What Is Carole Up To Now?

Carole is wandering the world. Having had a couple successful careers, as a software engineer then a technical marketer, it's time to take a sabbatical and plan for the next big thing. New philosphy: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Love the IWC

May 31, Tuesday. I went to an International Women’s Club event at one of the member’s homes, a lovely big apartment in the University district quite close to the English Garden. Another member, Heidi, an Austrian, was demonstrating how to cook some classic Bavarian dishes. We made KaseSpaetzle; which I think is the basis for our mac & cheese; German potato salad; which bore little resemblance to what we get in the states called that; and then a pancake called Kaiserschmarm.

The Spaetzle is a basic flour/water/egg pasta, pretty loose like a very heavy batter. We mixed it up, and Heidi showed us how to use the Spaetzle maker. I thought it was a grater at first, it’s a metal blade with very round holes in it, about the diameter of your little finger. There’s a round plastic cylinder that rides on top of this. The blade fits over the pot, in which you have hot water (not boiling or, as Heidi says, you get soup!). Fill the cylinder (sitting on the blade) with the batter, put the blade over the pot and slowly run the cylinder back & forth over the holes. The batter drops through and the Spaetzle starts cooking. When they were done (they float & turn a darker yellow), we scooped them into a pot. Each batch got sprinkled with grated cheese. When we had cooked all the batter, the pot was put into a warm oven to further melt the cheese. Separately, we carmelized onions, they go on top as you wish when you’re serving yourself. This dish was really good, cheesy and with a great chewy texture due to the Spaetzle. It was a lot of fun, there were 10 of us alternately helping prep, cook and chat. One interesting thing, Heidi complemented me on a necklace I was wearing. I told her that my parents had given it to me as a present for going to Germany. She wondered why, I said they were impressed that I had moved here. She said “Because of the war?” “No, because they are still living in their first house after 46 years!” (My mother in particular is agog at the notion that we picked up and moved to another country.)Now I was thinking she meant WWII, but she may have meant the current war. Anyway, we have been on a couple museum tours and the tour guide prefaces discussion of the WWs with 'bad things, but part of our history.' I get the sense that most people here feel " wasn't even alive then, it was bad, we're embarrassed, let's move along, OK?" Not trying to deny it, not accepting any blame for it. It was bad, we’ll not repeat it.

The cooking and lunch event was held at Kate’s house. After lunch was over, Kate offered to show Barbara and I to the Hugendubel bookstore downtown. Specifically, the English branch. Barbara had tried to find it before, but had not succeeded. We walked from Kate’s place, and what a find! Hundreds of books. Again, they don’t take credit cards. But our EC cards are coming in the mail, they say. And my bank card works in several cash machines here.
Tuesday before supper Logan and I got out for a bike ride. It's light pretty late these evenings, til 9:30 or so. There are so many paved bike paths, some “off road” and some along the sidewalks, it’s so easy to get around here on bike. Mine needs some adjustment, I am putting too much weight on my arms so that between my shoulder blades and my wrists hurt. But Logan thinks he can turn the handlebars around to help with that.

Monday, May 30, 2005

We got the bikes!

May 30, Monday. Back to my computer problems. Today another coworker, Roy, brought in a voltmeter to work. Logan used it to check the power supply, and it turned out it wasn’t the power supply, but the connector I was using to plug in with. Somehow that had gotten broken; it was working at the beginning of the week. So I’m finally back online.

And the bikes came! Logan called first thing in the morning and was told they’d be delivered between 12:30 and 1:30. He came home for lunch, and just as he was pulling in, the DHL guy was loading the last bike onto a hand truck. They loaded them into the car, and Logan drove them down into the parking garage. Getting from the garage to the storage space involves 5 doors and 3 hallways. But we finally got them stowed and I’ll count that as my upper body workout for the day.

Called the bank, and they could take us at 15:15 to open an account. We got there just in time, and it took about 30 minutes for all the paperwork. We tried to deposit money in the new account, but, … it was closing time by then and all the cashiers were closed. They still didn’t want our money!

Logan spent the evening putting the bikes back together and testing them out.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Our first tourist trip

May 28 – 29, The weekend. The universal power supply didn’t fit my laptop, so we took it back & got our money back, which Logan's coworker Bruce made much of – he says you don’t get your money back very often!

Saturday the 28th, we touristed, drove down to the Chiemsee which is a large beautiful lake dotted with large islands about 90 minutes southwest.

Took the autobahn. Our direction was pretty clear, there were some real slow areas on the other side heading in towards Munich.

The countryside is beautiful. Very green, lots of trees, rolling hills, and Alps in the background.

We got close to the area to catch the ferries to the islands, and the town was having a Jazz festival so we got to experience some more 'Umleitung'; which means detour. But all was well and we got to the coast and found parking.

