Wings of Dixie

Mike plays in a group called Wings of Dixie that plays, well, Dixie music as well as rock and folk and all kinds of stuff.  He started performing with them two weeks after we arrived in Germany; he really hit the ground running.  We got here right before festival season and his group had several festival gigs.  I got to take Ben to one in Kaiserslautern, half an hour from our house.

Mike's colleagues are awesome.  They're great musicians and wonderful people. 

I've been to a couple of these gigs, and Germans always come up to Mike at the breaks and after the performances to tell him how fabulous he is.  But I'm not bitter or anything.

Really, Ben liked the performance.  But it wouldn't be a complete day without a major breakdown.  Two other band wives sat with us and kept Ben occupied.  I was very grateful for them.

Had to get a picture of our friend who was hidden in the back.  She was the one who answered all my annoying questions by e-mail before we moved.

New Place

Here are a few shots of our new place.  These are from our first few days here in September, so we either had no furniture or base-issued stuff.

A peek at our living/dining room area from the second-floor hallway.  I love that there are doors to all the rooms.  The back doors open to a small patio; there's a small yard with a swingset.

Our spacious kitchen - spacious for Germany, anyway.  The built-in fridge is very small, so we put a full-size fridge in that back-right corner.

Bathtime!  Our master bath (on the third floor) is a nice size and has a shower stall and this bathtub.  Ben loves to play with the faucet...

...and that spray thing on the wall.  But he definitely does not like the spray thing to rinse his hair of shampoo.  But I do :)

Someone found a reflective surface.  What a handsome fella.

Here's our master bedroom, also on the third floor.  That alcove is great for Ben to play in.  It's not so great for anyone over three feet tall.

Here's our two-story spiral staircase.  It's much more stable than some other staircases we've seen, but the space between the steps scares this momma.  Ben is pretty cautious on them and waits for me to help him climb up and down.

Ben's room.  The wardrobe is on loan from the base.  We have no closets in the house, unless you count the pantry.

Living room with a bunch of base furniture.  I don't know how I would've stayed sane without that laptop.  It kept Ben occupied for hours.

Ben's expression cracks me up.  Mike was getting ready for his first gig with his small group.  Ben seems a bit suspicious of the uniform.

I'm still organizing and getting rid of boxes.  When things are neater, I'll post more photos.

Catsitting

The duplex we rented wasn't ready for another two weeks after we signed the contract.  One of Mike's coworkers was going out of town with his family and needed someone to watch their three cats.  He had heard me complaining about not having laundry or a real kitchen or room to move around, so he told us that we could stay at his place as housesitters while they were gone.

Not the greatest photo of Ben ever, but it shows Calvin lording over the other cats who actually lived there.  He was a total bully.  It was so embarrassing.

 

Ben wrapped up in a curtain.

There were a couple of days where Mike was on the road but the homeowners came back while Ben and I were still there.  Ben liked the company, and he liked staying someplace with a yard he could explore.

Our friends' daughter didn't seem to mind Ben being around.  She was nice enough to share her toys and snacks.

Ben's not the only one who can hide in a curtain.

I think Ben liked watching someone else do this more than he liked being the one hiding.

 

His obsession with keys and keyholes began when we got to Germany.

That's Mike's car key.  Ben has figured out how to put the key in the ignition.  But when the car's not available, a door will do.

Our friends had also recently moved to Germany, and all they had was loaner furniture from the base: no TV.  Mike's laptop came to the rescue. Ben even sat through some kind of Barbie Princess DVD.

Out and About

Here's a sampling of some of the things we did (other than househunting and base stuff) during our first couple of weeks in Germany.

Mike's sponsor, Paul, took us to a doner shop for dinner right before we first looked at the house we ended up renting. Ben liked both Paul and the doner shop.

While we were staying in our temporary place, we walked down the street to the restaurant that was part of the hotel we first stayed in. The owner was great and really liked Ben.

Ben really got into using regular "adult" silverware in the restaurants when we first got here. But now, at home, I can't get him to use a fork or spoon to save my life. Today he tried to eat pudding with his hands.

Some friends invited us to their place to use their phone and computer, and to be in an actual HOME instead of a place where we dump our luggage. Drew worked with Mike back in Georgia, and two years ago he and his wife Ali came to Germany. They have been incredibly kind and helpful, and I will be very sad when they leave next year. They have babysat Ben and he absolutely loves them. And he loves their dogs, too.

