Road trip

Brian was able to get his car the other day and he has been busy driving all over the place! We both are rather happy he has it so we don't have to walk everywhere, take a taxi or bum rides from others to get there. Friday night we spent a long time at the Pub getting to meet a few new people and some other obnoxious people who decided to sit down with us, which did not last long.

Saturday morning we both got up and decided to head to the commissary to get some groceries there before heading to a German grocery store. Let me just say this the German store was bigger than most Walmart's and Targets back in the states!!!! There was tons of stuff in the one we went into. So much that we almost got lost a few times walking around. We have decided that next weekend since it is a 4 day that we will venture out to visit two other grocery stores on the economy. There are plenty of grocery stories around here, I'd say probably 6-8 if not more in our small little town!

After we went grocery shopping and came home to put up all our food we got ready to head down to Nürenberg for the afternoon. We got in the car and off we went. Oh did I forget to mention that visibility was close to zero because of all the fog that we had floating around us! Today looks a little better though. Anyway back to our trip :) It was a short drive down the road took us only 20-30 minutes to get into town. We were able to drive through several small towns along the way and see some great churches and other things that we will have to go visit in more detail some time soon! We got to Nürenberg and parked at the one train station. After walking around and not finding much to do we decided to Google a castle or two to go visit. We got lost a few times and it took us an hour and half to drive 12km. This isn't far at all considering we drove 50-60 km in less than 30 minutes! Sure it was all a straight shot the first time and not in a major city but still we got lost. We had a wonderful time once we found the castle. It covers a large area well at least the wall does. I didn't get a chance to take many pictures as I was wanting to get something to eat and warm up some! As we were walking around the little town inside the walls of the castle I spotted a Starbucks, this girl hasn't had any in a month and half. I begged to go get something to warm both of us up! Brian also had to pee really bad so we decided to stop in and get something to drink before walking around more. After Starbucks we headed up the hill to walk around some more. I spotted some tents in an open area right outside of a church or two. We walked over to the one tent and I was in even more heaven than with Starbucks! At last I had found the gingerbread cookies that were covered in a powdered sugar icing. Not my favorite ones but it will have to work until the fall when the ones come out that are dipped in chocolate and I can buy boxes to store in the freezer for next year. Some how we got a little turned around and got lost in this little town. We walked up a huge hill and then back down. Brian remembered after we stopped at Starbucks and got the cookies that his iPhone has an application that will save the location of your car and give you directions back to your car when your ready. Needless to say we WILL be using that from now on when we go out and travel on the weekends! We were hungry and decided to head back to Ansbach to go to Da Enzo's Pizzeria for dinner as Brian now has the car and we don't have to pay for the taxi ride to and from which is more than our dinner was last time.

We ended the afternoon at Da Enzo's for dinner. We both had pizza and split a piece of tiramisu which was to die for. After dinner we came home to relax for a bit before heading out to the Pub with our friends for a little while. We all did not want to stay a long time as we were all tired from our trips and what not. Today we are being bums and not doing much. We can hardly wait for dinner because I'm making tacos and all the fixings. Brian isn't sure if he has work in the morning or not. If he does we probably won't stay up to watch the Super Bowl but if he has it off we most likely will stay up to watch it! I'll be posting pictures this week from our trip. I need to downsize them and look through them to weed out the bad ones!

car...

Brian picked out the car today and put a down payment for it! Hopefully he can pick it up before Friday gets here so we can have a car to ride around in :) woohoooo I can't wait and I know he is super excited.

last few days

The last few days have been wonderful! We have our unaccompanied baggage which included our tv, a set of 4 folding chairs, a small folding table, pots and pans, baking pans/sheets, plates/bowls, silverware, our Wii, towels, clothes and of course some of Brian's military gear. It all came on Friday pretty early into the day which was nice. They gave Brian a time frame of 7am-7pm which is just nuts. Our place is starting to look more like a house than just an empty place with little stuff in it. We are trying to figure out what the best way is to do the curtains because they all have the German track system and not regular American systems! So for the time being we have sheets hanging up in the dinning room covering the window so when it gets to be sunny we can see inside of our place unlike this past Saturday when I couldn't read my laptop or any of my homework papers!

Brian was able to pass his drivers test last week and can now drive in Germany. This is huge news, I plan to go take the test on Wednesday since my homework was a breeze this week due to group work! I've been busy working on submitting applications for jobs around here in hopes of being able to get something. At this point I would be happy with a job that could give me 25-30 hours a week just to get me outta the house and saving some money to travel with later on. We got spoiled and had 3 home cooked meals this past weekend. It's been so nice being able to cook not only with my own pots and pans but in my own kitchen! We are loving it here and have been able to go out into Ansbach and go walk around downtown. We had a short walk through downtown where all the mom and pop shops are along with restaurants. Before that we stopped at the plaza that is like what we'd call a mall back in the states. We will be heading back down there to get some stuff for our house such as curtains and other things hopefully this week or weekend. Brian is busy looking for a car to buy so he doesn't have to walk places anymore. Hopefully the one he is supposed to look at today isn't too highly priced and is in great shape. I'll post later on about that. Now onto the pictures I took of our place on Thursday. Sorry some aren't great but deal with it! I'll be sure to post pictures later this month once we get our stuff (should be next week when we get everything else!) I'm also hoping that I can go with Brian next week to do "Head Start" with him. This is just like going to school, they teach you some German, take you around town, make you order in German and show you the ropes of things around here. If all goes well I should be able to go all week with him.

On to the pictures:

Our front door, sorry it's a bad picture!

Stairs from the top of our floor, looking down to go down stairs.


Let's start off in my favorite room of the house the kitchen! Here is one side of the kitchen. As my family would say it's a one butt kitchen!

Neat shelving in the kitchen... Oh the possibilities of what to put there!

Other half of the kitchen. Yup hard to cook, do dishes, clean with more than one person in there!


Shelving in our dinning room. It's pretty neat and yet we have no clue what to put there just yet.


Dinning room with the loaner table and chairs. Excuse the mess!

One side of the living room.

Behind the front door is a pretty nice coat/shoe closet!


Other side of the living room.

Our hallway towards the bedrooms and bathroom.

Bathroom, pretty new was redone in Sept of last year. Sadly bigger than the kitchen!


Big linen closet inside of the bathroom which is nice!

One side of the Master Bedroom

Wall of closets in the Master Bedroom.

Wall of closets in the spare bedroom. Brian's Army clothing goes on the left side and the right door is dedicated to my scrapbooking supplies :) How AWESOME is that?!?!?!?!

Spare Room that was pretty empty!

Moving truck that came with our stuff on Friday!