Last Post

This is post #200 and my last post for the blog Oederweg. Our time in Germany is over and a new chapter of our lives has begun. Repatriation is an important part of expatriation, but certainly not as fun and light hearted. I made this video for my friends in Germany before I moved, then discovered Germany blocked it on YouTube. No problem, I sent it to all of them on Facebook. For my American friends, it will be less poignant not knowing all the faces or feeling the pain of saying good-bye, but still is a great summary of our time in Germany. You can watch Gianna grow from a little peanut into a spunky little Fräulein.



Yesterday we visited Gianna's new school and my old/new work. We returned the rental car and tried out taking Dan to the train station at 6am this morning (it was not sooo bad). The flooring is supposed to be delivered to our house today sometime and the installers will get to work on Monday. Our new phones are sitting at a UPS pack station ready to be picked up. Everyone has been pestering us for our new phone numbers. Why do I want to talk to you on the phone anyway? Hahaha, just being mean. But it is nice to travel around anonymous, no way for people to bother me. If you want to contact us, call the Candlewood Suites in Somerset or just send an email.

Last thoughts on repatriation and the new me...

We have been gone for a year and a half. Parts of Germany seeped into my subconscious; returning to America is disorienting. The previously familiar is now unfamiliar. American money seems odd; I forget the denomination of coins. Before walking into a store or doctor's office, I still formulate my greeting and questions in German. Sometimes German words pop out instead of the English. Last night I forgot the English word for mandel (almond). American milk tastes better, but the coffee tastes weak. This morning I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to get a donut for Gianna (as a reward for putting up with that 6am ride to the train station), but passed on the coffee in favor of my home brewed Tchibo German coffee back at the hotel room. I am frustrated by the waste (car commuting, plastic grocery bags, water wasting toilets), by laws and practices that discourage public transportation use, bike riding, and walking, and by the fast paced life that leaves little time for family, friends, or vacation.

Some people think of me as the same person I was two years ago. Don't you love getting back to suburbia, tending a garden, working in the yard, spending your weekends on home repairs, driving all over creation in your car? No. The past year and a half living in an apartment and riding public transit was great! I did not miss the house one bit. I thought maybe I would feel sentimental coming back to the house once I laid eyes on it, but all I feel is resentment. Being up at work yesterday felt great when I imagined living 5-10 mins away in an apartment. I can't wait to go back to enjoying life rather than being a slave to my commute and my high-maintenance property.

So now what? I like blogging too much to say good-bye forever, so I plan to start a 365 blog. What is a 365 blog? The objective is to post a photo each day for one year with only a title and small description, when required. Maybe after 365 days, we will be off on another adventure, who knows. Once I get the blog up, I will post the link. Bis später, tschüss!

Making changes

Today we ventured into a local "gourmet food store" with the hopes of finding a few European products. Instead, I walked out with some American delicacies from their gourmet bakery, chocolate chip cookies and brownies. Gianna gave them two thumbs up.





We have made a few life decisions that have somewhat put my mind at ease. If we can only survive the summer, life should get a little better. The plan is to fix up the house and put it on the market ASAP. New flooring is going in sometime in the next two weeks. Then we need to remodel the master bath and fix a few odds and ends. After the house is under contract, we will move into a rental closer to the city where Dan can walk or ride bike to the train station and my commute is 15 mins or less. Dan will still have a relatively long commute, but not 1.5 hrs. And having only one car will be less of an inconvenience if he does not need rides to/from the train station. We hope to find a community where we can walk to a playground and grocery store...well, I'd just settle for a playground or park. Gianna can't understand why everything is so far away here. Why do we need to get in the car and drive 15 mins to the playground? Can't we just walk 5 mins like in Germany? Clearly we are not in Germany anymore and will have to adjust our expectations.

At least we have each other

Of course there were going to be difficulties readjusting to life in the US. I prepared myself for more fat people and a highly commercialized society. I thought I was ready for dealing with the third world country healthcare system and fixing up the old house, but the USA has brought me to my knees. Today's low-lights:

1. Found an $850 expired check from the mortgage company in our pile of mail from the past 1.5 years.
2. Realized we don't have health insurance cards, and then got turned away from my doctor appointment for no proof of insurance...and then they tried to reschedule for next month. Complaining got me in Wed morning, as long as I bring proof of insurance.
3. When I tried to call Dan for a ride home from my failed appointment, I realized my German T-Mobile plan won't let me call out. This is the point when tears were streaming down my face as I stood there in the downpour with no ride and no way to call anyone for a ride. Then I realized SMS was working. That's very German. So I was able to contact Dan afterall.
4. Found out our ATM cards are expired when we tried to get some US dollars (does anyone here take Euros? Maybe IHOP?)

