Week 4: Out and About in the Eifel

The area of Germany where we are living is the Eifel region. It has a lot of rolling hills, looking a lot to me like Pennsylvania or upstate New York. We had a long weekend for Memorial Day (yay US holidays!), so took a bit trip to a few interesting places in the area.

On Saturday we went to Luxembourg City and the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial. The cemetery was having a Memorial Day service, of which we were able to see the last 30 or so minutes. We missed the flyover, but did get to hear Taps, the US National Anthem (really, after hearing that, it should only ever be played by military bands--there is no comparison to the tinny version played over loud speakers or sung a cappella at your favorite sporting event), the Luxembourg National Anthem and the 21 gun salute. There were a number of wreaths placed as well, with the oversea Boy and Girl Scouts helping to place them. They, luckily, had some Airmen helping them out, as in many cases, the wreaths were a bit much for 2 or 3 8-10 year-olds to manage.

The majority of the dead here were killed as part of battles in the Ardennes during late 1944 and early 1945. There is one particularly notable VIP here: Gen. Patton, whose grave (as you can see) got a lot of attention.

Gen. Patton's Grave

The other dead, while not forgotten, were not as heavily remembered.

Some of the 5,076 dead from the battles in the Ardennes

The tower in the back is the cemetery chapel. It is a nice little room with a guest book and space to contemplate and, if you are so inclined, pray. Jason took a look through the guest book and there were people from all over the world, including Europe, Australia and from all across the US. It was a nice, though somber, place to spend an afternoon.

On our way back home, we stopped in the town of Echternach, Luxembourg. Jason is planning to come back here later this summer for the dancing procession, during which time I will be in Chicago. We stopped by to stretch our legs a bit, and found there was a small festival going on in town, so we wondered through, had some beer and a bag full of cherries. There were a couple of bachelorette parties among the people groups, complete with coordinated t-shirts and glasses of Champaign--or more probably, Sekt (i.e. Champaign not from the Champaign region of France). We also heard, and then saw, the Dixie-Land style band pictured below, complete with banjo. I am a big fan of such, music, so we listened for a few minutes before moving on.

♪ I wanna go back to the southland,
That "y'all" and "shet-ma-mouth" land ♪

On Sunday, we went to the town of Pruem, where they were celebrating Rhineland-Pfalz Tag. It is a regional fair and had a fantastic parade where each community in the state of Rhineland-Pfalz had a separate float. I've captured a few of the best below. There was, of course, plenty of food--particularly Bratwurst--and an opportunity to see the wares of local vendors. The midway, though, was a bit weak, with only a Ferris Wheel. Each of the groups in the parade also had a booth, where they were handing out their local tourist information. We grabbed a few handfuls, to help us with trip ideas for the rest of the summer.

This alchemist is yelling at his grad student

Germany: Home of Dragons

Today we spent time closer to home, with a trip to Trier. I'll post more about Trier another time. It is the closest large city and has many interesting sites. We also received news that our stuff will finally be here on Friday--at last, the rest of my clothes, our computer and pots and pans. I have a feeling we will spend most of next weekend unpacking as a result. I really, though, am looking most forward to the arrival of my bike, hiking boots and rollerblades. I can't wait to get out on the countryside!

Week 3: Our Apartment

Our building from the Outside

We've been settling into our apartment over the past couple weeks. It is a big and airy ground-floor apartment, about twice the size of what we had in Providence. It is a lot of space and currently we have very little loaner furniture, so there are a lot of echoes. We fixed that somewhat on Saturday with a trip to IKEA, but we won't have everything up and running until some point in (hopefully) early June when all our stuff shows up.

Hello-oo-oo

There are a few things about German houses that are different about any house I have ever lived in the in the US (granted, every place I have ever lived has been in New England, but still...):

• Every window has blackout shades, known as rolladens (turns out it is an American company's name). Every house in our town has them on every window. You can see them in the picture of our building from the front. They have been a great help with the longer days lately and will be super-useful in the living room once our projector arrives.
• The houses are all made out of cinder blocks, which I suppose will keep things cooler in the summer. It also muffles the sounds considerably. Despite the fact we have people living both above and below us, we barely ever hear them.
• We have a reverse-bowl design toilet. I'll leave any further investigation of this as an exercise to the reader.
• There are no screens in the windows. This wasn't so much a surprise to me, as no hotel I have visited in Europe has them either, but it is an exceptional difference.

Additionally, not related directly to the apartment, but relatively close, we've found this area is particular about its trash. We have five separate bins for waste in total:

• Trash
• Recyclable plastic and metal
• Paper
• Glass
• Returnables

Here, there are separate days when each of the first three are picked up. Jason has a matrix posted by the door as a reminder of what can go out when. For the trash, we buy a sticker that goes on our trash bin. When the trash is picked up, they scrape off the sticker. For the recyclable plastic and metal, you buy a yellow bag. Paper goes in it's own bin. Glass is walked to a bin at the end of the street, where you separate it into green, brown and clear (god help you if you have a blue beer bottle). Returnables you take back to the grocery store, where they are returned to the breweries for reuse. The deposit can vary--we had some bottles from last week with a 0.50 Euro return and others with 0.10 Euro.

Granted, all of this isn't too different than what we did in Providence. We had three bins in our apartment there (paper, trash and recyclables--no deposit in RI), plus our compost bin, but everything (but the compost, that went in our bin out back) went on the street on the same day every week. Also, from what we understand, the fines are more serious here if you do get something wrong.

