Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Swine Flu
We are watching the news on this swine flu outbreak very carefully. I first heard about it Sunday morning at work; V printed out a news article and gave it to me to read. Since then I have been checking the news at every opportunity. V and the kids were planning to fly back to the US next week, but now we are thinking carefully about this. There have been (conflicting) travel warnings here in the EU suggesting avoiding travel to the US right now, plus I am worried it might be difficult for them to return from the US if things get worse. This flu appears to be spreading from human to human and dispersing very quickly.
'The European Union's health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, told reporters she was "not worried at this stage" about a pandemic spreading to Europe but nonetheless urged all travelers to avoid the United States and Mexico "unless it is very urgent for them."'
'The European Union's health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, told reporters she was "not worried at this stage" about a pandemic spreading to Europe but nonetheless urged all travelers to avoid the United States and Mexico "unless it is very urgent for them."'
Monday, April 27, 2009
More Spring
In the last week goslings have appeared following their parents around. Small schools of fry are flowing around in the lake. Winged ants have taken off and all kinds of wildflowers are coming up in the woods. We planted several planters on our porch over the last two weekends for our third story garden. Our cherry tree is past peak and is dropping its pink petals now; our clematis vine from last year has sprouted back out. The kids and I have also planted snapdragons, morning glories, marigolds, maypops, tomatoes, "wildflower mix", gourds, sunflowers, carrots, and an angel trumpet (that's a new one for me). Also, both the kids went fishing last Thursday with A back to the same herring spot in Neustadt on the Baltic. It was much less crowded than last time.
They had better luck than some of the Germans!
They had better luck than some of the Germans!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Car, Visa, Easter and Herring update
We had Easter for the kids on Sunday. V hid plastic eggs with candy inside all over the house. M was the first up with her basket and went around finding them. T had a harder time getting up and was more reluctant. We also decorated out "tree" for Easter. We have a bunch of long willow sticks in a vase in our living room. Last fall we hung fall decorations on them (yellow, orange and red felt cut in leaf shapes). Then for Christmas we hung ornaments on them. Now we have dyed easter eggs hanging from the twigs. It turns out that Germans also do this. In many peoples yards there is a small bush with multicolored eggs hanging on it.
On Tuesday a co-worker, A, was going to go fishing for herring after work and invited T and I along. We went to a coastal town east of here called Neustadt (New City). A had found a "secret" place and the herring season was just beginning. People around here seem to love herring. We (expats) have a joke about Denmark just over the border. The food variety there is endless, you can get herring any way you like it (which is true, I've never seen so many variations on one theme). Here a favorite snack is "rollmop", which are raw picked herring fillets rolled up in a ball. So T and I went with A to Neustadt and just as he was pulling into the harbor we saw the banks along the inlet from the ocean lined with people fishing for herring. His secret spot wasn't as secret as he thought. A put on his herring rig; it's a "ladder" of hooks with a butterfly weight at the end. We found a small gap in the line and he showed T how to cast it out and reel it in. T did very well. He cast it out many times and didn't hit anyone standing next to us or tangle the lines up (I would have been terrified of tangling all those lines if I was casting). I was careful not to touch the pole when the line was in the water because I don't have a fishing license (yet). A brought two poles so he and T fished for a while. The herring started biting after 7pm as the sun was setting. T reeled one in and was very excited about it. We got the hook off and put it in the cooler and were covered in scales. They have large scales that come off the fish easily but seem to glue themselves to your hands. Every now and then T went back to the cooler to look at his fish some more. They only got one more after that and we packed up at about 8:30 and headed back. A says in the next couple weeks they should start biting more and is thinking of going back next week.
Wednesday morning I went to the foreigners office to renew our visas early. V and the kids are flying to the US and will be away when the visas expire, so I wanted to have everything current for their return. (I had trouble last time at the airport flying to Germany without a return or through ticket and had to show them my work visa to get the tickets.) It was very easy this time because they already had all the paperwork from last year. Essentially I just paid the 90 euro fee and they printed the visas and stuck them to the passport pages. When I double checked them I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were good through 2012! So I won't have to repeat the process again for a few years. I'll probably need a replacement passport (mine is running out of pages and expires in 2012) and have to get a new visa for that before the visas themselves expire.
