One of the few things my mom wanted to do while she was here was see a castle. Saturday we drove across the border into Luxemburg to a small town called Vianden. Vianden has a castle you can walk through which has displays of period furniture, tapestries, and different armour displays. It was really neat to see, especially because many castles in this area are more run-down or falling apart. It took us less than 40 minutes to get to Vianden... just a bit of a reminder of how easy it is going to be to travel around while we are here. After we were done at Vianden we still had half the day left... so we drove back into Germany to a town called Trier. I had gone with Josh to see Trier when I was here in April. We took Mom to see Roman ruins and yet another cathedral. There was some sort of music festival going on in Trier, which made getting around the sites a bit of a challenge, however there was an amazing selection of little food carts. I believe the amount of beer carts were equal to that of the food.
The storage problems have been solved. There is a craigslist type website for the base where people can post things for sale. I've been watching the site looking for different options for something to use as storage in our bathroom. The other day I'd seen something and contacted the seller who told us she was having a flee market on Sunday. We went to the flee market with no real hope of finding anything. The flee market looked and smelled like a typical garage sale... I was figuring that we would walk away empty handed. However, as we started to walk up and down the aisles of items and sifted through things, it seemed that we had stumbled upon something more special. We found a cabinet for our bathroom to store towels and things. We also found a black and white photo of a city that looked as if it was local. The woman running the flee market told us it was an old painting of Luxemburg City, which is about a 45 minute drive away. My mom found different trinkets and knick-knacks for herself. We only ended up paying 25 euro for all of it, which is about $36. The woman runs her flee market as a business and always has new things coming in and out. I really enjoyed being there... it made me thing of all the times I went to garage sales with my Grandma Shirley as a child. Mom and I kept saying that if Grandma were there she would be going crazy. So many things and antiques. She also would have tried to haggle and pay less than we did. Needless to say, I think we'll be back. And maybe next time I will have the nerve to try and talk the already low price down.
I had to go on base for a new-comers orientation. It was something I had to attend to get some paperwork to get my German drivers license. Luckily to obtain said license I just have to take an open book written exam. However... spending my whole morning at a "military briefing" was definitely something new for me. And overwhelming. I'm hoping to take the written test for my license next week. That way I won't have to rely on Josh to take me places. We haven't decided yet if I'm going to get a car over here, or if we're going to share his. As long as it works out with work schedules, I'm not opposed to sharing. Speaking of work... the one good thing about my briefing yesterday was that I met the head dentist at the dental clinic. I introduced myself to him, and asked if there were any positions available. He said there is a civilian hygienist who is leaving in a few weeks... he's not sure yet with funding and such if he will be able to replace someone in the position. He did take down my contact information. At least it's a foot in the door, and I was able to meet him in person. I feel better about it. AND the best part about it (if I were to get the position) is that it is for a perio hygienist. Even better. Doing perio for the government on a military base would be one of the biggest learning experiences I could hope for.
I believe we have found a couch. When Josh left Florida he had a nice micro-suede couch and a crappy bachelor loveseat. When the movers packed up his stuff one of the moving guys was talking about how he'd just broke up with his girlfriend and she took/kept everything, so he was starting over with nothing (I personally say HA and he probably deserved it). Josh, being Josh, offered to let the guy take a bunch of his stuff. Josh offered to le the guy have his old loveseat. When Josh's household good arrived... the moving company sent the crappy loveseat, but his couch was nowhere to be seen. He thinks it could possibly be a mistake, but I have no doubt that the guy took his couch and left the loveseat for Josh. Karma. There is a military couple who lives below us who asked Josh the other day if we were interested in buying their couch... it doesn't fit well in their apartment and they've been looking to get something else. We went down to look at it, and I quite like it. It's a wrap-around couch that is micro-suede... and RED. Which will make decorating our living room fun, and interesting. The red will go well with all of my black and white pictures - and with the one we just bought. It makes me wish even more that my things were already here.
The trade off with our land lady... she may be a creeper who watches what we do... but she will let us paint if we want to, and she will pay for it. The people who lived in our house before us had painted the living room some terrible pastel colors... and they did a very sloppy job of it. So we're planning on doing some painting... nothing too crazy, more just getting things to a neutral color before we hang things on the wall. The most interesting part of it is that all of our walls are wallpapered... and you just paint over the wallpaper. Unlike American wallpaper the paper here doesn't have any colors or patterns, but it is textured. So... we will be painting our textured wallpapered walls from easter egg colors back to something normal. And hopefully it will start to look and feel more like home.
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