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 hat 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 can 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.