Bad Münstereifel

On the second day that the car was available to me since Darren was carpooling to work, I decided that I needed to go somewhere and not waste this opportunity. I thought about just driving around and looking at some of the little villages that are around here that I hadn't seen yet, but then I talked with Mary, our land lady, to see what her recommendations would be. The first place that she recommended was a town called Bad Münstereifel. I looked on the map and since it looked to only be about a half-hour drive from Embken, I decided to go. I got a little bit later start than I had wanted since Mikayla woke up late, but a little before noon we were on our way.

It was my first time really driving by myself with Mikayla to somewhere new, but the trip was pretty easy and the town was a big enough destination in this area so that there were many signs pointing the way. It was well worth the trip. The town was amazing, even though it rained quite a bit of the time that . It is a historical spa town (thus, the name "Bad" in front, which means "bath") located in the Eifel mountain range. The town has kept its medieval walls intact, and the whole town is confined within those walls. It is small enough to see everything by just strolling around it.

Mikayla and I had a good time strolling around, taking pictures, and just enjoying the town. We ate at a little pizza place called Pinocchios, where Mikayla made friends with a nice couple that spoke a little English and flirted with the waiter. We bought an umbrella after we were forced to wait out a downpour in a bookstore, but mostly we just looked at the sights.

The entry gates to the city

Our first view of the city

Mikayla at the restaurant

The restaurant

More of the city

Waiting out the rain deluge

The inside of the city walls

A cross bow window in a gate tower

Zülpich

Zülpich is a city that is a ten-minute drive from our village of Embken. I don't know what the size of the city is, but it is bigger than Embken and is where we go when we need to do make a big grocery shopping trip. It also has a small castle, and the old part of the city where all the fun shops are is enclosed by the old castle walls.

One of the entry gates to the old part of the city

The old castle walls

Last week, the second week that Darren worked, he was able to find one of his coworkers who was willing to carpool in to work a couple of times a week. This leaves me with the use of the car on the days that he rides in with Franz, and I have definitely been enjoying the freedom that comes with having ready transportation. On Tuesday, Mikayla and I were able to take the car and drive into Zülpich for the morning and look around at the city, do some window shopping, and just enjoy the day out. I had forgotten to get money before we left, so we didn't have any money to buy any more than a cone of ice cream, but we had a good time. It was fun sharing a strawberry ice cream cone with Mikayla and strolling around the old part of the city holding her hand. I am not sure there is a sweeter feeling the world than that of her little hand in mine as she walks next to me, pointing out every car and truck that passes on the road and every dog or cat that she sees.

Here are a few more pictures of the city and the castle that I took as we walked around.

Mural that was painted on a concrete fence near the castle


The other end of the mural, showing the castle - "Burg Zülpich"


Flowers that were near the castle


Castle Tower

Downtown Düren

The day after our trip to Aachen with Darren’s coworkers, which was a Sunday on the second weekend we were here, we decided to take a trip into Düren. I hadn’t really spent any time in Düren and Darren had spent most of the time in Düren at work. We mostly wanted to get down to the train station near the center of the city and get a feel for how much it would cost to take the train to different cities. I had also told my cousin Keri that I would check out train prices for her, since she is planning on flying into Germany and then heading to Prague, Czech Republic, early next month.

After the train station, we walked to the main downtown part of the city. Most of the stores weren’t open since it was a Sunday, but we looked around to see what stores were available and found a little café that was open so we could have some coffee. We also found that McDonalds was open. Yes, we know that is cheating and not a good cultural experience, but we were hungry and it was the only thing open in the area.

Downtown Düren


Eating at the Cafe


German McDonalds wrapper


Playing with the doggie in the fountain

Thunderstorms

The area we are in gets some amazing thunderstorms. They mostly come at night and we have been woken up several times in them middle of the night by the sound of driving rain on the windows at the roof and by loud thunder claps that sound like they are right above us. The storm that hit last night also came with wind that sounded like it was going to tear some trees down with it. When we came out of the house this morning the only thing knocked over was a potted tree in the courtyard, though.

It had been a beautiful, warm day yesterday all day. I had even been practicing my German phrase for "the weather is nice today" in case I ran into the little old man that I have been seeing on my walks to the store. He doesn't speak any English (although one of his grandsons does, and he corralled him one day so that the grandson could tell me that the weather was nice), but he keeps trying to talk to me. So, I have been trying to memorize some phrases so we can say a couple of things to each other. I haven't seen him for the past couple of days, but hopefully I will see him soon so I can use one of my phrases. Yesterday, my phrase was "Heute ist das Wetter schön" since it was so nice and warm. But the flies were even worse than usual around our house. When we were having dinner with Mary last night we were talking about how bad the flies were swarming around and she said that she thought there was a thunderstorm coming since they usually get worse right before a thunderstorm. And she was right, even though the weather station hadn't said anything about rain or a storm.

