23 Oct 1999
Nuremberg, Germany

It has started to occur to Sue and I that we are approaching the one year anniversary of starting to talk about a potential move to Europe. It was sometime in November of last year that we had our first discussions and now we are here. Be careful of what you wish for it may come true! With that being said we are still both real glad that we took the plunge. It has had it's difficult times but all in all this is a great experience. We figure if it was real easy it would not be as much fun. Is it not Kurt Vonnegut that says do something to scare yourself everyday? Well, I think we have satisfied that request for a long while!

So what's new?

Day to day life is settling into more of a routine although not boring at all. During the week I continue to keep the homefront going (more on what I refer to as the vegetable guys later in this letter) and Sue continues to fit into her new position.

Weeknights might see us simply eating dinner always made up of fresh foods bought at the local markets and then taking our hour long walk to discuss our days or it might find us going out to a concert. The music scene is great from concerts of organ music in churches to jazz, blues and Classical. Since last writing we have seen the John Scofield trio, a Mozart concert, John Mayall and the bluesbreakers, and a couple of other local bands. We also survived Nurenberg version of October fest. This was quite interesting. We expected a lot of Umpa bands and beer. What we got was a lot of rock n roll and beer. The event lasted two weeks and since our apartment is right outside of town we were able to sample a number of nights. The crowds were huge the first week and took away some of the fun because it was difficult to find a place to sit or stand and even getting a beer was difficult. The second week was also very crowded but there appeared to be a few less people and we did find seats a number of nights in a row. Although I am still confused that the song that got the crowd moving the most was not a traditional German drinking song but the Stones "Satisfaction." Maybe this is the new German traditional beer drinking song.

We are adjusting to life in a foreign land better everyday although I am still confused with time and dates. This is something we took for granted in the states, that is knowing what the date and time was. Over here it is a little more difficult. Now for you military guys you ill think this is easy but not for us. Time is very often described in military time so Concerts and or appointments may be at 15:00. this gets me to counting on my fingers trying to figure out what time this might be to my head. Then the dates are written with the day first then the month then the year. So October 11th, is written as 11/10/99. Since this is Sue's birthday it is important for me to understand the difference between this and in the states 10/11/99. Even as I reread what I just wrote I am confused. They also like to talk about the week of the year so that if you are expecting a delivery they say things like it will arrive week 42! What does this mean? To make it even more difficult calendars start with Monday as the first day of the week. This may not seem real weird until you glance at a calendar to see what the date is and your mind has you see the calendar like it is in the states and you have no idea what the day really is. It is little things like this that ad up to make life challenging.

Now once you start to learn some German they make telling time even more difficult. For example if it is half past 8 they say it is 30 minutes before nine. they also use this strange system of telling you it is ten minutes to or after the half hour. That is to say if it is 8:20 to 8:29 you say it is so many minutes before the half hour yet you cannot use this method if it is 8:19. Now if this is all very confusing to you just be happy that if you do not understand this it is not important to you but to Sue and I we keep being at places at the wrong time or day.

Language is still very frustrating although we are all excited that we can look up words in the dictionary faster than we use to be able to. We also are looking up a few less words than in the past. Sue gets lots of help with her German from her colleagues at work who work on pronunciation and new words. I do not have this stimulus so I relay on the "Vegetable Guys," these are the guys who sell fresh fruit and vegetables in the town market. This is an interesting cultural happening. Once you start going to a certain set of vegetable guys you are obligated to go only to them. If you try shopping another stand you get extremely dirty and hurt looks. Now the scene is like this. In the market area there are probably 20 to 25 stands with people selling fresh food and flowers. I started to go to the same guys because they seemed to have the best produce. It did not take them long to recognize me due to the fact that my German was brutal. They started out by calling me English and everytime I went there I ended up spending some time buying food and the rest they were teaching me German. They speak some English but not much so I reciprocate by teaching them English. they now call me Frankie and I have given them nick names in English that they seem to like. My favorite guy is called happy go lucky. He now always refers to himself as happy go lucky and says that he is an English expert. The other side benefits of this daily encounter is that they always steer me away from the older veggies and save the best ones for us. This is a fun daily experience and a lot different from the shopping chore that we faced in the States.

All in all we are understanding German a little better but every conversation is still difficult and we can only speak in phrases at best and people hate our pronunciation but from last June we have come a long way. We have gained new respect for multilanguage people in our country.

Now to the best stuff weekends and a weeks trip to the Bavarian Alps. We continue to go to ancient cities on Saturdays or to just discover our own ancient city (Nurenberg dates to the year 1050.) We have had quite a few rainy weekends but that got us into the Art Museum in town which is one of the largest in Germany. This was a great day and we plan to spend many more afternoons discovering different corners of this building.

On Sundays rain or shine we continue the fine past time of Wander. As explained before this is a Bavarian pastime that is held near and dear by all Bavarians. We walk all through the German hills and villages with no real destination except the beer garden at the end or the middle for a meal. We had one really neat experience in a small town on a very rainy day. On this day we called off our hike after only about an hour and a half due to the hard rains. We then saw a sign on a gausthaus that announced they were having a schnitzel party. So in we went. well everybody there knew everybody else except for us. Once again we were celebrities. The owners spent time with us practicing their limited English and correcting our German. We ended up spending about 2 and a half hours just having lunch. It was not that it was that big of a lunch but just because nobody was in a hurry on this rainy day and we figured the stove only had enough burners to cook four meals at a time. Talk about home cooking!! We left feeling very German and brave for walking in.