Wandered down to the dock area and went to a restaurant for lunch first. Had local fish, which was excellent. Then we bought tickets to take the ferry over to Herrinschloss, the island with the castle on it.

Ludwig II built one of his castles there; a slavish imitation of Versailles, until he ran out of money. He had portraits of Louis XIV throughout, copied Louis’ bedroom, etc. We think he had a crush on Louis! (Coincidently, Ludwig II died in a mysterious boating accident shortly after running out of money.) We took a ferry over to the island and toured the castle. It is a beautiful area and the grounds are fabulous, but it was a hot day (around 90) and we were wiped.

Drove home and did McDonalds take-out for dinner, and even then it wasn’t easy. We don’t know how to say ‘to go’, but between 'aus gehts' and the clerk understanding our sign language we got pretty much what we wanted.

Sunday the 29th dawned hot again. 25 C by 9 a.m., on its way to a bit over 30. Logan had some work to do and he spent the morning working on his laptop.

That afternoon, we went to go see a movie. Logan reserved 2 seats on-line. There are at least 2 places in Munich that show first-run movies in their original language, and they mostly show American/English movies. We took the S-Bahn to the Hauptbanhof (main train station), and connected to a U-bahn and got off at Stiglmaier Platz, and walked up the block to the Cinema to see Star Wars Episode III.

When we got there, we bought the tickets and picked the seats. It’s reserved seating, you pick the row & seat you want. No mob scene when the doors to the theater open. It was nice to be out of the heat! And seeing a movie in English. Thought that the effects were great but the dialog and the characters were lousy. I mean, how can someone be a Jedi and still be so susceptible to manipulation by a Sith? I did love the line when Obi Wan & Aniken were fighting, and Aniken said “You’re either with us or against us”, Obi Wan replied “Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.” Must remember that one!

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Running Errands and Exploring

May 27, Friday. The day after a Thursday holiday is a ‘bridge day’; many people take that day off. Logan worked from home. We did walk to the bakery, bought bread and a doughnut and a couple of things that look like slices of cakes. Had breakfast on the balcony.

I have had the hardest time getting & staying online. It took a few tries until the user name/password to the account would work (and this was over a few days.) Yesterday, it appeared as if my laptop had expired. We thought it was the power supply. Not sure how to find out if this is the problem. If we were at home, Logan would have had a voltmeter. Oh well.

In the afternoon, we took the car into a few new places in town. We wanted to open a bank account, credit cards are not widely accepted here, you need a EuroCard, or EC. So we drove off to the local Dresdner Bank branch. Hmm, closed for lunch. OK, we’ll go to the local Apple store up the street, to buy a printer. Closed for lunch. By now, the bank was due to be open so we went back there. It was open, but we were told that there was no one available to open an account. Could we call on Monday to set up an appointment? … OK, sure. Don’t take our money! Found the OBI, which looks a lot like Home Depot. We went also to Tech Mart, for electronics. There we discovered that it was a good thing that we hadn’t opened the bank account, because Tech Mart only takes EC or cash. So all the cash that we would have used to open the account went to a DVD player and a ‘universal’ power supply instead. We stopped at the Apple store on the way back, and ordered a printer.

Hurray! The Luggage Concierge and DHL people have worked it so that the bikes are considered duty-free! They will be delivered sometime on Monday.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Holiday in Munich

May 26, Thursday. Today is a holiday in Bavaria – Corpus Christi day. Logan had the day off, he spent some time catching up on reading in the morning while I worked on laundry. I timed it, the wash cycle takes 85 minutes. Doing laundry is becoming almost as constant as going grocery shopping. It was a clear, hot day – over 80 – so putting wet clothes out on the balcony had them dried – and hot – in about an hour!

For lunch, we decided to take the S-bahn into the city. At one of the main city stations, we transferred to the U-bahn, which is a mostly underground train, and got off by the University. We walked with the rest of the hordes to English Garden. It is a huge garden – the largest public city park in Europe. Again to a Beer garden. This time we had Bavarian food. We hung out and walked through the park for a couple hours. Boy, it was hot. I think I need to avoid beer in the middle of the day when it’s so hot out, I got a headache and felt lousy by the time we got home. So did Logan.

One the way home from the train, we took a bit of a different route and explored the Unterhaching Rathaus Platz. We found the local bakery – score! Made plans to come back in the morning.

I think we had a simple dinner out on our balcony that evening. The balcony faces southwest; and there are wind shields that conspire to keep it hot out there until the sun slides behind the building. Then it is delightful to sit out there. We’re on the fourth floor, the buildings that we face are perpendicular to us and only 3 stories tall so we have a nice overlook. On a clear day, we can see the tops of some Alps. (I have taken some pictures and hope that you can see them too. They may just look like a cloud smudge on the horizon.)

