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.

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. ?

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...

Back in Germany

I'm very jet lagged at the moment, but managed to crawl into work at 8am/2am. I need to catch up with some work then will update more about the rest of my trip.

Israel-Gaza protest in Luebeck

This is out of time order (I was purposely spacing out these posts to avoid apparent links with the name issue Mohamed was having in the US) but I thought I should say something before any more time passed. Back in January we went to Luebeck for a day, and by coincidence there was a rally protesting Israel's actions in Gaza, so I snapped some pictures.

Made it to Raleigh

I'm in Raleigh now. ... have to run. More later.
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Today the flight went without a hitch, and I made it to the meeting in time. One thing that really stood out to me was the banter in the shuttle from the hotel to the airport. One guy was going on about "Arabs." First it was that the CIA did not have enough Arabic translators, then he complained about his "Arab" shuttle driver the day before and how he was late to pick him up and it was probably because he was praying. The women he was talking to agreed and laughed with him. Then there was a woman with a little kid and a baby that got on the shuttle, they didn't have coats and it was very cold. They also were not able to get their checked bags the night before. Then as the shuttle driver was driving, with snow and ice on the road, they were making fun of him and his driving and laughing to each other right in front of him. I was ashamed of how openly rude they were toward him. I was rude to the airline guy at the counter the night before (after he made racist comments about Ethiopians I might note), but in contrast this guy WAS doing his job. At the airport the driver helped the woman, who was carrying the baby with one arm and leading the toddler with the other, get her bag and stroller out of the van and up onto the sidewalk (in contrast to the people who were criticizing him) and G and I helped her get it inside and set up quickly so they were out in the cold as little as possible. Their criticism reminded me of how people do this in checkout lines in grocery stores in America. In the past, sometimes someone in front will turn to me and loudly criticize the cashier, with a laugh at the end and expect me to laugh and agree with them, just for small talk. Americans really are very rude towards people they see as different or beneath them (and can be unhelpful when they have the opportunity to do something). Being away from that aspect for a year really makes it stand out now.

In Raleigh I got checked in to the hotel then went to find some lunch. Immediately walking out of the hotel things were different. There was no sidewalk to walk from the hotel to the street. It is only designed for people driving in and out, so I had to walk in the road (snow was everywhere else) to where the sidewalk started at the intersection. And the sidewalk was in horrible shape, narrow, broken, cracked and tilted--typical of a lot of cities in the US, because most people drive and hardly anyone walks. Then crossing the intersection people seemed to expect to be able to immediately turn despite me waiting to cross the road at the light change. Anyway, I found a local BBQ place and knew I had found the right place from the smell in the air as I got closer to the door! I ordered some pulled pork BBQ with coleslaw, corn chowder and iced tea--it was wonderful!!! One funny thing, that I half anticipated before, was the mild awkwardness in ordering food in English. For a year now whenever I've ordered food I have attempted it in German, and the German phrases popped immediately into mind when the waitress came; I had to ignore those and use English.

I've really missed real southern food while out of the US. I know exactly where I'm going for lunch tomorrow!