Then, this morning, I went to a car insurance office to ask about getting insurance. Things work very differently here. You can buy a car, and drive it home, before having insurance from an insurance company. There is some special plate you put on it first and you can use that for a short while before getting insurance. In fact, we can't even get insurance until we have a car, because the rate depends on the type of car (models with higher accident rates in the year before have higher insurance rates, and newer cars have lower rates). I also found out that the German insurance is good in countries outside Germany. So we don't have to worry about getting additional insurance if we drive over a border to a neighboring country. One frustrating thing is we start off with a very high rate, 133% of the "standard" (asking around most people seem to have less than 100%, A for example is at 45%). This is because we have no driving record in Germany, so it is like we are new drivers. I asked if we could get a lower rate if we got insurance records from the US to prove that we have been driving for years without accidents, but the guy said that it wouldn't help because it wasn't in Germany (I have heard mixed things about this). At any rate, even at 133% plus gas, it will be much cheaper, and faster, then what we are currently paying to take the kids to school on the public bus.
I feel like things are finally starting to come together as far as the official paperwork side of living in Germany, it took a year to get this far, but I think things will be easier from here as we get the most important and most difficult parts out of the way. Really the hardest part of all of this so far was the problems the school created for us. Even getting the car and drivers license is directly related to that, but now resolving the mess with the public school is all falling into place. I am feeling very optimistic about the next few years.
On Tuesday a co-worker, A, was going to go fishing for herring after work and invited T and I along. We went to a coastal town east of here called Neustadt (New City). A had found a "secret" place and the herring season was just beginning. People around here seem to love herring. We (expats) have a joke about Denmark just over the border. The food variety there is endless, you can get herring any way you like it (which is true, I've never seen so many variations on one theme). Here a favorite snack is "rollmop", which are raw picked herring fillets rolled up in a ball. So T and I went with A to Neustadt and just as he was pulling into the harbor we saw the banks along the inlet from the ocean lined with people fishing for herring. His secret spot wasn't as secret as he thought. A put on his herring rig; it's a "ladder" of hooks with a butterfly weight at the end. We found a small gap in the line and he showed T how to cast it out and reel it in. T did very well. He cast it out many times and didn't hit anyone standing next to us or tangle the lines up (I would have been terrified of tangling all those lines if I was casting). I was careful not to touch the pole when the line was in the water because I don't have a fishing license (yet). A brought two poles so he and T fished for a while. The herring started biting after 7pm as the sun was setting. T reeled one in and was very excited about it. We got the hook off and put it in the cooler and were covered in scales. They have large scales that come off the fish easily but seem to glue themselves to your hands. Every now and then T went back to the cooler to look at his fish some more. They only got one more after that and we packed up at about 8:30 and headed back. A says in the next couple weeks they should start biting more and is thinking of going back next week.
Wednesday morning I went to the foreigners office to renew our visas early. V and the kids are flying to the US and will be away when the visas expire, so I wanted to have everything current for their return. (I had trouble last time at the airport flying to Germany without a return or through ticket and had to show them my work visa to get the tickets.) It was very easy this time because they already had all the paperwork from last year. Essentially I just paid the 90 euro fee and they printed the visas and stuck them to the passport pages. When I double checked them I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were good through 2012! So I won't have to repeat the process again for a few years. I'll probably need a replacement passport (mine is running out of pages and expires in 2012) and have to get a new visa for that before the visas themselves expire.
Then, this morning, I went to a car insurance office to ask about getting insurance. Things work very differently here. You can buy a car, and drive it home, before having insurance from an insurance company. There is some special plate you put on it first and you can use that for a short while before getting insurance. In fact, we can't even get insurance until we have a car, because the rate depends on the type of car (models with higher accident rates in the year before have higher insurance rates, and newer cars have lower rates). I also found out that the German insurance is good in countries outside Germany. So we don't have to worry about getting additional insurance if we drive over a border to a neighboring country. One frustrating thing is we start off with a very high rate, 133% of the "standard" (asking around most people seem to have less than 100%, A for example is at 45%). This is because we have no driving record in Germany, so it is like we are new drivers. I asked if we could get a lower rate if we got insurance records from the US to prove that we have been driving for years without accidents, but the guy said that it wouldn't help because it wasn't in Germany (I have heard mixed things about this). At any rate, even at 133% plus gas, it will be much cheaper, and faster, then what we are currently paying to take the kids to school on the public bus.
