Should be cleaning...instead, we PLAY!!!

Jeremy was off this past weekend, so we jammed some good times into a short three days.

So, it is true what they say about castles in Germany.  There are a ton of them!  Most of them are nothing but a pile of rocks at this point.  All the really pretty ones are too far away from France to get beaten up.  The little bit of research that I was able to find out about some of the less important Nobles/Knights/Lords has given me a very un-romanticized look at Knights, castles, and the ole days of chivalry.  Because public transportation was not invented back then, they had some sort of Lord/Knight or what have you on every corner.  (They were like the Wal-green of their time.)  They didn't want to travel too far to govern over (crush, steal and destroy) their people.

There are two castles that are 15 minutes from our house in Hutschenhausen.  There's one in Landstuhl and one in K-town.  The one in Landstuhl, Berg Nanstein, was the site of the fall of castles in the Palatinate area.  Franz von Sickingen was a mean SOB of a knight who made it famous and caused its demise.  He was smart, but got greedy.  I'm not going to give an entire history on it, but I can say that even though Landstuhl is small and the castle is not that famous it made many history books and articles  that I've read about in reference to the castles in our area.  Considering how many there are, that's big.  Ok, back to the castle.  Our GPS refused to know where it was.  The road to get there is a driveway to a hotel.  When you get to the castle itself (not open on Mondays, but gives a military discount when it is open--very nice), there is a cafe right outside its walls.  It looks like they have turned part of the castle into a section for parties or receptions.  Its tastefully done though.  The cafe looks over the entire town of Landstuhl and you can see Ramstein Air Base to the right.  They have really nice benches and tables outside, so Jeremy, Harper, and I had a super nice lunch out in the sun watching the heavies take off from the base.  The food was so good and it was the cheapest we've paid for a meal since we've arrived.  When we were finished with our meal, we went to explore the Nanstein.  When I say explore, that is exactly what we did.  The castle has two places you can't go: the tomb of Sickingen and a stairwell that looks like it hasn't been excavated yet.  I mean we must have walked all over that place for an hour.  It was a fun adventure.

Thinking we were up for more adventure, we headed into Kaiserslautern (K-town) to see another one.  Well, this one was not as forgiving as the other.  There were no signs on how to get there.  The GPS, again, was no help.  I actually told Jeremy (I'm the navigator when he drives) to drive up what I thought was a road, but ended up being a walkway with steps at the top.  So we had to back down in our huge car with the locals looking on (stupid Americans).  After asking two different people, we parked behind a church and hiked to the castle.  I will not go into detail on how out of shape the Wood family is, but when I say hike, I really mean cry, sweat, scream, and gnash our teeth hiked to the top of that big ole hill to see a couple of walls left over from a long ago life.  Burgruine Hohenecken was built in 1200 but first mentioned in 1277.  Again, this one was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again by the French.  See the trend here.  All that remains are about 5 walls and most of those have been reinforced with newer construction to keep them from falling over.  The grounds are beautiful.  It's a great place to go if you want a little hike and a picnic lunch at the end.  This one was free (maybe monetarily, but not in blood, sweat and tears).

This ended a great day, but we were beat.  All three of us.

~Tara

Flying Solo

So for those of you who know me, you know that I love the game of soccer or futbol as they call it here in Deutschland. I love it so much that I was willing to get cable for two months just to watch the world cup. So, needless to say, one of the things that I wanted to do while I am here is to get involved in some kind of soccer. I didn't care if it was going to the local pro team to watch games or to play on base.

Like most things in Deutschland I haven't quite figured out how the local soccer league works. What I have figured out is if you walk down to the local field or pitch (I'm trying to educate you here) you will find some info in Deutsch that you can't read or understand, and despite how long you stare at it hoping it will miraculously translate itself it just doesn't happen. But I'm determined, right! So I write down the website, load it into google chrome, which only half translates it, and get the number for the local coach. If I understand it correctly, each village has its own local team. Then the villages play each other. So when I called up the coach, whom I thought was the local coach, he informed me in somewhat broken English that he was no longer the coach.  But he was going to be helpful and "SMS" me the number for he new coach.

