10:49 PM 7/13/2006
Cabin fever is setting in. This morning I woke up at a blessed 10:00 am, after having lulled Jacob back to sleep from a midnight waking. He woke with a smile and coo. John had gone to get his German drivers' license, which will take until about noon. Soon after that he came back to the room to find me struggling with the car seat. Jacob had spilled all his water into it. I took the blasted thing apart only to find that I could not figure out how to detach the washable seat cover from the bottom seat. Thankfully John figured it out. Next we went to housing to get signed up for off-post housing.
I went back to the German supermarket (Kaufland) today, armed with a basic vocabulary list (Karteloffen is potato). It was less intimidating than yesterday. There is hope! It is still weird to me that they don't refrigerate the milk or butter. It would be nice to walk around Bruckburg and see what those stores are like. To my untrained eye, it all looks like some kind of Epcot-inspired housing development. (Yes, yes. Of course it's the other way around. Ugly American tourist, yada yada.)
A side note: if you must find a German address, do buy a map! The friendly housing representative drew us an utterly useless one yesterday, which confounded all of the people we asked for directions on the way. We still cannot discern which is the intersection with "the light", an apparently invisible device that only works when a pedestrian presses the mythical button. We found Finkenstrasse by sheer determination and after asking perhaps half a dozen bemused residents. Fortunately the second place we visited was also in Bruckburg. By this time we were pros, finding Finkenstrasse and the other street without needing to find the aforementioned alterdimensional light. The language barrier was in full effect as we met with the landlords. They are an aging but friendly German couple who showed us through the house, pointing out in German the new (neues) appliances and the playground (Kinderplatz) near the house. The A-frame roof makes the flat a bit claustrophobic, and John is not enthusiastic about third floor living. The washer and dryer hookups are in the basement, and the owner explains that there is "kalt" but not "Warm" water for the washer. I managed to convey the idea of garage by putting together two words I already knew... "auto" and "haus". It was crude but the light still went on. Luckily one of the tenants, Mr. Jones, was able to translate our remaining questions for us. Apparently my painting project for Jacob's room would be OK so long as we paint it back to white and don't use oil paints. Still, I have little hope that we will rent this one, though with three bedrooms and freedom to paint I would have put it at the top of my list.
Despite the encouragement of other Army spouses, I am not sure that I want to give up the security of living on post. With everything I need nearby, do I really need the experience of living on the German economy? Unfortunately we are only authorized two bedrooms for on post. Off-post leased housing allows us three, but on the economy we can get as many as we want. John is not keen on trying the newspaper ad route, since that could leave us responsible for lawn maintenance or other unknown liabilities. Who knows, it could be better than we think. I want to keep looking.
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