Feeling at Home

If there is one thing that this experience has taught me is that if things are looking down that a good (or even not so good) night of sleep will definitely help.  Things are looking much brighter on Monday morning.  I decide to take my new bike for a spin to the grocery store.  I put my backpack on and go.  Just me and my bike and it feels really good to be self sufficient.  I'm typically a very independent person but because of the language barrier I've had to rely a lot more on Marty for daily exchanges and things than I normally would have at home.  I know I can muddle through an exchange but when there is someone right there who speaks the language, why bother?  But for my own sanity and self preservation I know I need to get out there and do it.  Grocery store and bakery  success.  I know I sound like a toddler as I try to ask my basic questions and pay for things but I do it and have enough groceries/fresh bread for the next day or two.
We also finally met up with a family that I had been emailing with for months who had moved from Colorado to Berlin back in March.  They have children the same ages as ours and from the sounds of it are quite similar.  The kids and I board a bus and head their way.  They are dog sitting a golden retriever puppy so we figure it would be fun to meet the puppy too.

We head toward their house and get off on the right bus stop but can't figure out which way to go from there.  The kids get cranky when I go the wrong way (3 different times in 3 different wrong directions) but we finally find the right apartment and the kids hit it off immediately.  Bridget (the mom) is great and shares all of her hard earned 6 months of advice about Berlin living.

Josie and Elia are quick friends and seem to like a lot of the similar things. They are definitely preteen girls.   Benjamin and Tesh are literally two peas in a pod.  As we were walking the boys were behind me and I couldn't tell which one was talking.  "Can you lick your elbow? "  "I'm the fastest runner, let's race."  "I can burp really loud, watch!" and so on and so on.

We walk the dogs to a park and the dogs and kids play for a bit and then we head back.  I've brought some food and Bridget has some food and we put all of our food out on the table and we eat picnic style just like we would in Seattle.  We needed some normalcy.  All of us. Thank you, Sarah for introducing us!! I sense more outings and get togethers with this family.  Thank you Bridget for sharing your home, food and dogs.
Marty does his first live broadcast from Berlin and it goes off without a hitch.  Quite remarkable that we can be here in Berlin in the afternoon and he is broadcasting live to Seattle's morning commute.  Because Marty is worried about interrupted internet connection the kids can't have screen time the way they normally would like to during this later afternoon time.

I haven't gotten around to cleaning or cooking (although I'm still doing laundry on a nearly daily basis) I don't have much to do during this time either.  The kids and I spend an enjoyable several hours playing games on the back patio.

I'm still not brave enough or creative enough to venture into real cooking and we are getting a bit tired of the German "Abend Brot" - evening bread so we decide to eat out again.  It is amazing how cheap eating out here is.
It makes cooking not nearly as economical and because it is much more difficult here for me (the kitchen doesn't have all of my tools and the stores don't have all of the same stuff) eating out is a great option.  Except finding a place we all can agree on is difficult.  Actually just getting the kids to agree is the hard part.  Marty and I will eat just about anything.  I throw out a restaurant named "Good Times" that we have passed many times while in town and it has a large outdoor seating area.  I have no idea what type of food it is and therefore no one can shoot it down because they don't know IF they will or will not like it.  We decide to ride our bikes.  Benjamin's bike is OK as long as he doesn't shift.  Haha!!  So much for a bike with gears.  We will get it fixed eventually.  Josie and Marty ride up ahead.  Benjamin and I a ways back.  There is a special traffic light just for the bike lane but since I'm not much of a biker and I've never biked in Germany I'm not all that familiar with how it works.  Like the car traffic lights the bike traffic lights go from red to yellow to green and BACK to yellow and then red again.  This way the cars are really ready to go when the light goes green.  German efficiency at its finest.  So I hesitate when the bike light goes from green to yellow thinking we should stop but then decide we have time so I tell Benjamin to go and follow him.  When we are just about across the street the car traffic light turns green and someone in a BMW lays on the horn full blast and scares Benjamin and I nearly to death.  We get a man crossing the street giving us a nasty, judgmental glare and apparently he says " Man, man, man, what a terrible example you are setting  and in front of your child" obviously directed at me.  I have to say it is times like this that I'm thankful I don't speak German and worry that this kind of public scolding and putting down will wear us down during our year.  It is funny, I told Marty that I have noticed this attitude in him.  It must be innately German.  He is not that way at all with strangers but he sets very high standards for himself and anyone in his family or tight knit circle. Of course you should KNOW how to cross a street on a bike in Germany.  Doh!! 

But Good Times ended up being good  Indonesian food which our kids had never had.  We all ate and drank to full for 28 Euro.

