Home repair

About two months ago it rained. Hard. Buckets you might say. It rained harder than I've ever seen, even after living in Florida for most of my life. The morning after the rain, I noticed a wet spot on the ceiling just above the bunk bed where my small children sleep. The leak didn't actually drip, thankfully, or it would have gotten the bed wet.

 

I notified the landlord about the leak and damage. She seemed concerned and told me she would send someone out "soon." Two weeks passed and she came out with a workman to investigate. They discovered where the leak came from. It sounded like it could be a major repair and the landlady was glum.

 

A week or so later, the landlady came to inform me she'll be out of town for 2 months working on restoring a building in France and her repairman would be going with her for the first 2 weeks of her trip. She told me there's no hurry to fix the leak because it's likely not going to rain that hard again (we hope!). 

A month passes. She texts me from France and says the workers will be here in the morning. The next day they arrive at 11:00 a.m. These guys are different than the first one who came, so they inspect the damage and decide they need to buy special paint.
 

After a five-minute phone call with presumably their boss, they ask if they can come back later to paint the small section and then the next day to paint the whole ceiling. We arrange for 3:30. 

One man shows up 30 mins late to tell me they can't paint today and will come at 11 or 12 tomorrow, which he did. Then we have to sort out when he can come back to paint the whole ceiling. Our conversation went like this:

Him: I can come Monday.
Me: No, Monday is not good.
Him: Wednesday?
Me: Yes, 9:00 on Wednesday . . . Mittwoch (which is Wednesday in German, but I realize now that even my best German would not work because he's Polish!)
Him: OK, Wednesday at 9:00

At this point I'm pretty confident in Wednesday at 9:00.

Tuesday mornings I regularly attend a meeting, but by chance I was at home with my smallest child who missed school because of a cold. And guess who shows up at 9:00? The painters! So now our ceiling is painted at least! Next time I know to get out a calendar and point to the day to make sure we're all on the same page. Or maybe I should learn to speak Polish in addition to German!

Terrain

I thought I'd give you an overview of our new land. Germany is the size of Texas and borders 9 other countries. (Not many other countries in the world can claim that!) Germany is divided up into 16 states. "Germany" is an English word for the country. Here, they are Deutsch living in Deutschland. Hence, their license plates are D and websites end with .de.

Outside of town are soft rolling green hills; farmland dotted with villages. Each village is crowned with church steeple. Driving by on the autobahn, you can nearly see the entire village without actually going into it because of the way they are often situated on hills surrounded by farms. Interspersed throughout the farmland are giant windmills.

The nearby Rhine River banks rise with neat patchwork rows of vineyards. In some areas, the Rhine carves it's way through steep hills topped with countless castles and ruins.

I'm surprised at how jungly the woods are. The foliage here is much like Alabama in that respect. I had anticipated it having more of an alpine feel. I'm not sure why I thought that, except perhaps stereotypical imagery of men in lederhosen drinking liters of beer in quaint alpine villages. Indeed, only a small part of the country fits that bill.
 

The city we live in dates back to Roman times and was part of the northern most border for the Holy Roman Empire. Throughout history, many wealthy people chose to live here because of the natural thermal springs. It has been a spa city of leisure, culture, vacation, and retirement. To this day, our city's residents are older and many are wealthy. There are still public baths and springs throughout the city, and people fill cups and plastic bottles to drink the water because it's said to have healing powers.

Most of the city, including our apartment building, was built up in the late 1800s. The city was largely unscathed during both world wars, mainly because there were no factories or industry here, nothing of strategic importance. The city is not a main tourist attraction, so many of the people here are residents.

The Kurhaus - the spa house and casino

The Marktkirche "Market Church"

 

The Russian Orthodox Church, which overlooks the city

 

Looking through the vineyard down toward the Rhine

Looking out over the vineyards near the Rhine

Here is a view of the Rhine from a castle

An ancient window view

Looking at a village across the Rhine

 

Brussels

While our houseguest was here, we took her to Brussels, Belgium. Our style of touring the city involves lots of taste testing at the various chocolatiers. Other notable gastronomic pleasures included an Italian restaurant called Le Sans 13 and a burger place called Hemgie's (I know, a burger in Brussels?)