I feel like things are finally starting to come together as far as the official paperwork side of living in Germany, it took a year to get this far, but I think things will be easier from here as we get the most important and most difficult parts out of the way. Really the hardest part of all of this so far was the problems the school created for us. Even getting the car and drivers license is directly related to that, but now resolving the mess with the public school is all falling into place. I am feeling very optimistic about the next few years.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Spring is here with a vengence
The switch from winter to spring is very dramatic this far north. In the last few weeks it is like someone suddenly flipped a switch and the cold dark days disappeared. Now the days are much longer and it is much warmer and sunnier. Flowers are coming up everywhere and the trees are putting out new leaves. The other day I saw spiderling threads all over the dead weeds from the winter and a small herd of deer next to one of the lakes has suddenly reappeared (a buck and three does). Last night just after the sun went down I saw a bat out, first one I've seen this year. A few days ago the years first thunderstorms came through and it lightninged and poured rain for a few hours.
One thing I was wondering about. A while back it was very dark at night and I heard a coot (Blesschen(sp?) in German) out on the lake. They have a very short, sharp "tick" sound they sometimes make and this one was doing it. I couldn't help but wonder if the sound echoed off of the bank and trees at the waters edge and helped the coot echolocate in the dark, to know how far it was from the bank. ?
One thing I was wondering about. A while back it was very dark at night and I heard a coot (Blesschen(sp?) in German) out on the lake. They have a very short, sharp "tick" sound they sometimes make and this one was doing it. I couldn't help but wonder if the sound echoed off of the bank and trees at the waters edge and helped the coot echolocate in the dark, to know how far it was from the bank. ?
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
I have a driving license now!
Who said Germans couldn't be bribed...just kidding.
Actually, this is the main reason I haven't kept up with this blog (or much of anything else) in the past weeks. I have spent every possible bit of spare time studying for the driving test. Starting out I tried to learn the rules and a few weeks ago I went to Kiel (just after coming back from the US) to take the test. There was a lot of confusion at the get-go because the people taking the test were organized by driving school and I didn't have a driving school, so they had to consult and figure out if it was OK for me to take the test. First of all, the rules in the teaching book I used were badly translated, for example, "half of your speedo is a useful driving aid," which half? But in general I could understand what they meant. But the questions on the driving test were also badly translated and relied heavily on British English. "What must you consider at a zebra crossing?" I don't know, get your camera ready? or "What must you consider at a St. Andrew's Cross?" Religious pilgrims? Anyway, I didn't do too bad, I only got 10% of the questions wrong, including, for example, that there is a special sign I didn't know about that means you can park a trailer without a car for more than 2 weeks in the designated lot. I struggled trying to understand many of the questions and answers and finally was the last one to turn in my test and get it graded. The guy giving the test seemed to be very upset with me and said that I had to come back in two weeks (which ended up being three weeks) and take it again and that "You must learn our laws." The only thing he said to me in English.
For the second test I tried a different strategy. V found someone on the internet in Munich that not only had the teaching book but had copies of the official tests with all the possible test questions and an answer key. I made copies of the tests (32 of them, 4 pages each) cut the individual questions out, wrote the answers on the back, and used them as flash cards to memorize the answers to each question. The ones I had trouble with in each batch I saved out and went over them twice a day. Every few days I would go back over old ones and I worked my way through the 100s of possible questions--in writing this it sounds easy but it was a huge amount of work. At the end of three weeks of this I didn't even have to read the question. I recognized it from the pictures and could tick off the rights answers without even thinking about it. (Note, that I still don't have a clue what many of these questions and answers are actually referring to, the terms are bizarre and include the metric system which doesn't mean a lot to me intuitively, I just memorized which bizarre answers to check with which bizarre questions.) Yesterday I went back to take the driving test again. It was with the same guy administering the test. He handed mine out first because it was in "English" then proceeded to hand out the German version to the other people. I immediately flew through page one, check check check..., page two..., three..., four..., done! Clicked my pen closed, set my pen and test down on the table and looked up. He had just sat down from passing out the tests and was staring straight at me. I got the feeling I had finished it too fast, especially given my performance last time, and that everyone else seemed to still be on page one or two at the most (I know this is bragging, but honestly, this is what happened). So I picked my test and pen back up and pretended to thoughtfully study the questions some more. After a while I looked up and he was looking at me and motioned for me to come up. I handed him my test, he carefully went through each page with the key and checked it, then looked up and stared straight at me again (for the third time), then went back over the test again with the key trying to find a mistake (the only time I've seen him go over a test twice). Then he signed off on it and I had all of the questions right--in record time!