 This eating out thing is pretty great when it is so cheap!

I make Marty ride with Benjamin on the way home and I trail happily a few blocks behind.  

Day 7

Micha and Julie tell us that there is some big, used bike sale on Sunday in Berlin and since this is our last day with our rental car it is perfect timing.  We decide to get there early thinking this will be our best shot at getting a good bike.  We show up and it is quite empty.  Tons of bikes but not tons of people... yet.
Apparently people bring the bikes they want to sell, they pay a commission to the organizers and hundreds of people are able to sell and buy their bikes.

It is actually pretty cool.  I'm not a bike person at all.  I enjoy riding bikes but know nothing about them and really could care less about what type or even if it has gears - Germany is really REALLY flat.  Josie, Benjamin and Marty have much more specific demands on their bikes.  There seems to be a lot of bikes for adults but not many for kids and in particular not many for Benjamin's size.  He borrowed a bike from a friend for the past few months in Seattle that had gears and he was not going to go with anything less in Berlin.

A bike without gears was a definite downgrade in his opinion.  The whole set up was pretty cool.  You browse through aisles of bikes.  If you like one and want to try it out you push it out to an open square and when exiting you hand over your ID to a guy standing at the entrance/exit.  Then you can ride the bike around to see how well you like it.  When we first got there the open area was virtually empty but after an hour or so there were dozens of people test riding bikes in this small area.  Kind of crazy and kind of cool at the same time.
Marty, Josie and I all end up finding bikes.  I was really drawn to the bigger, cruiser type and if they had a basket it was bonus points.  I know that is not how you should pick out a bike so I ask Marty and Julie to ride  around the bike I have chosen a bit to get their opinions.  At first they say the gears stick a bit so the bike seller puts some oil on it and then it seems fine.  Marty and Josie decide on their bikes.  Josie's criteria was color and it had to have gears and not look like any of the old lady, bikes that I liked.  We pay and head toward the car to try to figure out how to transport them back to our house.  Benjamin, of course, is very upset that we all got a bike except him and we try to explain that we will keep looking for a bike for him.  Hard for a 7 year old to really understand this concept while he watches the rest of his family walk away with new (to us) bikes.  Poor guy.  He REALLY REALLY wanted a bike.  As we are walking to the car I notice something is sticking with one of the wheels on my bike.  Great!  We just paid for it and we figured they would just say all sales were final.  Julie to the rescue again. She helps us bring it to the seller who tells us that her husband has a bike shop and can fix it up, no problem.  We load my bike into the car and Marty and Benjamin head to the bike shop in hopes of fixing my bike and finding one for Benjamin.  Julie walks with Josie and me to a train station and helps get Josie and I on the correct train to our house.  I'm pushing Marty's bike which is 10 sizes too big for me.

He is 6 foot 5 and I am 5 foot 1 - and yes I looked like I was pushing a gigantic bike.  Because it is!  Once we get off the train at our stop I tell Josie she can ride ahead to our house, about 1 mile away.  She already knows the route and is quite happy for this new freedom.  Things really are different here with how much freedom children are given at younger ages.  Marty and Benjamin get home a bit later with my bike perfectly fixed and they found a sweet bike for Benjamin.  Unfortunately upon riding it up an down our street the chain falls off and gets stuck in the gears.  Then one of the pedals falls off then the handle bars come loose.  What the heck??  Thankfully, Marty is pretty handy and puts it back together (mostly) but I think it still needs to go to the shop for a once over.  We have to return the rental car and so we all load up for one last joy ride and then take the bus back.  We decide to eat on the way home and is par for the course deciding what to eat causes a family fight.  We end up ordering from some burrito type place.  It turns out to be quite gross, unfortunately.  I need to always remember that Germans CANNOT make Mexican food or even anything that comes close to it.  We return home and we are all utterly exhausted. It has been one of the fullest, most productive and tiring weeks of our lives.  We are all in grumpy moods and we end up all going to bed with headaches.

Day 6

It's Saturday, a week after we left Seattle.  In so many ways it feels like the blink of an eye and in others it feels like a year ago.  We have really learned so much and done so much since leaving home.  We hit the ground running in Berlin and have not stopped once since arriving.  We have a newfound appreciation for the immigrant experience knowing all too well that we have it so SO (complete understatement, I know) much better than most immigrants and/or regugees.  Not only was this a choice move and one just really for fun and the experience but we also have the language (Marty at least does) 3/4 of our family has the citizenship, we have an education and resources - both financial and family and friends here with all the important information we would need. Even with all of these benefits and advantages it is still really, really difficult, overwhelming and all-consuming.  And we have realized that we have this rather self-important attitude that we WILL get this to work out (Internet, insurance, food, schools, etc) we came with that attitude because unbeknownst to us we've had it our whole lives.  Privilege.  We have a lot of white and American privilege.  So much of living here is a learning experience and not just in where to find the grocery store and learning the language but truly being able to see the world from a very different perspective.

