I'm back in Berlin. Catching up, part 1.

And I really need to fill in some of the blank spaces in my blogging, but I'm a bit afraid that if I wait until I start uploading pictures and getting ready to blog chronologically, I will be totally out of the habit and never start again.

So, a quick run through.

• A 27 hour (in total) journey from Duesseldorf to upstate NY, left at 5 am German time, arrived at our final airport at 22:45, got there pretty whipped and late,Friday night but was up by 6 am Saturday morning to visit a close friend.
  
• Discovered that a friend's storage unit had not been cleaned out, as had been promised to the both of us, and therefore we would need to take care of it for him, as he couldn't rely on anyone else.
• Did a bit of shopping, picked up: 2 small coffee grinders, 2 microplanes, a small mandolin, a goodly amount of coffee (from Dunkin' Donuts. For some strange reason, the Berlin outlets have not been receiving their bean shipments over the last several months and I'm not fond of either Starbucks beans or German brands. We have Jamaica Blue for special, but I like DD for regular and decaf.) 
• Mom gave us a great dinner of chicken, corn on the cob, and berry pie (we made two crusts together as I needed practice on my pie crust). I complain all the time about the miniature chickens in Germany: I don't understand how anyone can serve chicken to a family here as they are so small. And gosh, do I miss real corn on the cob, fresh and juicy and still sweet as the sugar has not yet converted to starch.
• Spent some time visiting with the parents and a brother and his wife and kids, whom we miss dearly. Picked up wine boxes and started re-packing the piles of books that had been accumulating for months in my room, as the orders from Amazon came rolling in. These books and the others that I accumulated (as well as the magazines I purchased) were all packed into three wine boxes in preparation for the packing into M-bags and then being shipped to us in Berlin. I know it seems crazy, but it is far more cost effective (and swifter) for me to get my books this way than to bring them into Germany from the UK. While we were getting wine boxes, we saw my mom's car and 
• We also visited the Apple Store: finally decided on what laptop would be the replacement for the German's US work computer, that I have been using for the last year:  I chose the MacBook. I was tempted by the Air--- it's just so cute. But no internal DVD/CR-Rom drive made it a non-starter for me. Also, it's slow. I stared at the MacBook and the MacBook Pro for a while, and then I decided on the MacBook. Why, you ask? I really wanted a small laptop. I have a Dell with a 21" screen and that's the reason that I have been using it as a TV transmitter and carrying the German's lenovo around instead. I craved the lightness and ease of handling. I did get the faster processor, upgrade the memory and buy it in black, though, and it feels sleek and sophisticated. Great key action. I am having a real learning curve on it, though, as my last MacOS was 7.5 and this is Leopard. I have really gotten used to a right mouse button and I need to start understanding how to access those actions with a single button. I got an extended AppleCare warranty and Office (though it's not installed yet) and I will be playing with this more in the future.
• On Sunday up at 6 am gain,visited my friend again. Spent more time with brother and family, did a bit more shopping. Went to Barnes and Nobles and bought scrapping mags, digital photograpy mags, and some scrapping materials. Went out to dinner at a really great Thai-Sushi place where the Thai spiciness gave me tingles and the tuna te-taki melted in my mouth. I have a photo of my dad's sashimi appetizer I will need to add later: it was amazing. How can such a tiny town as that have such great sushi, Indian, Vietnamese and Thai where here in Berlin I can find only one decent Tibetan place (in terms of ethnic restaurants?)
• Monday up at 6 am again to get ourselves down to Westchester county to visit my other brother and his wife and kids, and to visit our dear friends and their daughter, Thing1's best friend. We ran into serious traffic on the Thruway and wound up taking the scenic route through the mountains: lovely, but longer. We were driving my dad's car, so at least we had a navi to help us out. 
•  When we got to P's house, she had an enormous pile of great clothes and shoes to hand down to the girls. That's been such a life saver for us, reducing the amount of clothes we really need to buy for the girls to almost nothing.  I chatted books with the girls for a while (V was reading Breaking Dawn and my copy was in the car;)). We packed them up, and then headed out to have a late breakfast/ early lunch with my brother A, his ex, P and their two girls. I'm sorry that we weren't able to see more of them, they are really growing so quickly.
• Then on to Costco, where we grabbed more wet wipes (those things are da bomb), ink and toner cartridges, some CF and SD cards, some cherries (Rainier and Bing) for my Dad and thence to J's. We drove by our house and saw the kids and the tenant by the fence playing, but with our limited time we drove by: more important to spend time with J and A and E. We spent a lovely evening with them and wound up not leaving until 22:00, leaving poor A exhausted behind us. We took away the fresh and beautiful gingerbread cookies that J made for us, as well as enjoying a wonderful grilled steak dinner. Home around 2 am.
• Up late on Tuesday, at 8 am today! We reserved a U-haul and then had breakfast with the parents and friend L. Dealt with the paperwork at the storage facility, cut the lock and then the German dropped me off for my long awaited ( a year now) hair cut and hi-lites. Mmm. I fell asleep in the chair for a minute. Then I picked up some shoes for the girls at Stride-Rite (black with sparkly sequins for the family wedding when we get back to Germany, pink with flowers and lights for school play shoes), got passport photos taken (for the replacement permanent passport that I need to get as soon as I'm back in Berlin) and then the German picked me up with a full U-Haul. We then headed to our own storage unit and spent several hours going through B's things. Things we felt that he might want or had sentimental meaning we put in our own unit, then we repacked items for the dump and the salvation army. That took us until dark and we met the parents and L again for dinner at the same Thai-sushi place: it was so good that we wanted to eat there again. fter dinner we moved the truck back to the unit, finihed sorting, then left it there and went back to my parents again and chatted late into the evening with dad while we packed and weighed our suitcases and packed and sorted the books and hand me downs and other materials. All the clothing more than 2 years out for the girls was re-sorted and re-packed to stay in our storage unit and be shipped in a year or two.
• Up bright and early on Wednesday morning. Raced to get the truck and dump the dumpables. then we headed to my brother's to give him the donatables and to kiss everyone good-bye. Then dropped the truck off (what kind of vacation would it be if we didn't rent U-Haul and tote that bale on it?) and back to my parent's to get the boxes (three of books, another, 45 lb box of hand me downs) and head to the Post Office. I must say that, considering the mailing prices even when using M-Bags we might, next time, be better off just shipping a partial pallet to ourselves and adding a few boxes of consumables to the lot. We will certainly think about it before then.
• After the post office went back to have a cup of coffee and chat and hang with the folks before my dad went in for a cataract operation (went very well) and we needed to be dropped for our flight to Denver (with a short lay-over in Cincinnati/North Kentucky).

