From Pizza No. 1 - really good!

Gyros Salad from Hellas - SO GOOD! I💗Greek Food

We’ve met the neighbors (3 families) that live on each floor directly under us on our half of the building plus a few more from the other side.  Below us is a very nice elderly couple that brought us a box of chocolates to welcome us. The neighbor below them is also from Iowa! He is married to a German Frau. The ground floor family has boys around the same as Evie and William so we are excited to have some playmates!  Their dad is an engineer at JD - such a small world in our little building! There are two apartment houses in our complex connected by the parking garage. 

Our balcony (3rd floor), two balconies below (floor 2, 1) and  Erdgeschoss (ground floor)

View in the other direction of other building and where the Saturday night concerts took place. 

We’ve had a great couple of weeks settling in. Still finding our groove really and I'm sure we won't be in any major routine until we start schools in August.  The COVID has put a bit of a damper on some travel plans.  It's sad that our first house guests would've been here in a few weeks but had to postpone their trip till next year (fingers crossed!).  We do have confirmed guests of Grandma and Uncle Mike for Christmas time and can hardly wait for that!  We're in the process of planning some summer fun trips.  There is SO much to see and do right here in Germany.  The kids have certain places that they'd like to see based on pictures that they've seen of ours from our previous time here.  I don't mind at all going back to places we went before, it's going to be awesome seeing the kids reaction to some huge castles! 

Bis zum nächsten Mal! 

Tschüss!!