German Classes

A few people have asked how our German classes are going, so I figured I'd better update the blog.  We are currently going twice a week (although not for the next week since we're in London) and meet with two different ladies depending on the day.  On Mondays we meet with a lady from South Africa who has lived here for 7 years and knew German before she came.  This lesson is meant to be used to explain things to us in English since she can speak both very well.  On Thursdays we meet with a lady from FN.  This lesson is meant to be all in German, but yesterday we spoke quite a bit of English.  We don't know quite enough yet to be able to do much speaking all in German.  So far we've learned greetings, a few questions/answers regarding names and places, and a slight amount of grammar concerning verb conjugations.  We use a book with a CD and exercises to do at home to learn.  Hopefully things will start to move a little more quickly because we'd like to be learning a little faster.  It is helping to improve our pronunciation though.  :)

"Yellow" Beans

If you remember, several months ago Brian started growing yellow beans.  Needless to say, it has now gotten too cold for them to grow much bigger, so Brian decided to pick what he had and eat them while he could.  What he picked wasn't a lot and they weren't very big, but he still got a few mouthfuls of beans.  The other strange thing is that they weren't really all that yellow.  Most of them were more green, so perhaps they would have turned more yellow if they would have grown bigger.  Here's some pictures of the beans and Brian enjoying the beans.

Floh Markt

Every Saturday in a small town next to ours, there is a Floh Markt.  This is kind of like a flea market or giant garage sale.  Different people bring things to sell and set up tables in a big empty area.  Most of the stuff is from people's houses that you would normally find at garage sales in the US.  We've been a few times, but haven't been very successful with our purchases.  We've gotten a few small things, but nothing special.

This morning we went to the Floh Markt because it wasn't raining and we did the best that we have done yet!  First, we found water bottle holders for our bikes.  We took some old ones off some of our other bikes, but wanted them on all our bikes.  We finally do!  We walked a little further and Brian found something that he's been thinking of buying for a little while.  He wanted one of these bike stands that has resistance so that you can use your regular bike as an exercise bike indoors.  He had looked online, but wasn't totally happy with the price.  Brian found one at the Floh Markt and it was cheaper than the ones he had found online!  When we got home, he had to put it together right away to try it out.  Now I can't blame rain on the reason I don't exercise.  :)

We walked a bit further and I found something that I wanted!  We have this strange little cabinet with shelves that I think it supposed to be used for CDs or DVDs.  We don't have anything to fill it, so I've wanted some sort of tea set or pottery or something to fill it.  One of the people had a basket with a tea set in it that was green and red.  I liked the pattern on it and it was super cheap!  We ended up buying the whole set.  I think it's technically missing a few pieces, but what we got fits perfect in the cabinet, so I don't care. 

It was a little bit of a trick to get this all back on our bikes, but we did pretty well!  The woman we bought the tea set from had paper for us to wrap it in, so I was able to fit it all into one of our bags and take it on my bike.  The bike stand didn't fit in the bags, so Brian used our three bungie cords to attach it to his bike and it stayed on the whole way home!

Man Scarf

My most recent knitting project is finally finished!!  Brian wanted a scarf to keep his chin/face warm when he rides his bike to work.  I found a pattern on Ravelry.com and got some yarn at the store in downtown.  I started almost a month ago, but scarves get rather boring to me fairly quickly.  I finally finished it today!  Here's some pictures.

Crazy German Weather

I know we've lived here for almost three months now, but I still have yet to figure out the crazy weather here.  Yesterday was a good example.  It was gorgeously sunny for most of the day (which it hasn't been in a long time) so I thought that I would go for a walk.  When I looked outside again, I realized that it was pouring rain!  It had rained during the night and kept raining on and off (quite hard) throughout the day even though it was sunny!  Needless to say, I never took my walk because every time I looked, it was raining in the sunshine.  When Brian got home from work, we did walk to the bike shop and the bank and completely avoided the rain.  When we got back to the apartment though, it started to rain.

Since it was so sunny and clear enough to see some of the mountains, I decided to take the camera along and take some pictures of a few things we saw and the mountains.

 The Buchhornerhof (a hotel down the street from us)

 I like seagulls.

 Amazing clouds...they got even crazier after we got home!

 Snow in the mountains...perhaps we'll have to learn to ski while we're here.