But on the bright side, that mail pile also revealed our 5-year ARM readjusted to a much lower interest rate than we were paying. We discovered an Indian grocery store within walking distance of the hotel, and Dan was able to get a replacement ATM card for himself and some US dollars from the TD Bank teller. Hooray!

Two days on US soil

We bought a car, a little piece of German engineering:


We stopped by our house. It is a bit of a disaster area. The landscaper is getting fired.


















We talked to both of our neighbors about what's been going on in the neighborhood while we were gone, mostly weather and crime related. The cell phones and flooring for the new house are on order. And today I went to Stop-and-Shop, forgetting with a car, it is possible to purchase more groceries than I can carry. So far, we are accomplishing repatriation tasks more rapidly than expected.

Moving stage 5: leaving

Parting is such sweet sorrow. We are in our Somerset hotel room enjoying lousy coffee that tastes like dishwater. This morning we cleaned up our apartment, the rental company did a walk-through, we said a teary good-bye to our American neighbors, and headed to the airport in a taxi van that fit all of our luggage. I was quite depressed on the flight, happy for a few hours when my NJ friends picked us up from the airport and dropped us at our hotel, but now depressed again. I miss Germany and we have only been gone 12 hrs. Gianna says she is sad, she misses her old friends. I asked her what she wants to do tomorrow and she said "go back to Germany". Part of me feels the same way. But we have some work to do to reintegrate, become full-fledged Americans again. We need to buy a car, get us some US phone numbers, and buy some cheap US products. Before I left, my Germany friends said "look on the bright side, at least in America, you can buy cheap sneakers". Yeah, land of the free, and home of cheap stuff.

The photo is Dan and Gianna looking at planes from the Lufthansa lounge, the last photo I snapped in Germany.

Moving stage 4: moving day

The dog wants to make sure he doesn't get left behind, so he keeps laying in the piles of stuff. The movers are 2 hours late and counting...I'm starting to get angry. We have to pick up Gianna from school by 5 and we wanted to take luggage to the airport tonight. If the movers don't even show up until after 3, things might get ugly.

8:45pm update, the movers showed up at 3:30 and were done by 5:30. Still, there wasn't enough time to take the suitcases over to the airport. We will either take two taxis tomorrow morning or call for a van. Both Gianna and Bruno are anxious now that the apartment is empty. Where did all my stuff go?? Bruno has been sleeping in Gianna's car seat and Gianna was hiding in the curtains.

Good-bye party

Tomorrow is Gianna's last day of school, but today her teachers threw her a going away party complete with balloons, musical chairs, and chocolate frosted cupcakes topped with gummies. They invited me to come in and snap a few pictures of Gianna and her friends.




















And later this afternoon, I had to say good-bye to my dear friend, Denisa. Denisa is from Slovakia, studied in the UK, and has lived all around the world. Since we are both world travelers, hopefully our paths will cross again some day. That is one of the great things about being abroad, meeting so many new people from all walks of life and becoming fast friends with a few of them.

Now back to moving prep insanity. The movers come tomorrow afternoon, then it's all a whirlwind until we land in Newark Thursday afternoon.

Since you are moving...

...and I'm never going to see you again, here's what I really think. Ugh, one of the mothers from Gianna's school said some pretty awful things to me on the playground yesterday. She's American married to a German, with three kids. We were having polite conversation and got on the topic of adoption. In her opinion, all international adoption is corrupt. How can you really know Barbara, that your child was not trafficked? How do you know the documents are not forgeries? Why not do US adoption, get "one of our own"? Well, you and Dan are good looking and smart, you would make a beautiful baby together. Can't the doctors do anything more? At the point where I was about to punch this woman in the face, Gianna came over and said she wanted to go home. Thank God. So I took my little feral, trafficked, racially inferior, ugly, stupid child home and gave her lots of love.

Recently somebody posted a thread asking what are the three most memorable moments of your life? Many people said when they found out they were pregnant or the birth of their child. My top two are 1. receiving the call from the adoption agency saying "it's a girl!" 2. the moment I first laid eyes on my daughter at the orphanage. She was more beautiful than I had ever imagined. It was the only moment in my life that I felt like melting butter.

