Last Winter In Germany

Unfortunately, our time in Germany is coming to an end. It's been a roller-coaster of emotions the past 3 years, but we're excited to be moving on as well. The one thing we've agreed that we're strangely going to miss the most: Christmas Markets.

Surprise!

...The surprise being that I am updating the blog.

Middle Rhine Valley in October.

Obviously, I haven't taken the time to update this with the second half of our Norway trip or any of the adventures we've done since then.

Since August, we've enjoyed our last fall living in Germany, our last Christmas markets, a short trip to France, a visit from Greg's sister and brother in law, an ill-fated "ski" holiday to the unusually warm Alps and a recent trip to London. Now, we're gearing up to say goodbye to Germany, and (more importantly) the Army, for good.

Partnachklamm

I recently found out that I was accepted into one of the three grad school programs I applied to. I am still waiting to hear from one sometime in the next few weeks and another has invited me for an interview in February which I am debating whether or not I want to attend. I'm feeling pretty confident, though, because the one program I was accepted into is probably the most selective, only admitting 8-10 students per year.

Greg has started preparing for his upcoming job hunt and is feeling very positive about the end of his military career. We're ready to move on with our lives. There are a lot of things that we are going to miss about Europe, but we can always come back in the future if we would like.

Tower Bridge

We're debating about whether or not we will do any more traveling in our last few months here. There are a few more places we would like to visit, but may not make it to all of them. And, ultimately, that's okay. We've had a lot of fun in the past 3 years but we're ready to focus on our next stage of life: building careers that we value and enjoy.

What will happen to this blog? Well, depending on where I decide to go to grad school, there may still be some extensive travel in our future. In the meantime, I should probably just focus on updating all of the fun things we've done before we return stateside!

Day Trip: St. Goar and Rhinefels

Last time I posted about visiting a castle, Burg Eltz, I made the mistake of including it as part of the Rhineland, which is misleading because it's technically in the Moselle Valley. Speaking of castles, we took a short trip today to visit some nearby ruins in St Goar on the Rhine River.

We get it.

I couldn't possibly think of a better title for this blog post.

Ever since we found out we'd be going to Germany, we've heard the same advice repeated again and again, "But you'll get to travel everywhere! You'll have plenty of opportunities, you have to ttrraavvell!"

Can I just take a moment to say: We get it. We're living in Europe. Berlin is closer to my current home than my college was to my parent's house. You could be stuck in Atlanta traffic longer than it takes to get to France from here. We have three years and we'll do plenty of traveling, so please stop reminding us that we HAVE to get out and travel the second we get off the plane. We're going to, it's just not as simple for us right now as people seem to believe.

I think people in the United States have a lot of misconceptions about traveling in Europe, particularly if they have never tried to do it as an adult who wasn't, you know, 19 and backpacking. Gas here is close to $10 a gallon on the economy. Train tickets can cost as much as flying across the United States depending on where and when you're trying to travel. How many times a year does the average American afford to fly cross country? Probably not too often. 

My point is, yes, everything is close, but that doesn't exactly mean traveling is cheap, it just means you don't have to go as far, but even the shortest trip is more expensive than the equivalent in America. And that brings us to our next issue- money. In the US, Greg and I were doing very well financially. We were dual income and living almost entirely off of Greg's basic housing allowance, giving us plenty of money to play around with. Since coming to Europe, our income has been reduced to less than a third of what it was 3 months ago. We're living on less than what grocery store clerks make in the EU. We're perfectly able to support ourselves and aren't hurting for money, but it does take some adjusting when your income suddenly reduces substantially. We're having to realistically accept the fact that there are little to no jobs out here for me. It really puts a huge damper on our plans for Greg to get out of the Army in 2016, as we may have very little savings at that point.

Speaking of the Army, did I mention Greg has to get approval for us to leave Germany? I found an awesome deal the other day for a 3 day trip to London and asked Greg if he would be interested in me "surprising" him with it. Turns out, I can't do that because he would have needed to request a pass to leave weeks ago. Bummer. Also, the Army is particularly enjoying making Greg's life miserable the next few months. He is being sent off to several different military bases for weeks on end soon for various training. It's hard to travel when you find out 2 days before that you're husband is going to be gone for the next 3 weeks.

We have ventured out to different festivals in the area and even took a train across the river the other day, but don't expect anything too exciting out of us any time soon. When we get settled and start saving money again, we'll start exploring further out of our comfort zone. Until then, we'll be at the fest drinking dunkles bier and erdbeerwein and walking home. Tschüs!

Dragon boat races on the Rhine last weekend