Landscapes and Langenscheidt

4:58 PM 7/15/2006

So last night we went walking around Katterbach. I am relieved because I now know where the important stuff is: bank, shoppette, thrift shop, commissary. The thrift shop has the typical short hours but I've heard that they do a brisk business. I want a bike! There is no way I'll have my own car for the next 5 weeks, but I will have childcare soon so I need some transportation. First I'll check the thrift shop, then if there's nothing good, John can take me to Ansbach for a German one.

We are using lots of resources to learn German. The first one was the Rosetta Stone software, but I can't always use that because my disk is packed and John's copy is through his AKO account. So, now I have a bunch of audio disks on CD, a cool "learn german" card game which turned out to be more useful than I thought, and the enormous yellow Langenscheidt Standard Dictionary. Word to the wise: e-Bay this crap before you deploy because it's expensive to buy new at the PX. Whatever... in the kid's section I got a sticker book that's right at my level. Kind of embarrassing to be using the kid stuff but HEY, it works!

Getting lunch today was annoying. The cantina and Eddies were closed so we had to walk all the way across post to eat. The good news is, we found food. The bad news is that it was Burger King, which is just as raunch in Germany as it is stateside. On the up side, there's a Doner Kepab place in the same building, which we found AFTER eating the raunch stuff. Doner is cheap and filling food. Last night I had a Doner platter at Eddie's. Doner can be lamb or beef; mine was beef. It tastes just like Gyro and comes with that cucumber tzaziki sauce.