Although not a picture of a thunderstorm (we don't have any since we have mostly been sleeping when they start), here is a picture of Darren standing out in the rain during one of the rainstorms that have hit while we have been here.

Trip to Aachen

On the second weekend we were here, the first after Darren started work, his some of his coworkers invited us to go to Aachen with them. At first the outing was supposed to be with his coworker Waldemar and his wife and their two daughters, the youngest of which is the same age as Mikayla. They had told us of a park near Aachen that they thought would be fun for the girls, and then we were going to head to dinner. However, when we woke up on that Saturday morning, it was raining pretty heavily and was not predicted to get much better throughout the day. Because of the weather the park plans were abandoned and we decided to just head to Aachen and dinner there.

We got a later start than we had originally planned since Mikayla slept late and actually got a good nap and we didn’t want to wake her up. Then we headed to pick up Alexandra near Düren, where Darren works. She is from Warsaw, Poland, and is interning at the company for a month. She had been pretty bored since coming to Germany since she had come alone and didn’t have anyone near her own age in the company to do things with in the evenings. We also speak more German than she does, which is saying quite a bit. She sounded pretty glad to be able to get out and do something with us.

It took us quite awhile to get to the little town that Alexandra’s hotel was in because we got lost a few times. At one point we were driving along a little rutted dirt road alongside the railroad tracks, trying to follow what we thought were the signs to the town. We ended up having to turn around before our car high-centered on the weeds and mounded dirt in the middle of the road. We had kept on the road originally because it looked like on the map that it came out at the right place, but we couldn’t keep going and had to back track a ways to get on a more main road before we could get to her hotel and pick Alexandra up.

Alexandra

And then we were off on the autobahn to Aachen. The area between Aachen and Düren does have a speed limit posted (some areas do not), so we weren’t able to go as fast as we had heard about, but we were able to go faster than we usually drive back home. There was some confusion as to which gas station, exactly, we were supposed to meet Waldemar and his wife at, but we did finally meet up with him, although much later than we had originally said we would meet. They ended up leaving their two daughters at home with a babysitter since we weren’t going to the park. It would have been fun to meet them, but we understood that it is a lot easier to get out and do things if you do not have two young kids in tow.

Once we got to Aachen, we toured around the old part of the city. They bought us a traditional Aachen pastry called Printen, which is a type of chewy gingerbread made into large bars. We had Printen with chocolate, Printen with nuts, Printen with glaze. It was very yummy. We did a little shopping and looked at the cathedral there. It is much smaller than the one in Cologne, but it is much more ornate inside. The stained glass in the windows was amazing. We don’t have any pictures of this trip, since we had left our camera in the car and didn’t notice until we were fairly far away. We hope to get back to Aachen at some point on this trip so we can post some pictures.

After shopping for a bit, we met two more of Darren’s coworkers, Olaf (who had picked us up from the airport) and Andreas, and their girlfriends, Britte and Katherine, for dinner. The place we ate was in a very old and beautiful building, and they had some very good traditional German foods. The dinner ran a little long, and Mikayla got pretty restless by about the middle of it, but it was wonderful. These people that we had dinner with love to laugh and joke, and they made us feel very welcome. They had a good time entertaining Mikayla and trying to get her to talk to them and say words in German. I hope that we get to see them again before we leave.

Laundry Day

It took me awhile and some instruction from Mary, our landlady, but I finally figured out how to operate the washing machine. It turned out to be pretty easy once she explained that she only uses the "mini" cycle and showed me where to put the soap. Mikayla likes to help put the clothes in the washing machine.


Although we do have a dryer, I have been using the clothes line that was provided with the apartment and drying our clothes in the fresh air and sunshine. It is kind of fun to do things that way, although it does require me to actually iron at least Darren's work clothes once they are dry. The dryer is located in the room where Mikayla sleeps, so Darren's preferred method of getting the wrinkles out of his clothes by throwing them in the dryer isn't possible in the mornings before he leaves.

