Update

It's been a bit since my last post because not a whole lot has been going on. I went with some friends the other day to the Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart. I was really impressed with it. The Porsche museum was neat, but the Mercedes museum was massive. I really liked the way it was laid out. When you start the tour you take an elevator all the way to the top, then start to walk down. As you enter each level of the museum the audio guide would automatically tell you a synopsis of the cars in the section, then you could push the guide button in front of any specific exhibit to get info about it. Each level was considered an "era". As you walked down between eras there were pictures and captions telling you about what was going on in the world at that particular time so you had perspective of what was happening while the cars you were about to see were on the road.

One thing that really impressed me was there open discussion of WWI and WWII in the 1914-1945 era level. The Porsche and BMW museum completely skipped over 1914-1918 and 1933-1945, but not Mercedes. They openly discussed it and even went so far as to talk about the forced laborers who made up over %50 of the German workforce from 1939-1945. They had a book with a list of names of all the forced laborers they used during the war, as well as a statement about how they apologized and made reparations to them after the war.

Aside from that, Shanna and I have been taking German language classes two nights a week for the past few weeks. We both really like our teacher...she's funny, nice, and most important, patient. An interesting note I learned last night is she is also the only female firefighter in the town she lives in. I'm definitely looking forward to the day I don't have to ask the locals if they speak English. I've improved 100 fold since we got here, but still have a ways to go.

Today we spent the day cleaning the house and getting ready for a friend to come visit this weekend. She lives up in Heidelberg, but this is the first weekend our schedules have lined up. We're both looking forward to seeing her again.

Not too much else to report. Deutsch Telekom is coming out tomorrow, so fingers are crossed that after 2 1/2 months of living in the house we'll FINALLY have home phone and Internet.

That's all for now...hope everyone is doing well back home. We miss you all.

Finally, I'll leave you with a picture I just took on our back deck of the sunset over Stuttgart.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone 4

Location:Mühlrain, Stuttgart, Germany

Shanna's First Blog Update

So, I spent ALL weekend unpacking and decorating the house. I also managed to find the dogs actually using their beds. Most of the time, they commandeer mine!
Here's some pictures of one room at at time.

Fishmarkt & Tübingen

Yesterday Shanna & I had made plans to head down to Tübingen, a college town 45 minutes outside of Stuttgart, with some friends we've made since coming here, Jenny & Chris. At 10am, right as we're getting ready to walk down to the train station, we get a call from Chris saying that Jenny woke up that morning not feeling well, and they were going to head to the clinic. We had planned on going to the Fischmarkt while it was in town (July 8th - 18th), so we figured now would be a good time to go while we waited to hear back from them.

Yes, as you can see, Murphy had a field day trying to get as many pieces of dropped food as possible.  The Fischmarkt was great...seafood isn't easy to find around here, and the selection they had was huge.  They also brought some beer from Hamburg.  It wasn't anything spectacular, but it wasn't bad.

They also had vendors set up in giant boats (or Boots as the Germans say).

After lunch Jenny calls us and says she's feeling much better and still wants to head to Tübingen.  We finish up at the Markt, take the dogs home, then head out.  Jenny & Chris get on our train when we get closer to their house in Böblingen, and 20 minutes later we reach the Tübingen Hauptbahnhof.  

It's a neat little town...it has a good mix of young students and tourists, plus the town was never bombed in WWII, so all the old buildings are original, and not re-made.  In comparison, Stuttgart was leveled during the war, so 60 percent of the city is less then 70 years old.  We first stopped by the Tourist Info center to see what there was to do around town.  I saw this in the window and had to take a picture.

After that, we headed into the older part of town.

At this point it had started to get cloudy and cool, so we walked around looking at the shops, and eventually stopped a coffee shop to sit & relax.  A brief shower came through, and when it subsided, we started walking around again.  It's definitely a city I'd like to come back to again, it was nice walking around the old parts of town.  Dinner time rolled around, and we headed to a brewery / pub we'd seen on the way in to town.  They had GREAT food, and good beer.  That's where we spent most the night, just talking and enjoying some beers.

Finally the night wound down, and we all headed back to the train station.  All in all it was another exciting day in Germany. :)

Maastricht

A few weeks ago when Shanna & I watched The Netherlands upset Brazil in a World Cup game, Shanna said if The Netherlands made it to the championship game we should go watch it with the Dutch in Maastricht.  So Wednesday night last week, after the Dutch were in and Germany was out, we booked a hotel.  Apparently we weren't the only ones with that idea, so we had some trouble finding hotels that weren't ridiculously expensive and that also allowed dogs.  Unfortunately we couldn't find any, but a lady we'd gotten to be friends with at the hotel we stayed at for the first month has always said if we ever wanted to get out of town for a weekend, she'd be more then happy to look after the dogs.  She has several at home in the US and misses them, so she'd love to have a few dogs running around for a few days.  She was free Sunday, so Sunday morning we dropped them off and hit the road.

