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Hamburg

Hamburg

by | Sep 17, 2023 | Blog

This week was a start of our new “normal”. I started back to (online) school and Nathan did his (self-determined) studying. We took care of home things like laundry and shopping. We also took care of shopping for a home, since we only have this apartment for about two more weeks. For more about our normal life (if you even care), you can check out the post from earlier this week here.

I was able to get all my homework done, so that means I got to go out this weekend. We hopped on a train early Friday morning and headed north to Hamburg! The weather here is close to perfect, so we just had to take advantage of it.

With the “budget” train passes we are using, we must use the slower regional trains, we can’t reserve seats, and all of Germany can buy the same pass. So, we are learning by trial and error when EVERYONE else also wants to be traveling by train. For example, we thought that when we decided to travel back from Dresden last Friday in the afternoon, we would be avoiding rush hour. Oh no. We were right in the thick of it because everyone likes to get away on the weekend and the train to Leipzig was crazy busy. This week, we thought we would be ok, because we left our apartment at 6:30 am. Well, it was a bit better. But at one of the stations where we needed to change trains, our train got in a few minutes late, there were so many people on the platforms and in the tunnel to change platforms that it was almost too crowded to move. We witnessed a verbal fight that almost turned physical. But at least the train peeps were aware of the difficulty of changing trains at that moment and held the train until everybody could get through. Then, on the train, people were taking up seats with their luggage (very common), so there was nowhere to sit down. There was a group of about 10 ladies who were traveling together and having a rollicking good time. They adjusted and squeezed so that we could sit, so that was kind.

We got to Hamburg and headed straight (well, not straight exactly, because we stopped for some really good, authentic tacos) to the museums for a handful of composers, primarily Brahms. The Brahms Museum is housed in an original baroque building that survived the war. Brahms was born nearby. They have a small collection of items, but with good descriptions in English and it was very nice. The museum next door has rooms dedicated to Telemann, CPE Bach, the Mendelssohns, Mahler, and some others. It was also very good.

We checked into our hotel and went in hunt of some dinner. Hamburg is a big city, the largest “non-capital” in Europe and a port city. So, there are a lot of people and there is a lot of diversity. Not far from our hotel there was a street lined with all kinds of foods from different nations. We opted for Indian. Nathan’s Tikka Masala was yummy. My Korma was meh. But we had a nice meal after a long day.

We headed for the port on Saturday morning and took a boat tour that was enjoyable. We got up close and personal with the container ships and saw the workings of the port and how the city is changing and rebuilding. They have made some cool choices for how to use the real estate to make their city more livable and more beautiful.

We did a lot of walking after our boat tour. We strolled over to the Reeperbahn neighborhood, which is the entertainment and “red light” district. Not normally our top pick, but this is where The Beatles played for hours every night for months and really became musicians…it’s probably the experience that made them “The Beatles”. There is a spot called “Beatles Platz” which is just a few “sculptures” and some song titles on the ground. But it was still fun to see the neighborhood.

After that, we just wandered around town, learning about the city, eating what we liked and watching people. One thing we hadn’t had yet was a German classic and a great street food: currywurst. After WWII, the story goes, it was hard to get supplies. Some enterprising woman didn’t have mustard to serve with brats, but there was ketchup and curry powder. Currywurst was born. It might sound like a strange flavor combo, but it is delicious.

We climbed down about 100 stairs to walk a pedestrian and bike tunnel under the Elbe River. It was built in 1901 for the workers of Hamburg to get to work at the port more efficiently. Then we climbed up the same 100 stairs on the other side so we could enjoy of the city from across the river. Then we went right back across. (I should add that there are elevators, but we had to walk off pastries and currywurst.)

There is a church that was destroyed in the firebombing of Hamburg, but unlike in Dresden where they rebuilt their destroyed church, this one they left the tower and shell as a memorial to the dead and a message about the horrors of war. It’s called Nikolaikirche and it was quite lovely.

We went for dinner, which was of course hamburgers! They were adequate, but the best burgers we have eaten in Europe were in Budapest. Anyway, then we just walked around the busy shopping areas, the city hall (Rathaus), and the different parks and lakes. It was a lovely evening, but we were also biding our time because one thing we like to do when we visit a city is to try to find some live music. Once it was a bit later, we tried a few different possible locations in several different neighborhoods. We completely struck out and finally dragged ourselves onto a bus after a long but satisfying day of sightseeing.

