One month in, two countries down

My friend Shalene, from Georgia, sent me a link to her blog and I liked it so much I decided to make one for myself. This way I can put blogs up about all our adventures and post photos for everyone to take a look at.

We have been in Germany for just over a month now and things have been crazy. We are still living in a temporary lodging facility (TLF) for now and it isn't so great. It is a one bedroom, basement apartment with a fridge the size of a cooler. We have been fighting to get our pay situation straightened out, but that seems to happen alot when you PCS - even in the states.

On Friday we plan to move into housing for the next four years. It is a 4 BRM house in Huechenhausen, a little town about 10 miles from Joe's work. The problem is these houses don't have closets, so they give you portable ones, like the walmart wardrobes. That isn't so bad, but are in the top floor of a house, and the houses here have extremely pitched roofs and they have rooms in the attic area, so you have no wall space. There isn't any room to put up our canopy bed because it won't fit due to the pitch of the roof. - at least there is a lot of floor space. Here they don't have kitchens like we do back home. They have portable kitchens and you can buy a kitchen at the local hardware store - like a Home depot. They are particle board and you just buy the cupboards and assemble them, they get yourself a stove and oven (which are about half the size of american ovens - can't put a large cookie sheet in it or any pan larger than 9x13). The army has to give us refridgerators because they don't really have them here, they are just small ice boxes.

Anyway, aside from housing we have had some fun adventures.

Last week I was hanging out with my cousin and his wife and we thought - Hey, the Olympics are only 7 hours away, let's go to Torino - and we did!

The guys had a 4-day weekend, so we went to Torino and Milan, Italy and then went sightseeing through Switzerland on the way back. We saw a medal's ceremony in the heart of Torino and went to see the Olympic torch and then had some Pizza. Oh, the the pizza in Italy is definately -- well -- unique! They had hotdog and french fry pizza. That is right, hotdog slices in cheese topped with french fries. We also got a green pepper and artichoke pizza when the guys asked for pepperoni.

We saw some great places in Milan, Italy and even saw a bunch of transvestite dancers putting on a show in the town square, in front of a 900 year old castle. That was unique.

In Switzerland we ate tons of chocolate and pasteries and got to see some of the neatest midevil castles. On, and it snowed 18 inches of wet sloppy snow overnight, so we were visiting castles in shin-deep snow. It was awsome - not a single tourist in sight!

We really had a lot of fun, and next month we are planning a trip to Berlin and in May I am gonna get Joe to take me to either Paris or Prague for my birthday!