We were quite proud of ourselves in our little adventure downtown because we were able to give someone directions to Cafe Aran (the place I went to use the Internet the first month we were here).  Here's the conversation (sorry about misspellings in German):

Lady: (somthing in German we couldn't understand)
Me: Sprechen sie English? (Do you speak English?)
Lady: Yes. (doesn't repeat question for us in English)
Brian: Wie bitte? (What did you say?)
Lady: (laughing at us because we asked her to speak English and then Brian replied in German) Do you know how to get to Cafe Aran? (except the word "cafe" sounded like "coffee" to us)
Brian & I: (very excited because we know where that is!) Go along the lake until just before the harbor/Zeppelin Museum and you'll see it.
Lady: Thank you!

Anyway, we get very excited when we can actually help someone out, so it deserves to go on the blog.  :)

American Fast Food

Every once in a while, Brian and I crave some good, old, American food.  Since the only American restaurants around here are fast food, that is what we have to settle for.  We ate quite a bit of McDonald's food when we were going there to use the Internet (although we often got cake and American McDonald's don't have that).  When we were in Barcelona, we had quite a bit of Domino's pizza because that was the only restaurant within walking distance of our hotel.  We also tried the McDonald's there.

This past Saturday, we added a new American fast food restaurant to our list: Subway!  Brian and I both love Subway (I think we had lunch there every day we were in Florida for Jill's wedding) and it is relatively inexpensive.  This past Saturday was rainy, so we ended up just walking around downtown FN instead of going to farther places like we had planned.  In downtown FN, there is a Subway and we hadn't gone to it yet.  As a treat to ourselves, we decided to go.

It was not surprisingly exactly like the Subways in the U.S.  The menu was basically in English (with German translations below the English - backwards in my mind!).  They had the same sandwiches, although not as many choices.  There were a few different types of bread and less choices of toppings.  Brian noticed that they put less toppings on also.  Our sandwiches were absolutely wonderful and very American!

German Cookin'

Last night we went out to eat with several of Brian's coworkers.  One of them (Brandon) is an American who works in Mankato, MN and was here for a week.  The other one (Michael) is a German who has worked in Mankato, MN for the past several months and is now living back here in Germany.  It was Brandon's last night here, so the four of us and Michael's girlfriend went out to eat.

Michael picked the restaurant since he's the only one that knows any places around here.  It was nice to go with a German because they can explain things that we don't understand about the restaurants or the places we go.  We ended up driving out of town a little ways to an orchard.  Michael explained the orchards/farms are allowed to have their own restaurants as long as they serve their own food and they are usually only open for several weeks during the year at harvest.  This place that we went to has a special license to be open year round, but must still serve only it's own food.

Michael told us a bit about the food too because I really only recognize a few things on the menu and usually don't know exactly what I'm ordering.  One thing he pointed out to us right away was something that the man down the table from us had.  It was a skillet filled with fried sliced potatoes and it is served with two fried eggs on top.  He said that a normal American breakfast is actually a traditional German dinner.  This is what him and I ordered.  It was very good, but very filling!

Brian and Brandon ordered the same thing which is kind of a ravioli type noodle filled with a meat mixture.  It came with a salad.  Brian has had it before and really likes it.  During Lent, the Catholics are not allowed to eat meat, so this was their way around that.  They covered up the meat with a noodle, so that when God watched them eating, he only saw the noodle, but they still got to eat meat.  I'm not so sure you can really fool God that way though!

Michael also ordered something else for us to try that was quite interesting.  It was a slice of pork in the bottom of a bowl with an arrangement of pickles, peppers, onions around it and the whole thing was covered in gelatin.  It was served cold.  Brian tried some and didn't especially like it.  I was kind of grossed out by the looks of it, so I didn't even try it.  Michael said it is another very traditional meal in Germany. 

As far as drinks were concerned, we couldn't have any of the beer that we are used to here because it does not come from the farm.  Instead, they had something called Mostschorle which is a kind of fruit/alcohol mixture with water mixed in.  It is very common for local farms to have this drink.  I had apple juice which was very good because it came straight from the orchard.

There were two rooms to the restaurant and in the other room there was a large group.  There's a hotel owner from nearby that brings his customers there every Thursday night.  Two guys play accordion and trumpet and tells jokes through the dinner for these people.  We were glad we weren't over there because it was quite loud.  They did come in our room though and play a couple of songs and "happy birthday" to a man at our table because it was his birthday.  He told a joke, but it's not nearly as funny when someone has to translate it for you after he is done telling it.

Overall, we had a great time and it was good to experience something like this with Germans who can explain it all.  Hopefully we can do things like this more often!

Fall!

