Big purchases and small luxuries

WE HAVE INTERNET.

In other news we also got the washing machine delivered and bought a television. It's nice to be able to do the laundry without carting it all the way on base to the laundromat. With every purchase it's more and more a home. JM and I no longer have to watch movies on one of our laptops with the subtitles on (neither of our laptops' speakers were loud enough) we can now enjoy movies with surround sound. Now our only things left to purchase are rather small (aka: cheap) in comparison to the last few weeks: coffee table and a tv stand (it is currently sitting on one of our endtables...it works). The co-leader of the FRG, G, told me there is an IKEA near Nurenburg so that may be a day trip next weekend if we can't find what we want around here. And Lord knows I love IKEA.

Speaking of Nurenburg and G, she and I went to Nurenburg last week Tuesday. It is only about an hour away and it is a really pretty city. It is pretty big (about milwaukee size I'd say) and old. G needed some new winter clothes and asked me if I wanted to tag along to get out of the house. It was really fun and I had a great time exploring the city and scoping out where the Christkindlmarkt will be. The Christkindlmarkt is this huge Christmas market full of all different kinds of vendors (food, drink, stuff) and there are tons around Germany but the biggest and most famous is in Nurenburg. JM isn't exactly estatic to go with me...but we're going anyway. =)

Let's see... I am just so happy to be writing this from my hallway floor. Yes, that's where the router is and yes it is wireless but I just sat down and got online and here we are.

Weird differences I've noticed so far:
-- German drivers are scary confident/stupid. Passing 4 cars at one time on a two lane highway with oncoming traffic (scarily) close is normal.
-- German dryers are "condenser dryers" which basically means they suck. American dryers you plug in to an outlet and then you attach that hose thing that blows out air or whatever. (I never said I knew the correct terms here). German dryers are self contained, all you do is plug 'em in (sounds great right? Wrong). You have to empty this little tank that fills with water throughout the drying process because that's how it dries your clothes and so it takes forever (about two hours). Half the people in our complex don't even own dryers.
-- German washing machines are equally inferior. To do coloreds takes 1 hour and 46 minutes. Whites: 2 hours and 32 minutes.
-- Germany is not a fan of customer service. Example: getting cell phones. It took us 4 tries and two different offices. Surprisingly the one on-base was a bigger pain than the one off base. The on base one wouldn't give us a two year contract (they don't offer one year) because we are here two months shy of two years. Even when we were like "we'll pay you for the two months we're not here" they were not about it.
-- It rains a lot here. A lot a lot.
-- German appliances in general are inferior to American ones.
-- Germans are insane about their recycling. Also, I have yet to find out where we put our trash so we've been taking it on base.
-- They really like to fine you here. Not that we've directly experienced it but, there's a lot of ways to get one. Not properly recycling. Fine. Running out of gas on the autobahn. Fine. Hitting a deer with your car. Fine. Providing any vestige of customer service. Fine. (I'm kidding, but I'm also serious)

Alright. This became very long. The posts will definitely be more regular now. Not sure what we'll be up to this coming week but I will keep you all posted!