The Move

In case you've been curious what we've been up to, Greg and I have been lost in a big black hole called moving. After 30 days of living in a hotel, we finally have a place of our own that is somewhat put together. If I ever run across someone who is PCS'ing to Germany, I have a whole ton of advice for them when it comes to the move itself.

Two weeks before our apartment lease expired in Colorado, Greg managed to set up for us to have all of our household good shipped. So how do you prepare to move overseas in less than 2 weeks? You don't. You just wing it and hope everything arrives in one piece in Europe.

When the movers arrived in Colorado, we were surprised to find that the moving company had sent two older women and one young man to pack up our whole apartment in four hours. Yeah, it ended up taking 2 days. At the end of day one, it was pouring rain and hail to the point that they decided to just give up and come back in the morning. Greg ended up needing to be around the whole time to help them move out the larger furniture.

Our big empty apartment in Colorado

A couple of things to note:

• Greg and I sent all of our clothes, half of our linens and some of our kitchenware and utensils "unaccompanied" meaning that it flew on a plane instead of being packed onto a ship to get here. The purpose is that some of your stuff gets to your new location earlier so you aren't completely stranded. The trade-off is that it's less secure and your stuff is more likely to be damaged this way, so don't send anything of any significant value. How did this work out for us? Well, after spending all the time planning what we would send and shipping it 30 days before our arrival in Germany, our unaccompanied goods arrived 2 days after we did. However, we were not able to access our unaccompanied goods until we had a place to live, which didn't happen until we had been here for a month already. By then, our household goods had already arrived as well and both shipments were delivered the same day to our apartment. Luckily, nothing in either of the two shipments were broken or damaged, not even so much as a picture frame. So, send some things unaccompanied, but don't set your heart on actually getting them sooner than everything else. Maybe you'll get luckier than us and get a home right away, but if you're coming to where we're located, don't hold your breath. The housing situation here is crazy and you don't get to decide whether you live on or off post.
• PRO-GEAR! Make sure you separate everything that is pro-gear and most importantly, if you are  a spouse with a career (or in school), everything needed for or related to that career counts as pro-gear. Textbooks, work clothes, diplomas all count as pro-gear and do not go towards your total weight. Greg and I don't own much stuff, but we do know of others that have gone over their total weight and had to pay for part of the shipment. We shed several hundred pounds off the shipment total by being sure both of our work related items were labeled pro-gear. This also allows you to get away with more stuff in your unaccompanied goods, if you choose to go that route.
• Buy things you'll need before you leave and pack them to ship! We did this to an extent, but no where near like we should have. Fair warning, don't expect air conditioning when you move to Germany. If you are coming in summer, you'll want some good fans and black out curtains at the very least. Get them before you come here! We knew we wouldn't have air conditioning, but we were told that the temperature stayed so low that you didn't need it. Summers are rather mild, but there are days it gets 90 degrees and your apartment will feel like a sauna even when it's 80, especially if you ever plan to use your oven. You'll want fans to cool the bedrooms and living areas and good thick curtains to keep out the light. One set of curtains at the PX cost $70, when I know the exact same ones were half of that price back in the states. You'll be hard pressed to find black out curtains on the economy because German buildings have these awesome metal blinds to keep the light out that you won't get on post (and probably won't get to choose if you live on post or not). Fans at the PX are often sold out and will cost you $40 for one of those ugly stand ones that won't match any of your decor. Sure you can wait for Amazon to deliver, but if it's 85 degrees the day you're unpacking, you probably won't want to wait. Plan ahead and buy curtains and fans. If you want to be really proactive, you could consider buying an air conditioning unit, but they are not allowed in government housing. Yes, a lot of people over here have air conditioning units even though they aren't supposed to, but we surprisingly aren't one of them. I'm way too cheap to spend $400 on one. Finally, look into whether or not your housing will have a microwave, and get one if you feel you need it. We don't have a microwave and we may eventually break down and get one, but I'm not a huge fan of them anyway. If you can't live without a microwave, you may want to buy one in the states before leaving because they aren't a household staple here like in America.

We've surprisingly unpacked most of our stuff in the past 3 days. It helps that we have a whole spare room just to throw empty boxes and storage. We've realized that we still need a lot of things to really make this place home. Slowly, it will come together I hope. Until then, I'm just enjoying having my own bed back and a kitchen to make bread in!

From CO to TX to GA

It's been 16 days now since Greg and I landed in Germany and moved into a hotel. It's not looking like we'll be getting a place to live any time soon, which apparently we should be thrilled about. Supposedly, we're going to end up getting enough cash in TLA (temporary live allowance) to pay for a car and we're spending the hottest months of the year living in the only place in the area with air conditioning. Did I tell you how much I miss our apartment in Colorado?

View of Colorado Springs last night we were there

Anyway, before jumping on a transcontinental flight, Greg and I spent a month visiting our families. This was probably the longest visit either of us has had with our families since Greg joined the Army and since I went away to college. However, this was definitely the longest time we've ever spent with each other's families.

