Willkommen in Deutschland

I love Germany. In some ways it is much better than I predicted it would be, and in others it’s much worse. I prefer to just think about the better ones.

Way number one? We found a house yesterday. After 25 days in US and German hotels, a house sounds rather appealing right now...even if we have to part with our precious, hot breakfast every morning. Although, I’m sure both my husband and I will suffer from a predictable period of acute agoraphobia when we finally move into our house, which will be in about two weeks!

Getting a rental house here is a pretty cut throat business which entails aggressive spur of the moment decision making, a reliable navigator, proper and excessive schmoozing of the owners, and a lot of spare change. In fact, enough spare change to buy 10,000- 14,000 soda pops (just to get you a set of keys). But the house is wonderful! Best things about this house? Well, first of all, it comes with a (apprx)4.5 foot tall German Grandma next door (she is the cutest, sweetest, and most likely the only 4.5 foot tall German Grandma I’ve ever met). She covers the yard with perfectly cared for flower gardens and from what we hear, she makes you jam and homemade pies! Not that I can actually eat pies (more for my husband!)…but still… just the thought of receiving and smelling one from an adorable Grandma is wonderful enough by itself. The rest of the best things about the house include the view outside the windows of the fog ridden woods behind the house, very awesome landlords, the nearby church that rings it’s bells every day, the semi-iconic “no tank” road sign in the village, and the fact that the landlord’s name is Manuel, which I found rather ironic because it sounds very much like manual, and we’re going to be “consulting” him whenever we need information or instructions concerning the house. Also, it’s big enough for us to entertain a good number of guest. Hint, hint. To all you people that promised you’d come visit us, we will have a ridiculous amount of spare bedrooms and would appreciate some company any time over the next three years. I’m afraid you will have to put up with, well.. me, but there are some benefits. The good news is that my husband makes up for all that I lack in coolness and the German countryside is so intoxicatingly beautiful that sometimes it actually makes me want to cry(well, that and the fact that I can’t speak German yet, I have only one friend, I’m on my period, I miss my family, I don’t have a driving license, a cell phone or a clue as to what I am doing here, and I’m a gluten-free, non-drinking, vegetarian who lives in the land of sweet smelling bakeries, beer and weinerschnitzels).

Enough of that, here’s a list of my favorite things in Germany so far.

#1- My husband. Technically he didn’t come with the country, but he’s still the most fabulous noun I can think of. I’m so glad I get to look at his green eyes whenever I want… which is quite often.

#2-German. We are really focusing on learning to speak it fluently, and I just so happen to LOVE TO STUDY languages! So, I’m happy. Also, I love the grammatical rules of the language. I just love a language that has, and generally follows rules that actually make sense. Not to mention the fact that the list of perfect and close cognates is spectacularly refreshing. So far, my man’s favorite word is Funf (foo-nff). It means five and I’m pretty sure I misspelled it. Either way, the spelling is irrelevant. The best part of this word is just how it sounds when you say it. My favorite word is Ausfahrt. No reason really, other than the fact that it’s freaking hilarious. Ausfahrt means “exit” and is obviously posted very frequently. I’ve decided it’s a pretty simple (and seemingly accurate) test of one’s level of maturity… a test that I failed with flying colors. It’s especially comical to me because the sign is shaped like an arrow, as if notifying you of the direction one should go in order to find an ahss fahhrt. Not that I would be interested in doing that, but perhaps I would stoop to sending someone in that direction if, of course, it didn’t actually mean “exit”, and I just so happened to be in a particularly awful mood.

#3)  25mpg=114 miles an hour on the Autobahn.