At the airport, we gave L a kiss good-bye and went to deal with the lovely Delta check in process. They really want you to use the computer kiosks to ckeck in, but since we hadn't been able to check in on-line (a consistent problem based, I think, on our mied passports and our travels ending in Germany. We passed through some experimental security equipment and had a relaxing wait for our plane. We volunteered to be bumped, but weren't taken up on the offer (boo).

I'll pick up on the 2nd and 3rd parts of vacation tomorrow.

Catching up. Berlin to Duesseldorf to New York to Denver pt1

It's 5:30 Denver time and I am still running on NY time so I just hopped out of the shower and am sitting down in my (HeavenlyTM) bathrobe. I took a heavenly shower and slept in a heavenly bed on heavenly sheets and know what: it's all true These are heavenly compared to what one gets in Germany. I think my US imported bed is pretty good, but these sheets are fantastic. This is the first time I have stayed in a Westin and it's pretty nice. Strangely enough, this is basically our honeymoon... the longest time the German and I have spent alone together since we got married, as I started a new job the week after our marriage six years ago, and then the kids came along. I kept saying that we would honeymoon when I could go scuba diving, but I am happy enough to take any time now.
This is also, by far, the longest time we have ever left the children (next longest a few months ago, for two nights). They seem to be loving it: Thing1 was answering our calls completely in German by our second call (the girls are with Oma and Opa). They are seeing their cousins every day, swimming in the lake, and becoming fluent in German overnight, it seems. I'm not certain they will want us back.
It has been a busy past week. First, I had an emergency quick hospitalization in Germany. All is well, it was just a little stressful. Since the admitting registrar was completely unfamiliar with non-EU insurance (the German's company has international insurance), she was flustered and things got a little bogged down. Luckily, the process continued while he left work, took Thing2 from the babysitter and joined me at the hospital. It was a good experience, even with that hiccup. All the staff and doctors I came into contact with were warm and helpful, and I found their pseudo-British accents comforting to my Anglophilic ears.