The drive up was almost uneventful.  At one point traffic slowed down, and we could see smoke ahead.  As we got closer we saw a minivan completely engulfed in flames, and parts of the grass around it on fire.  It looked like everyone got out unhurt, but neither of us had ever seen anything like that in person.  As we drove by it was amazing the intense heat we felt coming off the van.  Other then that it was smooth sailing all 4 hours to Maastricht.

We got lucky with the hotel...it was two buildings over from the hotel we stayed at the last time we were here 2 years ago, and it was just a few minutes walk to the Market Square and the town square.  It had a "Hollywood" theme to it, and was nice.  The only downside was it was HOT that day, and there was no AC in the hotel.  We changed into our Orange clothes, and hit the town...but not without taking a picture first.

We got out to the square around 4:30-5:00...a full 3 1/2 to 4 hours before the game started, and the market square was already starting to get packed.  We got lucky and found a seat outside, and all the bars in the square had TV's out.  It was fun watching with the huge group of Dutch fans, but unfortunately they lost.  If they had won the place would have gone nuts, but since they didn't, people just started quietly leaving and going home afterwards.  It was disappointing, but still a unique experience watching them play in their home country.  

The next day Shanna had heard about a fort used as a storage bunker in WWII, and an American WWII cemetery near town.  We drove to the fort, but it was closed.  The Cemetery, though, was open and VERY impressive.

It had the names of everyone buried there engraved along the side walls, and the center tower was a bell tower / chapel.  In the back is where all the men were buried.  When you first walked up there was a side section that laid out in detail the Allied liberation of Holland.  An interesting fact is The Netherlands donated the land in 1960 to the U.S., and the U.S. Government built and currently maintains the grounds.

As we left there we wanted to find an Albert Hijnes, a grocery store chain found all over The Netherlands.  Just like we had done in Belgium, we wanted to buy some of the local beer to bring back.  The cemetery was outside of town, and the closest AH was in a small town further out called Valkenburg.  Neither one of us had heard of it, but it was a quaint little town!  The AH was right next to their part of town that was lined with restaurants, taverns, and stores.  We had planned on just getting what we needed from AH, and heading home, but we had to walk around.  We found a little pub to eat lunch at, and ended up talking with three older guys who were also at the pub.  They asked where we were from, and were shocked when we told them America.  They thought we had traveled to their small town all the way straight from the US.  They were a little less surprised when we told them we actually lived in Germany.  It was nice talking with them though.

After that it was getting late, and we didn't want to get back to Stuttgart too late since our friend was doing us a favor looking after Milo & Murphy.

To see the pictures from the weekend, click here or click any of the pictures above.

July 4th Weekend

The base was having fireworks & a cookout for the Fourth of July, but Shanna & I decided to do something different.  Shanna had seen in the USO flyer a trip they were planning on July 4th to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwanga, two castles in Bavaria.  Hohenschwanga was the castle that King Ludwig II grew up, and Neuschwanstein was the castle had built.  He was deposed before Newschwanstein could be completed, but it's still an amazing place to visit.  Unfortunately everything inside both castles were copyrighted so no pictures were allowed.  We probably could have snuck a few if we were on a self guided tour, but we weren't...we had a tour guide, and neither of us wanted to risk getting thrown out considering the time & money spent on getting there.


Despite the fact that we couldn't take pictures, we had a great time.  We were both nervous about the weather.  It's been sunny & nice (albeit a little hot) for the past two weeks, but that day the forecast was rain in Stuttgart.  We woke up at 4am because we had to be on base by 5:45am to get on the bus.  Shortly after waking up the downpour started.  It was still going when we hit the road...there were times on the Autobahn that I could barely see 10 feet in front of me.  Thankfully at 5:30am there were almost no cars on the road.  We parked the car, hopped on the bus, and 3 hours later we were in the small village of Hohenschwangau.  The weather couldn't have been more beautiful.  When we were about 20 minutes outside Stuttgart the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and it was beautiful.  After we got our tickets, we started to head to the path to the first castle.  According to posted signs, it was about a 20 minute walk up the hill to Hohenschwangau Castle.  We had an hour before the tour started, so we took our time.  It was absolutely beautiful there, both at the bottom of the hill and the top.  Below is a picture of the lake there.