We have a rather lazy Saturday morning... Well, not really Kim or Marty.  She flew out of Berlin and they left for the airport around 4am!  Such a great visit, Kim.  Thank you SO much for coming and helping us set up.
In the afternoon we decide that since we still have the rental car we should drive to Cottbus, the town where Marty's parents are from which is about 90 minutes away.  About 10-15 years ago the apartment building next door to the one that Marty's dad grew up in went for sale through auction.  Marty and his parents bought it as an investment but also for a way to stay tied to Germany.  And then a few years after that the actual apartment building that his dad grew up in went up for sale and they bought that too.  These building purchases really did pave the way for us.  It set the wheels in motion for a long term commitment to and love of this area of Germany.  

When Marty and I first met we both said that if we moved to Germany we would like to live in this cute, quaint, small town.  And it really is cute but now that we live in busy, bustling Berlin we cannot imagine living in a place so small.  It is really nice to visit though.
To make owning property half way around the world work, we need someone local to manage everything for us.  Many years ago, Marty's dad found this woman, Frau Ehreke, who has been phenomenal.  She is always right on top of everything and communicates any problems or issues right away.  We visit with her and her family for most of the day.  They have 3 daughters, 2 older ones and one that is just one year older than Josie, named Bianca.   Benjamin and the two girls played together for hours while Marty asked Frau Ehreke and her husband so many important questions regarding insurance and taxes and so much more.  I, of course, cannot understand much but a few words more each day are seeping in my very tired brain.

When we are just about to leave their house Bianca invites us to go with them to some ride park.  So because we are in flexible vacation mode we say sure.  We drive just 10 minutes away to this crazy little ride park and the kids had a blast.  We haven't really done much (if any) touristy stuff and the kids (rightfully so) are a bit tired of just setting up life stuff.  

It is interesting to note that in Germany there is much more freedom to be.  Everyone here knows how to conduct themselves and therefore they need far fewer public policing.

 In this entire park there were just a few workers helping to make sure that the rides were running properly but Marty and I both mentioned that if this park were in Seattle there would be workers at every stage making sure people weren't doing things they weren't supposed to.  Overall a fun but tiring day as we didn't get back to Berlin until close to 10pm.

Day 5

We spend nearly the entire morning putting away all of the belongings from our boxes.  We were all pleasantly surprised that nothing (computers and screens) were broken and everything was just as we had packed it.
Kim actually loves organizing things and really hates clutter.  She helped so much with motivation and moving things along.  Plus, she knows I need so much help in this area and she can say things to me like, "Do you consider THIS folded?"  Then proceeds to completely rearrange my wardrobe in a way I would never have time or interest in doing.  The top two shelves are Marty's, by the way.  See the difference in the folding?  Who knew we were such bad folders 😏

Marty and Benjamin set up Marty's office and Josie happily organizes her room.

We meet Micha and Julie for a delicious dinner of doner kebaps.   Doners are a lot like Greek Gyros but even better and so very cheap.  There are Kebap stands everywhere.  Full dinners for all of us plus a drink each was 25 Euro total.  Berlin really is so much cheaper than Seattle in EVERY way.
After dinner we head to another very cool park near Julie and Micha's apartment.  There is no end of creativity in Berlin Parks and again, way more physically challenging than American parks.

We think that the Germans just don't worry about being sued if someone gets hurt as Americans do.  The video of this is not loading but after they walk over the sticks to the left outside part of the structure they jump off.  Marty is 6 foot 5 so you can tell by where his head is while standing on the ground how tall this really is.  The kids LOVED it!!

