Aug 7

Aug 7 New Cars & Fire Alarms

Day 4 & 5 Recap:

We made it to the weekend! Idon’t think I have ever experienced a week so full of running around, confusion, new experiences, getting things done, meetings, and beginnings. It has been exhausting and extremely rewarding. I am so glad I have documented in such detail, I am sure more so than many of you reading would like, but for my own memory’s sake. The last few days are nothing but a blur looking back even now, so having this to reflect back upon, and hopefully shed light as to what to expect for future military families PCSing in the future, is a blessing.

The rest of day 4 went well- checked a bunch of stuff off the list: housing briefing, bank account open, Garmin updated, touched base with moving company and set up apt for them to drop off our first shipment of goods (!!!!!) on Tuesday at the new house (!!!!!!). This is such a blessing. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have my own towels, a rubber spatula and more than 4 pairs of shoes to wear. It’s the small things. Before heading to a newcomers briefing, I went to pick up Subway for Michael and I at the BX (there is like a huge food court there, it’s basically a mall on base) and the line was SO long. So I went to this German sandwich shop I had seen in the mall instead (with no line) and it was AMAZING. I was just excited to have made my first “German over American” food decision and it paid dividends. Then off to our Newcomers briefing on base. Just a short hour briefing but REALLY informative. I was so glad they invited spouses to be there because although only 5 minutes of it was specifically for us, I was able to learn SO much about the 37th Airlift Squadron, their mission, their pace, Michael’s expectations and who his squadron commander is. Michael has reminded me to not get into too many military specifics here, which I agree is smart, so for those of you wanting more details feel free reach out to him directly. But I CAN say this is an excellent squadron and extremely busy. The "simple" way to describe what they do, per his squad commander, is “anytime you see something going on in Europe or Africa on the news… we are involved”. The squadron commander made a point to recognize that it will be a demanding 3 years and he realizes this also requires a lot from the spouses. Sometimes that is tough to hear, because no wife wants to see their husband gone last minute for weeks at a time on a frequent basis (well, not this wife anyways!) but to be reminded that in some small way I am supporting the fight by supporting my husband and being strong and independent when he is gone, feels good and makes it that much more worth it.

After the welcome brief Michael headed back to the TLF to drop me off, and the keys to the TLF did not work. So we drove to the Ramstein Inn office on the other side of base (There is only one front desk for all the TLF buildings around base) and got new ones. Drove back. Those didn’t work. At this point I am exhausted, and Michael needs to get back to base to get more work done, so I literally crawl through the open window (no AC- windows are pretty much open 24/7) and open the door from the inside. The keys magically work again. Who knows! At this point we expect small hiccups like this as they are now a part of our daily life. Once Michael got back for the day we just heated up some leftovers, had a few beers and watched Men of Honor. Really amazing film… highly recommended. Makes any complaining I have put on this blog seem ridiculously insignificant. Needless to say though, we had a really nice night just relaxing in.

Day 5:

I guess the jet lag finally caught up to us because with blackout curtains and no alarm set we managed to sleep clear until 11:20am without moving. Guess we needed the extra sleep! Next we were up and at em and out the door to car shop! We looked at the Nissan we had our eye on in the Lemon lot and met the owners for a test drive. Fell in love instantly but Michael refused to pull the trigger on the first car we looked at. So we made a few more calls, went to a few dealerships, and looked at a Volvo that we both thought would blow us away and it really didn’t. As much as we felt like we SHOULD buy a nice German luxury vehicle, we could not find anything in our price range we were happy with. So back to the Nissan to snag it up! The owners were another military couple with a young child and had taken immaculate care of it. They were selling it so they could go buy a new Volvo! So glad it all worked out and we could not be happier with the purchase. So now to do the run around of insurance, registering the car, emissions test, getting new plates etc etc!

Last night we were back off to Kaiserslautern for dinner with some academy grads via a friend of Michael’s. We ate at another outdoor seating area and enjoyed the downtown views of cobblestone streets and people coming and going. The weather was absolutely perfect and I could have sat there forever. One unique thing we experienced were the church bells of the church right next to us: they ring every hour on the hour just like any traditional church bell tower… but it lasts for a solid 10-15 minutes! You can barely hear the person next to you to carry on a conversation! It was quite humorous. After dinner we went to an Irish bar called The Snug for a few pitchers of beer and to pick the brains of the others we were with about their lives in Germany and where all they have traveled. One of the girls there said she basically plans one trip a month. She gets 3 day weekends every so often with her shift work and she takes full advantage. This got us excited! We cannot wait to see all the places we have yet to explore in Europe!