In the evening after the construction work has stopped, it is so great to be here in this building.
I have to remind myself then that we really want to find a better place. When all of our stuff gets here, this place won’t have nearly enough storage (for things like heavy sweaters, boots, winter coats and skis); the construction of several new buildings is taking place behind this one. The work starts at 6:30 in the morning most times, the power equipment is not supposed to start up until 7; and it continues until 7 at night; Monday – Saturday. Yes, Saturday! And, other than the balcony, we have no outside space. There is some common area between the buildings, but it’s all given over to playground. There are no tables nor pool nor built-in barbeques. I think I’ll find that confining soon, and Logan doesn’t like it either.

More calls about the bikes. Luggage Concierge has offered to pay the duty if they can’t get this straightened out.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Beer Gardens!

May 25, Wednesday. It was a beautiful clear day. I headed into the city again to meet Barbara at Rosenheimer Platz. From there, we took another S-bahn to the monthly meeting of LIA – Ladies’ International Association. The speaker was a last-minute substitution and she spoke German, and had someone translate for her. She talked about an agency in Munich that helps people find volunteer opportunities. There are more people volunteering in the past few years. (Duh, their economy is down too!) The meeting was a snooze for me, but afterwards 6 of us walked across the street to a beer garden & had lunch. That was fun. I’m trying to hear all the things that the servers say, and get translations and learn what to say back so that I can feel comfortable going to a place on my own.

I got home around 3:30. Talked with Logan and he wanted to go out to dinner, so he got a recommendation from Bruce for a beer garden near “home” that is Italianische and makes good pizza. We got to Rosen Hof around 7, had a couple good pizzas – they have a wood oven out in the back, at the side of the beer garden area. It was great to sit out and eat for dinner, too! It is light late here, until 9:30 or so. I love the lifestyle, so far.

A note about our stuff getting here: the bikes are held up in customs. Well, not held up so much as they want us to pay 2,500 Euros for duty & VAT – they don’t believe the bikes are ours! Luggage Concierge, the people who shipped the bikes, didn’t tell us that we should have the receipts for the bikes with us to prove they are our personal belongings. So Logan was on the phone to DHL and Luggage Concierge a couple times each today. The folks at customs can’t be persuaded to open the boxes, to see that the bikes are used.

We may have to have a friend go to our storage space & rummage through the files to find the receipts. What an avoidable hassle.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

May 24, Tuesday. I go into Munich

The weather started to clear so I decided to go into Munich. I love taking the S-bahn, it is so great to walk a few blocks and get on the train & get into town in minutes with no parking worries. I got off the train at Rosenheimer Platz and popped up above ground to find the park. The chestnut trees are in bloom, and some of them are pink! It was wonderful to sit in the sun by the fountain. I intended to wander around the neighborhood and end up by the Isar river but I got turned around. I passed an Internet café and decided to go in & get online. 2.5 Euro for an hour, pretty good deal.

Once I checked my email, I headed back down the street and quickly found out where I was. I headed to the Viktualien markt - a large outdoor food & produce market with permanent stalls & a beer garden - and bought a Brat, walked around munching it and taking in the sights. I wandered around in the tourist area for a while, then headed back to Rosenheimer Platz and did a bit of grocery shopping in the Hit supermarket in the station.

It sounds like I’m doing a lot of grocery shopping, and so I am. It is taking a while to sort out where in the store things are, and to find what I want. When I’m out on my own, I don’t want to carry too much. And the stores are close, so I stop and get a few things every day.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

The first couple days

The flight was great. We had been working so hard to clean out the house the week leading up to the flight that we both slept for 8 hours! (Plus, the departure was delayed. We ended up taking off at about 12:30 a.m. Saturday the 21st.) Touched down in Munich around 7 p.m. Saturday the 21st.

So we went grocery shopping in the airport before hauling everything to the rental car; grocery
stores are still closed all day Sunday here. All 5 suitcases, 2 laptop cases, 1 tote bag & 1 grocery bag and us fit in the car, thank goodness.

Sunday was a low-key day. We mostly unpacked the suitcases. Bruce & Barbara Birdsall stopped by around 1:30, invited us to dinner at their place that night. Thank goodness, all I had been able to score at the grocery in the airport was a jar of tomato sauce & some pasta.

So the afternoon was partly cloudy, we went out for a walk to help clear the jet lag. Then we got cleaned up & went over to Bruce & Barbaras. They are staying in a small house, half of a duplex actually, but with a nice yard. We sat out on the deck while Bruce grilled dinner. The birds here are amazing, there are quite a few varieties and they all sing. Barbara said that when her daughter Lisa was visiting, she commented “Mom, those aren’t just birds, they’re Disney birds!”