Day 4

On day 4 we wake up to no internet still!  We somehow thought that overnight this would have happened.  After several phone calls and many visits to the local Telekom store.  SO frustrating.  Kim offers to watch the kids for an hour or so while Marty and I walk up (AGAIN) to the Telekom store.  The guy working there is very nice and walks Marty through all the steps he needs to do to try to reset the modem.  It's all in German and the internet/modem speak sounds like Chinese to me so I didn't catch a thing but Marty feels pretty confident.
We buy some shampoo and contact solution and although not really a date -you know us, we go all out on date nights/days - visiting the internet store and buying toiletries but after many days of constant kid chatter it feels nice to be alone and light to be out in our new town just Marty and me.  We realize how incredibly close we live to the school and town.  It always seems so much further when walking with kids.
When we get home Marty gets to work on resetting the modem.  He has 4 or 5 places where he has to enter passwords that are like 18 numbers long.  It is crazy.  A lot like German words where they have 20+ letter words.  It doesn't work the first time so he tries again and again and again.  For a couple of hours he tries every combination of passwords he can think of.  We dig out old contracts from the office desk in the house.  We try those numbers.  Nothing works.  He is getting more and more frustrated by the minute.  Then after the frustration wears off he is feeling defeated.  He tries to call their helpline but there is a 45 minute wait and we don't have a land line because it is connected to the internet which we STILL DO NOT have.  We can't wait for 45 minutes on our cell phones because they are  still Seattle cell phone plans and it costs so much per minute.  We try to get a hold of the owners of the house to try to trouble shoot.  They are very kind but can't really help. They don't know much about the internet and can't figure out why it isn't working.  They wrote all the passwords meticulously for us and for some reason it still doesn't work.  After several hours of this the owners text back with some old, outdated password.  And lo and behold it somehow works!!  We are connected and up and running.  Right around the same time we get an email saying that our boxes have arrived at Tegel/Berlin airport and are ready to be picked up (after a 2 day delay)  WOW!!  It was like Christmas around here. Once the internet connected the kids ran happily to their rooms for some unadulterated screen time!!

Julie and Micha say they are willing to help us with our boxes.  They tell us about a place that you can rent a truck for 30 Euro per day.  We honestly COULD NOT have done this without them.  Without a truck Marty would have had to go by himself at least 3 or 4 times with the back car seats put down just to get everything home.  Micha and Julie drive the truck and we lead in the car.  We show up at this huge warehouse and ask around where we should go.  There are boxes everywhere and workers FLYING by us on forklifts.  It was like a live Rokenbok village.  We are led to one room where they have a file with our name on it.  Yay... they know our name.  That guy sends us to the Customs office.  I swear this office is from the WWII.  It is dimly lit and there are 6 or so windows with closed frosted glass.  There is a sign that says you need to knock on the window and then wait for someone to answer. Marty knocks on one window but it is the wrong window and he is scolded in the German way and told to knock on a window down the line.  He knocks on that window and then begins what I like to refer to as the "box Nazi"  No boxes for you!!  Straight out of Seinfeld.  The guy started out super grumpy.  He asked a bunch of questions.  We had forgotten to bring our registration of residency.  The Customs Gestapo says we may have to pay up to 4,000 to 5,000 Euro in customs taxes.  The gestapo guy asks why we are moving to Berlin and Marty answers "for the experience."  Then Gestapo guy proclaims that so many people are moving to Berlin.  Micha decides to crack the joke that "we have 'the blond one' to thank for us moving here" referring to Trump.  The ice was broken!!  Gestapo guy starts laughing then quickly catches himself and says "I don't know what I can say to that from an official standpoint, but personally I totally understand"   I have never been thankful for one thing about Trump but for this small thing, that we could bond over the sad, sad state of current American politics, I was thankful.  He tells us that if everything in our boxes is over 6 months old we should be fine but he will need to see in the boxes to verify this.  We are then ushered into another room with even more boxes and even faster fork lift drivers.  I wanted to take a photo but am completely yelled at by some woman that works there.  All of my German speaking family has abandoned me and I'm stuck with a really bitchy woman screaming at me in German and demanding me to hand over my cell phone so she can make sure I didn't take any photos.  I mime my way out of it and hopefully reassure her that I didn't actually take any photos.  We finally see our collection of 13 boxes.  Coming at us at a high speed on a fork lift.  Gestapo guy meets us and hands Marty a knife and tells him to open a box.  He sorts through the first box - it's mostly just boots and coats (I really loaded up for the winter because I HATE to be cold and Berlin is super cold in the winter) he is not at all interested in my boots and coats.  Marty gets to the next box and it is one of his 3 computer screens.  They have a shboxes.ort discussion.  There is laughter and even some camaraderie.  He says we are good to go.  We cannot believe that after all of our panicked phone calls and exchanges with Howard he actually came through in the end.  We shouldn't have doubted.

We end up paying 28 Euro and then as soon as our boxes are loaded up onto another forklift for a speedy trip to the door it starts to downpour.... like tropical, crazy amounts of rain on an 85+ degree day, downpour.  We can't even see outside through all of the rain.  We give it a minute or two or 10 and then load up the boxes during one of the lighter periods of rain.  And just like that we head home (us in the car and Micha and Julie in the truck) WITH OUR BOXES.  We cannot believe we actually are reunited with out things.

