Week 40: A Weekend at Home

Since we had some some adventures the preceding week and more to come in following weekends, we decided to spend a weekend home to relax. This was during the cold snap here in Europe. Our winter had been incredibly mild for a couple of New Englanders up to that point--then familiar icy grip of winter set in. We didn't get much in the way of snow, but we did have about two weeks of the low-to-mid teens (degrees F) and I had to start wearing my ski jacket around instead of my normal wool outer layer.

Due to the cold, we spent much of our weekend inside, catching up on laundry, lounging and otherwise relaxing. Of course, one does get cabin fever after being inside for a number of days, so we ventured out for a walk in the cold late in the day on Sunday. We took our usual walk through the fields near our apartment. There were no cows out, but we did pass at least two or three people out walking their dogs. Fun fact: you must play with your dog in Germany at least two times a day for at least one hour each time. (I see our downstairs neighbor doing this in the form of a walk at least twice a day. They have a cute little beagle named Joe.)

Jason doing his best to keep warm--check out our long shadows

The sun was setting as we came back from our walk. Though it was nice to get out and stretch our legs for a bit in the cold, it was even nicer to come back inside, warm those legs up and hunker down on the couch for the remainder of the evening. Luckily, it has warmed up, though it was nice to get a reminder--in retrospect--that it is indeed winter.

Sun setting over our neighborhood

Week 23: Rainy Columbus Day Weekend

(I am about a week behind on posting. I will, hopefully, fully catch up later this week, as for the first time in a while, I'll have a full week with no travel.)

Our long weekend was a bit wet, so we did some more inside based activities, including our first trip to a climbing gym here in Germany (they have *no* pads on the floors in the top rope area--just industrial tile on concrete; despite the fact that I knew Jason wouldn't drop me, it took a while to get mentally over that), followed by a stop by IKEA.

The stop by IKEA was primarily to finish up the living room--or get it *closer* to finished than it was before. As you may remember from an earlier post, since our walls are really bumpy and not really white, I built a screen for the projector. I finished that maybe six weeks ago, finally finding some appropriate material for the screen, and getting a can of white paint. The result isn't too bad, as can be seen below. The picture is a little uneven in places--I think I'll need to do a second coat of paint at some point.

The screen in place

The big gain, though, from the trip to IKEA was to finally get the projector high enough above our heads that we didn't have to squinch down on the couch while watching TV. We ended up deciding on one of IKEA's modular units, which is just about the right height for the projector, when placed upside-down on the top most shelf. I like this position much better as it is going to be great for Wii playing during these long winter nights--something I should have done long ago when we had this setup in RI. I do want to paint the unit. Any ideas for anything interesting? I was thinking a 'film' pattern on the legs...

The projector: Standing Tall

We did get out late on Sunday and went by a local Weinfest in Piesport. We had some sausage, wine and then...Waffeln am Steil! And I thought Americans had cornered the market when it came to putting things on sticks. The stand where we bought them had this great little waffle iron that could make up to four of these babies at once. It was a delicious find, with a little powdered sugar.

Jason and the Waffeln

Piesport is a big wine area (as can be guessed by it having a wine fest in the first place). After indulging in the festival food, we took a walk out next to the Mosel, by some vineyards. In the picture below, the hill behind me is covered in vineyards. There were more vineyards behind Jason. Those have already been picked clean. We still don't know just how they do it. We assume by hand, but it is a huge project, so I was expecting to see a roving band of migrant laborers completing the task, but haven't yet seen proof of that guess. Until that point, I will assume it is gnomes. They are in everyone's gardens.

Mosel valley

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?