It has felt like fall here the past little while, so I decided I wanted to bake something fall-ish.  Today I made apple muffins because we live in an area with lots of apple orchards.  The past week or so a farmer has been taking his tractor pulling carts of apples from the orchards just to the east of us back to his barn which is just west of us.  It is fun to watch him go back and forth, but not the greatest to ride our bikes through all the mud he tracks on the road.  :) 

The muffins were originally going to be for our book study group, but the day was changed and we couldn't go any longer, so I decided to make the muffins anyway since I had already bought the apples.  I was going to bake them yesterday, but had a run in with a bunch of fruit flies, so that occupied most of my day instead.  I was finally able to make the muffins today and they are by far the best thing I have baked since moving here!  I got the recipe from allrecipes.com and took the suggestions from some people to change a few of the ingredients and add a topping.  They are so good!  I wish I could share them with you (or perhaps I don't...). 

Here's some pictures of the amazing apple muffins.

German Classes

Well, it seems that I just needed to mention our German classes on here in order to get them started!  Brian was able to call the place today and set up our first lesson for next week Thursday!  We will have them twice a week for probably 90 minutes at a time.  We are very excited to get started learning because it will make life here much easier!

For example, I just spent most of my afternoon translating a paper about our answering machine service through our phone.  I've been having trouble getting our phones to work, so I've missed a few calls in the past few days.  Whenever I miss a call, we get another call immediately from an 800 number.  The only thing that I can understand from the recording is that it is Deutsche Telekom (our phone company) and that there are numbers to push to do different things.  Today I figured I'd look through our paperwork and figure out if there was something that had a menu.  I discovered that we have an answering service with our phone, so I had to translate the paper to figure out what all the different numbers do.  If I knew some German, this would be have been a much quicker task!

I'll keep this updated with how our classes are going and how we are able to use what we learn in our everyday lives.  Thanks for the prayers!

Progress

We have now been in Germany a little over 10 weeks and Brian is just starting to make some progress with some of the things he needs for work.  We've learned that everything takes time here and there's pretty much nothing we can do to move it along any faster.  The three things that Brian has needed to do his job here are a computer, a desk phone, and a cell phone.  After hearing that they would be coming eventually (when? who knows?), he finally received his computer and desk phone last week!  He was borrowing a computer and phone up until this point, but it is much nicer to have your own.  He can change the settings on the computer to be English instead of German and not feel bad about it.  :)  He also has a direct line so that people can call him instead of him having to always call them because they never knew what phone number he would be at.

He is still waiting for a cell phone.  He waited the time they told him it would take to get one and then inquired about it.  When he did that, he discovered that they had lost his order!  Now he is waiting again for one to come, but hopefully it will be here in the next few weeks.

The other thing that we are both still waiting on is German classes.  It has been a bit of a struggle to get these started and still is.  We are now waiting for someone at MTU to set the actual classes up since they have been approved to be paid for.  We don't know when we will be starting the classes, but I will definitely update this once we know! 

Your prayers for these things would be much appreciated because it would make life here much easier.  We don't have a lot of patience left since we've been waiting over 10 weeks now.

Lemon Poppyseed Bread

This past week I wanted to bake something since we had eaten all our Oreos from the U.S.  I love lemon poppyseed bread and we had all the ingredients, so I thought I would try it out.  It ended up turning out pretty good, but not quite lemony enough.  I'm going to try again with a different recipe if I can find one that has more lemon in it. 

IKEA

Since Brian and I still needed to find a couch and some other things for our apartment, we took a trip to IKEA last Saturday.  We had been looking for a couch to replace an old, ugly one that was here.  We had looked at several stores, but many German couches are huge (we didn't want a huge one) and very hard (we want something comfortable to sit on!).  We knew that IKEA would have what we were looking for at a good price, so we ventured there.

The closest IKEA is in Ulm, which is about an hour away by train.  Since we don't have a car yet, we had to take the train there and back.  We tried a new kind of ticket called a Baden-Wurttemburg ticket.  Baden-Wurttemburg is the name of the state that we live in and this ticket allowed us to go anywhere within the state at whatever time we wanted within that one day.  We only went to Ulm, but it gave us the flexibility to get onto whichever trains we wanted to and was the same price as a ticket straight to Ulm. 

Our trip to Ulm was quite interesting.  We were on one train the whole time, but we definitely picked the wrong car to sit in!  It was a double decker train, so we decided to sit on the top because I like to look out and see things.  When we got to the top, we discovered that there was a group of about 8-12 college aged men who were definitely celebrating Oktoberfest!  It was right in the middle of Oktoberfest, so this shouldn't have surprised us.  They were all dressed in lederhosen, we had to step over their crate of beer in the aisle, and they were all quite drunk and it was only about 9:00 in the morning.  We were serenaded with drinking songs for some of the ride and watched all of them get up at least once during the trip to use the bathroom.

