Recycling

Today is recycling day in our neighborhood.
(Right now you must be thinking, "Wow, she has really run out of things to write about. This is going to be boring.")
Recycling in Germany is an organizational feat.  First, we have blue bags, which hold paper. Then we have yellow bags, which hold any kind of plastic or aluminum.  Then there is the compost for any kinds of food, eggshells, tea bags, etc. And the garbage for anything that's left.You can get the bags for free at the grocery store, when they have them.  My latest problem is that I ran out of yellow bags and can't seem to find them anywhere, but they have blue bags around every day. So my recyclables just pile up as I continue the search. On Wednesday night everyone puts their bags out on the sidewalk.

Glass can go in the yellow bags but most (not all) of the bottles that are plastic or glass require a deposit when you buy them. When you bring them back to the store there is a machine that sucks them in and scans them to find out the amount of the deposit. Then it prints out a receipt for the amount of credit that you get back, which you can then give to the cashier when you check out next time. Got that straight?

All of these rules had Brian a little baffled so that he would just leave his trash on the counter for me to deal with. That wasn't going to happen for very long, so we invested in this fancy recycling bin instead:

The brown bin on the left is for the compost stuff. We decided to keep that separately in the little storage space in the kitchen - the only thing we have that resembles a closet.  The compost attracts fruit flies so it seemed like a good idea to hide it.

So give the Germans credit for being environmentally conscious. And confusing.

Weekend in Hamburg

Over the weekend we went to Hamburg to visit Dizzy (Tom) and Sonja. It was a great trip for a couple of reasons.
1. It's always fun to see them. They are part of the reason we're here. We are planning a trip to Egypt together over Christmas break!
2. It's good to spend time with people who have known you for years and years, rather than weeks and weeks.
3. The fact that our water heater kept breaking and that our shipment from July has still not arrived put some of us (won't name names here but it wasn't me) in a bad mood and we needed a little diversion.

Hamburg is about 2 hours away on the slow train, and it's a big place. It's the 2nd largest city in Germany after Berlin.We'd been there for Tom and Sonja's wedding last summer, so we didn't feel the need to do a lot of tourist things. Instead we had Pakistani food, rode bikes down to the harbor, walked under the Elbe River through a tunnel, and went to a genuine German housewarming party. It was really not much different than an American party, except they serve soup to the party-goers.

If Germany has Indian summer, that's what we have now. Can a place that has never had American Indians have Indian summer? I'm not sure (thought they are really into the wooden cigar Indian statues and one of the Hannover hockey teams is called the Indians...) Anyway, it's warm in a fall kind of way and it made for a great outdoor weekend. The warm weather also helps because, as I have mentioned before, we are still wearing the clothes we packed in July.  I will spare you the tedious details of what's happening with our shipment, but it is now in England and might not be here for another month.  It's sort of a grieving process - first there's anger, then denial, some other steps I can't remember, and finally we are working on acceptance. So Brian and I decided to just quit being stubborn and go shopping. Brian is already the only person in all of Germany to be wearing shorts. I had only 2 pairs of socks (but lots of sandals) until last week. It's time.

This week's tourism

I had a couple of touristy days this week.
On Tuesday, I went to the Herrenhauser Gardens with Renee, a woman from New York that I met through the Hannover International Women's Club. I don't know the history exactly, but the estate there used to belong to Hannover's royal family and was built in the 1700s. There are huge gardens there - very manicured with hedge mazes, statues, and fountains. Here's more info if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrenhausen_Gardens

Then on Wednesday I went as a chaperone on the International School's 10th grade field trip to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It's about an hour outside of Hannover. The Nazis used it first as a work camp for those Jews and other prisoners with British or American that they hoped to exchange for German POWs. When that didn't really work, they continued bringing other prisoners there from all over Europe for slave labor. At the end of the war, the Nazis shipped prisoners from Polish camps to Bergen-Belsen so they would not be rescued. Eventually most of the prisoners died from starvation or disease. About 50,000 people died there. It was really intense, as you can imagine. Some of the strange things are how peaceful it was there - all the buildings were burned down by the Allies since they were disease-ridden, so it really looks like a big forest preserve. There are some foundations of buildings still there and a cemetery and museum. In the museum is original footage that the British soldiers took when they liberated the camp. Also, there is a large town very nearby. The residents of the town knew what was happening at the camp and it was a part of the local economy for farmers, construction workers, etc who provided supplies. It was a powerful, draining experience for the kids and for me.

Grill shopping - Doner - Froggy shoes

Sorry I haven't posted anything lately. I've actually been really busy this week. More on that later - today we talk barbecue.