After the mover's packed up our things and we said a tearful goodbye to the place we've spent our whole married life, we set out for Texas where Greg spent most of his childhood. Since Greg still had to drop off his car in Dallas to be shipped, I drove my Jeep and he followed behind in his car. This was my third cross-country trip in my Jeep. The first was right after Greg left for deployment and I drove it back to Georgia. The second was the day after I graduated from college and packed that sucker down with all my belongings (and Augustus, of course) set out to my new home in Colorado. This third trip was not as upsetting as the first, but still not as exciting as the second. I hope to never drive a 2-door Wrangler with a lift kit from one side of the country to the other again.

We spent a little less than 2 weeks in Texas. Since each side of Greg's family lives in a different city in Texas, we went on an extreme road trip crossing all over the state to visit his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Because I only met most of his family once at our wedding, it was nice to get to know everyone better and spend some quality time together. It would have been awesome to spend more than a day with each side of the family, but we were pressed for time to see everyone we could.

After visiting his extended family, Greg and I went back to his parent's house to spend the rest of our time in Texas with this mom, dad, two sisters and brother-in-law. In case you all might have forgotten, this was the same period of time that strong storms and tornadoes were consistently ripping through Oklahoma and northern Texas. We narrowly missed hiding in bathrooms as a tornado ripped through an area just a few miles from Greg's parent's home while we were visiting family in Austin. Luckily, everyone was safe!

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of visiting Texas because I took all of them on my Diana which I haven't developed the film from just yet.  While we were there, we visited the Fort Worth stockyards for the first time, ate some famous donuts and bar-b-que and spend a day canoeing on the Brazos. Mostly, we spent quality time with family until it was time to say goodbye and continue our road trip to Georgia.

My immediate family all live in the suburbs of Atlanta relatively close to each other while all of my extended family still live mostly in Pennsylvania. While in Georgia, we stayed very busy with my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law and nephews and nieces. My dad's house is just a short drive to both of my sister's homes so we made the rounds visiting everyone. I can't say there was a single day in which we were at a loss of things to do. We climbed Stone Mountain, had cook-outs, went out downtown, played with my sister's four children under the age of five, ate at every awesome restaurant in the area, went on a guided fishing tour and spent a day at the aquarium. Luckily, we also made time to visit with my best friend from growing up and his new wife.

It was great to get to see and spend time with everyone. Greg had barely met several of my family members until then and even I hadn't had much contact with everyone since moving. Actually, this was the first time I got to meet my 9-month old twin nephews! I was able to be there when my oldest nephew and niece we born, but the twins weren't born until shortly after I moved to Colorado. They've all grown up so much that it reminded me how much I'm going to miss being in Germany for three years. Not just with the kids, but with my whole family. Mind you, even when we lived stateside I didn't visit hardly at all, but that fact of knowing that you can't visit is pretty hard. At least we got to all really enjoy quality time together for about 2 weeks before leaving. And I didn't even cry nearly as much this time as I did before driving out to Colorado.

I'll leave you with some pictures from the Georgia Aquarium, biggest in the world!

You all notice that line to the far right side of all of my pictures? Yep, my Canon is done for. I really had no intention of replacing it any time soon until I noticed all of these pictures were marked with that white line of death.

I'm a horrible blogger thus far. Since we've gotten here, we've gone to two festivals and explored both of the cities we are closest to. We've also passed our driver's tests, eaten way too much fast-food and been super depressed over our endless lack of permanent housing. This upcoming week, Greg will be busy at work so hopefully I'll have some time to update. Once Greg's car gets here, we already have out first day trip planned to Cologne!

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!

The Process, Part 2

So, as quickly as everything became a giant headache, it also suddenly fell together over the course of a week.

Last Tuesday, I had my medical screening with EFMP. Before I went to my appointment, I was completely terrified. Everything you read on the internet about EFMP and the overseas medical screening for dependents is completely terrifying. They pretty much make it sound like it will be hours worth of someone combing through your entire medical record and asking in-dept questions in an attempt to enroll you into a program that may prevent you from going overseas with your spouse. Rest assured, it's no where near as horrifying as everything on the internet tells you. My medical screening took about 5 minutes. I requested all of my medical records from the past 5 years which the nurse glanced over, reviewed my EFMP paperwork and my medical records from the military treatment facility and that was essentially it. The doctor signed my paperwork, forwarded it on to the travel office which passed it on to Germany for approval. Within 24 hours, Greg had my passport in hand and an amendment saying that I was approved for concurrent travel.

What does all of that mean? Basically, Greg and I get to fly to Germany together with Augustus in cabin. Flights are booked, movers are coming in a few days and all that's left to do is wait. Moral of the story: Don't listen to what you read online about how horrible the command sponsorship process can be.

About 2 weeks from now, we'll start our adventure towards Europe! Along the way, we have everything in our house to ship, families to visit, a chihuahua to prepare and when we finally get there, housing to select. So much done, but still plenty of work to go!