Back in the town we were staying in...Mike took Ben on lots of walks.

There wasn't a proper public playground there, but Ben used a local elementary school's playground until school went back in session.

Drew and Ali suggested we check out Dino's, an Italian restaurant in the same town that we were staying in. For those who don't know, most restaurants here serve "bubbly" bottled water and it is rare to get tap water, or even any uncarbonated beverage other than wine. Mike and Ben can't stand the stuff. Dino's caters to Americans, and they served us big glasses of ice water with lemon wedges. I heart Dino's.

They always serve some appetizer, and Ben really liked the one that day. We ordered him a thin-crust veggie pizza. It was delicious but he wouldn't eat it. Instead, he ate my spicy seafood pasta.

Yet another restaurant...remember how we could use either the fridge or the oven in our rental house? Not a lot of cooking got done there. Anyway, this was in the enlisted club on base. Just a basic, very American sports-themed place that serves burgers and fries. Ben loves it there. He especially loves to pretend he's playing the video games. When we get to the building and he figures out where we're going, he sprints to the restaurant.

Rental House

After deciding that staying in a hotel room until we found a place to move into just wasn't going to work, Mike found us a one-bedroom apartment (actually a small, very old house) with a living space and more of a kitchen. It was a charming place in a lot of ways.

Ben looking at the street through the front window.

The front of the house. There was a very small parking spot in front of the cellar door.

It was a challenge to get Ben and his stroller up and down those stairs several times a day. Especially with all the bees around the ivy. There was a sweet little backyard with a table and chairs but the bees and the heat kept us away.

Right inside the front door, which was actually on the side of the house. The door locked automatically, so we kept the key in the door all the time.

Living room. The only space I had for our groceries was on the dining room table, so we ate in the living room. That was also where we kept our luggage and clothes.

Mike trying to get a little practice in. The dining room is in the background.

Ben put the whole mouthpiece right into his mouth. Maybe he thought it was a lollipop.

The back of the house, dining room on the right, kitchen on the left. There's a tabletop oven behind the fireplace. What's not visible is the sink with the very small fridge underneath it. There was only one outlet, and we could either plug in the fridge or stove at any given time.
The kitchen shared a wall with the bathroom, and there was space in the wall above the sink near the ceiling. Kind of strange.

This fireplace was less than an issue with Ben than I thought it would be.

Ben loved climbing these stairs. They were pretty steep and there weren't any handrails.

The sitting area at the top of the stairs. It was too hot to use it.

Calvin spent a good bit of time looking out the front window.

He thought about making a run for it several times.

The bedroom where we all slept. It was on the second floor so it was pretty hot. The floor was slanted and my feet were higher than my head when lying in bed.

The bathtub was the saving grace of this place. First, it was an actual bathtub, not a dangerously slippery shower stall like in the hotel room. And it was the perfect size for Ben. He loved bathtimes there.

Jet Lag

Here are some pics from our first few days in Germany. The plane landed at a base, and we went straight to our hotel. I had heard that European hotel rooms were smaller than ones in the states, but I still wasn't prepared.

It was nice that there was a second bed, but it was too big for Ben and just took up valuable space.

And here's the other half of the room. The bed was full-size...with two twin mattresses. Apparently that's also common in Europe. Because the room was pet-friendly, the carpet was the outdoor kind that's really rough. Ben was playing on the bed and fell off (a short fall) and scraped his forehead on the carpet.

This is what the scrape looked like the next morning. He's all wrapped up in blankets because it was chilly in the mornings, despite the heat wave that week. Did I mention there's no air conditioning in Germany? We had to keep both windows open, and Calvin almost escaped several times (no screens).

Our hotel room was down the street from the front desk and restaurant. This was on the restaurant patio.

I think this was our second day. Mike's sponsor took us into Kaiserslautern to run an errand, and we got to see the Saturday produce market and stop at a bakery. We ordered a pretzel, not realizing that it was sliced in half and buttered on the inside. Pretty darn good, and Ben liked it a lot. We won't be in the habit of buttering all our pretzels, though.

Mike's sponsor drove us to several villages that day, just to give us a taste of the area. At the edge of one of the villages was a walking trail through the woods. We usually tell Ben to "stay on the path" to keep him on the sidewalk, but there was no concrete out here, so he decided to make his own path.