After recovery, I stuck around for long enough to make them happy and then I went home with the German and the girls. That seemed to surprise the staff, as I was told that I could stay for two days. But since we were leaving for the States in 2 days, I wasn't very interested. Maybe next time, if I have a chance to line up the grandparents for babysitting... One hopes, of course, not to have unexpected medical emergencies.

Before hitting the doctor (and then the hospital), I had been at American Services and my emergency passport was initiated- the German picked it up Wednesday morning. Awful photo.

Then the drive Thursday night to NRW and the drive Friday morning to Duesseldorf to leave for upstate New York. That was a 27 hour trip, in total, what with needing to actually drive to the airport, get there early enough and then an 8+ hour layover in Atlanta (the small upstate town we were going to doesn't have that many flights from Atlanta, and we had missed one by 15 minutes). We were an hour late leaving and got about 23:00 local time. Since we had driven from Berlin the night before and gotten only 4 hours of sleep, we were pretty tired. We did see Kung Fu Panda, Made of Honor and Nim's Island and I enjoyed them all.

We had ordered special meals (I was the Asian Vegetarian High Spice and the German was the Muslim) and I can tell you that mine was tastiest (and spiciest) and his was also very good. I found it amusing and telling that the (German) stewardess asked which of the meals was for which, and when we said that either was fine, mentioned that she had not thought our choice was for religious reasons. That is so intrusive, that I can only smile and say that I was not surprised that a German could say that. I told her it was to avoid pork in the meals and she said that Delta did not serve pork and I informed her that domestically she was incorrect. None of us could understand why an airline would serve a foodstuff that is so offensive to so many, but that's Delta for you;).

Home (that is, at my parents) by 23:30 and to bed asap. That was Friday August 1st and it was a very long day!

What a nice weekend.

What a nice weekend it is shaping up to be.
First, it's warm. Over 80F and sunny and yet not too muggy.
Second, we had folks over for dinner on Saturday and had a great time (as I hope they did;)) and
today, we went sailing on the Wannsee. A co-worker of the German's on his current project invited us all (including the girls) and we had a great time. We got to swim a bit off the boat and to see Angelina and Brad's huge mansion in the process of construction (I'll add photos later, perhaps- the thing is huge: so far they have excavated the hillside and built the infrastructure inside the hill as well as a boat garage that looks like it can handle 20 inside boats). Oh, our new neighbors;).

We ate a bite at the marina and then took the S-bahn home.

Can my life really be this chaotic?

I can't find my passport. This is very bad for two reasons.
One: I'm leaving for the US, from Duesseldorf, extremely early next Friday morning.
Two: That was the best ID photo that I have ever taken and I do not expect to see its like again, two children and 6 years later (and thirty pounds to the worse) and many, many sleep deprived years later.

On the plus side, since we live here in Berlin I will be able to get an emergency passport with very little trauma. On the negative, that passport will be good for only one year and I will need to replace it almost immediately with a permanent replacement so that I can get my German visa replaced, which will lead to more standing in line and monetary penalties for my carelessness.

Things that are annoying...

