First Day.

So, I haven't updated in over a month. In the past month, we packed up our entire apartment, visited all of our family and flew out to Germany. I plan to post all about our move and vacation once I get a chance, but I'll start with something much easier- our first day in Germany.

Greg and I were extremely lucky to be able to fly a commercial airline from Atlanta straight to Frankfurt. Most military families PCS'ing to Germany are required to fly on Patriot Express (a military chartered flight) from Baltimore to Ramstein AFB, but we lucked out. When Greg was completing the paperwork to receive tickets, the man in the travel office accidentally booked him to fly out in May instead of June. Opps. Once they realized their mistake, there was no room left on the Patriot Express to bring Augustus. Instead of making us leave our chihuahua-child behind, a very kind woman at Carson Wagonlit filled out some extra paperwork so we could fly Lufthansa and bring Augustus aboard with us.

Did I mention they give out free wine?

Pretty much everyone who knows me knows that I'm terrified of flying. It doesn't matter how many times I do it, I hate it. This trip was no exception. I'll spare you the details, but I'm extremely happy to have a husband who has learned how to deal with my anxiety. Augustus did much better at flying than me. Mind you, he's flown many times before, but only back and forth from Colorado to Atlanta. That 3 hour flight was nothing compared to the 8 hours he spent confined to his little carrier.

Once we got to Frankfurt, we were both dead tired waiting for our luggage to appear. Every minute felt like an hour. Once we finally got everything loaded onto the trolley, we followed everyone else out the exit. The sign pointing to the customs area was closed, so we didn't even have to go through customs. We went to so many vet appointments with Augustus to get the proper paperwork filled out to get him into Germany and then literally no one looked at it throughout the whole journey. No one working for the airline, no one in Atlanta and not even a single person when we arrived in Frankfurt seemed to care that I had my dog with me. The most eventful moment with him was when the girl sitting next to me on the plane told me that I had "a very well behaved cat."

No one had really specifically said what we were supposed to do once we landed in Germany, so we figured we'd just find the USO office and see if they could call Greg's unit. After walking for all of a minute, suddenly two men appeared behind us yelling "Brickman!? Are you Brickman?" Apparently, Greg's sponsor was on top of it! They picked us up, took us to our hotel and then starting showing us around the area.

Now, I have to say, I don't remember a single thing we learned in our first 24 hours here. Greg's sponsor gave us a lot of wonderful advice, but I can't recall a single word of it right now, I was so exhausted. I felt like a zombie wondering around aimlessly staring into space. The only thing I recall is them telling us over and over again that the wonderful weather we were having was not normal. It was low 70's, sunny and gorgeous, much different than the usually overcast and rainy German weather. I could imagine if we weren't completely dead tired, we would have probably really enjoyed being outdoors yesterday.

At 2 pm, we finally got back to the hotel and crashed. I remember telling Greg, "Don't let me fall asleep, I'll never wake back up" and then waking up at 9:30 in the evening starving. Great. Everything within walking distance closed by 8 and our only option was to call an Italian restaurant that would deliver. Listening to Greg attempting to order was seriously comical. Thankfully, they delivered wine as well. You know that feeling that you get when you're at the Vietnamese owned nail salon and you know everyone in there is talking about you because they know you don't understand them? Imagine having that feeling all the time. All the Germans know you're American and have zero understanding of the German language. They are all very kind so far, but you can't shake that feeling that everyone is talking about what an idiot you are for not understanding them. I don't blame them at all, but learning an entire language when you just found out you were moving to a different country 3 months ago is pretty much impossible.

We ended up staying up until 4 am because we took the world's longest nap. We can't really go anywhere right now, so we get to hang out in the hotel and watch German programming and AFN until we get some understanding of this area. I'm not sure if I even want to venture outside after witnessing my first German cockamouse last night. Once Greg wakes up, maybe we can explore this particular housing area we're isolated to for the time being. 

As of right now, we're both extremely jet lagged, disoriented and in complete culture shock. Not only have we never lived in a foreign country, we've never lived on a military post before. Even the "American" way of life around here is totally different than in Colorado. We have a lot to learn!