We're here!

Well, we arrived yesterday in the afernoon. We had a great trip. After a hiccup with a Delta employee at the check-in counter, who told us that I would need a round-trip ticket to enter into Germany and almost didn't let me get on the plane - we made it on smoothly in Columbus.

Turned out that Luna had her own seat the whole way, including the business class seat from Cincinatti to Paris!! We thought that was pretty cool!. All the flights were easy, and Luna was great. Although, CDG airport in Paris was terrible. Avoid it like the plague if you can!! We had 4 hours there, and if they had given us any less time we would have risked not making the flight jut b/c the airport is so disorganized, inefficient, poorly marked and crowded. Some might appreciate it for purely architechtural reasons, but the style just re-inforced my impression that the airport would fit better in a 3rd world country.

Anyway. Enough about that! We arrived here in time to do a quick tour around town, stop at the bank and then for groceries. We went to two and have decided that the second one will do well for almost everything we will need. Very different than at home, but more than enough for what we need! Baby food we will be using is Nestle - there were about 5 different brands. SInce we recognized Nestle we tried that first. Their #4 is very similar to the Graduates stuff by Gerber.

We bought diapers at the first store we tried, and didn't recognized the available brand "Midi." But bought them anyway. Second store had exactly the same pampers we are used to. At least we know they're here for next time!

The temp apartment we are in is great, will suit us fine for 3 months. Will be happy when we get Luna's toys in the air shipment though!! Met the landlady today and she seemed very nice and speaks English well. She will come over tomorrow to show me how the washing machine works - should be interesting - especially since Bas just told me it might take 3 hours to do!

So yesterday evening we went to a Bier Garten for dinner. It was great I had schnitzel, sauerkraut, and spatzle. Better than I've had at any restaurant in 20 years! With great beer ofcourse, and for so cheap!!

Then Luna was up all night last night - since her body clock said that it was daytime. So we slept in this morning. But once we got up, we had breakfast and then headed off in the car to do some exploring. Most of the towns are like villages or hamlets and connected by little 2 lane country roads. I drove so that I could get use to the European signs and lights, etc, since I will have the car while Bas is at work. It was fun, even in the little 1992 Nissan Micra!! So we found a couple towns, Wiesendorf and Hessbach, which semed like they would be nice to live in. They were small and quant, had new houses as well as old, and had at least one bakery, butcher, and candlestick maker (just kidding) - at least one butcher, baker, market, guesthouse (for an easy dinner out) and a place to get an eis would be nice, too! Both of the towns I mentioned qualified, and I'm sure there are plenty more. It's definitely not difficult to drive to a different town for groceries, or clothing or whatever, but it would be nice to be able to get the necessities for eating without having to get into a car and drive anywhere. We'll see. I expect to meet with the relocation agent on Wednesday, so then we can get started on finding a place to live!

For lunch we ended up in a small city called Neustadt an der Aisch. Closer to the size of Nuremberg. We parked and went into the town square or "Innenstadt" and found several cafe's. Turns out that the city had just had a special performance of several local bands who were in traditional bavarian dress, including Lederhosen. We didn't get to se the performance, but all the bands were still hanging out drinking beers, so it was a fun thing to see on our first day!!

Came back and made dinner for the fist time in our apt. Went well. The stove in kitchen doesn't work, so we bought a counter-top electrical grilling unit. And the original range doesn't work either so they have two induction "burners." The induction unit was interesting, since I've never cooked with one, but I think if I could get used to one, I would really like it. It's really fast!! And the grilling unit isn't the same as our real grill, but it will work well for cooking meat. We used it for chicken tonight, which is more difficult than beef our fish, so I feel pretty good about it! Stll have to figure out where to get some decent beef, hopefully we find some!

Well, I think Luna is finally getting tired, and Bas has to be at work early tomorrow, so will sign off for now. Forgot to bring the camera today, but will post some pics soon!