1. My Google Reader is acting up. I have deleted it, exported it, and re-imported it and still the darn thing doesn't give me preview (reads as "marked read") and when I actually mark it as read, doesn't update. I know this seems a small thing, but it is annoying me to no end. I may need to switch to a different Reader if this continues.
2. I want to switch to Wordpress, but I can't bear to give up Feedjit and my WeatherPixies.
3. We have a new TV (32"LCD, very nice). This is after Karstadt confirmed delivery, did not deliver, would not explain why it would not deliver, citing EU "privacy regulations", would not respond to e-mail questions after stating that it would only respond to e-mail questions, would not confirm that the order had been cancelled by them, and so on. So the German went out this weekend, picked up a great JVC floor model, negotiated a super price and we are watching the Lost season finale (yes, we are really that far behind on it) because he was able to get the correct cables to allow us to watch the computer through the TV. But, we still can't get the TV to recognize our code-free DVD/VHS player and it's making the kids really mad to not be able to watch the DVD of Happy Feet that we bought two weeks ago.
4. It's rained every day for the last 8 days and the average temperature has been in the high 50s- low 60s.
5. My refrigerator is a total piece of schlock, as it seems is standard in Germany. In college, I had a 40 year old fridge that was better than the standard German refrigerator, where water customarily runs down the back wall, freezes, and destroys delicate produce. I don't want to store it for the next several years in my basement and doubt that I can get the landlord to split the cost, so I will put up with it for as long as I can. One reason to put up with it is that it seems to be SOP in any case: my in-laws and our prior fridge and all the refrigerators I have seen here operate in this manner. Hard to believe that a 1st world country finds this acceptable.
6. I made chocolate chip cookies today and they came out very flat. I just can't adjust to all the extra fat in the butter: should I add baking powder to help it rise? There's already soda, of course, as I am using the Tollhouse recipe.
7. I took Thing1 to camp today and when I went to pick her up, discovered that she had been on a field trip, by bus. This would not be a problem, per se, except that I had been told that the youngest class wouldn't be going on field trips and I was concerned that there would not be car seats in use. Luckily, when the bus arrived I saw that it was a charter and that the seats were safe for the children, rather than the usual small shuttle bus.

And there are a whole lot of other, smaller annoyances. The plumbing problems, which will require another visit from the plumber after he gives warning to the whole building that the mains need to be shut off, the re-keying of the locks as the prior tenant absconded with the internal keys, the co-tenant in my building who has found it amusing to rip my name off the mailbox (we added it while waiting for the landlord to put in a new tag with both our names, and someone pulled it, with all its tape, off three times).... I need to stop and start thinking of more enjoyable things.

I will go watch Dr. Horrible and put myself in a better mood.

Where is Summer?

While New York is sweltering in an elongated heat wave, the weather here in Berlin as, well, quite chilly. And wet. Will this be last summer all over again?

Yesterday when we ate lunch outside, we had to ask for the patio heater to be turned on (as were all the others next to outside diners). This is really taking the fun out of summer.

Things I haven't been blogging about...

Wow, it's been a lot. I'll probably add photos when I can find the card reader, which is buried in one of the 2 boxes of jumbled cables and wires. Here are some miscellaneous things that have happened in the past three weeks:

• We had the closing party and open house at the children's school. We enjoyed being there, picnicking and seeing some of the parents of the other children (the few we know). We saw a CD loop of the school year and (for a very nominal fee) bought one for each grandparent as well as picking up the school photos that were available. Somehow (hey, my German is not that good) I had missed the notice for the day that they were made, but I'm glad to see the girls look presentable.


• I met another ex-pat blogger, D, who has a son Thing2's age and I've gotten together with her several times. Thing1 just loves B and made him a picture this evening. I think she loves having another little one to boss around. And he's just 10 days younger than Thing2 so she plays well with him as well. It's so great to meet another parent: even the nicest of non-parental ex-pats can't quite understand the circumscription that having young children put's on one's activities and it's wonderful to have someone to chat with while the children play. Because, sometimes, I just don't want to play.


