Week 47: Is it Spring Yet?

Compared to the last couple of weeks, this was definitely a slow and boring week, but we really needed a quiet week to catch up on stuff at home, work, and school. To answer, the title question, it definitely is not Spring yet in Stuttgart; it snowed three times this week alone and has barely gotten above 40F. We are hopeful though that Spring is in the forecast.

In order to avoid this being a super short post and because I am coming up on the end of my first year here, I figured I would just share a couple of thoughts about our first year here. In some ways, it still feels like we just got here but in most ways, it already feels like we’ve been here forever.

So, here is my list of Ways We Can Tell We’ve Been in Germany {Almost} a Year:

1. It took forever, but we’ve finally been cleared from in-processing. Meaning, they have finally said “you’re done” with all of the meetings, appointments, and briefings you are required to complete when moving here. I thought we were done a couple of months ago but I was recently reached out to by command here stating that I was still missing some signatures.
2. We’ve stopped seeing the graffiti. It’s everywhere here and when I first arrived I just could not see anything but graffiti everywhere I went. I noticed a few months ago, when someone pointed some out to me, that I hadn’t even seen it. I guess we have become conditioned to it.
3. We run into people we know. During the first couple of months here, I noticed that every time we would go shopping, I was scanning the crowd for familiar faces. I guess this is a habit of coming from a small town where you have to say ‘hi’ to everyone you know. Of course, we didn’t know anyone so it was kind of a let down. I trained myself to stop looking for people when we went out. Of course, now that I’ve trained myself to stop looking, we’ve started noticing more and more familiar faces. On one recent outing, we went from the store, to the gas station, to the post office and had to stop and say ‘hello’ to someone at each place. Knowing people here doesn’t replace friends and family from home, but it does make it feel more like we are part of a community here.
4. We assume places are closed on Sunday. On our recent trip to Belgium and France, we caught ourselves assuming that supermarkets and stores would be closed on Sundays, only to be pleasantly surprised when we were reminded that’s only Germany.
5. We have stopped saying “Excuse Me.” Seriously, Germans only say this to get people’s attention, you don’t have to say this unnecessary phrase just because you are walking past someone, or because you bumped them. Just go.
6. We know how to recycle. Seriously, we are down to one bag of trash every two weeks. And honestly, once we had the system set up in the house (and we started making the kids dump our glass) it doesn’t even take that much time.
7. We carry reusable shopping bags with us. This one was hard to remember every time but having to pay for every bag, every time, got it into our heads quickly that we needed to bring bags everywhere. Its faster anyways when you’re bagging up your groceries that are being thrown at you at 1 million miles per hour at Aldi and you can fit more in them.
8. We bring umbrellas with us. We’ve learned it rains without warning just about every day at some point and we have to do a lot more walking here. So, we’ve trained ourselves to grab one every time we are leaving the house.
9. We have mastered the German stoplight. You have to start revving your car when the light goes from red to yellow. If you don’t squeal tires and immediately take off at a green light, you get a honk from every car behind you at the light. If you don’t go immediately, it definitely means you are an American who is playing on your cell phone at the light.
10. We can speak German. Ok, we can speak a little German. We can get through most restaurant and shopping excursions and we’ve even handled a few phone calls, but anything more intense than that and we ask for English. We are still studying and practicing as much as we can so hopefully we will be a lot more confident by this time next year.

So with that, here’s a quick recap of what we did over the weekend, when we finally emerged from the house. We had dinner with friends at one of our favorite restaurants, Zum Rad in Sindelfingen and then bar hopped in the rain to a few of the other restaurants around the MarktPlatz.

Saturday was an all day shopping adventure. Brooklyn has her eighth grade dance next Thursday and we needed to go dress shopping and we went to three malls and to Konigstrasse (Stuttgart’s version of Rodeo Drive) before we found the perfect dress. We definitely noticed that while malls are on the decline in America, they are the place to be in Germany. Each of the three malls we went to and Konigstrasse were packed with people, some shopping, some having drinks in the many bars in the malls, and some just hanging out. This is where everyone goes in Germany on Saturdays.

After Brooklyn had her dress, we attempted to visit the Stuttgart Museum of illusion but it was at capacity and fully booked for the rest of the day. I guess this is where the rest of the people were who weren’t at the mall. Since we were already out, we had dinner at another L’Osteria location in the Stuttgart and had our favorite giant pizzas, then called it a day.

Sunday, we spent most of the day cleaning. We did take a break though when our friends texted us to tell us that it was opening day for our favorite biergarten in Sindelfingen. It was a beautiful sunny day and not too cold so we threw on clothes as fast as we could and sped over. We got our biers and then a cold front promptly blew in, bringing lots of wind and a snow storm. This is Germany.