Since we didn’t want to repeat the craziness of Friday’s train journey, and since we are fairly early risers anyway, we headed to the train station around 6:15 am. We easily caught the train, found seats, and avoided the rush as we did the same journey as Friday but in reverse. Things were starting to get busy at the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof as people were heading home after their weekend trips, but we were already home! It was a fun trip to a vibrant, living city.

It was a good weekend, and we are looking forward to apartment hunting, studying, and maybe another adventure this next week. Tchūss!

Your Questions Answered

Your Questions Answered

by | Sep 13, 2023 | Blog

So, some of you asked some questions after last week’s post. Here are some answers!

What are you studying?

I am in my last semester of an online Bachelor’s Degree in Professional Studies through BYU-Idaho and Pathway Worldwide. Professional Studies is just a way to be able to offer a degree with more than one focus. My two areas of focus are Administrative Assisting and Graphic Design. This semester I have Adobe CC Basics (which I should have taken a year ago, but I think they really just added a few months ago), Organizational Leadership, (which is a business class), Professional Projects (which is kind of like an internship, but more project-based), and Teachings of Living Prophets. I stuck in a photo of the project I did this morning. I had to prove I know how to use Adobe Illustrator, so I had to build a robot out of assigned shapes. I have been able to do classes in these areas that I already had experience and interest in, so that has been great. I have absolutely no plans for my degree after graduation, except that I want to continue to be available to offer my expertise to my family, friends, and community. The Pathway program has been great because it has been entirely online, meaning that I can (and have!) completed my coursework from wherever I am, whether that is home or not. It’s also super affordable. I was kicking around during the pandemic, digging around for projects to keep myself busy and one day I just thought, “I have a degree that I never finished. Maybe that should be my project.”

What does a typical day look like? How do you pass the time in the evening?

Well, much like a day a home. We get up fairly early, like 5:30 or 6:00. We exercise; Nathan often goes for a run and I do a workout of some sort at home. We get ready for the day and then we study. Nathan listens to podcasts, reads books that interest him, practices and instrument or two, studies languages, watches lectures from Wondrium (The Great Courses) or Masterclass. I work on my courses. Sometimes I listen to podcasts or audiobooks while I work on design projects. We take periodic breaks and have something to eat or drink. It’s flexible so that if the grandkids call or we need to go run and errand, we can break away. Sometimes we are in separate rooms and sometimes we are together. At the end of the “work day” we will do things that need to be done, like shopping, food prep, or other chores or projects. I might draw for fun or do some knitting. We make dinner together and maybe watch something on Netflix or some other streaming service. We will often take a walk. We also have to do research and planning for whatever travel or outings we have coming up, which actually takes a surprising amount of time and discussion. We head to bed around 9:00 because (let’s face it) we aren’t spring chickens.

Where do you shop for food?

This is actually a hard one to answer. Since we are still newish to Germany, we are still figuring out how to get our hands on some of the things we want or need and how to do that without spending a ridiculous amount of time or money. We have been to maybe 5 different grocery stores in the two-and-a-half weeks since we arrived. We have also gone to the pharmacy AND the drugstore (because those are two different things) and (to no one’s surprise) bakeries. We have figured out that Lidl has the nicest produce and nuts, but there are more choices for other things at a store (kind of like Target) called Kaufland (which means “Land of Buying”). Sometimes we can’t find something for a long time, like some sort of non-coffee, non-tea, non-sugary drink mix. Sometimes we stumble on something excellent, like a 1.5L bottle of Vanilla Coke Zero (my fave). We are slowly figuring it out just in time to move to a new apartment and probably a new neighborhood in a couple weeks.

What’s your apartment like?

