From the U.S. house to the Germany house

Must say the Transitions from Washington to Germany did not take a staight line. From the middle of October till we left Washington, we stayed at the Navy Lodge at Bangor. Nice room with kitchenette, no free internet though. They need to catch up with the rest of the worlds motels. We had to pay $ 16 dollars for access till we left.  That was heaped upon the $ 65 a day they charged for the room. I thought that was terrible till we stayed here in Heidelberg with the Army Lodging. If you want a example of mental conditioning to increasingly more cost for less return read George Orwell's 1984. It's just as insightful now as it was when he wrote it.

First of November, I having retired from Naval Hospital, gassed up the expedition on the way out of town heading to Illinios as I mentioned in an earlier posting. After Brenda and I diverged in Denver, she went on to Landstulh Germany and settled in a hotel paid for by army. Now in the U. S. if you want to rent a place, look in the paper or on-line, go to the military housing office and get a listing. In Germany the best way is to get a realitor to show you around. Big difference is the reality wants to charge one months rent of what you find. That can be pricey when renting a place on the economy (so called when doing business off the post / base). Now I'm talking about civilian employees. The military have an entirely different scheme to things. If you're not of sufficient rank you're not going to live like we do. Fortunately for us, Brenda is a senior civilian employee (nothing to do with her age of course) and therefore has a liberal allowance for housing. Army pays housing, and utilities. She got a realitor and found a wonderful huge (for a 2 bedroom) house in Hettenhausen that is 15 miles from her work at the hospital. Here are some pictures.

About 2200 square feet. About 190 Sq meters in European terms.

The entry way from inside. Yep, that's snow you see there. But, more of that stuff later.

Here is a spiraling granite staircase. I can attest it does no good to be in a hurry on the stairs. Does not lend itself to climbing two steps at a time or running. Not saying there's anyone that has ever known of me to be in a hurry, but the phone is upstairs.

The first of three fireplaces. This one is in the kitchen / dinning room area. Rather than bias your thinking as to what fashion I think these fireplaces look like I'll remain mute on it and let you decide.

Took some doing to get the date to print sdrawkcab.

A smaller verison of the kitchen fireplace in the downstairs bedroom.

Lastly is the fireplace in the master bedroom. Makes good heat and warms up the room quite nicely. Note as you see these pictures inside there is no carpet. The germans are not to keen on Carpeting. In several homes we've been in - all tile floors.

Main Kitchen

Close the Fridge door and it looks like another cabinet.

Living room area.

Right Side of the master bedroom.

Work shack

This is the guest cottage. Very quaint. Somebody needs to come over to visit so we can get some use of it. I'm thinking of trying it out for a hobby workshop.

The backyard intruder alarm system

View from the top of the street. Second floor.  There has been a lot of this white stuff on the ground, roofs and every other horizonal surface outside.

Until we've became familiar with the area the GPS has been indispensible for finding our way home. A person never really realizes how orientated to the compass they are in the U.S. until your away in another land where nothing is familiar.  When we see a town sign we wonder is that town East or West or some other way from where we want to go.  Just don't know.

The landlord and his family live to our left and are really pleasent people. They are tree huggers of the first order.  Those that know me know I'm just the opposite.  Not that I would toss paper out the car window, but I'd eat a snow owl before having a lumber jack have his kids go hungry over saving it.  He has pointed out the variety of herbs planted about and all the different fruit trees. There is an apple, two types cherry trees, couple plumbs, rhaseberry and loads of wild strawberries.  He has practially begged us not to use any chemicals on the property to take care of it. So if you see a pinpoint of light deep into the night from a miners forehead lamp it will just be me spraying weed killer about while the landlord sleeps. In any case, the yard has the potential to be striking with some of the care it hasn't gotten for a couple years from the previous tenants. We are looking forward to spurcing it up when the air warms up.

Okay, That concludes this blog session.  We have gone from house to house.