Stuck in Dulles

I flew back to the US yesterday with a coworker for a conference. It's been about a year since I've been back. It felt really odd listing my resident country as Germany and giving a hotel as my address in the US on the customs form. It asked me to list all the countries I had been to on the "trip." There wasn't nearly enough room so I just left it blank and assumed "trip" just referred to this flight back. The money also looks really strange to me now, the bills are all the same size and color, kind of old fashioned looking--I had to look for the numbers to tell how much money I had (I know this doesn't sound odd to Americans, but I have really gotten used to European money where you can tell at a glance what it is), and the dimensions are off, too long and thin. The dimes and quarters also seem too thin to me. But let me back up. I left Ploen on the train at 5:15 am, got some breakfast and transferred to the metro at the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, and made it in plenty of time to checkin, go through security and to the flight to Frankfurt which boarded at 9:40. The flight from Frankfurt was delayed on the runway for an hour because "the numbers of passengers didn't match." They counted and recounted everyone and kept asking for a few people over the PA including "Mohamed" (see this earlier post about Mohamed). Then they said the problem was that some people had canceled their flight and then rebooked it ... but if they counted the boarding passes handed out and the people on the flight then shouldn't it have added up regardless? Anyway, once they were satisfied with the number we took off. In Dulles I coundn't help getting the feeling we were in a military base in Siberia. Everything was snow and ice and concrete with giant machines rolling around and people in dark uniforms acting irritated. Of course we were late for the connecting flight from Dulles to Raleigh, I got through security in record time however--only one double take at my Egyptian and Ethiopian visas, in this process I had to pick up and recheck my bag, and only after rechecking my bag was I able to find out that the next flight was canceled because of snow before we even got there. They redirected me to the customer service counter, which had a line a mile long. There were touch screens and phones it said to use to rebook if you missed a flight. I talked to the guy on the phone and was told the next flight was in the morning (despite another flight at 10pm with a different airline on a sheet of paper listed all the flights that was laying on a counter nearby). I said I needed a place to stay tonight and he said the airline didn't pay for hotels for weather reasons. So I got back in line. At that point my coworker caught up as well as a crowd of non-citizens that were just coming out of security, and we waited in line. We prepped our stories that this had nothing to do with weather and was the delay caused by Lufthansa, and I had circled possible connecting flights on the sheets one of the airline people had lost. Finally I was pulled out of line and told that they had a hotel for me and to go to the front counter. An older women behind me came up and tried to ask what was happening, she spoke German, and only a little English, very slowly. The airline person kept yelling at her to get back in line over and over before she could finish her sentence, and she was just trying to explain to her to slow down and that she couldn't understand. I pulled her aside before they called security to taser her and explained to her in German as best I could that the flights were canceled because of the snow and that the airline was booking rooms for us tonight and the connecting flights were in the morning. She seemed relieved and went back to the line to explain to everyone in German what was going on (in sharp contrast to the airline worker that was yelling at everyone rapidly in English). At this point my coworker asked me if I was sure if this was a democratic country we were in--it seemed like a military dictatorship to him. OK, so we went to the front desk, where we were told to go, and guess what, no one was there (see my earlier post about being stuck in New York). At this point we couldn't return past security without a boarding pass so we were stuck there. We bothered workers from another airline and they went back and pulled someone out from an office in the back (apparently they had ordered a snack delivery) who started processing our hotel form and gave us vouchers for supper ($15) and breakfast ($10). We asked if there was a shuttle to the hotel because we didn't have a car, so she explained how to find the shuttle and when it left. We asked if we could get our bags that were checked in and she looked at us like we were from another planet. We explained that we didn't have any clothes to change into, or anything... She gave us each a "night bag" that contained a t-shirt, and told us to go around back to another counter to get our boarding passes for tomorrow morning and so on (then I think she went back on her snack break). We went around and waited in line again as the sun set. There were some very tired people in line there trying to figure out what to do. Finally it was our turn and we waited to get our boarding passes. While he was looking at his computer and chatting with coworkers, and went into some weird story about Ethiopians and spices and the Flintstones cartoon (I kid you not, it didn't make any sense ...?), we asked if we could get our bags and then the guy rolled his eyes and went into a long story about how hard that was and the bags were in a different building and someone would have to get them and so on... I asked how long it would take and he said at least an hour. So I asked if I could have one of their uniforms to wear tomorrow--in fact it looked like I could wear his clothes and I offered to trade clothes with him. The least he could do for visitors to his hospitable country. My co-worker chimed in that he wanted one of the Qatar airlines women's outfits for a touch of color. Then we carried on with a loud conversation, that since this guy was giving me his uniform it was only fair that another airline give you one also. I started to take off my coat like I was going to change. The other people waiting started paying attention at this point to see what the guy would say or do. The counter guy was not amused but at that point he did hurry up and we finally did get our boarding tickets and we were able to get out of there. We took the shuttle to the hotel, which was not next to anything else, so we are stranded for the time being at the hotel. We got some supper, but that also seemed to take forever and several people around us got their food before us, eventually we ate and I was on the edge of collapse and had to lay down. Our waiter wasn't anywhere to be seen so I just left some money on the table and went back to my room and slept. Then I woke up before 3am local time--jet lag! I have to say, for all my complaining here, this was handled much better by Lufthansa than the time I was stuck in New York (JFK) by KLM. Today to goal is to get to Raleigh and change clothes before the conference starts.