As we went to leave we tried to get back into the parking deck. It was a kind of unique set up with stair wells leading up to street level that are sealed off with automatic glass doors. You have to put in your parking ticket to get back in. Luckily I remembered someone saying you paid you ticket before leaving in your vehicle German parking garages so we took the ticket with us. But it didn’t work to get us back in the door. We assumed we were doing something wrong so we tried the call button on the machine but nobody answered. So we ended up walking back down the tight and curvy entrance ramp we used to get inside in the first place, which I am sure is extremely frowned upon. Then we go to pay our ticket and it won’t read the ticket! We cannot pay to get out! Michael had tucked it in his new wallet that has a magnetic money clip. We should have learned that lesson with the room keys… but here we are! So we walk to the attendant window. Nobody is there. I find a number on a sign and call it and when the lady answers in German I ask “Sprechen sie Englisch?” and she just says “Nein”. I lost all hopes and dreams at this point. I called the second number and nobody answered. I am starting to freak out because even if we got a ride home we are not sure we can leave our car here overnight without a ticket or getting towed AND we would need a ride back to the deck because my car is not registered yet and cannot be driven! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!?! We walk BACK over to the ticket machine and press THAT call button in a last ditch effort. SOMEONE ANSWERED. I quickly look up on my Google Translate app how to say “my ticket does not work” and said this to her in German. I must be really good at reading German because she promptly asked “do you speak English?” YES YES YES WE DO HOW DID YOU KNOW?!? God had sent me an angel. She then asked for the time stamped on our ticket and had the machine spit out a new one so we could pay for it and get the poop out of this forsaken parking garage! I still cannot believe it was that easy in the end but was SO glad they have this system in place. I hate that I am in a country that I do not speak the language because I constantly feel stupid and an inconvenience but I will be attacking learning the new language with new fervor. Needless to say we made it home safe and sound and I kissed the floor of our TLF. Not really. #gross

Today we slept in again (yessssss) and I woke up before Michael to take Ryder out and cook breakfast! Pancakes and eggs it was so I began working with the 3 pieces of cookware and utensils that come with this TLF feeling exceptionally resourceful even if this 15 minute meal was now taking me over an hour. As I went to the final step of making the pancakes, everything else was ready to go. Table was set, strawberries were cut. Coffee was brewing. I was relishing in the thought of gently waking up Michael and leading him to a hot prepared breakfast to start his Sunday right. Then I attempted to put butter in a hot pan. Said pan decided it did not like butter and quickly burned it off with a large side effect of smoke. I had the slight suspicion that the smoke alarm might go off but the windows were both wide open and it just did not seem like that much smoke. BEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. Yep. That sounds about right. I run into the bedroom to tell Michael it’s all okay, I just set it off cooking and the TLF was in fact NOT on fire. I didn’t want him jumping up a and running to my rescue for nothing. He was still asleep. Then afraid that the entire base fire department would show up on our doorstep and also afraid I am going to get reamed for making too much noise on a Sunday since it’s all-day quite hours (despite the dog next door barking for hours on end) I jump up and try to press all the buttons and take down the smoke detector so it stops going off. I get the thing twisted off only to realize there are no batteries… it seems to be hard wired into the electricity or something crazy. Probably not, I am no electrician and that doesn’t make much sense, but I could not find anything to disconnect without ripping it from the wall! Heart pounding, standing in my pajamas in the middle of a smoky TLF near a panic attack, it finally stops. Whew, no fire department, no angry neighbors on my doorstep, crisis adverted. “Good morning honey, time to wake up, your burnt breakfast is waiting!”. Cheers to a relaxing Sunday.

All in all the breakfast turned out great and now Michael is cleaning up as I write this. Once I finish we are off to explore some hiking trails with Roo on this BEAUTIFUL, warm and sunny Sunday.

Oh and the new ride has a name. Kuddos to Mom for coming up with it! Her technical color is Cayenne Red, so please meet the beautiful, single and ready to mingle, Japanese-made, US-sold, now our German car: Miss Pepper!