So I phoned the coach. When he answers the phone I offer a German greeting and tell him my name...in German. Or at least I hope that's what I said.  He speaks much better English than the previous guy and tells me to show up at the pitch on Tuesday at 7pm. And so, I do.

Now I want to say before I go on that by no means do I think I am the best player, heck I don't even think I'm mediocre. What I can say is that I know who I am as a player.  I know my limits and abilities, and so going into this my plan was not to be the American who tries to show the Germans that Americans can play soccer.  I was going to play it safe and conservative.

Right before I leave to go to practice Tara says to me, "So, are you nervous?" Looking back on it now, I was pretty nervous.

So I show up as directed. And as I watch all of the guys filter in the nervousness and anxiety start to build more and more with each passing moment. I see a guy who looks like a coach (don't ask me how, I just knew).  I tell him who I am and that I spoke with Alex about playing for the team. He tells me that he is also the coach, and at this point despite my best effort to at least appear (apparel-wise) like a futbol player he seems less than impressed. He asks me if I have my boots (cleats), and then shows me to the locker room. Once in the locker room the stares some how increase. The looks I'm getting now are "who is this new guy." Oh and did I forget to mention that it's Mustache March, so I'm totally rocking an awesome pornstache! I get myself together and head to the pitch. The coaches say a lot of things in German that I don't understand, and then everyone, at once, looks at me. I subtly wave indicating not only to them, but to me how uncomfortable this really is.

Everyone grabs a ball and starts doing some drills, the coaches periodically give me instruction in English but for the most part I just did what everyone else was doing. After about 45 minutes worth of drills and running, we play a short ball game. I think this was the moment where the tide turned for me. I played smart, calling for the ball, play the short easy ball, not taking to many touches, moving into space. It wasn't perfect but I think it was enough. With about 30 minutes left, we played a half field scrimmage. It was at this point that some of the guys were starting to actually communicate with me. Calling me by name and playing me the ball with some confidence. I played some good balls and actually made a couple of balls hit the back of the net (no keepers). After the practice the coach came over and asked me some questions. He told me it was a good practice for me, and that the next practice is on Thursday at 7. I guess that means I made it past round one.

But it doesn't end there. I walk back to the locker room to change my boots and collect my things. The rest of the guys are inside as well. They are on the side where the showers are, I'm on the other side....by myself.  One of the guys who really made an effort to not exclude me and who looks like he is 12 (he was probably 17-18) pokes his head around the corner, calls me by name, and hands me a beer (beer and sprite actually, and it was good). With the cap still on it, I gesture for a bottle opener. He takes the beer from me, places it against the beer crate, and slams his hand on the top of the beer forcing the lid off. He then hands me the beer and says, "practice." One of the other guys holds out his non-alcoholic beer (because even though he is old enough to drink, he isn't old enough to drink and then drive) so we can toast one another. I extend my bottle allowing the two to "clank."  A smile crosses my face, I guess I didn't do so bad.

-Jeremy

Some random thoughts

When we moved to Germany, we went through several briefs to prepare us for the upcoming adventure.  One of the pamphlets we received was on culture shock.  I threw it away.  I'm a world traveler.  I know how this works.  Intercultural Communication was my major.  I got this!  Ha!  Was I wrong.

To do anything administratively in Germany is 100 times harder than in the States.  Setting up utilities takes more work and more steps.  Registering your car is pretty easy IF it passes inspection, but having it pass inspection can be tricky.  Germans are very green and they walk and bike everywhere, but they smoke like chimneys.  Dogs are allowed in restaurants, but most German restaurants don't have highchairs for your babies.  A lot of Germans speak English, but hardly any of them have the confidence to do so.  They are as nervous about the language as we are about speaking Deutsch.  The other thing that I have observed about Germans is that they are to-the-point kind of people and have no use for you if they don't know you.  So smiling at you when they pass you on the street is unheard of.  That's a little harsh for me. I may not like you, but for darn sure I'll smile at you.  I'm nice like that.