• I met F for lunch in Kreuzberg, where she introduced me to her (wonderful) Pennymarkt, which is chockfull of great fruits, bio products and the dangling carrot that had brought me there: unsweetened applesauce. I bought their entire supply of 14 jars and topped it off with 2 inexpensive carton of Johannesberren(sp?) (I love red currants). We then went to lunch at Mt Everest, after she walked me past herr new Kaiesrs and Liedle, both open til midnight (oh, the envy) where the food was as wonderful as ever but the service was uncharacteristically lacking. My momo balls were served after F had finished her entire meal. I know that it takes a while to prepare those, but the acceptable method would have been to prepare both our meals to be finished at the same time, so that I didn't spend 30 minutes watching her eat so that she could then spend time watching me eat. New (and bad) server.


• The German and I, and D and her husband C, with the children, all went together to a "International Festival" which, strangely, turned out to be just another street fest. But it also had several kiosks which were handing out information on the Wilmersdorf-Charlottenberg section which have already turned out to be useful: one was a compendium of all the spielplatz' in the area and there turns out to be one that I missed just on the other side of my block (there are 5 in my area, 1 quite large and the others varying). I also got a listing of all the Vereins (or sports/fraternal/sororal groups) and will be looking at these soon. Thing1 also got the opportunity to bungee jump again (she did it at the Embassy Opening Street fair) and she loved it. Then we all went to Nollendorf platz and took food from Habibi to the spielplatz til the kids were exhausted. A really nice day.

Summertime Meme (a bit late)

It's been 22 days since Diane tagged me and I am finally starting to breathe again and think of responding! Maybe I can even start blogging again soon. In the meantime, this meme, originating with Fabulous Me (who is such a funny read- go and see) and through Diane, will give me a chance to think about this rapidly passing summer.

So, What Couldn't I live without this Summer?

1. A chance to sit down.
I thought that I wouldn't get that and I've been running on my last dregs of energy. This is my 'week of freedom', when the kids are in school and I have no class and yet my idea of a great time is sitting here, for the first time, and just opening Google reader and catching up on everyone and grabbing a minute to actually blog myself.

2.Fans
As Diane mentioned, fans are a necessity. Here in Berlin, we rarely have warm weather, or anything other than chilly (to my upstate NY senses). But it seems to veer from cold and dank to hot and humid quite rapidly, without passing through temperate. So much so that at one 95F and humid point, I sent the German out to purchase a Klima. I came to my senses the next day and we returned it and got three fans instead. The very few ceiling fans available in Berline don't have extensions (and our new ceilings are quite high) so that's a point on my list for this week: order two ceiling fans/lights with meter extensions and then have them installed when they arrive.

3. Room Darkening Shades
I could look up at what latitude Brelin is and sound erudite, but I'm too tired. Suffice it to say that after suffering SAD during the winter, we now have 19+ hours of sunlight here and I am suffering the children's inability (and lack of desire) to sleep when it's tremendously bright outside. When it started, I got a burst of manic energy (as I've read happens in Alaska during the summer) as the natural cues to wind down disappeared and now I'm just tired. We have had the girls sleeping in our room (which came with shades as the windows are slanted) until we had the opportunity to run a curtain line in their room. Now the flannel sheets from the US will go up to darken the room and we will bring more back from the States (yeah LLBean!) next month.

4.Cottage Cheese
This, along with unsweetened yogurt, is allowing me to survive the German concept of breakfast. That is, they don't have any decent cereals and it's a little warm to be eating imported Irish oatmeal every day.

5.Drinkable Yogurt
Without this, my children would starve to death or I would go insane. My picky older girl will have nothing else for breakfast every day.

And that's about it, because the other things I require are required at all time (books to read, an occasional English language program to watch, US magazines, people with whom to socialize, etc.)

This is so late I'm not going to try to tag anyone. But if you would like to pick this up and run with it, pleaes post back here so I can be sure to check your summer necessities out.