The apartment is, as I mentioned, on the 5th floor of a building much like every other residential building in the city. It is brick and stone and many of them are covered in stucco. They are old enough that they have nice trim and accents around the windows and doors and they have tile roofs. There is a set of big double doors at the street entrance so that when they are both opened, a vehicle can drive in. That leads through a passage to a courtyard. Most courtyards seems to have common garden space. Ours has a tiny garden with one little table, but mostly it is used by the construction company that occupies the first floor of our building for their vehicles and inventory (windows and doors). The building has about 15 apartments in it and all of the windows face the street. We walk up and down old wooden stairs that are sturdy, but so creaky. The building is surprisingly quiet and we don’t hear the neighbors much. The apartment itself is newly renovated and decked out with IKEA furniture and fixtures almost completely, which is very common here in Europe. Usually, if you are renting an apartment, it doesn’t come with kitchen cabinets or appliances. You are responsible for putting that stuff in and you take it with you when you move. There is an entryway and the kitchen is directly across from the entrance door. It’s a narrow galley-style kitchen with a small refrigerator (about my height) with a freezer below. There is a cooktop and a small oven. There is a dinky microwave and a teeny tiny countertop dishwasher, which seems like a luxury. There is also a small washing machine, another luxury. To the right of the entry is the living room, with a couch, some book shelves, and a dining table with chairs. To the left of the entry is the bathroom and then the bedroom. One odd thing about the bathroom is that the vanity mirror/medicine cabinet is mounted really high. I can only see my face from about my eyebrows up.

Thanks for asking questions! You can ask questions for Nathan, too, and maybe we will be able to convince him to write the next one!

Saxony

Saxony

by | Sep 10, 2023 | Blog

This week, we decided to take advantage of the good weather and the fact that my courses haven’t started yet and try to get out for some adventures.

If you just want the highlights of this week, here they are:

We started exploring some musical sites. From the Handel House and a Beatles Museum in Halle to the Bach Museum and Thomaskirche in Leipzig, we have had a fun time starting to track down some of these composers that we came for. We also attended a free organ concert and an amazing piano concert in the Gohliser Schlösschen.

We were finally able to get our hands on the Deutschland Ticket, a magical pass that gets us all over the country for 49 euros each for the whole month. So we put it to good use and explored some different parts of Leipzig, the neighboring city of Halle, and we took a day trip to Dresden.

We had a few other experiences. We went to church, we visited the Stasi Museum, we wandered around Leipzig, and we ate some tasty food.

That’s this week in a nutshell. It turned out to be busier that we thought, but it was pretty good!

If you want the details, read on…

It was a struggle to get our transport passes. It’s a pass designed for residents, not necessarily visitors, so it took a while before we found out how to get them with a credit card. Once we did, we were on the train the very next day to the next city over, Halle.

Halle is where Georg Friedrich Handel was born, so we went to the Handel House Museum. It was well done and we learned some new things about him. They also have a section of historic instruments that was interesting.

In doing some poking around the night before we left, Nathan found out that there’s a Beatles Museum in Halle, so we decided to try it out. It was surprisingly extensive, with details that most people wouldn’t really care about. There were a lot of wacky collectors’ items and merchandise that was entertaining to see. We ate Turkish for lunch, which was good, and our train home was delayed by an hour, which wasn’t good.

We are here in Leipzig in what happens to be the year of celebration to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s appointment to Kapellmeister of the Thomaskirche. We went to the Bach Museum and walked through the Thomaskirche. The museum is very well done with tons of information about Bach and his family. They have an awesome app that you can download and do a virtual tour. This is the city where Bach did most of his composing for choirs, composing a cantata every week for a time.

Near one of the beautiful parks, there is an 18th century palace called the Gohliser Schlösschen. We wandered around last week and this week we went to an amazing piano performance by Yeram Park. She played works by Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Allan, and Stravinsky. It was an amazing concert and we got in for only 20 Euros each. We also caught a free lunchtime organ concert at one of the churches nearby our apartment.

Dresden is the biggest city nearby and we knew we wanted to visit. Along with Leipzig (and other cities in Germany), it was largely destroyed during World War II and then neglected during 40 years of communist rule. The rebuilding that has taken place in the city since 1990 is truly astounding and is still continuing. The baroque palace, the churches, and the buildings that house the museums are F-A-N-C-Y.

