I arrived on Saturday morning at 7:45am local time (1:45am for most of you guys). I was greeted by Jason at the Munich airport which was so wonderful. He woke up at 4am on his day off just to pick me up. Now if that isn't love, I don't know what is. On the way back, we hit major traffic, which we realized was due to everyone going skiing for the weekend. It took so long to get home but at least we had plenty of time to catch up.
In order to overcome jet lag, you have to make yourself stay up for the first day. With this in mind, Jason and I picked up keys to our apartment, headed back to the hotel so I could shower, and started our day. We went to Ikea to pick out all of our furniture, which was quite a task being that we don't speak German and they only had certain items in stock. By the time we were through, we went back to the hotel and grabbed a drink before dinner. We decided that we wanted to go back to this Italian place that we had visited on a previous trip. We walked into what we thought was the restaurant and it was a wine bar. Of course we couldn't leave at this point. We stopped for a glass but then made friends with the bartender and his wife and ended up staying for a couple of hours.
The next day we went back to the apartment to gather measurements of each room in our flat. We realized that this was imperitive the day before at Ikea when we had no idea what furniture would fit or not. On Sundays, not many shops or restaurants are open. We tried to go to one of my favorite lunch spots, but it was closed. We decided to head to another one of our favorite Italian restaurants (and made it there!) for some tasty lunch. Jason was going to take me out to the country and try to get me more comfortable with driving a stick shift, since that's all they drive over here, but I was much to tired. We went back to the hotel, watched some TV on our slingbox, and called it a night early.
Monday morning came quickly. We woke up early and headed right to our German lessons. Jason had gone while he was here early but it was my first lesson. I don't think I did too bad, being that it was my first lesson. I have realized, though, that it is very important for us to learn German, as everyone speaks it all the time and people rarely speak English. After our lesson, I went to lunch with a friend whose husband works with Jason. She is also and American and had recently started a book club with several ladies who are all English speakers. She invited me to dinner to meet them all and we had so much fun.
Tuesday our stuff finally arrived from Singapore and Atlanta. I went over to the apartment and started to unpack what I could (mostly kitchen stuff since we still don't have furniture). Then I went back to Ikea with a lovely German-speaking woman that Jason works with so I could pick out the rest of the furniture and set it up for delivery. We received great news that our furniture will arrive tomorrow (Friday) and will be set up on Monday and Tuesday. This is amazing because usually it takes at least two weeks. Great news!
Yesterday I went back to the apartment to pick up some things from some of our boxes. A scarf for Jason, a thick coat for me, and several other personal effects. I ended up staying in the apartment for a couple of hours, listening to music, because I was dreading the walk back to the hotel in such cold weather. It sure will take getting used to! Then last night we had dinner with a co-worker and his wife at a Thai restaurant, which I am sure was Jason's idea. It was good food and really made me miss Asia.
Today is Jason's welcome party at his office. I will try to take pictures (if it's not weird to do in this culture) and post them when I can.
Although we've been quite busy, it has be so nice to start to get settled in. And now I am going to leave you with some pictures of the view from our apartment. Life is good!
No comments:
Post a Comment