Little Differences

These are just some of the little things we've noticed or learned about living here that I thought were interesting and/or different from living in the US.

1)Before a stop light changes from RED to GREEN, you get a warning Yellow light so that you can prepare to go. When we first saw this, Alisa and I thought about why this must be. After driving a stick shift around for a couple weeks we came to the conclusion that, since most vehicles here were stick shift, that the yellow light was telling you to get into gear because you are about to be able to go and we don't want you holding up the line :)

2)During none peak driving times, mostly late at night, certain stop lights are just turned off. When a light is off, you just make sure that if there is an intersection and other cars are coming so that everyone gets a turn and you don't get into an accident, but you don't have to come to a stop if no one else is around. Sure beats ideling your car at a red light for 5 mintues in the US at night when no one is around and you are waiting for the light sensor to kick in!

3)You cannot name your children "weird" or different "made up" names that would cause a child to be made fun of (as our German friends put it). You have to name them classic names that I guess have been around Europe forever and considered a "common" name. Gwen Stephanie and Gwenyth Paltrow would have been out of luck with their kids names. Now, if you are a "foreigner" that has moved to Germany and your child is born here and you have a name that they don't consider to be a common place European name, you can show proof that the name you want to give your child would be a "common" name in the country you came from. They even told us that our son "Mason" would probably not have been allowed without petition because it is from a profession, the "stone masons".

4) You do have to bring your own bags to the grocery store or you will be charged about 15 cents per bag. I remember the riots that practically broke out when Seattle wanted to pass a law requiring a 5 cent per bag fee. Really people, its not that big of a deal! Just bring your own reusable back, all kinds of companies are giving them out for free now!

5) Speaking of grocery stores. You have to deposit money into a slot to unlock your shopping cart from the racks to use it for shopping. Most places its a 1 euro coin or 50 cent piece which you then get back once you click your grocery cart back into place. If you don't have a coin, or don't have a lot of shopping to do, you can use the little arm baskets, but beware, they have security tags on them so you can't take them out of the store. The carts also have all four wheels capable in going every direction that does make it easier to move your cart through some of the aisle or out of someones way, but if you are walking through the parking lot and happened to hit a slope in the concrete, its a ab work out just to get the cart to go straight to the direction you want to go!

These are just a few that I remembered for now as I write. More will surely come.

4th of July in Germany

I was excited to host an American Independence Day bbq at our house for our German friends for the 4th of July. To properly prepare for the event, a new friend of mine allowed me to come down to the Ramstein Air Force base and pick up some American decorations and food products from the commissary and BX that is not available to us in the German stores. For those who know me, you know I love to throw a party and decorations and the theme is always key!!! But, as our guest list was a little smaller for this bbq/celebration, I tried to be a little more low key.

For the bbq we did classic Cheeseburgers on the grill, American style potato salad, green salad with Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, and grilled vegetables on skewers. For dessert, I was able to get a chocolate gluten free cake mix from the commissary. As much gluten free breads, pastas and little prepackaged cookies you can find in the German stores, you cannot find any baking mixes that are gluten free for things like brownies, cakies or cookies. So this was a rare find and a special treat. Now you might be saying "why is Heather subjecting everyone to gluten free cake when she is the only one that has Celiac?" Well, because I'm not the only one! Our friend Janine also has Celiac so I was very happy to be able to share with her a traditional American cake that we could both eat! So I made a chocolate cake with (American) store bought white frosting and then did the classic American flag decoration using strawberries and blue berries. The burgers I think went over well and everyone had the salad and tried the dressing and they seemed to think it was ok. Hardly any of our German friends ate the potato salad, so I guess that one was just a little too "off" for their taste. :)

But the cake was a big hit. Surprisingly, no one had heard of frosting and come to think of it, I hadn't seen something like that round here either. Pastry shops and desserts aren't so focused on cakes here and certainly not the frosted ones. So I was pleased that everyone liked it. I was especially pleased that the gluten free cake tasted just like "normal" cakes that I remembered. Its great to know the brand of mix now to use for my dessert fix. (BTW, I made the same brand's chocolate chip cookies from their mix last night and they were great too!)

