The title, "Gegenwart Bewältigung" needs a bit of explanation...
During our honeymoon driving Betsy and I read a book about German culture and learned the phrase "Vergangenheitsbewältigung," which means "coming to terms with the past," specifically the Nazi era. And Betsy made a song to help us remember it, and so we have. Therefore when thinking about blog names we modified our favorite German phrase-in-a-single-word to mean something like "coming to terms with the present" or as google translate puts it, "contemporary crisis management." Which sums up a lot of the first 3 weeks of getting settled here.
(Betsy adds: 1-800-fragt-de is a number we wished existed. We envision it as a hotline with a friendly, helpful, English-speaking German person on the other line, who could help us understand all of the road signs, customs, words and idioms that we don't quite get yet. "Fragt" is a conjugated version of "fragen" (to ask), and "de" is of course Deutschland.)
Monday, October 31, 2011
Feiertag (Holiday)
The part of Germany that we live in, Baden-Württemburg, apparently has many more state holidays than other parts of Germany. I think we will appreciate this for the opportunities we will have for long weekends of traveling, but we're not quite settled enough now to think of venturing too far. So, the fact that tomorrow is Allerseelen (All Saint's Day), and the University and all stores are closed is just kind of an annoyance. We're still adjusting to the combination of shops closed on Sunday and a small refrigerator (Kühlschrank), which means we need to take extra care to get everything we need on Saturday, but only what will fit in the Kühlschrank. This problem is magnified for us at the moment because we're still learning what everything is in the German grocery stores. Needless to say, we spend a lot of time there.
There is somet
hing nice about Allerseelen, though. That is Huibu. They are some kind of ghost-shaped bread covered in frosting, and they started appearing in bakeries last week. My friend 
Merle says that Huibu is a ghost character in a children's book. Maybe I can find it, because the level of difficulty in German would be about perfect for us right now. Joe and I shared a Huibu for breakfast on Saturday. Here are the before and after shots. All that remained of Huibu before Joe finished him off was his Cheshire cat-like smile.
The weather
here has been beautiful. We were glad to hear that our friends Megan and Kevin completed their bike ride from Switzerland to Vienna (with a stopover in Tübingen). They're traveling in Europe all fall - hiking and biking - and have had great luck timing their break days for nasty weather. We hope their luck holds. Meanwhile, we took advantage of the ni
ce weather to go on a 34 km bike ride up the Neckar River valley yesterday. We saw some cute towns, and serendipitously we came along some kind of fall festival in Unterjesingen, the town just west of Tübingen. We stopped in for some local beer and wine, and polished off our Currywurst with some kind of delicious apple-pie-cake-thing. We felt very proud of ourselves for figuring out what real Germans are up to an a beautiful Sunday.
There is somet
hing nice about Allerseelen, though. That is Huibu. They are some kind of ghost-shaped bread covered in frosting, and they started appearing in bakeries last week. My friend 
Merle says that Huibu is a ghost character in a children's book. Maybe I can find it, because the level of difficulty in German would be about perfect for us right now. Joe and I shared a Huibu for breakfast on Saturday. Here are the before and after shots. All that remained of Huibu before Joe finished him off was his Cheshire cat-like smile.The weather
here has been beautiful. We were glad to hear that our friends Megan and Kevin completed their bike ride from Switzerland to Vienna (with a stopover in Tübingen). They're traveling in Europe all fall - hiking and biking - and have had great luck timing their break days for nasty weather. We hope their luck holds. Meanwhile, we took advantage of the ni
ce weather to go on a 34 km bike ride up the Neckar River valley yesterday. We saw some cute towns, and serendipitously we came along some kind of fall festival in Unterjesingen, the town just west of Tübingen. We stopped in for some local beer and wine, and polished off our Currywurst with some kind of delicious apple-pie-cake-thing. We felt very proud of ourselves for figuring out what real Germans are up to an a beautiful Sunday.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
First Three Weeks in Germany
It has taken us awhile, but we finally have a blog to chronicle our days as newleyweds living in Tübingen, Germany. Our first week was pretty successful. We arrived in Tübingen with all ten of our checked bags. We found an apartment in the first 48 hours of looking. Even though it is not perfect, it was a better option than squatting in a the hay loft of a barn we spotted on the bike path, along said suitcases. Our second week was more difficult, as we were struggling with the language, finding language classes, applying for our residence permit, opening a bank account and most importantly getting INTERNET to our apartment so Joe can work and so we can communicate with you all.
To catch you up on what has been going on, I have pasted in the text of Joe's emails to family in the last two weeks. I have retained his characteristically engineerical typos and misspellings!
Joe's update to family from Wednesday, October 26
Subject: Internet h
at gekommen!
The technicians finished a few minutes ago, around 4pm local time. We now have internet at our house! ...so I can get back to work, after 2months off, but first a few pictures of our new place.
...as I was taking pictures of our apartment, the hotair balloon went right over me. I could hear the roar of the flame. It became a very nice afternoon after a few sprinkles during the first half of the day. ...and, Betsy & I will start language classes next Monday.
...and here are a few more pictures.
