Spiel Wochenende

This week has had it's challenges for us. It's been difficult for Joe to work in our small apartment and we're looking forward to moving in May. However, we don't have anywhere to move yet, and most places we find are looking for people to move in March 1. However, we did make plans to look at two places on Monday. The first one, due to communication snafu, had already been let before we arrived after a 20 min. bike ride and taking most of the afternoon off of work. The second one was horrible - claimed to be freshly-renovated, but all that was new was the botched parquette flooring. I've also had difficulty communicating with the support staff in my institute, which makes my workdays sometimes less than pleasant. Still experiencing culture shock, I guess.

At any rate, we've had a nice weekend, which helps to make up for the stresses of the week. Joe has been baking, so I've been treated to home-made pizza crust, sweet bread, and now a quiche crust. I actually enjoyed being in the kitchen for the first time since BD (before dissertation). I made home-made granola from Aunt Linda's recipe, and it helped me feel like we're on track toward getting "back-to-normal" after the craziness of the last year. We also had a successful shopping adventure, where we found everything on our list with minimal effort (including wheat bran) and even managed to cut off German shoppers when a new check-out line (Schlange) formed. Horrible, I know, but very German and "When in Rome..." In addition, we discovered an outdoor flea market where we can buy eco-conscious used items for our future apartment, a wine store with fill-your-own 3 euro/liter table wine, and we discovered that the public library has kids books appropriate to our level of German and that you can check out... GAMES!

This is fantastic and completely timely because we're obsessed with the German strategy game Die Siedler von Catan (Settlers of Catan). We broke down and bought our own Settler's game from Amazon this week so we don't have to wait for our friends Chris and Rachel to invite us to play on their board. But now we have access to all sorts of other games, including "Civilization", which is almost too much game for me. Thank goodness the directions were in English! The board took up our entire dining table. TTFN, as less time writing blogs means more time playing!