While eating we talked about some of the stuff we usually did back "home" for the fourth of July and I showed them on You Tube what some of the community parades looked like. There was also some interest in what American money looked like, and since I had just returned from the base where you have to use US dollars, I had some cash fresh on hand. We discussed the things on the bills and then got on the topic of patriotic songs, the pledge of alligance and the Star Spangle Banner national anthem in which I couldn't get the words right without hearing the melody! So, of course, to you tube we went again. All in all we got to share some good patriotic themes with our friends and they liked the decorations and the Jenks family all in our little USA themed shirts :)

The final amusement was of the fact that on the beer bottles (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I picked up some Bud Light and Samual Adams from the base too) had warnings about drinkng while you were pregnant. They all got a kick out of this and the reputation of Americans beeing sue happy and warning labels needing to be on everything since we seemed to lack common sense. You would of course, never find this warning on any alcohol here in Germany.

We Learned a lot at Toys R Us Germany

So today we were prompted to get out of the house and go to Toys R Us/Babies R Us for several reasons today. 1. We are in search of Soy formula as we tried the US kind and it seemed to work best for him and we cant find it at the regular grocery store. 2. Air France still owes us a stroller that we need to hurry before our reimbursment runs out and 3. We wanted to find a store an a/c! Well, after two Babies R Us stores we struck out on finding AC in either place nor did we find any Soy formula. We did get to look at a lot of strollers though. A picture is attached at the wide range of options parents in Europe have to choose from. (If you will remember my post a couple months ago about stroller envy.)

So we also ended up learning a couple little cultural lessons in the process of fulfilling our 3 above mentioned objectives.

1) As we knew already before, Europeans, and Germans in particular seem to be far more open and not so uptight as Americans in regards to sex and sexuality. Our first evidence of this was the fact that you can watch porn on public television late at night with no privacy codes required. Clue number two we discovered at Toys R Us in the children's book section. Andrew and I were looking for some books that had lots of pictures and words that would help us continue with our German language learning process. He came across a book called "Woher die kleiner kinder kommen?" translated into English "Where do babies come from?" Ok, so you might be thinking, yes, we have some books like these in the US, maybe you wouldn't find them at Toys R Us, but still, they are out there. So we started to look through the book and found first that it was a book that you see the picture and then you lift a flap to see what is "inside" or "under" the picture. The first couple seens were to tell the difference between a boy and a girl. So there is a picture of a little girl with clothes on and then a picture with a little boy with clothes on. Then you lift up the flap of their shorts and skirt and you see the anatomically correct gender differences for each. The next page has a picture of a door with a little kid standing in front of it about to open the door. The text says something to the effect of "what are mommy and daddy doing?" Then you open the flap and it actually shows mommy and daddy on a bed "doing it". The opposite page shows mommy and daddy in full naked frontals and then you live of the flap of their private parts to see their internal reproductive organs. The rest of the book kinda goes on to continue how you might actually find an American book to contain things like the mommy's tummy showing the baby inside, etc and the developing stages of the fetus. Does show the mom giving birth with an up close shot. So needless to say, I was a little surprised. I'm still not sure if it was because I disagree with having that discriptive of a book available in a toy store to anyone or that I was just shocked because I grew up in the ever protective American environment where sex and babies was taboo and the dreaded discussion by every parent. Anyways, I took pictures of the book to because I didn't think some people would believe me, but didn't feel comfortable posting it on a public blog, (insert all the comments you'd like on me being a prude, lol) But if you are interested, you can email me and I'll send them and if I know who you are (aka won't be sending them to strangers) then I won't think you are a pervert :)

2) Germans are way into strollers, and I think Europe for all that because many of the strollers came with tags that are EU certified. We think we found a winner for us though and wish that we had waited till moving over here to begin with to buy a stroller, or in our case we were actually gifted one. But I love me the European strollers, though, they are expensive, but I guess when it comes to the comfort of your kids (and I'm sure there is also some European medical theories and what not that go along with the design of said strollers) its worth the money. We even saw a dolly stroller in the toy aisle that looked more high tech than the American umbrella strollers you are used to seeing for kid dolls. These are the pictures that will be posted :)

3) The way the Germans teach their kids to ride a bike is awesome. A friend mentioned to me that they have these bikes with no peddles but I had never seen them before until this trip. The object is to get the kids to push with their feet then coast and get used to balancing on the two wheels but then able to put their feet down when they didn't feel stable anymore. It helps them get the feel for balance without becoming dependent on training wheels and then they can move to a regular bike more easily. I think its genius! Here are some pictures.