6 days ago Megan (brides maid) and Kevin stopped by for 2 nights. They are on a bicycle tour of Europe. Their timing was very good, because it rained (not just misted) the full day they spent with us.
Bebenhausen is the
town directly north of Tubingen in the nationalforest. It is very small, but we have been told that it hosts musicconcerts and other artistic events. Although other access points to the national forest are several hundered meters higher in elevation, Bebenhausen is not too much higher than Tubingen; therefore it is an easy bike ride.
This photo shows the Hoenzollern Castle outside of Hechingen. It is the ancestral home to the Prussian kings, who became the emperors of Germany. in the mid 1800s the prince and future king visited his ancestral home and was taken by the romance of the ruins which go back to around the 11th century. He decided to build a romantic style castle.
The photo at left shows the heron which we have seen nearly every morning in the the brook/drainage ditch across the street.
This is a main bridge in Tubingen which connects the old town to the more commercial & industrial south Tubingen. We live in a residential area east of old town and northeast of the commercial district.
Joe's update to family from Mon., Oct. 10 Saturday night is a difficult time to arrive in Germany --nearly all the stores were closed until Today. We did manage to find a Turkish food shop and a smokey pub to have a locally brewed beer. Betsy is my translator. Since we have been here it has been mostly cloudy to rainy. The weather is cool --between 40F and 60F, but not too windy. Yesterday morning, after Betsy figured out how to get messages from the phone we went to the university to rent a bike for her. I assembled mine, and everything works just fine, so we were off. We biked up to Pfrondorf (~5km [3.2miles] from university and ~300ft elevation gain) which is a village just northeast of Tubingen. Betsy has recieved some phone calls from an ad we placed in the paper on Saturday. We went to see one place Yestarday evening. It is very large, more room than we need, and a bit more than we want to spend, but it has a wonderful view of town including the castle and Schwabain Alps (foothills to the Apls). We will also see a place tomorrow, which may be too small, judging by the advertised area. Hopefully we c
an find a place that is just right, and soon, because we must leave the guest house on Thursday. Yesterday evening we went to the castle, but didn't see much inside. So far the bakeries are very nice, the bike paths are very confusing, and phone calls are very short/kurt. Much is similar to the US, but in different language. The JohnDeer picture I took as I was writing, to show that some things are indeed the same.
To catch you up on what has been going on, I have pasted in the text of Joe's emails to family in the last two weeks. I have retained his characteristically engineerical typos and misspellings!
Joe's update to family from Wednesday, October 26
Subject: Internet h
at gekommen!The technicians finished a few minutes ago, around 4pm local time. We now have internet at our house! ...so I can get back to work, after 2months off, but first a few pictures of our new place.
...as I was taking pictures of our apartment, the hotair balloon went right over me. I could hear the roar of the flame. It became a very nice afternoon after a few sprinkles during the first half of the day. ...and, Betsy & I will start language classes next Monday.
...and here are a few more pictures.
6 days ago Megan (brides maid) and Kevin stopped by for 2 nights. They are on a bicycle tour of Europe. Their timing was very good, because it rained (not just misted) the full day they spent with us.
Bebenhausen is the
town directly north of Tubingen in the nationalforest. It is very small, but we have been told that it hosts musicconcerts and other artistic events. Although other access points to the national forest are several hundered meters higher in elevation, Bebenhausen is not too much higher than Tubingen; therefore it is an easy bike ride.
This photo shows the Hoenzollern Castle outside of Hechingen. It is the ancestral home to the Prussian kings, who became the emperors of Germany. in the mid 1800s the prince and future king visited his ancestral home and was taken by the romance of the ruins which go back to around the 11th century. He decided to build a romantic style castle.
The photo at left shows the heron which we have seen nearly every morning in the the brook/drainage ditch across the street.
This is a main bridge in Tubingen which connects the old town to the more commercial & industrial south Tubingen. We live in a residential area east of old town and northeast of the commercial district.
Joe's update to family from Mon., Oct. 10 Saturday night is a difficult time to arrive in Germany --nearly all the stores were closed until Today. We did manage to find a Turkish food shop and a smokey pub to have a locally brewed beer. Betsy is my translator. Since we have been here it has been mostly cloudy to rainy. The weather is cool --between 40F and 60F, but not too windy. Yesterday morning, after Betsy figured out how to get messages from the phone we went to the university to rent a bike for her. I assembled mine, and everything works just fine, so we were off. We biked up to Pfrondorf (~5km [3.2miles] from university and ~300ft elevation gain) which is a village just northeast of Tubingen. Betsy has recieved some phone calls from an ad we placed in the paper on Saturday. We went to see one place Yestarday evening. It is very large, more room than we need, and a bit more than we want to spend, but it has a wonderful view of town including the castle and Schwabain Alps (foothills to the Apls). We will also see a place tomorrow, which may be too small, judging by the advertised area. Hopefully we c
an find a place that is just right, and soon, because we must leave the guest house on Thursday. Yesterday evening we went to the castle, but didn't see much inside. So far the bakeries are very nice, the bike paths are very confusing, and phone calls are very short/kurt. Much is similar to the US, but in different language. The JohnDeer picture I took as I was writing, to show that some things are indeed the same.
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