A few weeks ago we smelled charcoal coming from the neighbor's balcony. We decided that if they could have a grill then we could have one too! So on Saturday, Brian and I went to the Bauhaus, which is like the German version of Menards. Bauhaus is where my plumbing adventures with the washing machine took place, so I know it pretty well already.

As a tangent, I'll tell you that Brian and I first had lunch at the Doner place near our house (one of them, there are actually 4 or 5 in short walking distance). Doner is Turkish/Mediterranean/Middle Eastern fast food and it's delicious.  Fast food is maybe the wrong word. It's gyros and falafels and kabobs and greek salad and something I have yet to try which is like a Turkish pizza. At some places they also serve pizzas and fries and other items that are probably not worth trying.  It's fresh and cheap and generally not greasy. If you can't tell, I am a big fan. I took the takeout menu home with me so I can practice my German Doner vocabulary.

Anyway, at the Bauhaus we spotted a sturdy little Weber grill - designed in Palatine, IL. It looked like the floor model might be the only one. So I approached the Bauhaus staff member nearby (they usually don't approach you in a store, but let you shop until you are ready for help, which I find very civilized and great also if you don't  speak the language). He told me he did not speak English, so I somehow managed to ask if that grill was the only one in stock. I said it a lot less eloquently than that. I said something like "is the one?" or " you have one?" but he figured it out.  We got a discount since it was the floor model and got a few modest grill tools and some lighter fluid, and headed for the tram.

I took this picture of Brian holding grill tools in the tram station (really dorky of me, I know), which attracted the attention of a man nearby, who then was interested in Brian's five finger (aka froggy) shoes.  So then he had to ask about them.  All I could understand of the question was "your shoes". Brian sort of froze up as he does when people speak to him unexpectedly in German.  I just said, "he doesn't speak German," and the guy walked away. It's a good thing that I wasn't wearing mine too.

In general we have been glad that Germans here are less outgoing than Americans. In the US, people strike up conversations about the five finger shoes all the time. They also (especially in MN) strike up conversations while waiting in line at the grocery store and sometimes while walking down the street.  It's good that doesn't happen here because it would be hard for us to respond.

So we made some delicious cheeseburgers and I learned how to use charcoal, having only gas grill experience thus far. Our old grill, which is still going strong at the house in St Paul, could eat this grill for breakfast. It has 6 burners and a rotisserie. But that's part of the more urban lifestyle we now lead. That and carrying grills around town on public transportation.

Weekends

Now that we have had a few weekends here in Hannover, I am figuring out how they will be different here than back home. Here are a few reasons why:

Yard work - We don't have a yard. So there's none to do. It's not really good or bad because I don't mind digging in the dirt and raking a few million leaves. It's just different. I do miss a little being able to walk out the back door into our garden.

Groceries - There is no big weekly grocery shopping trip here for a few reasons. We don't have a car so I can only buy as much as I can carry. I'm not working Mon-Fri really so I can go to the store any day I like. And food here seems to come in smaller quantities, meaning I shop 3 or 4 times a week instead of once.

Laundry - Brian's big laundry Sunday has now been replaced by 2 or 3 laundry days per week. The washer is not very big and we can only dry 2 loads at a time on the drying rack. It has also gone from being Brian's job to my job, though he is better at folding than I am and helps with that sometimes.

Cleaning - It takes about half the time to clean our apartment as it did our house. Plus I can clean during the week if I want to - it doesn't need to take up half of Sunday.

Church - We found a church not far from our place, so that's easy. Understanding the Mass in German is a little harder. But since it's the same service in any language we have a general idea of what's going on and when to sit, stand, kneel, and repeat.

Newspapers - They have lots of them in German. We read the news online instead.

Bike rides - We haven't done too many, but now that I have a good route figured out and Brian's bike stopped its incessant squeaking we will probably ride more in the near future.

So that is the report for today. Schones Wochenende!

Hockey in Hannover

Last night Brian and I went to our first professional sporting event in Germany. We saw the Hannover Scorpions take on the Iserlohn Roosters at Tui Arena. Even though I am no hockey expert, it was fun to watch. Here are a few observations:

• The "superfans" behind each goal proved to mean that Germans really can be loud if they want to. I wasn't sure before because it's rare to hear one yell. Even the dogs are quiet.
• There were no fuzzy mascots, no cheerleaders, no goofy games between periods or racing M&Ms on the scoreboard. Just hockey - go figure.
• When I tried to buy concessions with money, I got turned down. The nice man at the counter asked for a card, so I took out my bank card. Then he said, half in English, "no no you need a Tui Arena card." I walked away confused but not defeated. I found a kiosk where you buy a debit card and put money on it. 
• The concessions you can buy there include: cold fish sandwiches (which looked good until I realized they were made of cold fish), big soft pretzels and bread, french fries, mini egg rolls, jalapeno poppers (not spicy), and popcorn.

