I have been downright lazy about documenting the adventures that I am starting to have here in Deutschland, because I am currently dealing with a winter addiction to coffee, my Kindle, and a snuggly blankie. Also because by the time I make it home after my adventures I am too exhausted to do anything at all. I know I’m going to be sorry when I look back at the end of this journey if I don’t make a point to remember all the things I thought were strange, funny, or scary when I first arrived. My adventures are all of the housewife-y sort, not the exotic world traveler sort, but I’ve had a couple of good laughs and plenty of frustration so far.
McDonald’s:
I declared that I wasn’t going to visit the McDonald’s while we were here, because a) I think it’s gross, b) I wanted to stick to local food, and c) I forgot that being idealistic never works in real life. In America, we have a zillion fast food restaurants. Here they have fast food, but if you want a drive through I think your options are limited to Mickey D’s or the Burger King. I like drive-thrus, because I hate loading and unloading kids into the car. I’m also tired of sausage and brown gravy. So one day, as I was (rather accidentally) exploring the nearest big town to us, I decided to grab some Happy Meals for the kids. This town is not near the military base, so I wasn’t guaranteed that the drive-thru person would speak English—but how hard could it be to say “zwei cheeseburger Happy Meal” or “nummer drei”? Next time you order, notice the number of questions you have to answer about your food. Pommes frites or apfel? What to drink? Girl or boy meal? Thankfully the girl working the window realized that I was lost and spoke English. But then, grown up meals aren’t numbered so it’s not as easy as just saying “number three”. Oh, and did I mention that the menu is different? I opted for the “Royale TS” (thinking of Pulp Fiction’s “Royale with cheese”). It wasn’t a Big Mac… it may have been a quarter pounder, or however that translates into kilograms. Whatever it was it wasn’t very good. Anyway, when she asked what size I wanted I was going to say medium, hoping that was an option, and then she said “if you order the large you get a free gift”. Well, how could I say no to that? I was hoping for a free apple pie or the strudel equivalent. What I got was a “collectible” lime green and white McCafe coffee mug that looks like it will hold about 5 ounces of coffee, or however that translates into in milliliters. What do I do with that?? I wanted a damn strudel. Picture me perplexed. I guess adult meals are Happy Meals too. The coolest part of this particular adventure was the strawberry milk for the kids. When we got home I opened the bag and saw two bottles of white milk, and thought they had just gotten confused. Then I discovered that the straws actually hold the strawberry flavor! I’ll get a picture next time. The straws are bigger than normal, have little vent things at each end, and in the middle are filled with little flavor beads that you suck the milk through and dissolve as you drink. It was the coolest thing! I’ve been looking to see if they sell them in grocery stores, but so far no luck.
Taking the Kids to School:
Because I was sans license and vehicle for a long time, Tom was the one to register the kids for school, meet the teachers, and drop them off/pick them up when necessary. I am still slooowly learning how to navigate the area, and Tom programmed a few locations into the GPS to help me. Unfortunately, when it comes to military installations you can’t just look up a name, and frequently when you try to look up a post address what you get is an incredibly unhelpful building number. When Tom showed me one day where the school was, he programmed the specific location into the GPS so I could opt to return to that spot. Easy peasy, right? Jacob forgot his lunch one day and I decided I would drop it off at school and then stop at the commissary, which if I remembered correctly (I didn’t) was right down the road (it’s not). It had snowed the night before and the faster highway route is a scary 1.5 lane path down a steep hill so I decided to take the autobahn to a closer exit. This resulted in an exit to a cute, scenic village, through a gorgeous scenic pasture area, and to another scenic village… located on the side of a freaking mountain on a road with hairpin turns that went at a 45 degree angle down to the highway. Fail.
[Side Note: Usually a military base is all in one spot. Here, there are like a dozen separate places where post things are located. As if life wasn’t confusing enough.]This was my first time going to this base on my own, and only the second time going at all—things looked vaguely familiar, but after a couple of turns onto some rather rural looking roads I started to think that the GPS was dragging me out to the middle of the woods. Maybe for murder purposes, based on the fact that there were no other tire tracks in the snow on the last road it had me turn on… Well, what it did was bring me to a gate that is no longer in use. Military bases have tons of old gates that are permanently locked, but GPS’s evidently aren’t hip to that. So I turned around and figured if I got back on the highway it would reprogram me to the next gate… it didn’t. It just kept telling me to turn around. It was pure luck that I finally found a gate, also hidden in the woods, and I asked the guard for directions. They sounded a lot like “up this road and straight at the roundabout”… only there was no straight at the roundabout. I opted for left and a few blocks later found the school.