Jeremy was crazy on top of things before we left Virginia, which was great considering we didn't have a sponsor when we got here, which means we didn't have a place to stay when we got here either.  We had one guy drive us around one day to get some things finished.  (And that guy could have cared less about living here, so he was a real downer.)  If Jeremy hadn't done some of the legwork in the States, I'm sure it would have taken even longer to get things set up.  For example, if you are active duty, you can take your driver's license test online before you get here.  Awesome!  So that first day, Jeremy picked up his license from DTS and was able to rent a car.  Looking back on the whole adventure, I'm not really sure if we would have shipped a vehicle either.  I think I would have liked to sell our Taurus and take the money to buy two beaters for the price of one.  I can guarantee Jeremy would have sold his motorcycle before we left too (in hind sight).

That first day we got here, Jeremy got his driver's license, a rental car, a cell phone (we agree with the pre-paid cell phone way around here), got our customs stuff filled out, got an Esso card (we'll go over that again later), went to the post office, and brought dinner.  It was rough.  The hotel they put us in was terrible (Hotel Atlantis)!  So about four days later, Jeremy got us into the Ramstein Inn.  Much better.  We signed a contract on the first house we looked at.  So far we love our landlords.  Nice people.  Our biggest hurtle was getting internet to our house.  We were without it for a month.  That was pretty hard on both of us.  It's one thing to have to combat culture shock, it's completely another thing to be cut off completely from everything.  After signing a contract with the wrong internet company, signing another contract with the right internet company, we have internet.  When you sign up for internet, you get a phone line along with it.  It's actually more expensive to not have a German land line.  We also signed up for Vonage before we left the States.  It's an internet phone line that acts like it's coming from NC.  This enables us to talk freely back and forth to the States without any problems (well, time difference maybe).

I know this is random and not really written well, but it's hard to cover last months adventures when most of them were a blur.  I'm sure we will cover them again later in detail at some point.  I will cover German trash adventures, but again, I'm not ready for that yet.

~Tara

RSS.....I guess....

So by request I have added two ways to subscribe to our blog.  For those of you who are computer savvy (and you know who you are) just click on the link that says "Subscribe to our Adventure" under the RSS tab.  For those of you that aren't so computer savvy, enter your email address where it says "Enter Your Email Address to Us.", hit submit, write in the letters that appear, and shazam you will get a confirmation email and you will be on your way to a great adventure! It so much fun your hair will stand on end!    -Jeremy

Just your average day...

I can't seem to get ahead on any of the house work.  Because German's don't believe in central air systems, the dust builds up over night.  I could sweep three times a day and it would still be dusty.  Anyway, Jeremy came home early from work today, so we were able to run some errands on base (commissary, exchange, dry cleaners, etc.).  But, tonight we went to dinner in Landstuhl (with our favorite Karl) and had an amazing traditional German meal.  Yummo!  We ate at Le Marecage, which was a beautiful building and the wait staff was great!  I ate, what the waiter described as, a German omelette.  It was sliced potatoes, shrimp, and eggs.  After cooking it kind of forms an omelette shape, but the majority of the food is potatoes.  The potatoes (Kartoffel) are grown small here, not like the ginormous ones in the states.  Man, it was so good!  Anyway, I recommend that restaurant.  Oh, but, they do allow children, but no highchairs and cash only.  This restaurant also allows dogs, though it's such a nice, high-class place I wouldn't have thought so.  Germans love dogs. 


Tomorrow we're going back to Heidelberg.  Our favorite Karl is driving, so what do we care to go again if it's not our gas we're spending.  I'm excited though.  I love this country, and the more we get to travel it, the more familiar we'll get the the roadways, parking, and driving habits.


There are thousands of things I could talk about when it comes to Germany, but I've got four years to write about all the little things that are different from the states.  Just wait until I start talking about the trash in this country.  They are efficient people, but when it comes to trash, I hate them.  All righty then.  Going to bed now.  Big day tomorrow.  


Gute Nacht!


~Tara

Zahl Eins

Okay, so we've been in country for a little over a month, and we have a lot to catch up on! But its super late and I'm going to bed! :-) So we'll write more soon, I promise! You don't want to miss this....just sayin!


-Jeremy