Top moments

These are some of the top moments in time over the past year... moments that would not have happened unless we moved here. They are not trips or months or days, just a couple of minutes or a couple of hours that were really unique.
These are in chronological order, because it was too hard to try and rank them:

• The day our stuff arrived. We packed in July. By late October we could no longer handle living with one pot, one pan, minimal furniture, no blankets, and way too many summer clothes. I tested the limits of what could be baked on foil in the oven, and we wore our clothes so many times they started to fall apart. After many angry thoughts, phone calls, and emails directed at the moving company, we finally got our stuff. It was better than Christmas, because it was everything that was already ours and had come back to us. We had dishes and pictures for the walls and jackets. It was finally time for our apartment to feel like home. 
• Ireland - Dick Mack's. It was a dreary rainy Sunday in Dingle, County Kerry.  Brian and I had seen a storefront that looked like part shoe store, part second hand shop, part your grandfather's attic, and we decided to stop by. Turns out it was actually a bar. We sat down to have a pint. Several hours later we had celebrated the rugby world cup with some Kiwis, talked to a German and Bolivian couple, laughed with a few locals, and sung along with the band. 
• Berlin - QBA Cuban restaurant. In Berlin in February, we found this little island of tropical happiness. I started speaking Spanish to the wait staff, we figured out how Brian could buy a freshly smuggled in Cuban cigar to smoke in the basement. I talked about life with an old guitar player in the band, Brian befriended a Guatemalan man named Negro, we danced a little and laughed a little too.
• Egypt - taxi to the hotel. We were prepared to drive a hard bargain and avoid taxi swindlers at the Cairo airport. We might have gotten mildly swindled but the ride to the hotel was worth it. It was dark out, there were no lanes, just masses of cars swerving and weaving and flashing their lights in an elaborate communication system that made the roads sort of orderly in a chaotic kind of way.  It wasn't scary, just fascinating. Fancy cars, beat up cars, a few donkey carts and self-confident pedestrians... Coming from the land where everyone patiently waits for the "walk" signal, we knew we were in a very foreign country.
• Egypt - Nile gazing. We spent four days and three nights on a boat heading down the Nile. Even though we saw some amazing temples and tombs from ancient Egypt along the way, one of the best parts was sitting on the top deck of the boat and looking at the river bank. We'd pass villages spiked with minarets along the way and hear the Muezzin's call to prayer. Every now and then we'd see a camel munching on the grass. Also on the top deck, we got our guide to tell us what he really thought about politics, living as a Coptic Christian in a Muslim country, and working in the tourism business.On the last night our boat got stuck in the mud, we spend a lot of time watching the other boats pass us by, and eventually a little motorboat took us to shore.
• Budapest - ruin bars. We found two ruin bars in Budapest. The first was in a former factory and you had to pass through a bike shop and a pizza place on your way in. The bar itself was in a courtyard with a bike dangling from the ceiling and a DJ who mixed 40s swing music with Rage Against the Machine. The next night we found our way to a place built into an old  warehouse. It was too cool to have a sign or a menu. The food list was written on a chalkboard in Magyar. We tried our first palinka and Hungarian wine.
• Biking through the sugar beets. This isn't one moment exactly, but more like a recurring moment. After getting lost and frustrated several times, we have found a couple of pretty good bike routes around Hannover. They take us through the fields of sugar beets, barley, corn, and rye. We pass huge modern wind turbines and small old windmills. We go through suburbs that are actually pretty little villages that have been around for a few hundred years. 

Those are the moments so far. I am sure there will be more to come.