The school looks like it’s made up of like six different buildings, most of which I think are connected. I couldn’t find the front entrance but I found an open door and wandered in (past the sign that said go to the front entrance and check in) and promptly got lost in a maze of a school filled with harried-looking teachers and small children who looked like they would taunt me for getting lost (which, in fact, my own children later did). I finally asked this old dude for directions to the office. They sounded a lot like “left stairs right right hallway right left left” or something complicated like that… so I went up the stairs and there was the office. The lady at the desk asked me if I wanted to bring Jacob’s lunchbox up to his classroom and I said, “NO! MAKE HIM COME TO ME!” and collapsed into a chair waiting for him. Of course, this whole time I am accompanied by Norah and Wyatt in their slow, clompy winter boots, moaning that “it’s too cold” and that their slow, stumpy little legs were too tired to walk (the parking lot was really far away). Then in the office Norah had to declare loudly that it was stinky, because she lives to embarrass me. And then when it was time to go she had to cry because I wasn’t bringing her to find her teacher and she lives to annoy me. How we made it back out of that death-trap school and back to the car is beyond me, but once we did I programmed the GPS to “Home” (my lifesaver). Except that it wanted me to leave through that abandoned murder gate in the woods. And I didn’t realize that until it had taken me to that gate, which was located in the middle of Vogelweh’s post housing… in which every building on every windy street looks exactly the same and there is no way to get your bearings. In other words, I was lost again. I felt like I had gone down countless roads and twirled around infinite traffic circles before I accidentally found the gate where I came in… wait, it was a different gate. Whatever! I was out! Two hours after I had left the house with that damn robot lunch box, I arrived home to an email Jake’s teacher had sent about five minutes after he arrived at school saying that he’d just charge school lunch that day and not to worry about bringing it in.
To School, Part II:
On Tuesday morning at 7:15, I loaded up the older kids into the van, scraped off the windows, and shivered down to the bus stop as usual. The two younger kids were actually still sleeping, and I was looking forward to not having any errands to run and a day at home. Usually the bus comes between 7:23 and 7:26, but I noticed there were no other American parents waiting for the bus. At 7:30 I was ticked off because I figured the bus had come really early and my kids had missed it (it used to come at 7:18, but it kept getting to school too early so they changed it a few weeks ago). So back home we went, and I tried to call the school as I got the little ones up and dressed and prepared to drive the 30 minutes to the kids’ school. No one answered at school, but it was still half an hour before school started so I figured they were all enjoying their teacher’s lounge coffee and laughing at me (I was totally not rational, not having had my own coffee).
Finally we get everyone into the car, Norah crying and moaning because I didn’t have time to get her any cereal, and I hit the GPS to take me to the kids’ school. For some reason, it wanted me to take the Autobahn instead of the highway, but it was snowy and I don’t like that highway so I didn’t mind. And sometimes I think the GPS doesn’t always take me places by the same route. (We have the TomTom here, and I much prefer the old Garmin.) And it was butt-early in the morning, and butt-cold outside, and my van doesn’t have a cupholder so I couldn’t bring my coffee and I was grumpy and Norah was still whining and Wyatt was yelling because it’s what he does… plus I still don’t always know where I’m going. So the fact that I trusted the GPS did not work in my favor as we delved deeper and deeper into an incredibly unfamiliar area, and it finally announced in the middle of a random street “You have reached your destination”. I had decidedly not reached my destination, since I hadn’t had to go through the process of ignoring the directions to the murder-gate and remembering where the secret forest gate is located. I could see that I was somewhere near post, but whether it was the right post or anywhere near the school I wasn’t sure. I tried to select “Kid’s School” as a GPS destination again and saw that for some reason, it was flipping down to the next selection on the list instead. I looked up and realized I was, in fact, sitting in front of the Furniture Management Office. (FMO, FML.) It took two tries before it finally stuck on the kid’s school. Turns out I was on the correct highway, and as I trolled around trying to find the secret forest gate I drove past the entrance gate leading to the long-lost commissary (which I tried to find again later, but it had of course mysteriously disappeared).