There is less fighting than in U.S. hockey, but it was still fun to watch. Here's the website if you want to check it out: http://www.hannoverscorpions.de/
There is a picture of a fuzzy scorpion mascot on the website, but I never saw one at the game!

Sometimes being a foreigner means feeling like an idiot.

Do you remember the story of Brian  and I standing in front of the tram, waiting for the driver to open the doors, then it pulling away? Well, sometimes being a foreigner means feeling like an idiot. This has happened to me twice already today and it's only 11am. 

First, the cell phones (they are called Handys in Germany). With help from our friend Anne we ordered pre-paid cell phones a few weeks ago. We got our SIM cards in the mail with some instructions. I interpreted the instructions to mean that as soon as the phones arrive, we would put the SIM cards in them and call or go online to activate the account. So we have been waiting and waiting and wondering where the phones went. I tried emailing the company and calling with no success. Finally I emailed Anne to ask her to help. It turns out that we were supposed to register with the SIM cards and THEN they company would send us the phones. I could have done that three weeks ago! So I think I have registered one of them and am waiting for my customer log-in to kick in so I can register the other. I hope it works.

At the grocery store near our house they have some sort of a promotion where you collect stickers. When the cashier asks if I want stickers (I'm pretty sure that's what she is asking) , I just say no. Today when I was checking out she asked if I wanted the stickers and I said no. Then an old woman behind me in line looked at me and asked a question. I sort of stared blankly, shook my head, and said no.  That's usually what I do when people ask me questions that I don't anticipate. Then as I was walking home I realized that she was asking me if she could have my stickers since I didn't want them. What a jerk I am to say no!

There are some things that I do that I remember a lot of my new immigrant clients doing over the years. I carry my phone number and address with me on a little piece of paper in my wallet. I collect letters that I can't read and either wait for someone to help me with them. Sometimes type most of the letters into Google Translate to see if I can understand what they mean. I keep almost all the papers I get because I am not sure what's important and what's not.  I nod and say yes a lot even when I am not sure what's going on.

I hope that as time passes I will feel a little more competent doing day to day things here. But until then I think the best thing is to get comfortable with the fact that sometimes I really don't know what's going on.

What is different here?

(It reminds me of a Sesame Street song... one of these things is not like the other)

Obviously, many things here in Germany are not like they are in the U.S. But what? You might ask. So here are a few observations for you.

Things we have in Germany that they don't usually have in the USA (at least in my experience)

• Bakeries, lots of bakeries, on every other street corner in the city and at least one but probably more than that in every town
• A lot of pharmacies
• A lot of travel agencies
• A lot of pork - wurst (sausage) of all kinds, ham, salami, bacon, schinken (sort of a salty ham)
• Fizzy water everywhere. You can get it in different strengths of fizz - regular, medium, and light
• More bikes than I have ever seen in one place
• Scarves in all types of weather
• Great public transportation
• Really complicated recycling programs
• All sorts of fish and cheeses and cuts of meat I have yet to identify
• Electric tea kettles 
• Lots of Turkish and Mediterranean food

Things they usually have in the USA that we don't have in Germany

• Closets
• Free tap water at restaurants
• All you can eat buffets
• 64 ounce fountain drinks
• 32 ounce lattes
• Obese people
• Target
• Bagels (we found one bagel place, but you can't get a bag to take home)
• Lemonade
• People doing things as they walk or drive - like eating, drinking their 64 ounce sodas, and texting
• Ranch dressing
• Spicy food
• Stores that are open on Sundays

Things that we have in Germany that surprised me a little

• Subway restaurants
• Peanut butter
• A lot of Rollerbladers
• Ebay and Amazon.com

I am sure I'll add to the list as I discover more!

What do I do here?

So now that I don't have a full time job for the first time ever, what do I do with my time?  Right now I have a few different things going on - I am taking an online class for my Masters program, I go to German class twice a week, I am doing a freelance translation project for an organization out of D.C., I am doing a little consulting work for my former job at Portico, and I am coaching cross country at Brian's school.  Come October, cross country and translation will end, but I should be able to start substitute teaching at the school.  Right now we are just waiting for the work permit to go through.

I am pretty busy but it's all on my own time. So I can work a couple of hours, and then go take a bike ride. I am starting to like it a lot!

Getting around

We don't have a car here. The only other time in my life I have been without a car is for a couple of years in college. It's awesome.