German toilet design

Just to break the tension of moving and give you a bit more insight on German culture before we move away, I give you the German "shelf toilet". The flush comes from the rear of the toilet and washes away whatever you have deposited on the shelf. Then there would be a toilet brush sitting nearby that polite customers use to scrub away anything that remains and reflush. I find these toilets disgusting, especially for #2. Who wants to hear it hit the shelf with a thud, and then sit there and smell it until you are finished? We have a typical Euro toilet in our flat (exit hole in the rear, no shelf), but Gianna's school and many restaurant bathrooms have these shelf toilet contraptions. What is the logic you ask? Well, Germans are quite the hypochondriacs. Legend has it, they like to see what's coming out their bottom end before they flush. This is why they are also called display toilets. Gross!

Moving stage 3: packing

It had to happen sometime. With less than a week until the movers arrive, I was starting to feel like a procrastinator. Packing up to move overwhelms me almost to the point of non-functional paralysis. So I started out by putting 3 picture frames in a box, then collecting all picture frames, then all decorations, etc, etc. It is difficult to look at each item and decide, will I need this immediately (goes in the luggage), in ~1 week (air freight pile), not for a few months (sea shipment pile), or never (trash can or donation bin)? Dan is working late tonight so Gianna and I made pizza for dinner, then had some fun taking pictures of the dog. She often points her play camera at him and says, "smile Bruno, smile!" I think in the first picture he is actually smiling!

Shipping people and cargo

It's one week before our move and the Icelandic volcano still is affecting flights and cargo shipping around Europe. Some people are asking if we will get our flight as scheduled and the answer is, who knows! They lifted the flight ban today, but they say German airspace could close again at any time. We are prepared to stay in a hotel if need be and get a flight when (and where) we can. And we are also bracing for the fact that our air and sea cargo that will be shipped from Germany may take a lot longer to arrive in the US because of the backlog. Worst case, we have to take a train to southern Europe and catch a flight there. Dan wants to book passage on the Queen Mary 2, but I wouldn't like 7 days at sea.

Today I took Bruno to the vet for his pre-travel health check. In typical German style, they were reluctant to give him a health certificate because they have no records of his puppy shots. I was already stressed out from getting one anxious dog and one tired three year old on and off the train to her office and wasn't in the mood to deal with this "everyone is inferior to Germany" attitude. So, I firmly told her that our US vet is USDA certified and wouldn't have issued Bruno a USDA health certificate if he didn't receive his puppy shots. After more arguing, she reluctantly handed over the health certificate and tranquilizers for the flight.

Tonight we have another good-bye dinner, this time with Dan's co-workers. Gianna and I enjoyed some much deserved post-vet visit treats to hold us over. I had a simple, but delicious apfelkuchen:

Volcanic disruption

All of Europe is in a panic over the volcano-related flight ban. The Frankfurt airport has been closed since Friday. Even Merkel had to fly to Portugal, then Rome, then take a bus home from her recent US trip. Although we are starting to wonder how this will affect our travel and cargo shipping plans slated for next week, we're trying to remain calm and enjoy the rest of our time in Deutschland. (I'm eating a Spaghetti Bambino sundae and Gianna is eating an After Eight mint sundae. She said it felt good on her throat)

Frankfurt: contrast

Red squirrel at Hauptfriedhof

GMai after our morning photo shoot

Flashmob pillow fight at Hauptwache

Two weeks to go...

...and the natives are getting restless. Bruno knows something is going on. Boxes are being packed and organized and the occasional suitcase appears. He's been hanging out in his travel bag when it's accessible and last night, in the closet next to the large suitcase. Not sure what's going on in his little doggie head, perhaps, if they decide to pack up and leave in the middle of the night, they're going to have to trip over me to get this suitcase out. Next week he goes to the vet where I'll pick up some doggie tranquilizers.






Little miss has expressed ongoing anxiety about the move. Will she be able to bring her books? What about her toys? Clothes? How about this toy? And that toy? She says she will miss her friends and her old school, that Germany is her home. I'm trying to get her psyched up for a new school and new friends. She asks "Will Amanda be there?" No. "How about Jivi?" Arg. This week at school they are doing a unit on seeds. Without any prompting from me, she is majorly excited about planting a garden at our home in NJ. That's the spirit!

As for me, I just want to get this all over with. I'll be sad to say good-bye to all my Germany friends and this beautiful lifestyle. But I am anxious to turn the page and start the next chapter in our lives together. Most of the time I'm calm. But once in a while I erupt like that Icelandic volcano spewing out ash. My neighbor told me to drink less coffee, more wine ;-)

Say what?