Once we made it to Ulm, we knew that IKEA was within walking distance of the train station, but we had to figure out how to get over the train tracks to the other side where IKEA was.  We eventually found a bridge that took us over the tracks and it wasn't too bad of a walk there.

This IKEA is basically the same as you would see in the U.S.  I have only ever been to the one in Canton, MI and this one was quite similar to that one.  It had two floors, was set up with the same winding aisle through the merchandise, and had the same warehouse type place to pick up your items.

We first spent some time looking at all the stuff on the top floor.  We wanted to pick out the couch we wanted and then go back once we had gotten some of the other things we wanted before we got the couch.  The top floor was pretty much all furniture and kid's stuff, so we didn't get anything up there.  At the end of the top floor was the restaurant.  We decided to eat here since it would be much easier than trying to leave the store and find something else.  We both had meatballs with gravy and french fries which was very good!  They had this cool vending machine that you could put an ice cream cone in the bottom of, insert your euro, and then the cone would be lifted and filled with soft serve ice cream, but the line was too long for us to wait to us it.  It was very cool though!

After lunch, we went downstairs and found some of the smaller things that we had wanted and picked out a rug that we wanted for under our dining room table to replace the faded and flaking one that was here.  They also had an area where you could cut your own fabric.  This is where we got the fabric for our kitchen curtains and chairs.  Once we got all the little things we wanted, we went back upstairs to figure out how to buy the couch that we wanted.  We ended up waiting for a while because the first person we talked to didn't know English and the other person was helping someone else.  Eventually we got the right pieces of paper and figured out where we had to go to get the two different pieces for the couch.  We then went back downstairs and got the rug that we wanted.

We found the large box for the couch fairly easily and then went to the checkout to pay for our items.  After paying for them, we had to go to another desk and show them the other slip of paper for our couch where they would pull the other piece that we needed.  The box we had picked up from the warehouse was bigger than me, so I expected the piece that they pulled to be even bigger!  I was quite surprised when all they brought out was a smaller package that was just the cover for the couch.  We're still not sure why they didn't have that in the other warehouse! 

After getting both pieces and fitting our smaller items into the rolling suitcase we had brought along, we decided that the only thing we couldn't take back on the train with us was the large couch box.  This would take two people to carry it and there was no way we were bringing it back on the train.  We then stood in line for quite a while to have them ship the big box to our apartment.  The lady who helped us spoke very good English, so that was very helpful!  It would take less than a week for the box to get to us.

Once we finally left IKEA, we carted all our stuff back over the train tracks.  At this point, we had a rug that was rolled up taller than Brian, a rolling suitcase full, the couch cover which rode on the top of the rolling suitcase but fell off every little while, and a flower pot in a bag I had brought along.  We probably looked quite hilarious walking back over the bridge!  When we got back to the train station, we realized that we had just missed a train by a few minutes and had to wait a while until the next one.  We found some seats and tried to set our stuff down, but in the process I broke the flower pot that was in the bag.  When we finally got onto the train, we were pretty crammed into our seats with our stuff, but had a much quieter ride back than we had had getting there!  Once we got back to Friedrichshafen, we then had to walk back to our apartment with all our stuff.

Here's the new rug that we got for under our dining room table.  It's nothing fancy, but it's not losing the padding underneath like the last one was!

Yesterday, the large box of our couch was finally delivered, so we got to put it together!  The couch was actually in less pieces than I thought it would be in and wasn't very hard to assemble at all.  My favorite part of it was the funny pictures that they had for the proper ways to put it together.  There's no writing with them so that they can be used by people from any language.

Brian's first task was to get the couch out of the box which is quite large!

He then had to attach the armrest to each side of the couch with three different screws.

Then he had to put the feet on.

And then for some reason, he had to get back underneath the couch to tighten something up.

We then put the cover over the large part of the couch and then had to cover each of the cushions.  This normally wouldn't be a very hard thing to do, but the cushions that you sit on had slightly sticky stuff on the front edge which made it hard to just slide the covers on.  I had quite the time getting these on!

We finally got all the pieces together and Brian had to try out the couch.

Here's a picture of the final product without anyone sitting on it.

I decided that I had to try out the box before I tried out the couch because I've always liked large boxes (ask me about my favorite picture of myself as a kid).

Then I finally tried out the couch and it is quite nice!