Here's why:

• There would be nowhere to park
• Everywhere we have gone so far you can reach by foot or bike or public transit
• We'd have to learn the German traffic rules
• I'm not sure since gas prices are in liters, but I think it would be really expensive

So while I wonder who is driving Sam, my Nissan Altima, around these days, we really don't miss having a car. 

The public transit system here is great. It's designed for a huge annual convention that Hannover has, so it's way more robust than what they need for everyday city use. And that's great for us. We never have to look at a schedule to get around the central city, and even out in the suburbs you never wait too long for a tram or a bus.We haven't taken the train to anywhere far away yet, but that seems to be almost as easy.  

Here's our funny (wasn't at the time) transportation story from yesterday. We had gone out to our friend Andy's  house on Saturday for his son's 2nd birthday party.  They live out in the suburbs so we have to take the tram to the end of the line and catch a bus, which takes about an hour. It was late enough when we were ready to leave that we decided to sleep over and leave the next day.  

Andy dropped us off at the tram stop Sunday morning.  We saw an empty tram pull up, and the driver got off to smoke a cigarette. We decided that any sort of train or bus drivers must smoke, because what else would they do on their brakes? And how would they know when the brake is over unless there was no cigarette left to smoke?  Anyway, the empty tram was sitting there and no one else was around. 

I said to Brian, "Maybe we should push that green button next to the door. Maybe that will open it." 

Brian said, "She obviously sees us and knows we want to get on. I'm sure she will open the doors."

"Yeah, you're right," I said, "she knows we are here."

And two minutes later the tram left, with us still standing at the station.  When the next one pulled up we pushed the green button, and the doors opened, we got on. We had to wait 15 minutes before that tram left.

Our neighborhood

The neighborhood where we live in Hannover is call Sudstadt (South city).  It's a more urban setting than we've lived in before and we are really liking it.  There are two groceries stores in walking distance, as well as restaurants, at least three bakeries, a dry cleaners and two bike shops.  Across the street is an Indian restaurant , where we have gotten friendly with the owner and convinced him to make our food more spicy than they make it for the Germans. Brian found a cigar store to visit regularly and is on good terms with the owner.  This is important because we mailed the humidor from St Paul a month ago and it somehow never arrived here and is probably being enjoyed by a customs agent somewhere. There's a tram stop (subway system) just two blocks away that will get us pretty much anywhere in the metropolitan area, at any time of day. And it's a 10 minute bike ride or 25 minute walk to Brian's school.  So we are in a great spot!

The landlady is supposed to be coming by today. We have never met her and are not sure if she speaks any English. Maybe I will try my very basic German on her (something like "Guten Tag, Danke, Tschuss). Should be interesting.

Our apartment

View from the balcony

It's been a long time since either Brian or I lived in an apartment. I guess when you have a house, you don't really think about renting again. But here we are in our 2 bedroom penthouse. It's not really a penthouse but it's on the 5th floor (4th floor if you are European and start counting with the ground floor at 0) and we like it. It's about 950 square feet if my metric conversion is correct, so there's lots of space.  We can look out the window and watch traffic, people walking down the street, judge how cold it is by what they are wearing (scarves are misleading though), and the other day I threw an allen wrench out the window so that Brian could pick it up on the sidewalk without climbing all the stairs up to our place. We have a little balcony too, which is convenient for  getting fresh air and smoking cigars, for those of us who do that.


Our bedroom is the only room in the house that is mostly finished. So all that's lacking there are some pictures on the wall and our clothes (currently on a ship somewhere, hopefully in Europe). Here's how it looks:
There are no closets in homes here, which I think is common in Europe. So we decided to get some clothing organizers and racks for hangers and put the screens in front to make a pseudo walk-in closet in the bedroom. It seemed like a better idea than buying big wardrobe cabinets, and at that point we were trying to avoid constructing any more Ikea furniture than we had to. Since we couldn't bring our bed, we brought the aerobed on the plane and slept on it for a couple of weeks.  Two person beds here actually have 2 singe size mattresses.  So the frame holds them both but there is definitely a crease in the middle! I spent days trying to find a top sheet and could only find fitted sheets. Then I realized that they don't use top sheets here - just duvets with covers on them.