Heimbach

On the first Sunday that we were here in Germany we decided that we wanted to drive around the area a bit to get oriented. We went on a long walk around our villages and to several of the neighboring villages the day before, so we felt like exploring a little further. We first went to Nigedden, which is a bit larger than the village we live in, Embken. The address of our house actually says "Nigedden" since our village is incorporated in the city of Nigedden, even though it is about 8 km away. Nigedden is supposed to have a nice castle you can hike to and tour around in, so we decided to start our day there. Unfortunately, it was raining really hard when we got into Nigedden and didn't show any signs up letting up. So, we continued driving past the town and into the Eifel Wilderness area. It was a very beautiful drive up and down mountains, through picturesque little villages, and over and around the river Rur. We enjoyed the drive, even though Mikayla got a little stir crazy being cooped up for so long and she hadn't yet adjusted to the time zone here.

And then we got to the village of Heimbach. We drove into it by accident, looking for the right road to get us back to Embken, and we were glad to have stumbled upon it. It is nestled along the banks of the Rur, in a little valley that offers many hiking trails. When we first drove into the village it was having some sort of festival that looked like a lot of fun. We thought about stopping, but we needed to get Mikayla back home and into bed. So, we put it on our list of places that we needed to get back to and really explore.

We ended up getting back to visit much earlier than expected. The next Thursday we went back in the evening after Darren got home from work and had dinner there. Going back to Heimbach was great, not only because we wanted the chance to explore the village and its surrounding areas, but also because it gave me the chance to get out of Embken. I really enjoy the village where we live, but I had been going a little stir crazy that week. It was Darren's first week of work, so he was gone all day with the car and tired when he got back. I think that was the first time in my life where I had been truly stuck in a place and not able to get out and do something if I wanted to. It is amazing how trapped I felt, even though Mikayla and I went on a walk every day for at least an hour. But not being able to communicate with most of the people that I saw and not being able to get out of a few-mile radius got to me after a few days, especially since at the time I didn't see any other options for the time that we are here.

So, getting out and going to explore Heimbach and eat out was a very exciting thing. We still need to go on some of the trail hikes that are offered around there, but we had fun walking all over the village and looking at the castle that sits above the city.

Darren and Mikayla with Burg Heimbach in the background

The River Rur at Heimbach

Fiddler Statue by the river

We had a wonderful dinner at a little restaurant called "Zur Alten Muhle", which means "The Old Mill". The building, when it was built in 1657 was a mill and even has the old water wheel on display inside. We ate outside in the patio area since the weather was nice and it gave Mikayla a place to run around. I enjoyed my Jagerschnitzel, which was the first truly German food that I had had since I had cooked most of our meals since we arrived. Mikayla ate most of her sausage and fries, and Darren enjoyed his meal, though neither of us could remember the name of it after he ordered it.

Darren practicing German phrases so he could talk to the waiter

Our meal

Mikayla

Mikayla wandering in and out of the restaurant after the meal. The waiters were really understanding about a little one underfoot and even smiled and tried to get her to talk to them.

Mystery Solved

When we first arrived in Embken, we noticed that many doors, including the one to our apartment had letters written either on the door or above it. The letters were: 20*C+M+B*09. Sometimes, as in the case of our own door, the last two numbers were 08, but most were 09. Once we started noticing it, we noticed it every where we went. In every village we walked to, and even in the bigger cities we noticed it. We wondered if it were some sort of superstitious thing and, if so, what it meant. I finally got around to asking Mary, our landlady, what it meant. It isn't a superstitious thing at all. Every year at Christmas time, or maybe the New Year (I wasn't clear on that), people come around to every one's house dressed as the Three Wise Men and collect money for children's charities. If you give them money, they mark your door in chalk with the above sign to show that you gave. The letters stand for the names of the Three Wise Men, Caspar of Tarsus, Melchior of Persian, and Balthasar of Saba. And the numbers are the year that you gave. Mary looked a little embarrassed and said that she had been gone this past year when they came and that is why the mark on our door ended in the 08.

Culture Shock

This has been quite a bit different than all of the other trips we have taken. I think that the longest we had been gone before was 3 weeks, so the mindset once we got here has needed to be different. Usually on our trips, we just go-go-go and try to see as many things as we can possibly see while we are here because we know our time is short and we can sleep later. This trip has not been like that since we not only have much more time to see things, but we also have to fit Darren working and life with a toddler into the schedule. It has been a little hard to get used to the fact that most days I am just here in the apartment or around our little village and not out seeing different sights. I know that we will get to it, but I have had to keep reminding myself of that.