The first tour started promptly at 11:05am.  Our tour guide was great...he mixed in the history of the castle and some humor.  One of the more interesting things to me was the "secret passage" in the King & Queen's rooms.  Apparently they didn't sleep in the same room, but when they wanted a late night rendezvous, they had to go through a secret passage that linked their rooms.  


The tour didn't last too long...approximately 45 minutes.  The next tour started at 1:30, so we had some time to kill.  We walked around the little village for a bit, then took a bus up the mountain to Neuschwanstein.  I thought the view from Hohenschwangau was impressive, but it was nothing compared to the view from Neuschwanstein.  Below is an example of what you could see from up there.

At this point the rain that had hit Stuttgart had arrived.  It rained for a bit, but it wasn't too bad.  Unfortunately, though, the area clouded over and visibility wasn't as good as it was earlier in the morning.  The tour was interesting.  The girl giving the tour told us this was her first English tour, and she did just fine.  She'd occasionally have a grammatical slip up, but I actually found that interesting...her conjugation and grammar were wrong for English, but correct for German.  Since Neuschwanstein was not completed, we didn't take a full tour of the castle, but we saw all the completed rooms, from King Ludwig's room to the hunter's hall.  We even saw the piano that the composer Wagner played on when he stayed there.  


After the tour was over we made our way down the mountain and had an early dinner at the beer garten.  The food & beer were great, and by the time we were on the bus, we both took a long nap.  


It was a lot of fun, and definitely something I'd recommend to people visiting the area.  To see more pictures from the trip, click here or any of the pictures above.

Ludwig's castles

Right now we're sitting on the USO tour bus doing roll call before heading home. What an amazing trip seeing King Ludwig's childhood castle and the castle he had built that Walt Disney modeled Cinderella's castle after.

We took pictures outside, but since the Bavarian state owns the castle, they trademarked the inside, so we couldn't take any pictures inside.

This week I'll do a full post with a link to pictures, but for now, Happy Fourth and Happy Birthday Dad!!

Location:Alpseestraße,Schwangau,Germany

Interesting Day

Yesterday our next door neighbor, Deter, came by and asked a favor.  He rented a big trailer and was going to use it to bring all his grass clippings, tree branches he'd cut away, etc... to the recycling center.  We have a tree in our backyard, and some bushes in our front yard, that had grown a bit too high and were blocking sun to his wife's flowers.  He asked if we minded if he came by with his tools and cut them back.  I told him no problem, and I'd be happy to help.

Before we got started today I had to head down town.  We still hadn't received a letter from Vodafone saying our account was closed, nor one from T-Mobile saying it would be starting soon.  I first stopped at Vodafone.  It just so happened that Herr Hoxha, the guy who had set me up originally and had answered my questions when I'd made subsequent visits, was there.  I explained that I had come in 8 days ago and cancelled the account, and told him why, and that I hadn't heard anything despite the guy at the time saying it'd take 5 days.  He called Vodafone HQ and confirmed they'd gotten the cancellation request, but it takes 5-10 business days, so I should get the letter next week.  Since he knew I wanted faster speeds then they could offer, he suggest the Cable company, KabelBW.  I told him I'd checked there, but they didn't have cable that ran to our street.  I then told him I was going to go with T-Mobile because their website said our address could get high speed.  Then he did something that blew me away.  He said he'd walk over to the T-Mobile store with me to translate in case the employee there didn't speak English. The Vodafone shop is on the main Schlossplatz stretch where there's a ton of phone shops for O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile, etc...  He said they all know each other, and this way there'd be no confusion on T-Mobile's end and he'd help verify that we could get the faster speeds.  So we walked over to the T-Mobile shop, waited in line, then he spoke to the Rep in German, explained the situation, and the person happened to speak English so he then turns to me and says they didn't see an account creation request, but he'd be happy to set me up now.  So he did, and when the Rep wasn't sure how to say something in English, Herr Hoxha stepped in and translated.  I couldn't believe it...this guy didn't have to do any of this, but he volunteered to walk over & translate for me.

Bottom line, assuming all goes according to plan, we should have phones & internet on July 19th.

Once I got home, Deter came over and we spent the afternoon cutting back the bushes in our front yard, then cutting the tree back in the backyard.  We talked while doing it, and I told him this was the first house we'd lived in with an actual yard, and therefor we didn't really have any tools yet.  He said we were always welcome to use his, and he was done with them for the weekend if we wanted to borrow them.  I definitely took him up  on that.  When Shanna got home she changed and helped us out, then trimmed our front hedges.

So it's been a long day...a cold shower never felt so good.  Tomorrow we're going over to a friend's house to watch Germany Vs. Argentina, then Sunday we're off to Bavaria to tour King Ludwig's castles!  I'll have pictures up next week and a blog post detailing our day there.