I could probably have a whole blog that just shows silly signs from around Germany. Whether it's their limited grasp of English, or funny sounding German words, every day there is something that makes me smile. Some of my favorites with no photos:

-cake called "Amerikanisher hell" (light American cake)
-Amerikanisher spaghetti (has bacon sauce)
-Bad Idee (sells bathroom fixtures, translation "bath ideas")
-Back Factory (a bakery franchise, but sounds like something much different...)

The juvenile fahrt jokes never get old in my book.

The nexus of the universe (almost) right down the street from us.

My brain reads "Wild Horse S**t: fine, specialty, like art"

If we lived here, it wouldn't be the name of my blog.

Have babies, Do it NOW!

Just your ordinary unisex tailor shop.

My personal all-time favorite "rape more cans". Hopefully the trash cans lined up below are carrying pepper spray.

Spargel

Spargel is Germany's pure white asparagus. At €11.90/kg, it's not a cheap vegetable. They are larger in diameter and length and have a milder, sweeter flavor than their green American counterparts. They also take up more room on the grill than the brats. Dan was wondering who was coming over to dinner to eat all this spargel? This time of year, sheds selling spargel crop up around the city. Last year I was fooled into believing some of them were ice cream stands since they paradoxically had a large strawberry on top. This year the sheds have been redesigned, without the confusing strawberry.








Gianna enjoyed the spargel so much at dinner, that she ordered a spargel sundae for dessert at Eis Olympio. That's vanilla and pistachio ice cream spargel topped with kiwi and tropical sauce, plenty of sahne, half a peach, and toasted nuts.

Moving: stage 2

It's 3 weeks until we hop on a Newark bound plane with 6 große pieces of luggage and all the carry-on the airline will allow (including one tranquilized dog). We've checked off some of those moving to-do list items like canceling our Germany contracts, arranging a date for the movers to arrive, reserving airline tickets, and booking a NJ hotel where we will stay until our furniture arrives. Our rental agent has been showing our apartment; keeping it clean is annoying.

Dan starts work back in NYC on May 3; I start work in Clark May 17th, which will be Gianna's first day at her new preschool. That's my biggest concern, keeping GMai from missing Germany too much as we go through the hassles of repatriation (see pissed off look in above photo).

Bumper car Barb

Finally we have some nice weather for spring break. Today these three monkeys had some lunch together, then spent the afternoon (and a lot of the adult's money) at Dippemess.
There were some heated discussions over who would be Michael Schumacher.
The kids all rode the ponies; Gianna shared some tender words with her favorite polka dotted horse.
We rode the ferris wheel and then we stopped at the mini bumper cars. That's when things turned ugly. The two other kids with Gianna are a bit bigger and fit in the cars just fine. Gianna's legs were too short to fit the pedals. As the ride started, the carny motioned me to come over...and get in the car with her. What? These cars are built for one 8-year-old, not a 3-year-old and her mom! I climbed aboard, one arm around the rear post, one foot on the gas pedal, one hand on the steering wheel, and one cheek teetering on the side of the car. As you can imagine, we were quite the target. Hit the American with her arse hanging off the car! Too bad for them, I'm a pretty mean bumper car driver. We managed to avoid all major hits and left the Germans wondering, "where did you learn to drive, New Jersey?" Sorry no photos. My camera was around my neck and my friend was likely rolling on the ground with laughter.

Easter Sunday

Easter 2010 came and went too fast! In Germany, everything is closed Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday. So tomorrow Dan goes back to work, but Gianna still has off for spring break.






















We decided to go with the Áo dài's for Easter Sunday. Our church is diverse, with many people wearing traditional dress even on regular Sundays. Gianna was very proud of her dress...and Easter basket. The first thing she ate was the black sheep.


The weather was cold and blustery outside, so the Easter Bunny kindly hid the eggs inside this year. Bruno was a willing participant; the hard boiled eggs drove him nuts!


Donnell, Gianna's godfather, joined us for lunch and Easter festivities. He brought Gianna a chocolate rabbit that we tore into sometime after the egg hunt. It was a fun and delicious Easter.

Frankfurt goats

Despite the cold weather, Gianna enjoyed petting the goats over at the Frankfurt zoo. Spring, what happened? I thought we had a deal, you were here to stay and I could pack all the strumpfhosen away?!