Okay, so finally we make it to school. I pull up and start to unload the kids and send them to the front door, since they knew where it was, and this other mom parked a little way in front of me starts saying “no, no, no!” It turns out there was a two-hour delay (because of the inch of snow just like the inch of snow we’ve had every other day for the last week?) and apparently there were other parents that didn’t know about it, because she showed up with her kids and found several abandoned children stuck outside the locked school. She was frantically calling people trying to figure out what to do with these random children sitting in her car. Being a kind, caring woman I immediately offered to help… just kidding. I said “good luck” and hopped back into my car and left. I was still in my PJs, for crying out loud.
So I drive 30 minutes back home, miraculously without anything weird happening (well, aside from getting briefly lost in the maze of post housing trying to find the secret forest gate exit). Since it was a two hour delay, and the bus is supposed to come at 7:23 normally, that meant I could expect the bus at 9:23. After everything that had happened that morning, I pulled into the village at 9:35 and declared it a snow day. I took a nap and the kids played Kinect. We’ve already determined that I’m not a saint, right?
To the Doctor:
The school decreed that Brynn had to have a special, specific prescription for her inhaler if we wanted to have it there. Which, being nice parents who want her to keep breathing, we did. So we finally got around to making an appointment to see the doctor and get this prescription taken care of. The pediatric clinic we need to go to is located at the Landstuhl Hospital, which is a big enough deal to have signs on the highway telling you where to exit and turn and everything. Since it is on post and can’t be looked up in the stupid GPS, I Google-mapped it and saw that it was just east of the highway, right off the main road. Between this and the signs everywhere and the fact that it’s a hospital and should be easily accessible, I (foolishly) decided this would be enough to get me there. And so, yesterday morning, I followed the signs off the highway to go the hospital. I was prepared to go east, so I was in the wrong lane when I got to the bottom of the exit and the sign said to go west. Of course there was nowhere to turn around anywhere near… but finally I got back on the road and followed the signs. It was just before 8am, so there was a huge line of cars headed down this road and I figured I must be going in the right direction. But it was weird, because according to my Google map the hospital was not located off an incredibly long rural road through the forest… yet that’s where all these cars were headed. Still, if years entering military installations has taught me anything it’s that where there’s a line, there’s a gate. And this was an incredibly long line, down a windy forest road… still, it led to a gate and I made it onto post. Once I got on post, there were signs directing me to the hospital! Yay! Then the signs started to get a little vague.
I haven’t really made it perfectly clear up till now, but there are no straight roads here. No grid-like city planning, no logical right-angle intersections. If you make a wrong turn, there’s no “around the block” to save you. There are roundabouts and “priority intersections” in place of 3- and 4-way stop signs, so traffic usually moves without stopping. Buildings are located wherever there is space on odd-shaped blocks, parking lots only hold 40 cars, and everything on post is located in weird little forest clearings. Driving is really hard to begin with, much more so when you’re trying to spot little the tiny sign you want tacked to a post with eight little tiny signs on it at an intersection where you can’t stop.
I figured I’d just follow the ones that said “Emergency”, because they were red and easy to see, and usually Emergency rooms have nearby parking and a big door to walk into. And you know what? For once, I was right. I was RIGHT! The joy was indescribable. The ER doors double as the main entrance (not that you’d expect that, since it’s located on a dead end and the signs point you directly to nowhere), I found the last parking spot in the teeny lot, and actually made it into the building and to the peds clinic with four minutes to spare. Glory hallelujah, something was going more or less right! Well, aside from the fact that Norah wailed about wanting gum through the entire appointment and was the child from hell from start to finish. (The doctor said his third kid was the same way, even at age seven, and we shared a moment resenting our respective decisions to have a third child.)
So, after the appointment I tried to navigate my way back to the woodland entrance gate so I could go try and get to Brynn’s school-maze to drop her off, and when I got there I saw that it was an “entrance-only” gate and I needed Gate 3 to exit. My lucky streak continued, because a car in front of me looked like it knew where Gate 3 might be as it turned away from the useless Gate 4. So I followed it through post until we came to an “exit-only” gate just behind the hospital. I sent the car a telepathic “vielen dank”, and turned out onto the main road. You know, the main road just east of the highway exit.
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