I will take just a moment here to warn you about our present travel style. We don’t visit every museum, every castle, every cathedral, or every historic site that we meet. There are just too many and we have seen most of the biggies. There is a point that you reach when you just can’t take another collection of armor or another solid gold whatever. So, I’m warning you now that we won’t be taking the “Grand Tour” of Europe that others might pursue. Now, back to Dresden.

With that in mind, we did choose to do a walking tour of the Old Town (Altstadt) and the New Town (Neustadt). It was very interesting and informative. (If you are visiting Europe on your own, I highly recommend Rick Steves’ books and excellent phone app.) We also chose to visit the Frauenkirche, the church that burned in 1945 and collapsed in a heap and was untouched until German reunification after 1989. It’s been rebuilt with some of the original stones in their original positions. In one of the photos, you can see a placard on a piece of the rubble that resides in the square outside the church, indicating where it came from the dome. The church is such a powerful message of recovery and rebuilding. There is also a cross on the altar with a wonderful message. It is made from two nails taken from the cathedral in Coventry England, which was firebombed by the Germans. The cross was a gift from the people of England as a symbol of peace. Simply beautiful.

Here in Leipzig, we visited the museum that has been built in the former headquarters of the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. It’s in a distinctive building called the “Ronde Ecke”, or round corner. We learned more about the extensive surveillance that the East German citizens suffered at the hands of the Stasi and a huge network of their neighbor informers. It was astounding. We also learned how the “Peaceful Revolution” that resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the toppling of the regime actually started 7 years prior in Leipzig’s Nickolaikirche with weekly prayer meetings. The citizens continued their vigils and they grew over the following years until in 1989, there were completely peaceful demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people. Moving.

We also went to church and that was another adventure. Everything was in German, except for the opening and closing prayers, which were offered by English-speakers. We sang the hymns in German (our experience with singing Swiss songs came in handy!), we took the sacrament, and we enjoyed being with people while we tried to pick out words that we know (Nathan understands far more than I do). The young women presented the program and that was nice. Coincidentally, they sang the same song that Nathan played with Lauren and Sarah a few weeks ago. We talked to a few people after the meeting, so that was good and we will visit again.

That’s about it for this week. I start back into school work tomorrow, but I’m hoping that I can confine my study to Monday-Thursday so that we can have some adventures on the weekends. We have some things to figure out this week so that we can take steps toward registering our address and getting me a longer-term visa. More to come.

I would love to hear from you! Do you have any questions about what’s going on with us or questions about Germany? Leave a comment with all the things you are wondering about!

USA to DE

USA to DE

by | Sep 3, 2023 | Blog

Early on Monday morning, we drove from Marietta to the airport in Columbus. We were sad to leave the grandkiddos, but we were also ready to start this next part of the journey.

Our travel day (days?!?) couldn’t have really gone much more smoothly. Our flights were on time, and we had no trouble with arrangements or luggage. We left ourselves A LOT of time for connections. It all was as expected, really. The hard part was, of course, trying to get some sleep on an “overnight” flight when it didn’t feel like night to our bodies. It was a bit of a struggle.

We landed in Berlin at around 6:30 am. We still needed to take a train from the airport into the city and then another train to Leipzig.

Mistake #1: not really researching the public transportation options beforehand and not refreshing ourselves on how to “train” in Germany. It wasn’t really a big deal, as we learned and remembered on the fly, but it would have been a bit easier had we figured a few things out before we arrived tired.

We arrived in Leipzig around 11:00 am, but we couldn’t check into our apartment until 3:00 pm, so what to do with all that extra time? We put our heavy luggage into a couple of storage lockers at the train station and found a walking tour of the city center’s music history sites that we could follow on our phones.

A note here: we are normally travelers who go carry-on only as much as possible. However, since we are here for a long time and potentially need clothing for four seasons, instruments, laptops, and a few other things that we didn’t want to buy new, we have more luggage than usual. That is not our favorite thing, since it’s all heavy and awkward and slows us down a bit. OK, back to Leipzig…

We were a bit worried, as the weather forecast said it was going to rain most of the day, but we started wandering with our umbrellas on board and hoped for the best. One thing we noticed early on is that the city is surprisingly quiet. We haven’t completely figured out why, but we have our theories. However, this is a city that has church bells, and I personally enjoy that.