Another big change is that although when we traveled before we tried to blend in as much as we could into the cultures that we visited, I see now just how untouched by the culture we were. We never had to do the every day things such as grocery shopping, or trying to translate packages of food, or even just figuring out how to use a cell phone that is programmed in a language we can't yet read. It took me quite awhile to make dinner the other night because I had all my books and the computer on to try to translate what the back of a package of spaghetti mix was telling me.

Although culture shock might be putting a bit strongly, here are a few of the funny stories of the mishaps that have happened to us so far.

We went to the grocery store to pick up a few items on the second day we were there. I knew that we needed sugar for our coffee, which is very strong, and I was pretty proud of myself for knowing the word for "sugar" was "zucker." So, while in the store, I picked up a package with this word on it and we bought it. After using it, we noticed that it didn't mix very well into the drinks and Darren thought that it tasted a little sour. I had noticed that there was the word "Gelier" in front of the word "zucker" on the package, but wasn't able to translate the word from any of the books we had brought or any of the online translation sites that I had found. It wasn't until about a week later that I was having breakfast with my landlady that I thought to ask her about it. She laughed and said, "That isn't for you to eat!" It turns out that it is used for making jam. She very nicely told me that she would trade me for my Gelierzucker and give me some regular sugar for my coffee since she said she would be making jam in the fall anyway.

When we were in the city of Aachen with some of Darren's coworkers, we decided to buy a better German-English dictionary. We found a place that sold them and had practiced out how to ask how much the book cost in German, since it wasn't marked on the book. So, he went up to what he thought was the cashier and said out his German phrase, all while his coworker were snickering behind his back. He said the phrase perfectly, but he wasn't asking at the right place and had to do it all over again.

The last time that we were in the store, Darren picked up what he thought was chocolate milk. He got a surprise when he opened it up and tried to drink it, though, because it turned out to be chocolate pudding in a milk carton.

Cooking My First German Meal

I have cooked quite a few meals since we came to Germany, but hadn't really tried to cook anything authentically German. We have had bratwurst, but Darren grilled those on the little barbecue that is in the courtyard of our apartment. So, today I talked to Mary, our landlady, and asked her the best way to cook weinerschnitzel. And even though every time we talk about weinerschnitzel as German food somebody chimes in and says that it really isn't German - it's Austrian- I am going to count this as my first German cooking experience. You can get the dish in many restaurants here, so I think it counts. And it turned out very well. I rounded out the meal with homemade mashed potatoes (Kartoffeln), berry sauce, and steamed fresh green beans (grune Bohnen).

The Corner Store

I love the little store in our village. On most mornings, while Darren is at work, Mikayla and I head down to the store to pick up milk and fresh bread (or brotchen) for breakfast, and maybe some fresh strawberries if they have them. The ladies who run the place are very friendly and speak a little English. I have been trying out my German phrases on them, but so far they just smile at me and reply in English. They like to greet Mikayla with a little pastry when we go, so she gets pretty excited when I say that we are going to walk to the store.

Settling In

It was a bit of work to settle into life here in Germany. We love our little apartment, which is much bigger and more than we expected, and we love our landlady, Mary, who speaks fairly good English and is very helpful. I just had underestimated how hard it would be to get a toddler to change her internal clock by 9 hours. I knew it would be hard, or thought I did, but it was much harder than I had anticipated, especially when I was dealing with jet lag myself. It was great that Darren didn't have to go to work right away, but was able to stay with us and help figure things out and help deal with a little girl who was miserably tired. It is hard enough to deal with jet lag as an adult when you understand the why of it, but it is even harder for a toddler to understand why we are telling her to go to sleep when she wants to be waking up and waking her up when she thinks she should be sleeping. It was the first or second night that we were here and I got woken up at 3 am with her popping her little head above the portable crib that she is sleeping in while she is here and loudly reciting all the words she knows. It took her a little over a week to really transition and start sleeping through the night. We are very thankful that part is over.

In order to get oriented here and also to let Mikayla have time to get settled here, we stuck around Embken for the most part for the first week we were here. We went on many long walks. This is a very rural area with lots of farms growing wheat, corn, peas, and other things that I am not sure of. There are little villages that are dotted all over the place here, and there are paths and trails that lead between all of them. It has been fun to be able to explore the area like this. Once we locate a bike seat for Mikayla, we hope to do even more exploring by bike. In the mean time, though, we are enjoying being able to get out and walk when the weather is nice. On the first weekend we were here, we were up really early because we still hadn't adjusted to the time change. I think that we were all up and had eaten breakfast and were ready to go by 7 am. So, we went on what ended up being almost a 3 hour walk. There was a lake that we wanted to go see, and then we just kept exploring. Here is a picture of one of the trails we were walking on.

