Goten Morgen! This thursday will be three weeks from our arrival. The first week was pretty rough being 8hrs ahead of MST. Whew jet lag is a buggar!

So much has happened since we arrived. Got a house, childcare, and two cars. We are still living on base in TLF (Temp lodging facility), but tomorrow we move to our house. Finding the right one was not easy. There are some real dumps around here. But we found a 5 yr old house that's pretty nice.



Those window covers (rolladens) are awesome! I can control the light in the house very easily! Makes it nice since it's light pretty late and early in the morning. We are about the same latitude as the Canada/US border.

Kitchen with teeny tiny stove, fridge, etc:


Granite floors:


Backyard:


Tomorrows move will only be with borrowed furniture from the base. We sent two shipments, one was an "essentials" with a limit of 1000lbs. We are trying to track that one down as it was supposed to be here two weeks ago!! Our main shipment won't arrive until later this month. Then we can finally settle in. Let me tell you, I am ready to get off base!!

And onto the cars.

Mine, 2005 Ford Mondeo 2.2L diesel, 6spd manual:


My wife's, 2005 Opel Signum, 1.9L diesel, auto:


Both cars sound like 4BT's, but I Love it!!! They both move. Had each up to about 100mph with much more there. But around here, it's hard to find a stretch of the Autobahn that is straight and doesn't have construction.

Have not seen a single bronco here yet. But I have seen many diesel mini-trucks (hi-lux etc). There is also this little 4x4 car here. It looks like those old boxy Subaru wagons, but shorten it by cutting out the rear doors and add some larger tires. I got to find out more about them. There is a fair amount of American cars here. You see a few super duties, some tahoe's and suburbans etc. I feel sorry for them trying to drive thru some of these villages around here. Thankful now we didn't try to ship anything over. But I know I am going to wish I could take what I have back with me. What we have is considered a large car! Smart cars are popular here and they even have little sports car versions. BMW's are EVERYWHERE! A dime a dozen.

Weather here has been all over the map. When we arrived it was cool, cloudy with scattered rain. Within a couple days it was hot and humid and stayed that way until yesterday. Now the weather is great. low 70's and raining each night. Sounds like winters are pretty nasty around here.

Anyway, hope all of you are doing well. Take care of yourself and we'll catch you on the flip side.

J.D.

Lol, well this is the best I can do:


It's a nice deep garage that should fit our two cars fine. It is tiled and has a poorly working drain in the middle. Contractor didn't slope the floor so we may have issues this winter. But most houses come with nothing and you're lucky to get off-street parking much less a carport. The house next door is under construction and thus the reason for the porta-potty. The hood is pretty new and at most we'll have 6-7 neighbors, so that'll be nice. better if they speak a little english.

More pics later!

Great to hear from you JD. Was wondering how it was going over there for you.

Oh I thought you were going to say the blue thing was the garage. Whew, at least you have a garage. It seems us Americans are spoiled by the amount of room we have huh? Good to here from you JD.

Nice to see your getting settled in JD! I think your going to love it there. The Mrs and I are going next summer for a couple weeks. Maybe we can stop through and test your inevitable knowlege gains on some truley spectacular adult beverages!

Awesome man that's a really nice place, I really like the granite floor that's cool! Good to see you got settled in

JD, I don't remember, what part of the country did you wind up in?

Time to get some tourism in. If you are in to anything concerning WWII, make sure you hit Normany and Bastogne. Luxembourg has a very large WWII cemetery and Patton is buried there. Amsterdam can be avoided as it is a festering cesspool. But Brussels is an amazing city worth checking out.

If you get the chance to really stretch your legs, get on over to the České Budějovice, Czech Republic and have yourself a real Budweiser.

If I remember correctly he's just outside of rammstien

Zack - Corey is close. Ramstein is where we are stationed. We live a little west in Waldmohr.

Thanks for the advice. So much to do I think we may be busy every weekend if we can afford it!!

Great to hear from you JD! Glad to see you are settling in. Somehow - I just did not figure you for a station wagon type... Oh well, at least it is a fast one.

Greg - yeah, I wasn't much of a wagon type, but we needed practical vehicles, so these were the natural selection and we fit right in as very much of the population drives the same!

How can you say you're not the station wagon type when technically we all are big fans considering our preferred vehicles o_0

Do they call their wagons "estate cars" and the sedans "saloons"? Maybe that is just a British thing?
Audi has an RS6 Avant (renn sport) that is a twin turbo beast pushing 500-600 horse power. Hardly seems like a traditional wagon. :)
I use to have the RS6 sedan chipped to about 500 ponies. 0-60 in about 4 seconds.
Fast German cars and the Audubon. :)

Lol. It's a long story... No , for the construction guys next door