If we didn't have an extra bed, I would definitely give up my spot in bed to sleep on this couch!

Immenstaad

Last Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so we decided to take a bike ride.  We knew we wanted to go west down the lake, but we didn't really know where we wanted to end up.  We had about 2 hours until we had to be back in time to eat before church.  In the end, we ended up in Immenstaad which is the next town down the lake about 3 miles.  We had been to this town before because it is where we meet other ex-pats from MTU to get a ride to Ueberlingen for a book study we're a part of.  They live near the highway and we hadn't been down by the water yet, so we decided to try to find the waterfront to take some pictures of the mountains.

Our first guess on which direction to go was wrong, but we did discover an orchard that sells fresh apple juice in boxes.  We've been wondering where to get this and now we know!  Unfortunately, we hadn't brought any money with us, so we couldn't get any.  We also passed a stand with fried fish that smelled amazing!  We're hoping to go back there and get some of it.  :)  We turned around and then were rewarded with the right direction to the waterfront. 

Each little town here has it's own unique things along the waterfront.  I love taking pictures of these unique little things because they seem somewhat random to us, but must have something to do with that town in someway.  Here's some of the things unique to Immenstaad.

 Giant bunnies in a backyard.

 A giant chess board that a few elderly men were playing.

A rooster statue in a roundabout.

 The top of the rooster statue.

"M&M" Cookies

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked if I could make cookies for a snack after our church service on Sunday night.  Making something new is always a bit of a process here because I never know if I can get all the ingredients that I need here.  I ruled out all cookies with shortening in them because I haven't been able to find that yet.  We also haven't been successful at finding regular, old chocolate chips.  We find fancy things that might work, but without seeing them, I'm not really sure. 

I decided that M&M cookies might be a good option because I know you can get M&Ms here, except that they are very expensive.  After going to the smaller store closest to our house, we discovered that they don't carry M&Ms like the bigger store does.  Since we didn't have time to go to the bigger store, we opted to buy Smarties instead of M&Ms.  Most Americans reading this are probably wondering how on earth you can put Smarties into cookies because they are thinking of the sweetart type candies in the plastic wrapping that many of our teachers gave us so we would be "smart"er.  These are definitely not the type of Smarties that I put in my cookies!  Here, Smarties are almost exactly the same as M&Ms, except a little bit bigger, different colors, and a different chocolate flavor.  I might even be tempted to say that I like them better than M&Ms!  The McDonald's here has Smartie McFlurries instead of M&M ones. 

After getting all the stuff we needed, we made our "M&M" cookies and they were a big hit!  They were very yummy and almost looked like Easter cookies because the Smarties lightened in color when they were baked.  I will definitely be making "M&M" cookies again!

Kitchen Curtains

Last night I started another project that is totally new to me.  Our apartment has no curtains (which is rather annoying on the ground floor), so I have been looking for curtains wherever we go.  We haven't had much luck in finding curtains that are the right size for our windows (most curtains here go from floor to ceiling and our heaters get in the way).  This past weekend we went to IKEA to look for things for our apartment and we discovered that they sell fabric there!  You could cut your own piece and they had a pretty good selection.  We found a fun, bright colored fabric (because our kitchen is pretty much just gray) for our kitchen curtains and to recover the kitchen chairs we got from a coworker.  Last night I worked on figuring out the sizes that I needed for the curtains and the chair covers and cut them all out.  Here's some pictures Brian took of me during the process.

The next step is to buy some pins and white thread and start the sewing process.  Hopefully it doesn't take me too long to make them because I'm very excited to have them up now!  As far as the chair covers, they are all cut out and pressed.  Now we just have to staple them onto the chairs, so hopefully that will be a much quicker process since Brian already has the old covers off of two of the four chairs.

God's Handiwork

The last three days have been unusually warm (65-70 degrees F) and beautiful (could see the mountains!) for this time of year in this area.  It was such a nice change from the rain and cooler temperatures that we had been getting (although the rain is back in full force this morning!).  We took full advantage of the nice weather while we had it.  On Saturday night, Brian and I went down to the lake to take some pictures at sunset of the mountains and then went out for pizza.  On Sunday afternoon, we went for a bike ride and ended up in Immenstaad (the next small town over) and explored a little bit of the town and took more pictures of the lake and mountains.  Last night, we rode our bikes across town to check out the Aldi (wasn't overly impressed).  It has been nice to be able to bike without gloves and headbands and to be able to see the mountains that grace the other side of the lake.  We have been in awe of God's handiwork and truly blessed to see it.