When we get home I actually don't want any of these boxes.  It just looks like SO much work to unload and put away.  There is definitely something to be said about living lighter with fewer things.  We were planning on taking Micha and Julie out to eat as a thank you but because of the downpour a big section of Zehlendorf had flooded.  It took us an extra 30 minutes to get home and we didn't want to go back out in it.  So I pulled everything we had from the cupboards and made a pretty tasty evening German meal (Abend brot)

I can get used to these kinds of dinner.   Not only was the food good but the company even better.  We have to pull up an extra chair because with my sister, Micha and Julie there are 7 and on the 4th day we have guests again for dinner and it is really started to feel like home.  We decide that with Micha and Julie living just 15-20 minutes away that we should start a family dinner night once a week.  Life in Berlin is looking pretty good!!

We go to bed feeling happy that we have family here, that we have been reunited with our boxes and that we have internet. Yay! For day 4.

Day 3

Wednesday morning we wake up and for the first time we actually have an appointment at 9:45.  Every person who moves to Germany has to register their address (einwohnermeldung) within 4 weeks.  Instead of the government doing a census it is up to each citizen to do this.  If you do not you will eventually be fined.  Marty is very on top of these things and someone in the know told him that it is so much quicker if you make an appointment instead of just showing up and taking a number (picture the DMV with more bureaucracy) So, weeks ago we made the appointment.  He read through all of the requirements and had all of the paperwork needed in a file (birth certificates, passports, marriage certificates, etc) and off we went, the 5 of us.  We still have a car, thankfully, because even though it wasn't far away we went to the wrong location and then had to rush to the right location. We quickly park and race in to find that our appointment number had just been displayed on the screen.  Couldn't have timed that any closer.  Marty asks around for where we need to go and a nice person points us in the right direction.  We are ushered through to a large room with a bunch of people working on computers.  We sit down at our assigned person and the process begins. She proceeds to take photo copies of everything, asks a few questions and within 30 minutes we are officially Berliners!!

To celebrate our official residency we decide to celebrate with our FIRST (for this trip) ice cream cone.  Anyone who knows us knows this is quite shocking that it took us 3 days to accomplish this feat.  But as always it tasted SO good.  And for 1.30 Euro (yep, they upped the price by 30 cents) you can't beat it on a hot day.  We walked around Zehlendorf, Marty stops into the Telekom store to confirm (for the third time) they our internet will in fact be installed TODAY?  They say yes and so we happily come home with dreams of wifi by dinner time.

As we head out to dinner we take bets on if the internet will be up and working when we return.  The internet company (Telekom) promised it between 9AM and 9PM on Wednesday.  They were doing it remotely and really it was just flipping a switch.. but still we waited.  Knowing if a German says they will do it by a certain time it will be done.  Dinner was great.

Sitting outside on Berlin's big, open sidewalks is what being in Europe in the summer is all about.  So fun to have my sister here for a few days.

Unlike the rest of our visitors she was here during our VERY formative week of set up.  Probably not as fun or touristy but hopefully memorable.
We return home to NO internet.  We go to bed after 9 feeling frustrated.  Marty really has to get the radio connection up and running so that he can test it.  If there are problems he will need time to trouble shoot to figure them out before he has to be back on the air, live, in just a few days.

Day 2

 In the morning of day 2 we continue trying to set up our home and making it feel like ours.  Marty needs a few electrical things so we head to a few stores.  We stop by the grocery store again because we are already adopting the European lifestyle of buying just a few things every time instead of stocking up. Doesn't our basket already look European?  I can understand why they do this as the kitchen storage space is quite small as is the fridge.  Also, things just taste fresher that way.  And, as we will soon find out once we return the car and are only able to transport groceries via foot or on bike, they get pretty heavy if you buy too much.
Marty is able to set up his radio equipment but we are still without Internet connection.  It is amazing how something so seemingly small can become so large when you don't have it.  Marty is getting pretty anxious because he really wants to test the connection between our house here in Germany and the radio station.  He has done his show remotely from our basement in West Seattle before but it feels (and IS) so much further away from Berlin!

My sister, Kim, was traveling in Spain for the last week of July.  On her way home to Bellingham she wanted to stay with us for a few days.  When she originally mentioned it I thought "WHAT? That's crazy! It will be day 2 for us.  How could we have you come and visit on day TWO of our international move.  Only a sister would ask and only a sister would say yes but I'm happy to report it was a WONDERFUL visit and she helped out in so many ways.

Her flight into Berlin was delayed by several hours and then there was terrible traffic on the way home so we decided to just eat at home.
 Pretty proud of myself that we were able to have dinner with a guest in our new house on day 2.  It wasn't much but according to Marty it is typical German dinner called Abend Brot.