The Grand Place is the main square in the city. It's spectacular at night.

Chocolate iPhones!

Chocolate strawberries at Godiva.

Hemgie's: "The Burger Place to Be." It has actually been difficult to find a good burger in Germany, so we were quick to try out this place. The burgers were pretty decent. The bottom of their menu has this disclaimer: " If your in a hurry, please consider that we’re always gonna care to serve you a very good food first, thank you"

Mr. Bloomsbury and I first visited this city a year ago almost on a whim. It was an anniversary trip, and we had planned to go to London and Istanbul. Only 5 days before our departure Istanbul started to get rowdy. We decided their tear gas and riots wouldn't suit our vacation vibe so we contacted the airline to negotiate an alternate destination. The best they could offer was Amsterdam.

I thought Amsterdam was only a red light district and a smoker's haven so I wasn't thrilled about spending time there. We decided to throw in a train ride to Brussels to finish off our adventure. Actually, visiting Europe had never been high on my list. To me, Europe was for young adults backpacking and retirees sipping wine and looking at old buildings. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed our visit and how wrong I was about Amsterdam. We even mused, "What if we lived over here for a time?"

After we returned from our anniversary trip Mr. Bloomsbury had the opportunity to apply for a job,
and nearly a year later to the day we moved our entire family across the pond. As I walked through Brussels on our recent trip I thought if someone had told me 14 months ago I would be back with my whole family, I would have never believed them! I am amazed at how much has changed in just 14 months.

This sign is in the lobby at the hotel we stayed at in Brussels. It impacted me when we were here last year. And now you know the rest of the story...

Trier

In contrast to our rainy day adventure along the Rhine, this next adventure takes place on a beautiful, cool, crisp fall day. Bright sun shining, leaves turning gold and red, a clear blue sky. In a few weeks, the leaves in the vineyards will also begin to change, adding to the already colorful palette of October.

Today we take the Autobahn out of town and soon find ourselves in the countryside on our way to the oldest city in Germany at 16 BC, with legends that date back farther. There's lots to see in this town, so we parked centrally and walked to most of the main sights.

Potra Nigra "The Black Gate" best preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps.

The Church of Our Dear Lady

Constantine Basilica, the throne of Roman Emperor Constantine, largest surviving single-room structure from Roman times. Close to this palace was a playground, so we stopped a while and let the small children run off some energy. What was particularly appealing about this playground was that one side of it was guarded by the city wall (built in 160 AD!).

Ruins of the Roman Baths, among the largest Roman baths north of the Alps.

 

 

Ruins of an ancient Roman Amphitheater, built in 160 AD - It made me want to re-watch Gladiator. We brought our lunch and climbed up to what would have been the nose-bleed section to take it all in. The amphitheater once sat 20,000 spectators for gladiator battles, music recitals and religious festivals. Below the main arena is a cellar with shadowy passageways where prisoners and wild animals were kept. 

Exploring the Rhine on a Rainy Day

Our houseguest has returned to her home in the states. We tried to pack in as much as we could while she was here. One rainy day, we took cover in the car, opened the screen to the giant sunroof, and took in the misty views of castle ruins along the Rhine River. Destination: St. Goar to see Rheinfels Castle.

The road to the town of St. Goar winds along the bottom of the river gorge. Vineyards rise sharply up each side and castles cling to steep slopes on each river bend. Some of the castles are just ruins, some are private residences, some have been converted into hotels or restaurants, others are open for public sightseeing.

We arrived in the touristy but quaint town of St. Goar, situated along the riverbank. We parked the car and ducked into a café to order coffee and cookies. We brought a picnic lunch along and the rain subsided long enough to allow us a dry lunch on a bench overlooking the river.

After lunch, it was a steep drive up the hill to the castle. The fee to enter was only €4 each and the kids were free. It is a non-guided tour, however they did provide a map of the castle with explanations in English.

The castle, built in 1245, is in ruins but provides enough interesting towers and tunnels for the imagination to fill in the rest. We climbed up steep steps to a high bell tower with fantastic views of the river in both directions. Situated in the old chapel is a history museum which helps piece together the castle's military and cultural significance. Ancient plans and historical illustrations can be seen as well as a stone relic from 400 BC.