The middle of summer

Ok, I have let this blog go unentered for too long. I thought about sitting down and catching up on the last couple months before adding the most recent things but if I waited until that happened we'd be on a plane back to the US and nothing would be written. So, I'm just going to start with this week and from time to time I will have to fill in the past couple months. Apologies in advance for things being so out of order.

Yesterday, July 8th, we took our first bike rides through the forest that our neighborhood backs up to. Our German friends have some favorite spots to ride bikes to and our good friend Christian arranged for us to use his parents bikes and to go on a ride with him to have lunch at a charming Inn about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles?) away from our house. We don't have our bikes yet because, well, they are expensive. There are a few that you can get for cheap at the local Toom Markt (a mini version of a Wal-Mart so to say) but it is nothing like going to a Wal-Mart and being able to get a bike for average riding for about $100. The "cheap" bikes here are like $250-$300. So anyways, we started first with getting the kids taken care of and picked up one of those little kid bike chariots. Still $150 but those are actually much cheaper than the ones in the US.

So the whole process for going to get the chariot and then getting the two bikes from Christian's parents house and then attaching the chariot to the bike and then getting the kids loaded up and then over to Christian's parents house again to inflat the very flat chariot tires only took about 3 hours. (Starting at 10:30am). Poor Christian was hoping to enjoy some lunch at the Inn and it felt as if we weren't going to get there until dinner. By 1:30pm we were finally ready to go on the 5 mile bike ride to get lunch. Above is a picture of the boys in tow.

It was a beautiful ride through the forest and with the temps being in the mid 80s for the past couple weeks, riding through a shaded forest was quite nice, especially with the breeze riding along provided. Its pretty cool how many different trails there are to go riding through the forest and not just little trails for a single bike at a time being hit by tree branches, these were like dirt roads that a small car could easily travel on so while the entire path wasn't always even, it was at least wide enough for the cart to find a relatively steady path for the little chariot.

Once we got to the Inn we couldn't wait for some cold drinks and lunch. We found a nice shady table right next to the entrance to the playground so that we could sit and watch Mason play at his leisure in the park. Mind you, this Inn/train station/restaurant is 130 years old. Christian also told us that the last Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, had visited this Inn during his reign. So the playground was quite old as well, though not 130 years old :) For lunch Andy had some piece of meat covered in a sauce with mushrooms and some french fries, Christian had the ever so popular Curry Wurst with french fries and I had one of my favorite things, a Salad. Now, you say, "A salad! How German is that?" Well, salads in Germany are a lot different than salads in the US. I mean, I guess you can get a salad similar to these in the US, but they are specialty meal salads that you usually pay like $15 dollars for. At most restaurants, you can get a pretty good German salad for like $10 or less and this was the case here and my salad included: Lettuce of course, kidney beans, corn, yellow beans, green beans, tomatoes, ham, sliced eggs, and very yummy cheese in slices rolled and placed to decorate as well :) Then of course, the signature yogurt and herb dressing. For drinks I had a Coke and some bottled water that wasn't supposed to be sparkling so that meant it has just a very tad bit of carbination. Christian had a popular summer drink, a Coke and Koelsch (Coca cola poured into a Koelsch beer) and Andy just had a Koelsch. The popular children's drink is Apfel Schole which is apple juice mixed with sparkling water.

We had a very enjoyable time and got to practice our restaurant German some more which was once again complimented by our waitress who was also happy to show off some of her English and also told us (in German first which we did actually understand) that her daughter was an au pair for an American family in Conneticut. We only switched over to English for the rest of the discussion to explain to Christian where in the US that was. What was a little surprising, and now maybe a little disappointing is that in this remote place, just out side of a not so populated area as it is, there was an American girl eating lunch with a German girl speaking English. It just reminded me that summer study abroad and summer vacation tours of Europe was upon us and we were going to be once again grouped into the class of American tourist and it would be a little harder to disguise ourselves as locals. Better keep learning that German!

I was kinda dreading the ride back because I was so relaxed and new that we still had a ways to go and it was also much warmer than the ride over. Other than our week of riding bikes in Hilton Head, South Carolina last month, neither of us have done much riding the past couple years so our bums were already a little sore.

None the less we returned home, at 6:30pm and it turned out to be a very satisfying way to spend the day. Pictures of the Inn and lunch are attached.