Much of the city center is closed to cars, so it’s really walkable. They say that more than 500 composers have lived here, including Bach, Mendelsshon, the Schumanns, Mahler, Wagner, and Greig. The orchestra, opera, and boys’ choir are all very old and very famous. We walked around and saw the churches, university, and opera house. We were fighting our jet lag by trying to stay awake, stay active, and getting as much sunlight as possible. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch that had tree trunks as part of the decor. It was different! We walked a bit more before returning to the train station for our bags and to catch the bus to our new home. Surprisingly, it didn’t rain on us a bit.

Travel tip: in Europe (and elsewhere), you often have to pay to use the toilet in public places like the train station, so carry coins! Restaurants will usually have a restroom, so use theirs if you don’t want to pay a Euro to pee.

By the time we took the bus and dragged our tired bodies and our heavy baggage to our Airbnb in the northern area of Gohlis, we were pretty happy to be there. Shoutout to Nathan for hauling our giant suitcases up 85 steps to the 4th floor (which is really the 5th floor, because Europe). It’s a cute little one-bedroom apartment that seems pretty typical for the area. I was still fighting off my cold, so I took a one-hour nap. Then we went out in search of groceries, we ate a very simple dinner at home, and that was the end of our first day!

The rest of the week has been pretty great, but fairly quiet. The temperatures here are in the 70s during the day and high 50s at night and we’ve had just a bit of rain. The neighborhood here is made up of buildings that are generally 100-150 years old. Many of them have a main door that leads into a courtyard and then into the individual buildings. There are lots of trees and parks and the streets are cobblestoned. It seems most people who have a car park on the street, so there are little cars lining pretty much every side street.

We have explored the neighborhood pretty thoroughly and mostly everything we need is within a mile or so. We haven’t needed to use the trams or buses again yet.

One of the first things we did on Wednesday was to walk to a local music store so that Nathan could try out keyboards. He brought his violin and his travel guitar, but he likes to practice the piano and renting a place with a piano is way more expensive than just having a portable option. He found a good candidate with nicely weighted keys, so he bought one and carried it home! We even stopped for lunch on our way back and the keyboard waited in the corner while we ate :D.

We’ve spent time this week adjusting to the new time zone, trying to open a German bank account, figuring out the whole visa process, learning more about our new city, exercising, trying to speak German, and taking walks.

Mistake #2: We didn’t check some of our electrical equipment thoroughly enough and we blew out two charging ports before learning our lesson. Unfortunately, Nathan caught my cold, so now he is feeling rotten just as I’m getting better.

We have booked this apartment for a month, so we are trying to decide what our next step will be. Will we stay here in Leipzig? Will we do some other German city instead? Will we stay in Germany until it gets cold and then wimp out and head south? We will figure things out as we go. For now, it has been a good first week and we have settled into more of a normal routine, except we’re in Leipzig!

Nobody Expects…

Nobody Expects…

by | Aug 28, 2023 | Blog

If your first thought was, “the Spanish Inquisition”, then you’re in the right place :D.

This was our last week in the States and we spent it in expected and unexpected ways.

The expected was spending time with Lauren’s family. We did a few more projects in the house and Nathan continued his crusade against the wasps. We were lucky enough to get appointments with Dr. Bo for some dental care. We hiked around their property and spied lots of wild mushrooms and tiny evidences of fall.

Nathan and I took Huck on a special outing to the park and to get some french fries. We all went out for sushi and the kids really liked the soup. We also got to really try out our grandparent status when we watched the kids while Lauren and Bo did an overnight trip to Hocking Hills. We all lived through it and actually had a great time. We also got to join some of the family online for virtual board games, which is always so much fun.

The unexpected was that I fought a cold all week. That was a real drag, but I’m on the upswing.

The most expected thing is that our time to visit family and enjoy the comforts of “home” has come to an end and it’s time to set out for the airport and fly to Berlin to start a new chapter. I feel like it is a bit surreal. Maybe because we have spent a lot of time on the road the past 5 years and it just doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary that we are leaving. I’m not really sure. One thing I know, however, is that the next year or two will definitely be full of new experiences and adventures.