We explored the castle from top to bottom. Armed with flashlights, we traveled down worn stairs into cellars, embrasures, and mine tunnels. There was even a slaughterhouse with still visible trenches for the blood to run out. (Sorry, gross but interesting!)

Pardon the Interruption

Please excuse the 2 weeks off I've taken. I promise I've been taking notes and will bring you more stories of our adventures soon. In the meantime, I will give you a synopsis of the past 2 weeks to get you caught up with the times...

We have our first houseguest! Thus, the preceding days of her visit were filled with putting the finishing touches on our apartment making it suitable for visitors (which means shoving boxes out of sight and finding appropriate furnishings to store the rest of our stuff).

The biggest news by far is that our youngest small child has started school! We got word that a spot had opened up in an American pre-school. Not my first choice, as I had hoped to be able to have the child in German kindergarten. But we are thankful for the opportunity and feel this will be a good experience.

Soccer season has begun. Both of the small children are playing. So our weeks are fairly normal, consumed with school, homework, packing lunches, and soccer practice. They both seem to enjoy it and are good at following the coaches' directions, which are about all you can hope for at this age.

One of our recent weekends I particularly enjoyed -- not because we went anywhere fabulous -- on the contrary, we spent the entire weekend at home. We didn't have to go anywhere, run any errands, or feel it necessary to experience any sort of adventure. We slept in (about 7:00 for the small children, always a treat for mom), made pancakes for breakfast, had a leisurely morning, walked to a few places nearby, took naps, and enjoyed life. It has been months since we had a weekend that wasn't filled with the demands of transition and I relished every minute of it.

And that's about it. We are enjoying having our houseguest here. Her visit is allowing us to experience some of the more enjoyable aspects of living here as we show her around. It may be a few more days before I can get some other stories posted, but be assured that "The Bloomies" are alive and well! :)

Strasbourg, France

We set off on a drizzly Sunday morning for a little road trip to France. Neither of us had ever been to France, and so we decided to take advantage of the easy 2-hour drive across the border. 

This little trip served as a trial run for other bigger trips and I learned a few things...Our phones do not have international service, therefore I can't rely on my smart phone for all my information. And so an actual map of the area would be helpful, even though we recently purchased a GPS. Also the actual addresses of our destinations would be beneficial to use in congruence with the GPS (again, because I am unable to rely on my smart phone to tell me everything).

Prior to the trip, I researched the area and picked a few sights for us: the Notre Dame Cathedral said to rival the one in Paris, a quaint neighborhood called La Petite Paris, a carousel, and a park. 

My research led me to believe all the places we would enjoy going to would be open even though it was Sunday. I'd like to take a moment to emphasize the fact that Germans (and Strasbourg, perhaps because it's so close to Germany) like to close down shop on Sundays. Unless you're in a big city or a particularly touristy area, most things are closed. I speculate that perhaps the reason we find such a variety of vending machines in Germany is to prevent people from actually starving to death in the event they did not properly prepare for the Sunday closings.

However, upon arrival we find that really nothing is open except for a few shops and restaurants obviously geared toward the average tourist. In the rain, we set out on a march through town in attempt to find food that's not overpriced.

On our trek we did see the cathedral, which is so large it nearly slams you in the face as you round the corners of the narrow village lanes. We also found the carousel and allowed the small children a ride on its double-decker grandness.

After nearly an hour of wandering through streets of closed shops, we came back around and settled on a nice restaurant by the river. We enjoyed our meal and our view. They enjoyed emptying our wallet.

Since it was still raining, we weren't able to visit the park so we continued just to walk. The neighborhood La Petite France is located on an island in the middle of a river. The river has an interesting set of locks and we spent some time watching the chambers fill and empty, allowing the cruise boats passage.

With our curiosity about France appeased, we decided it was time to head back to Germany. I'm happy to report that there was actually a small amount of relief upon returning to our 'home' country with it's budding familiarity. 

Notre Dame Cathedral 

Our oldest small child was quite impressed by the swans. 

River view 

Coming down a side street with the cathedral in the background

And of course, macaroons!