Things are coming together slowly.  I've hit a little bit of a lull with unpacking (i.e. I don't want to do it anymore), so I'm procrastinating on the computer.  

I've been hibernating lately, doing stuff around here and manning the house while movers come and go.  Today is the first day that no one is coming and I'm really excited about it.  

The house definitely is starting to feel like ours a bit.  The cleaning is still constant, but without workers/movers coming in and out its much more manageable thank goodness.  I think we're going to have to adopt the practice of always removing our shoes before coming in.  With all dark hard-surface floors, you can see any spec of dirt and feel it under your bare feet.

Other quirks that I'm still getting used to include:

• The washer/dryer - the washer is tiny, takes forever, and isn't the best in my opinion.  I've found detergent spots on the clothes whenever I do a full load.  One load set on "Coloureds" takes 2 hours.  Then the dryer is more of a water remover, with a tank that fills with water from the clothes.  You must empty this tank every couple loads, which means marching it upstairs and dumping it in the sink.  It too takes at least 2 hours to dry anything.  I think laundry is going to be a constant and ongoing thing, just to keep up.  
• The sink is still super tiny and annoying, but we bought a new goose neck faucet with a sprayer from Ikea that I hope Jason will install this weekend.  That should make things a little more manageable.

• We are still waiting for a new super-transformer the Keurig requires to arrive from Amazon, so I am still without my morning coffee.  I've been walking down the street to a bakery every morning and ordering "eine Kaffee, bitte".  I'm really ready to brew my own coffee though!
• The saddest thing I've been coping with is that I spilled tea on my brand new laptop last week and the keyboard isn't working now.  I've got to figure out how to get it fixed soon :(  I'm using Jason's laptop in the meantime.

This weekend is a 4 day weekend, but we haven't planned anything because we've been so wrapped up in the move.  We're thinking about taking a train ride somewhere because we haven't taken a train since we've been in country.  At a minimum, we'll head up to Frankfurt, but I'm going to try to brainstorm somewhere a little more exciting - we'll see.  

The movers come today!!!  I'm so ready to get all our stuff situated so that it starts to feel like home!

Yesterday we picked up our car that we shipped overseas.  It was my first day of driving in Germany and everything went well.  Not driving for a couple weeks and having to study & take a test to get a license has made me a little nervous about driving here.  I keep having to remind myself that I drove in Kuwait without incident, so this should be a piece of cake!  Its so nice to have our car back!  It'll take some getting used to looking at the kph vs. mph though.

We have workers in the house all day today installing our REAL stairs (YAY!), tiling our basement, and turning on the internet.  Also, the rest of our stuff has arrived in country and Jason is working with the movers to get a delivery setup for as soon as possible (Monday would be beautiful, so fingers crossed!).  Things are coming together, slowly but surely.  

Also I found these chips at our grocery this week.  I resisted buying them at first because they were a little pricey, but got them last night.  They're very ham-ey :)

Cookies made at sea level are so much prettier than high altitude!  Yay for not baking in the mile high city anymore!

We live in a small little suburb about 20 minutes from Wiesbaden. Its very small and quaint.  Here are some pictures from our walk last night.

Jason's birthday was last week and as a surprise I booked us a night in Cologne, which is about an hour and a half NW from here.  

We drove up in the afternoon, checked into our hotel and then went exploring.  Our hotel was really nice and the bed was super comfy - a good temporary break from our dusty home!  

Cologne is known for brewing Kolsch style beer.  So I laid out a path of exploring some of the top breweries - Fruh, Peters Brauhaus, Paffgen Kolsch, & Sion.  All within easy walking distance to the city center. The Dom (cathedral) which is in the center of the town, is huge and amazing.  As you can probably tell from the photos above, I was a little obsessed.  Its in the Gothic style and was a great place to hangout and people watch after dinner.  

The next day we checked out the Koln Zoo.  Its one of the largest in Europe, and is known for its collection of Elephants.  Overall it was a cool zoo, but honestly I think the Denver one was better.  It was fun and the weather was nice, although a little expensive (17.50 euro each), it was cool to see once.

They had a display of raccoons, that I thought was pretty funny.  It had a map showing them primarily in North America with pictures of them rooting through trash.  I tried to snap a picture, but it had quite a crowd around it so I couldn't.

Overall it was a great, easy trip that I'd definitely recommend.

I have been mostly without internet for a week now (ah!).  We have data on our phone, which is enough to text message over WhatsApp, check the weather, google translate, and somewhat peruse facebook - but open up a website?  Forget it.

We have signed up for internet at our house, but have to wait for something to arrive in the mail before it can be switched on (what year is it again!?).  My super techy husband, however, has figured out a way for me to temporarily connect to the internet on my laptop - using the wireless on his cell phone.  Its really nice having a nerd in the house!

So to catch up from the last week....