Overall, we are settling nicely. I'll post in the future about the town where we live. Next week I am headed on a short work trip to France and Switzerland. In the meantime, enjoy the view from our bedroom window.

Can you find our neighbor's pigeon cage?

Week 2: Belated Norway

I apologize for the delay in this post. After getting back from Norway, we’ve been doing a bit to get our new (and rather empty) apartment in order. In other words: I have a valid excuse. The apartment is nice and big, though not very bright. I’ll post some on it in my next post. This post is all about Norway.

As many of you know, part of my job requires semi-regular travel. Often this is to places in the Mid-Western US, but with my relocation, (hopefully) more of my trips will be locally here in Europe. And last week was my first, to the suburbs of Olso, Norway.

I came into Olso rather late from Frankfurt through Amsterdam. The Amsterdam airport, at least in the central part, is one of my favorite airports. Very often in European airports, little is located near the gate. Some times not even seats. They instead centralize all the shops, seats and activity in one area of the airport. While this can be a horrible and crowded experience (I’m looking at you, Heathrow), Amsterdam does it very well. The central waiting area is airy AND quiet. You don’t feel like you are part of a crush of humanity. You feel more like you are wondering around a European market square.

From the Olso airport, I took the express train (Jason’s favorite part to the trip, I’ll get to that later) to the suburb where I would be working. I arrived well after mid-night. The express train wasn’t quite express, as they were working on the tracks and put us on buses for the last few stations. Everyone was very helpful and spoke great English, so this was little more than a small annoyance.

I’ll skip the work week, with just a couple quick mentions of items:

How to Live in 100 Square Feet?

• Norway is super expensive. Think $10 drafts and $40 for Indian food dinner for one.
• Oslo is north. Very far north. Sun rise was at 4ish, and set was around 10pm.
• The building I was working in was *beautiful*. Lots of glass and steel. No wonder Norwegians are so happy. Being this building’s janitor would make me happy to be a janitor.

Jason met me in Oslo on Friday night. On Friday afternoon, my coworker and I wondered around Oslo a bit. I then checked into the apartment hotel IKEA showroom where Jason and I spent the weekend. (It was really nice to have that furniture to try out for a few days, as we have an apartment to populate with such things.) I met Jason on the street outside our hotel on Friday night. He was raving about the express train. He wants to bring one to every city. I will let him explain further, if he desires, in the comments.

All I could think of is one of the last scenes in
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age

We really only had the full day on Saturday to see Oslo together, but with close to 18 hours of daylight, that was plenty of time to get a taste of the city. We hit up the following sites:

• Gustav Vigeland Sculpture Park: This is a wonderful site. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
• Aker Brygge: A walking area, by the docks with cafes. Perfect for people watching. We had lunch here and saw some one try to move their power chair in among our cafe’s crowded tables. Yes, Virginia, the rest of the world has winners too.
• Akershus Fortress: A site with history back 800 years. We got to see the dungeon!



Jason Impersonating a Statue

• Oslo Opera House: The only opera house I’ve been where you are encouraged to walk on the roof.

There was definitely more to see, but in our time there we got a nice taste of the city.

Week One: On Base

The view of base from our hotel room.

I arrived in Germany about a week ago, joining Jason in the temporary lodgings on Spangdahlem Air Force Base. My exposure to base life and the military has been quite limited in the past—only a few trips to the Naval Station in Newport, RI, and stories from active and former service member friends and family—so I didn’t have a great idea of what to expect. Additionally, as I commonly tell people, I am liberal enough to be boarder-line communist and thereby have no great love for the *idea* of military action, but with that, I am practical enough to understand the *need* for it and fully appreciate those that serve. With that background in mind, here are some of my initial impressions of the base:

1. I’m really into Taps being played at 9pm. The base plays revelry at 7am, and the German and US national anthems at 5pm. This gives a nice flow to the days (though I have been rarely awake for revelry). And there is really nothing better than Taps to end the day. (Though, the tape played over the loud speaker has a bit at the end where it plays a touch-tone sequence, which distracts from relaxation of the tune.)
2. The atmosphere feels like a college campus on ROTC day. Most of the Airmen are young—I’d say under 25—so to me—at 31—it feels like there are just a bunch of kids in uniforms around, with campus just happening to be very close to an airport. There are bars, places to eat and activity groups, much like my undergrad experience (minus the problem sets, I assume). The base, though, is much cleaner, quieter and orderly than any college campus where I have set foot.
3. The gym is really nice. I guess that is to be expected when one part of your life revolves around being in very good shape, but I was impressed nonetheless.
4. Generally, things run pretty well. Again, I guess this is to be expected as the government does this all the time, but the whole process of getting on base and getting in the system was generally painless. I did have to go to a number of different offices and Jason needed to accompany me for the first day or so, but when I generally think of anything run by the government, I assume it is going to be a Kafkaesque experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find that to not be the case.
5. The mixture of German and American culture on-base is interesting. The majority of the beers available in the bars and stores are German and a number of the employees on base are German, but all other people around you are Americans, which makes for a strange mind shift when you have spent the day out in the countryside speaking bits and pieces of German and now need to order in English.

We do have an apartment and will be moving off base on Monday. We’ll be far enough away to not hear Taps, which is too bad, but we will be able to interact more easily with Germans, which will be welcome. We’ve done some exploring off base, especially after our car arrived on Thursday. The area of the country we are in is beautiful and rural. There are plenty of places to hike and go on bike rides and there are cities a short drive away. My first impression is that it looks much like up-state New York or Vermont. I think we will be at home here quickly.

Next week I am off to Norway on a work trip, so my next post will be regarding that adventure.