The village we are in is very quaint. Sometimes when I am walking around looking at all the buildings here or in one of the little nearby villages, it is hard to believe that I am actually here. Our village has a little church in the center of it that chimes the hours on the steeple bells, has windy little roads that twist and turn and never really go straight, and most of the buildings were not built in this century or the last. The house we are staying in was built in 1631, although I think it is the oldest around here. Here are a few pictures of our village.

Getting Here

The trip over here was actually much easier than expected. After all the hassle of packing and repacking our bags to make sure that we came in under the 50-lb airplane limit and at the same time remember to bring everything we wanted to bring for our 3-month trip, and after trying to get our house ready for Amy, who is renting our house while we are gone, we were finally able to get on the airplane and be on our way. We need to give a big thanks to Paul, Darren's dad, for all his help in organizing our garage so we could park our car in there while we were gone, for driving us to the airport, and for helping us lug our many bags through the airport to get them checked in. We had to do that by ourselves once we got to Germany, and it sure made us appreciate his help even more than we did already.

Mikayla did really well on the flight over. She only threw one screaming/ kicking/ rolling on the ground fit, and that was on the way onto the airplane. When that happened, and the flight attendants had to help us carry our stuff back to our seats because I had my arms full with a flailing toddler, I was bracing myself for a horrible flight. But, God was merciful, because once we actually got back to our seats and she was able to sit in her car seat and play with the video monitor in front her her she did amazing. She played and she slept a little and she watched "Bolt" on her video monitor about 4 times (she loved the doggy, and pointing him out on the screen whenever he came on). Luckily, there was a little girl about her age in the seat in front of her, so she didn't mind that Mikayla was constantly kicking her seat. The older gentleman that was in the seat next to Mikayla was pretty entertained by her and was understanding about the occasional foot in his food or flying toy. Our flight was a direct one from Portland to Frankfurt, so we had it easy in that we could just settle in and stay there and not have to change planes.

Once in Frankfurt, we were able to get through customs with little difficulty. We did have to wait around for quite awhile for our stroller, which we had checked at the gate in Portland. The gate-checked items had accidentally been sent to the baggage claim with the rest of the luggage and had to be picked up and sent back. We waited for about 45 minutes and it wasn't there yet. Since we were starting to get worried about missing our train to Cologne, we decided to just leave the without the stroller and take the chance that we would have to buy a new one when we were here. It was nice that I had the Ergo toddler carrier with me, so that I could strap Mikayla to my back and not have to worry about my arms getting tired while we were walking. It turned out perfectly, though. We met up with the guy who was carrying our stroller to the train terminal, and we were able to retrieve that and the rest of our luggage and get down to the platform for our train with about a minute to spare.

When we arrived in Cologne, we were met by Olaf, one of Darren's coworkers here in Germany. We didn't really have any time to look around Cologne or see any of the sites since he needed to take us where we were going and then get back to work. I am sure that we will get back there to look around at some point on this trip. We somehow managed to squeeze all of our luggage and ourselves into the car, although there were a few moments when I thought we might need to leave some of it in a locker at the train station. And then we were off on the Autobahn. As Mikayla slept peacefully, we flew down the road at about 110 mph, passing other cars like they were standing still. What a welcome to Germany.

Olaf took us through the city of Düren, where Darren works, and then from there to the little village where the apartment that they rented for us is located. The village is called Embken, and it is located about 16 km south of Dueren. It takes Darren about 20 minutes to drive to work in the morning, so he actually has a little bit better of a commute here than he did in Oregon.

Our First Week

Here is a video that Darren made to send to his company back home. It takes you through leaving home and gives you a little bit of an idea of what it has been like here so far. I believe that he is going to try to make these little videos every week or so while we are here, so I will add them to the blog as well.

Our First Post

We have finally gotten this blog up and running! After debating on whether or not to even start a blog, then debating on what the blog should look like, we finally decided that we had better just get something started or we would never actually do anything. So, here it is. We hope you enjoy reading about our lives and our time here in Germany.

For those who do not know, we are here in western Germany for almost 3 months. Darren is here to work for the sister company of his company in Newberg, Oregon, and our daughter, Mikayla, and I are along for the ride. I will post soon about our trip over here and about getting settled in to life here.

Enjoy!