There is no laundry room in the building, but people here usually have their own washing machines in the kitchen or the bathroom.  Our friends here, Anne and Andy Sallee, helped us find a place that sells used washing machines and arranged a delivery. What that meant was that an older guy and his daughter pulled up in a truck one day with about 10 washing machines in the back of a truck. I picked one, bought it, and the 3 of us hauled it upstairs. The man was huffing so badly and sweating so much I thought he might have a heart attack. Then they couldn't hook it up because we apparently didn't have the right hoses or something. The girl wrote down what I needed and told me in her small amount of English that I had to go to the hardware store. So (thanks to the internet) I figured out where one is and how to get there, found the plumbing section, and showed the note to the lady working there, along with some pictures I had taken from under the sink. She gestured, and repeated herself, and I nodded after catching about 20% of what she said based on the context and her pointing. It took another trip to the hardware store and I eventually hooked up the machine. It was leaking until a plumber came last week to fix our water heater (which is located in the shower, yes, in the shower) and he tightened it up for me. So now our clothes can be clean in lots of small batches, because the machine doesn't hold much. Nobody uses dryers either. I guess they use too much energy or something. So air drying on a rack works ok but we are getting used to much stiffer clothes. I have started to plan laundry day based on the weather forecast.

We had to buy "the kitchen". Meaning that in Germany, people take their appliances, lighting fixtures, and everything else with them when they move. Luckily the former tenants were willing to sell us their fridge and ktichen, which is a unit with a sink, a stove/oven, and some counter space and drawers. Apparently we are lucky they didn't decide to take the doorknobs!

The rest of our apartment is anxiously awaiting the arrival of our stuff. We shipped some furniture, decorations, etc that should help it be more cozy. Here's our living room. We decided not to buy a TV but we did get a projector to plug into the computer to show TV and movies on the wall. In this photo you can see our fancy homemade projector, complete with a stool and cardboard box.

So that's the mundane info about our place. I told you this wouldn't all be exciting!

Why the title?

Hannover, and over again (other than sounding catchy) is a name I picked because it seemed appropriate to our first month in Germany. Like the clothes that we packed in July before our shipment left Saint Paul. We are wearing them over and over again because the shipment has not arrived yet. Apparently it lands in England today, but who knows when it will land on our doorstep. We continue to nag Beltmann movers about it.

My ATM card is a problem that is happening over and over again too. The first one died because the magnetic strip was damaged. I later learned that this was because there's a little magnet in my wallet to make it close. When the bank teller ordered another one she told me (in English, fortunately) that the PIN number for the new card would be the same. When I tried to get cash with it the machine ate the card. So I have ordered yet another. The PIN number arrives separately in the mail 4 days after the card and I have promised not to use it until I get that number.

Going to IKEA seems to happen over and over again too. That one deserves its own post later on.

So I figure that if we just keep trying, maybe more times than we'd planned, we will keep making progress.

How did we get here and what is it like?

Some of you know the story already... but here it is again. Brian and I love to travel and see the world. We always thought it would be great to live abroad. Brian has a couple of friends in Germany (we'll talk about them later). A job opened up at the International School Hannover Region. Brian applied, he was hired, and here we are! That's the short version. The parts I left out involve how we rented out our house, quit our jobs, sold our cars, made an endless amount of arrangements for banking, utilities, insurance, shipping our things (more on that later too), said our goodbyes, and got on the plane. We decided that this sort of an opportunity might never come again and we would be crazy to pass it up. We know that Saint Paul is not going anywhere and would take us back if we wanted to return.

So on August 10th we arrived in Hannover. The director of Brian's school picked us up, groggy, confused, and loaded down with overweight luggage, from the airport. We had about a week to move in to our apartment and learn our way around before Brian started working.

From our first month in Hannover, here are some impressions of the city:

Brian likes to call it the Des Moines of Germany. No offense to Iowans, but I think it's a little more exciting than that. It is however, a small city with a good quality of life, lots to offer if you live here, but nothing too flashy or sophisticated. If you come to visit you might spend a day or two here but there are not a lot of tourist attractions. There are old and new parts of the city, though much of Hannover was bombed in WW2 and has been rebuilt. Hannover is a very green city. It has a big lake called the Maschsee which was created as a public works project under Hitler in the 1930s. The Maschsee is about 1.5 km from our apartment (about 9 minutes running) and has sailboats, pedalboats, and a triathlon that happened last Sunday. I wasn't in it, but have my sights set on next year's race.Here's some info on the lake: http://www.hannover.de/english/tourism_culture/sightseeing/touristische_highlights/maschsee.html

Hannover also has the Eilenreide, which is "Europe's largest urban forest". I haven't totally explored it yet, but it's also not far from our place. Like Saint Paul, there is a zoo, a fairgrounds, a big capitol building, which is the Rathaus, and now us! Here is info on the Rathaus: http://www.hannover.de/english/tourism_culture/sightseeing/touristische_highlights/neurathaus/index.html

Welcome to my blog!

Today is the first day of my new blog, which will be all about my life (and Brian's) in our new city - Hannover, Germany. So thanks for tuning in. I will try to make it interesting!