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!
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| Dragon boat races on the Rhine last weekend |
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