Musings and Random Rants

There were many details left out of the first few weeks in Germany, but in the interest of the general interest in reading this blog, I thought it'd be best if the issues were gathered in one location. The following will be covered; the nightmare that is in-processing, the German internet, our second battle with Ikea (is that a washing machine riding shotgun?), and our dogs vs. ticks.

In-Processing

In-processing is the equivalent of having to spend the rest of your days inside the Commissary - only, you are relegated to being the Sisyphus of bagging.  Maybe one day I can garner the capacity to summarize the horror, but that will not be today, nor in the near future...nor the distant future.

For the time being, imagine a world where the Nintendo game, "Duck Hunt," represents in-processing.  Successfully beating a level is equivalent to completing one task among a litany of obligations.  With that being said, the best way to describe in-processing would be akin to never getting past the first level and have that goddamn dog laughing at you for hours.

The German Internet

The internet at our apartment in Landstuhl was slower than what we have been accustomed to in the past, but the wireless router was two floors below us - understandably, there was going to be slower access speeds.  Unfortunately, our future experiences with the German internet would pale in comparison to that of our temporary housing.

When the came time to sign up for internet at our new home, we soon learned that Kabel Deutschland (the best provider) isn't near "Wo sich Fuchs und Hase 'Gute Nacht' sagen." The process of acquiring a provider is complex, confusing, frustrating, and painful - being the Sisyphus of bagging at the Commissary nightmarish.  We live in a rural area, therefore; our only option for internet providers were SkyDSL or Tooway, and we even signed up for both.  First, our Land Lord had offered to pay for everything if we used Tooway, he also had a friend who would complete the installation.  We signed up for Tooway service around May 6th and it is currently October - we have yet to receive our satellite and/or further confirmation of our services.  Thus, we subsequently signed up for SkyDSL and our satellite arrived a week and a half later.  As it turns out, the satellite is actually made by Tooway and comes from the same factory - the dish even had a SkyDSL sticker covering the Tooway logo (a whaaaa..? Einhorn is Finkle, Finkle is Einhorn*).

Then came time for installation and to make a long story short, our entire house is wired with coaxial cables incapable of carrying a modicum of digital information.  Therefore, every coaxial outlet in the entire house is useless (this took two hours to discover).  The only option left was to directly wire the cable from our satellite dish into our attic and set up a wireless router there.  By definition, we have an internet connection, however, we were informed that internet providers like SkyDSL and Tooway keep track of your data usage.  If you are using more than one gigabyte a day (equivalent of streaming one hour of HD programming) they will put you into a "high usage" category and slow your internet speeds down - which doesn't seem possible (just adding pictures to this blog can take hours at a time).  On a rainy day, our internet is a quarter the speed of a dial-up modem, on a cloudy day it is about half the speed of dial-up, and if is is a sunny day we are lucky enough if we can reach dial-up speed.  

Recently, Netflix arrived in Germany and it is our hope that our "group of users" binge watch anything and everything online, thus moving us back to a faster bracket.  Also. it should be noted that our internet speeds have improved since Netflix became available.

*

IKEA, Round 2 - FIGHT!!!

When we had settled into our lovely home we needed to find a washer and dryer for our laundry room, but wanted to spend as little as possible.  We found a vendor in Ramstein-Miesenbach that sold used washer and dryer units for a fair price, but only washers were available.  After some research, we changed our course and we looked into a washer/dryer combo if it would cost less than two separate units.

We found one...at IKEA.

When we arrived, we walked around the showroom looking for all the washers and dryers, but they are hidden throughout Ikea. The washer/dryer combo we were looking for was arbitrarily placed away from all the other appliances - disguised within a cloak of kitchen cabinetry.  Sadly, it was looking like the cost of Ikea washers and dryers were slightly cheaper, but we weren't convinced it was worth buying a new machine and the combination unit was more a space saver than cost saver.  As we walked through the warehouse, our final stop was to look at the discount section - there, they had a waschtrockenmaschin, exactly what we were looking for and affordable.  The price for the 2-in-1 was equivalent to the price of a single machine, we placed it in a cart and we were on our way.  

Now came the ultimate decision, do we have it delivered for a nominal fee, or do we try to squeeze this into the car (remember Fifi's storage capacity is the size of a lunch box).  I voted for delivery, however, my husband-issued half vote was trumped by Julie's single vote - forgoing delivery and to put Fifi to the test.  The trunk and back seats were not an option due to the size and/or the angle of the door - leaving one option, the passenger seat.  If we opened the door at it's maximum and put the seat in a fully reclined position, the doorway spared two centimeters of clearance.  To be honest, I didn't think it would fit, more like, I didn't want it to fit - however, twenty minutes later we had a washtrockenmaschin in the car.  All that we needed to do now was drive home, but ten minutes into the drive, the gas light indicated we were low on fuel.  

View of Waschtrockenmaschin in passenger seat

Took this picture with my arm in the trunk

It was already dinner time and we were just content with driving straight home, even if it meant scrounging around our cabinets for food.  When the gas light came on we used the GPS to search for the closest gas station, but we had to get off the Autobahn - a regrettable mistake to say the least.  We drove for ten minutes and still hadn't reached our destination, the gas station was more likely to be at someone's house based on our surroundings.  Therefore, we had to reroute our GPS again to another gas station. We were back on track and heading towards an Esso, or so we thought.  Twenty minutes later we had arrived at our destination, only there was an empty field to our right and a group of trees to our left.

Where were we...?

Was this to be a future gas station...?

What the hell G-PoS?

We tried another station, which appeared to be in the next little town - we could see it in the distance and when we got closer, it was closed!!!  We had been running on fumes for nearly 40 minutes at this point and stress levels were rapidly escalating.  After our GPS located another gas station that didn't exist, it was clear we were in the middle of no where, it was after 21:00 and we had no one to call if we ran out of gas.

The levies of tolerance broke when we found a sign for the Autobahn, only the on-ramp was under construction and we would have to turn around.  We drove through another small town or two and miraculously a way back towards the Autobahn presented itself.  While on the Autobahn, we finally spotted a gas station, unfortunately, it was on the other side of the highway.  A few kilometers later we found an exit where we could turn around.  It was now 22:00, we still hadn't had dinner and we had given up on the night.  I ended up having a gas station sandwich and pastry, surprisingly delicious, in the sense that I haven't had anything to eat for nine hours delicious.  

The following day, the washtrockenmaschin was still riding shotgun when  I drove Julie to work.  Upon our arrival to the security gate, we had a most interesting exchange with the guard, "Sir, is that a washing machine in the passenger seat?"  When I returned to pick up Julie from work, a different security guard took interest in my inanimate copilot - only, he wanted to know if I was giving it away.  When we arrived home, our neighbor was outside pulling weeds from his driveway and when he observed us moving our washer/dryer out of the car he offered to help.  He was gracious enough to help carry the unit into the house and upstairs to it's duty station.

Duffy waiting for his load of laundry to finish

Bella and Duffy vs. Ticks

The final diatribe concerns the insane tick population here in Germany, they are everywhere - there are more ticks than dog poop on the sidewalks of Metz.  Our backyard is a great place for the dogs to run around and play, we even have a tree house for my tea parties with Duffy and Bella - the major set back, ticks.   Within the first week of moving, Bella had five ticks on her and Duffy had two.  They both get their monthly treatments, but these insects are relentless.  Ticks continue to be a problem, but we just continue to be hyper-vigilant - like we are a troop of howler monkeys incessantly grooming each other.




Next time in musings and random rants...

our household goods arrive...

our dogs get passports...

the world's largest straw hat festival...

and...

my future career of becoming a street gondolier...