The next step in getting a German license is taking a first aid class, which I need to find one and make time to take it. I went to the county-house this morning to hand in the receipt that I had passed the driving test to the driving license office and to ask them where I could find a first aid class to take. Before I could ask the latter though they said they needed my US license. They took it and then handed me my German license!!! No first aid class??? This was the same person that had told me I needed to take one when I first started this process of getting a license last year. Either they forgot or the law has changed--at any rate I know when to not ask questions. I asked what they would do with my US license and they said they would destroy it, they have to take it from me because you're not allowed to have more than one license in Germany, or something like that, but obviously I will get a replacement the next time I am in my state of residence in the US. By the way, German drivers licenses don't expire, so this one is legal for me to use in the EU for life! OK, so now the next step to be able to drive the kids to school is to get car insurance, and then a car...
Actually, this is the main reason I haven't kept up with this blog (or much of anything else) in the past weeks. I have spent every possible bit of spare time studying for the driving test. Starting out I tried to learn the rules and a few weeks ago I went to Kiel (just after coming back from the US) to take the test. There was a lot of confusion at the get-go because the people taking the test were organized by driving school and I didn't have a driving school, so they had to consult and figure out if it was OK for me to take the test. First of all, the rules in the teaching book I used were badly translated, for example, "half of your speedo is a useful driving aid," which half? But in general I could understand what they meant. But the questions on the driving test were also badly translated and relied heavily on British English. "What must you consider at a zebra crossing?" I don't know, get your camera ready? or "What must you consider at a St. Andrew's Cross?" Religious pilgrims? Anyway, I didn't do too bad, I only got 10% of the questions wrong, including, for example, that there is a special sign I didn't know about that means you can park a trailer without a car for more than 2 weeks in the designated lot. I struggled trying to understand many of the questions and answers and finally was the last one to turn in my test and get it graded. The guy giving the test seemed to be very upset with me and said that I had to come back in two weeks (which ended up being three weeks) and take it again and that "You must learn our laws." The only thing he said to me in English.
For the second test I tried a different strategy. V found someone on the internet in Munich that not only had the teaching book but had copies of the official tests with all the possible test questions and an answer key. I made copies of the tests (32 of them, 4 pages each) cut the individual questions out, wrote the answers on the back, and used them as flash cards to memorize the answers to each question. The ones I had trouble with in each batch I saved out and went over them twice a day. Every few days I would go back over old ones and I worked my way through the 100s of possible questions--in writing this it sounds easy but it was a huge amount of work. At the end of three weeks of this I didn't even have to read the question. I recognized it from the pictures and could tick off the rights answers without even thinking about it. (Note, that I still don't have a clue what many of these questions and answers are actually referring to, the terms are bizarre and include the metric system which doesn't mean a lot to me intuitively, I just memorized which bizarre answers to check with which bizarre questions.) Yesterday I went back to take the driving test again. It was with the same guy administering the test. He handed mine out first because it was in "English" then proceeded to hand out the German version to the other people. I immediately flew through page one, check check check..., page two..., three..., four..., done! Clicked my pen closed, set my pen and test down on the table and looked up. He had just sat down from passing out the tests and was staring straight at me. I got the feeling I had finished it too fast, especially given my performance last time, and that everyone else seemed to still be on page one or two at the most (I know this is bragging, but honestly, this is what happened). So I picked my test and pen back up and pretended to thoughtfully study the questions some more. After a while I looked up and he was looking at me and motioned for me to come up. I handed him my test, he carefully went through each page with the key and checked it, then looked up and stared straight at me again (for the third time), then went back over the test again with the key trying to find a mistake (the only time I've seen him go over a test twice). Then he signed off on it and I had all of the questions right--in record time!
The next step in getting a German license is taking a first aid class, which I need to find one and make time to take it. I went to the county-house this morning to hand in the receipt that I had passed the driving test to the driving license office and to ask them where I could find a first aid class to take. Before I could ask the latter though they said they needed my US license. They took it and then handed me my German license!!! No first aid class??? This was the same person that had told me I needed to take one when I first started this process of getting a license last year. Either they forgot or the law has changed--at any rate I know when to not ask questions. I asked what they would do with my US license and they said they would destroy it, they have to take it from me because you're not allowed to have more than one license in Germany, or something like that, but obviously I will get a replacement the next time I am in my state of residence in the US. By the way, German drivers licenses don't expire, so this one is legal for me to use in the EU for life! OK, so now the next step to be able to drive the kids to school is to get car insurance, and then a car...
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