This entry was originally sent to friends and family by email on 3 May 2005 as Notes from Germany, Vol.2

While things have not been as exciting lately as they were during the first two weeks, I suppose there have been enough events of note to make it worthwhile to send an update. The big news, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that I have found a house for us to live it while we are here. It may sound like a simple thing, but I certainly found lots of ways of making it complicated. The Heidelberg area is not a sprawling metropolis like northern Virginia. Instead it is a whole series of villages, hamlets, boroughs, and small towns. Each little town is geographically independent of its closest neighbors and each town has its own personality and unique advantages and disadvantages to living there. My preference was to live in a little town called Eppelheim. Eppelheim is a close neighbor of Heidelberg proper, and it is a well ordered, quite, and safe community. It’s close to all of the places that we will need to go to frequently such as church, school, American facilities, and etc. Better yet, Eppelheim is home to my friends Doreen and Dorothea, which would have made Eppelheim immediately feel like home. On the downside, Eppelheim is mostly row houses which are small and very close together, and those little houses in Eppelheim seem very hard to come by. I looked at a couple of places there. One is actually owned by Dorothea, which would have made it ideal, but it was not going to be available until the 1^st of July and I was hoping to have a place to live BEFORE my family arrived. The other place I looked at was a middle unit and the neighborhood just didn’t feel right.

South of Heidelberg about 20 minutes or so is a little down called St. Leon. St. Leon is known for having larger American style single family homes. Lots of folks have built homes in St. Leon with the intent of renting them to Americans just like me. The folks in the housing office tell me that there are about 5000 American’s in the St. Leon area, which I suppose would qualify it as an enclave. The primary downside to living in St. Leon is that it’s a long ways to get anywhere from there. I know what all you folks in Northern Virginia are thinking; “Please tell me he is not about to whine about a 30 minute commute!?!” I know, but closer is always better. I looked a several places in St. Leon in my search and I finally came across one that felt right. It’s not a huge place, only about 1800 sqft, but it is a single family home and it’s brand new. The Landlord and his wife seem very kind and friendly. I hope that remains the case because they live right next door. It’s a four level house. There is a large room in the basement, as well as some storage space and a utility/laundry room. On the main level is a full bath, the kitchen, and the living room/dining room. The 2^nd floor is another full bath and 3 bedrooms. The top floor they call a studio. It is a single room accessed by an extremely vertical spiral staircase. It would make a very nice bedroom in my opinion except for the fact that German houses very seldom have air conditioning and that top room probably gets a bit warm during the summer. There is no carpet in the house and there is an awful lot of glass. The glass doors on the bathrooms did put me off a bit, but I guess I’ll learn to live with them. As a side note, the reason that there is so much glass in the house is because the Landlord is a glass man just like my dad. I suppose that might be another reason why I liked the place. I move in officially on 1 June.

This past Saturday was an awful lot of fun! There was a City Fest (Stadtfest) in Mannheim and I went to check it out. The vendors all sold one of 3 things; crafts/gifts, grilled food, or beer. I’m afraid I can’t tell you how the beer was, but the food was excellent and the gift booths were lots of fun. There was a puppeteer at one booth that was very effectively using a puppet to sell his puppets. I watched him for about 15 minutes and I don’t think there was a single child who walked by that booth without stopping to talk to the puppet. The amazing thing to me was that you could clearly see that guy with his hands in the puppets and you could see him speaking, but the kids all interacted directly with the puppet as if the puppeteer was not there. Amazing! Oh, and I also have discovered that they have dollar stores in Germany, but since everything there is one Euro, each thing actually costs about $1.30.

I have had a couple of opportunities in the last few weeks to see German castles up close. It is truly an amazing thing to think that many of these were built hundreds of years ago. I saw a tower in Neckarsteinach that had a stone engraved with the date 1100. There was a social event for work held at a castle near Schriesheim this last Thursday and the restaurant was AT the castle. That was cool, plus the food was really good.

Several people have asked how I like Germany. The fact is that I like it a lot. I still wish I spoke more German, but that will come with time. As it does my comfort level with normally routine tasks like shopping will increase. There are still lots of challenges ahead I am sure, but I am certainly glad that I am here.

An interesting note about driving in Germany: stoplights here go – green, yellow, red, yellow, green. When I first arrived I was baffled by the idea of having a yellow light before the green and not just before the red. Now that I have a Mini with a manual transmission, it is all starting to make sense. The light turns yellow before green so that you have enough time to clutch, put the car into gear, and be ready to go when the light actually turns green. Ingenious! Chalk up another one to the Germans…

For those of you who are hearing from me for the first time since I have been here, I apologize. I sent out a global email about a month ago, but I did not have access to all of my email addresses. If you would like to have a copy of volume 1, please let me know and I’ll send it along. Also, below is a link to my most recent batch of pictures. If you would like an explanation of any of them, just send me a note and I’ll give you the lowdown. If the link doesn’t work for you, try copying the entire link and pasting it into the address bar of your browser. May you all be as content in your circumstances as I am in mine!