Ausflug

I'm off to the last day of this session of German class: we are having a field trip to the Stasi museum. I'll be sure to let everyone know what it's like;)

added: It was an interesting trip. The museum itself was put together not by the State (which was ashamed) but by a people's group that wanted to preserve the apparatus of the Stasi and eastern Communist regime before it was dismantled and hidden by the apparatchiks.The building itself was a bit grey and 1950's office style because the head of the Stasi was born in the first decade of the 1900's and distrusted modernity. I had an apfelschorle in the canteen and watched the Discovery channel documentary on the Stasi that was playing on loop there (narrated by Roger Moore:)) and that, rather than the museum, really brought home what life was like in that period. They had a listening device that could be attached to your pipes 7 floors down and follow your life upstairs. they really did have cameras in false rocks in woods, and if you count unpaid informers, the Stasi had 500-700,000 informers watching and reporting on 16,000,000 people. That's a number unequalled anywhere else. I need to see The Lives of Others. Also, I'm told that the Stasi prison is more meaningful and I will try to make it there.

I'm back...and I'm very, very tired.

600+ entries cleared out of my GoogleReader queue (I just marked off the food entries, no way was I going to catch up), a few phone calls later, and a look at local upstate NY news and I am starting to feel a bit more in control.

Over the last 10 days we have:

• Put together 29 pieces of Ikea furniture.
• Bought a couch and a washing machine from a discount outlet in NRW (the couch is a nice, angled black leater. The european style that allows pulling a hidden section out to form a bed).
• Brought all our belongings (that could be fitted in the trailer) back from the in-laws. We are still missing the coffee table, end tables and bookcases, but at this point they may stay there (we got a 9.99 end table at Ikea and the ottoman would be in the way of a coffee table).
• Brought all our belongings from the "furnished) apartment we had rented to our new apartment. Lucily, we had only bookcases (they seem to breed around me), printer stands, file cabinet, etc, there in addition to clothing, books and toys.
• Put together "closet" shelving for the closet under the stairs- the only one in the apartment. We still have some commercial shelving to put together for the keller, at which point some of the things stacked up here will go downstairs. This is the first time in 10 months that I have seen my kitchen implements and had the foodstuffs that we brought all unpacked: I have been revelling in Trader Joe's Indian food and whining that Aldi (which owns TJ's) doesn't carry anything remotely spicey.
• Had 6 lights installed and a curtain line put up, on which we have strung 6 curtains. I need to put 6 more up here in the wohnzimmer and then we need to put up lines in the dining area, the vorkuche and the children's room: right now, they are using our room because they couldn't sleep without room darkening curtains or blinds, as the sun is up here past 10. Our room (with slanted windows) came with rollshades.
• We have installed the washing machine and the dryer (which we had brought with us from the US: it was a fortuitous gift from a German family that had brought it to the US only to discover that one cannot retrofit German dryers to work in the US). The washing machine has a distressing leakage problem that we can't seem to fix so we will need to call a plumber in. Perhaps at the same time we can find a way to run a water line to the terrace, which I had hoped to have planted by now, but which I am starting to think will not happen until next year.
• We ordered a kitchen island from Bauhaus: the price was 40% of the analogous price at Ikea. I can't wait until it gets here. We are exploring kashrut right now and the tiny kitchen (that was what I gave up in order to have the area, the light, the windows, and the outdoor spaces) has no place to allow separation of milchig and fleishig. The first 6 months will be a trial and if all works out well, I think we will kasher the kitchen, dishes, et al.

I have unpacked all except for 6 boxes which are living in my cornfield (the vorkuche) right now.

We need: to get the lines up (I am going to use flannel sheets to darken the windows in the girls' room), get some more lights up,get a toaster, CD player/radio and a coffee machine. I think we have done pretty well for this short time, though.

We also need to get a TV. Although my sister-in-law generously gave us her older TV, it can't support our DVD/video player and I need to be able to let the kids see movies and to see the subtitles myself (I find it useful when watching German to read English, and even to read the German while listening to it). I'm also looking for a staning freezer on sale so that I can actually cut back on the 5 days a week that I go shopping with the ability to buy meat only once a week and to prepare meals ahead of time as well as to be able to actually store left-overs.

Enough of that..I hope to talk about at least a few of the non-boring things that we have done recently in the next few days. Tomorrow is my next to last day of German and the last day is an ausflug (field trip) so I hope to have some fun next week, during my week of freedom: it's the last week the kids are in school and yet I won't have class!