Reason #1 why you haven’t heard from me in a while: The Eifel Crud.
We live in what is called the Eifel Region. And apparently, when you first arrive, you get the crud. Aka, worst cold of your life. We both got it right away. Thankfully, NyQuil has allowed me to get some sleep and Mucinex has done its job…so I’m thinking the end is nigh.
While we should be out right now house hunting, the Viper Pilot is taking a nap and I’m eating chicken noodle soup for lunch and watching reruns of Glee on AFN. {And you are all sleeping. It’s 5 am there. Good morning!} AFN is American Forces Network – Europe. It is about 5-6 channels that play American shows. You never really know what you’re going to get but so far I like it. We watched the Big Bang Theory last night and the Today show plays live (so around 3 pm here). One channel is called Prime and it literally cycles through all the prime time shows that are shown in the states. We watch NBC nightly news while we are getting ready for the day. Which is fine with me. The commercials are all military and they are super cheesy. They are quite entertaining. It’s really is great to have, though, because much to our dismay, we discovered that neither Netflix or HuluPlus work in Europe. We inquired with them about our situation and they told us they make exceptions for military members stationed overseas as long as they can trace the IP address to a military installation. But if you live off base and are using a third-party internet provider, they more or less don’t support you. I’m sorry, but that’s just not cool.
Money Ball is on this weekend — I have my alarm set so we don’t miss it. The Viper Pilot hasn’t seen it but I have. I don’t even really like baseball but I loved this movie.
My only complaint is about the Olympics coverage. They decided it isn’t fair that we get to see all the action live (since the games are an hour behind us here) so we watch the delayed broadcast that you all watch back in the states. The problem here is that all the good stuff (gymnastics, swimming, etc) are shown while we are sleeping so we have missed most of all the USA wins. I bet you didn’t know that while you are sleeping or eating breakfast, they are showing archery and horse jumping, did ya? Fun stuff.
Despite being ill, we are making great progress getting settled in here. So far, we love Spangdahlem.
We bought a car. It’s a Volvo S60 and has all wheel drive so it will be our driving machine in the winter snow. We will buy a second one eventually, but this will definitely do the trick in the mean time. It is fully loaded (including heated seats, woop!) so we’re pretty happy with it. Plus, it zips right along on these winding country roads out here and I don’t mind that…it’s fun to drive.
One a side note, we did look at a 5 series BMW (which is unfortunately way over priced and the guy didn’t accept our offer) but I did get to take it for a spin on the Autobahn and that wasn’t fun at all… <– sarcasm.
Now that we have a car, we can begin house hunting, but in the meantime we have moved into a furnished apartment off base. This place allows us to keep Elle and she is quite happy to be back with us again.
The apartment is small, but it has all we need. It feels wonderful to unpack our suitcases for once. We will be living here until we get a house, so I guess we might as well get comfortable, right? It’s a huge mess because we’ve been sick and getting moved in but it’s home.
We have also been getting a nice taste of Germany, courtesy of a welcome bag from the squadron. I’ll sum it up in one word: chocolate. I do believe it has healing power. We live in vino country (<– best part) and so we’ve been sampling some of the great local wines, as well.
Vanilla yogurt with espresso <– incredible. Maybe I can send some of my favorite (non-perishable) treats back to the states one of these days.
This evening we have our first First Friday with the squadron so it will be an opportunity for us to meet everyone. We’re really looking forward to it!
Hopefully by Monday we will be back to our normal healthy selves and can really begin house hunting. We have a few leads and I’m really anxious to find us a sweet Deutsch haus, but for now, we’re going to rest up.
Tschüss!