Because of the importance of recycling and reusing in Germany, most drinks you buy at the grocery—water, soft drinks, juice, even beer—have a deposit (Pfand) on the bottles (plastic or glass). These can be either € .08, .15, or .25, depending on the bottle. A family of three tends to collect a lot of bottles pretty quickly. Continue reading
Ramblings and odd thoughts
Roxy-Kino
Way down in the south end of Nürnberg is a little two-screen movie theatre that shows “foreign-language” films—the Roxy-Kino. Usually this means English, but I’ve seen ads for Indian and Arabic films there too. It really is a small, out of the way place. There’s nothing else to do in the neighborhood, so it’s a destination rather than a spontaneous thing. The seats are so close to the screen that you have to sit in the back row to keep from breaking your neck!
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Hostel Trouble
Through an unfortunate series of mishaps, our stay at the City-54 Hotel / Hostel in Berlin was a disaster.
The room itself was marginal. It was large enough, with two comfortable twin beds as well as its own bath and mini-kitchen (cooktop, sink, and fridge). Large windows let in plenty of light and fresh air, even though the view was nil. But the price was reasonable, and it’s situated next to an U-Bahn station for convenience. Continue reading
ICE to Berlin
I’m sitting on the Deutsche Bahn ICE 1512 to Berlin, working on blog entries as I head north to pick Sheridan up from her language camp. We’re going to spend a couple days in Berlin sightseeing—Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburger Tor, etc. Continue reading
Moving In Day (or, Why I hate driving in Germany Part One)
I mentioned in the dog story the van we rented to get from the airport in Frankfurt to our new apartment in Nürnberg when we arrived on Thursday 26 June—Vanzilla! In case my description wasn’t enough, here’s a picture of the type of van we had.
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Ransoming the dog (Part Two)
To recap:
It’s now after 12:00. I’ve been up for a day and a half. I’m hungry, tired, thirsty, can hardly think in English, much less in German, and I’m trying to rescue my dog from Lufthansa Cargo so that we can get to Nürnberg in time to get the keys to our apartment and crash.
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Ransoming the dog (Part One)
The flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt takes almost 9 hours—not counting check in, airport security, boarding, customs, baggage claim… you get the idea. We arrived at the Atlanta airport around 3 pm after dropping off Siggy at the cargo terminal in his crate (complete with paperwork and all) and took off at 6 pm. So with the flight and time change, it was around 9 am in Frankfurt when we arrived. I didn’t sleep well on the plane, so I’d been up since 6 am the day before. We had to be in Nürnberg before 6pm in order to pay our deposits and pick up the keys for our apartment so we had somewhere to sleep that night.
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Presents from our former selves…
Our shipment from the States arrived today! After numerous headaches and back-and-forth between California and Bremen, we FINALLY have our stuff! It’s like Christmas in Julaugust (as Kevin has said). It’s really nice being surrounded by familiar things—it makes the apartment feel much more like a home. Continue reading
The German TV License
Imagine if PBS, instead of holding a phone-a-thon each year in which they show old movies and give away t-shirts and mugs with paid donation, showed up at your door to calculate your quarterly bill.
“But I don’t watch PBS,” you say. “I don’t even have cable.”
“Doesn’t matter. You have a TV, right?”
Raining
It’s a gloomy day today, around 22ºC (72ºF) and drizzly. Perfect day to stay inside and catch up on house- and homework.
Converting from Celsius to Fahrenheit is challenging, although it’s getting easier. Basically, 10ºC (50ºF) is cold, and 30ºC (86ºF) is hot—not as hot as I’m used to from Georgia, but then, we don’t have AC here, so it’s plenty hot enough! The days in July-August run from around 12-14º overnight to 20-25º during the day, but it has gotten warmer on several days. When it gets cooler in the fall, we have to figure out how to use the gas stoves in our living- and bedrooms. Continue reading