We moved into our house and we got our first shipment of stuff from the States.  Our stairs are still in the death-trap-form as the picture below shows.  I've been cleaning and cleaning, trying to control the dust that is constantly tracked in either from our staircase or the construction site that surrounds our house, but its fruitless.  

Our first shipment of stuff was our kitchen, towels/linens, and clothes.  Since we have no furniture or storage, most of this stuff is just in piles.  I have the kitchen all setup and have cooked a couple times already.  Its amazing how just having your kitchen stuff back makes it feel much more like home.  

The kitchen has some serious quirks though that are going to take some getting used to.  First of all, our counters are wood veneer of some sort.  I'm super afraid to let water sit on it for any amount of time, so I'm constantly wiping them down.  Our kitchen sink is SUPER tiny and the faucet is stupid.  It gets in the way of washing dishes - so I then get water everywhere - compounding the above issue.  We're considering replacing it with a sprayer faucet, but would need to order it from the States because the ones we've seen here (Ikea included) are like $300+!  
Our refrigerator is tiny, which actually hasn't bothered me so far and we have a backup refrigerator in the basement, so I think that's a problem I can deal with.  Also, we only have big drawers, no cabinets.  So that's a little different.  I think I have it figured out for now though, and we'll be purchasing a kitchen island and some shelf storage soon - which will help tremendously.  One day I hope to have a kitchen with enough storage that getting things in and out isn't so puzzle-like!

As for the rest of the house, it is BARE.  I've had to turn a guest room into a giant closet since we don't have closets or dressers to store our clothes in at the moment.  The room is filled with piles of clothes, organized by type.  We need to go buy wardrobes from Ikea, but the boxes wont fit in our tiny car and we haven't figured out how to either get them home an alternate way or what all it entails to have Ikea deliver them.

All the floors in the house are dark tile or dark wood laminate, so any amount of dust shows.  We had all tile in Kuwait too, but we also had a maid to clean once a week and carpets provided by Jason's work all over the place.  I think Ikea is going to make a killing off of us this year!  I so wish we could have a maid here too!

Hopefully the rest of our stuff will be here in the next couple of weeks (they said at the latest by Sept. 9th).  Our stairs are supposed to be finished on Friday.  Hopefully we'll have internet sometime next week.  The tile is being laid in our basement this week.  

So things are coming along - just slowly!

We had to postpone our trip down to the wine festival earlier this week due to weather.  We decided to check out the shopping in the nearby town of Mainz instead, and on the way back to our hotel this was the sight we saw.  I think its been a really long time since I've seen a rainbow.  Think its a sign?

The next couple of days have the potential of being fairly tiresome, but we're moving forward towards getting settled in.   We check out of the hotel tomorrow (yay!) and move into our house (yay!).  However, we walked the space today with the landlord and there were a lot of incomplete items.

  They swear all the little stuff will be done & clean by tomorrow, but there are three big ticket items that will have slowly be completed over the next couple weeks: (1) Our basement floor isn't complete; it will be tile, but its just the slab at the moment, (2) The stairs aren't finished!  The treads are just missing (as you can see below) and they've installed some scrap wood planks instead - this was upsetting because these won't be done until the end of the month, and (3) the concrete, landscaping and fence around our house won't be complete for probably closer to 2 months - it doesn't look like we'll be using our outdoors until the Fall!  :(

So that was a bit of a bummer.  We knew that the landscaping wouldn't be done when we moved in, but they originally told us a couple weeks.

In addition, we now have to get internet, make a big trip to Ikea (or several with our tiny car), and we have to wait for our furniture to get here.  We've heard horror stories from other Americans regarding the internet installation taking months.  Cross your fingers and do a little dance that that's not the case for us.  Jason and I don't do so well without internet for extended periods of time!

Our clothes, towels, and kitchen essentials are here though (yay!) and fingers crossed they'll be delivered tomorrow without issue.  Then we can at least sleep in our house, cook our own meals, and just be in our own space.  

Wish us luck!

Not the best picture, I know, but I had to quickly snap a shot of this street sweeper using a witch's broom to clean the streets :)  

On the way to Munich, Jason had to stop in  Stuttgart for work.  So I wandered around the downtown area while I waited for him.  

I found the most awesome market while I was there called Markthalle.  It was a large building with an atrium in the center.  The atrium housed food stands, similar to a farmer's market, but there were also things like spices, wine, candy, etc.  Around the perimeter of the atrium, there were themed areas of shopping (textiles, soaps, cooking, clothes, etc.).  There was one section that reminded me of Crate & Barrel (which I love!) and then within this section there was a staircase to a shop in the basement with all sorts of Middle Eastern and Asian antiques - very similar to the antique stores that I frequented in Kuwait.  It was awesome.  Too bad its 1.5 hours away!

Then I strolled around, did some shopping at H&M, and then sat in the park and read.  It was a nice day.