May 23, Monday. Logan went off to work. Reality hit as the construction started up at about 7 a.m., even though it was raining off & on. I dragged myself out of bed eventually. I walked to the local Tenglemans grocery store to get provisions and bought as much as I could carry. I got back to the apartment & made some spaghetti sauce for dinner. I love cooking, and it was good to make something familiar and comfort-foodish. That evening, after dinner, we drove to Isar center in the town of Ottobrun, to stock up the kitchen. Ottobrun is just 3 or 4 kilometers from Unterhaching, and it’s where Logan works. The Edeka market there is much bigger than the market in Unterhaching.

Two important things about grocery shopping here:
1) Make sure to have on your person at all times a 1 Euro coin. The shopping carts (aka trolleys) are all chained together; to get one you insert a coin into the slot & it comes free, much like luggage carts in airports. When you leave the store, return your cart, chain it back up and recover your coin.
2) Bring your own bags! You have to pay for them in the market. They don’t seem to care at all that I walk into Tenglemans with Edeka bags. I have started carrying an empty bag in my purse.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Addendum

I was writing up what we did to get the house ready for renters, and I think I left out half the stuff. Some of the stuff was maintenance that was due, some was things that had been on a ‘let’s fix this list’.

All in all, we: got the kitchen floor replaced, got the tile strip by the step in front replaced, got the house washed & back deck sealed & patio cleaned then we sealed the patio ourselves because the guy tore his Achilles tendon and had surgery after the patio got cleaned, repainted places where washing the house had pulled paint off, trimmed bushes, moved the small fountain off the patio & stored it under the house, painted the utility sink room in the basement, got the oil changed in my car, scraped & repainted the place in the studio room that had water damage, ran to Kelly Moore to buy paint to match the studio room and guess what, that color is 10 years old (thank goodness they keep a file of ‘retired’ color recipes), replaced lights in the garage, cleaned the light coverings in the bedroom over the sink area (8 of em!), oiled our wooden dragons, checked that the sprinklers were all working, ran the generator, cleared out both refrigerators, called to turn off the utilities, returned the cable boxes, gathered up all the old paint & pesticides and ran them to the hazardous waste collection place (for which you have to make an appointment), took the old computer and monitors to the computer recycling place, and I can't remember any more. We had a list, a very long list and didn't quite get to the end of it.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Oh, the work we did!

When we got back to CA, and recovered from the jet lag, we started to work in earnest to get back to Germany. People asked “Oh, was the relocation service good to work with?” There was no relocation service!! Logan’s boss said “Go to Germany”. We did everything ourselves.

We started a list of the projects to do in the house, like get the kitchen floor replaced, and fix the ‘oops’ step as you come in the front door. The list grew every day for about a week, even as we were knocking items off. So much to do!

We knew we wanted to rent out our house. We thought that we’d prefer to rent it furnished. So in late March, I started going through the stuff, to get rid of things that were just hanging around because they had a place. I soon realized that I buy, and hang on to, way too much stuff! Of course, some was the result of 18+ years of being in California, with 12 in the house on Springer Ave. The house was rarely cluttered, it has so much storage space. But the storage space sure was full. I took 4 pick-up truck loads of clothes and miscellaneous goods to Good Will. We took over 700 books to the Book Go Round which supports the Saratoga Library. We had Salvation Army come and take some old furniture – it was old, beat up, but still useful and it had a place so we kept it.

We rented a personal storage space up the road, and packed up and stowed away our personal items like the books we still wanted to keep, the small amount of high-school memorabilia, the Christmas decorations, etc. Filled up a 7 x 10 space with no problem.

Along about the first week of April, we got recommendations from Nancy, our excellent realtor, about property managers in the area. We talked with three, and chose Donna of JDS Property Managers. She said that she only deals in unfurnished places. In our area, to get someone on a year lease, they typically want to move their stuff in. (Unlike, Germany, where renting is more typical than buying. And fortunately, there are a few places here for rent that are furnished.)

Soooo, now we need to find someone to pack & store the rest of our stuff. Started asking around, got recommendations and had 5 people over to the house over the next couple weeks to look at our stuff and provide an estimate.

Logan was also working on finding a way to get our bikes, our clothes and his car over to Germany. We ended up with a different service for each.

Donna came over to the house, we signed the contract with her, and she took some pictures. She posted the house on Craig’s list on Monday May 2nd, got three responses that day. We had 2 couples come over & look at the place on Tuesday. One was coming into the area from Connecticut, he has a job with Google; the other family is from Tokyo, he works for Fujitsu. The Japanese couple was already living in the neighborhood just a couple blocks over, but their landlord wanted to sell the house to they needed to find a new rental.

Saturday the 7th, the Kuratas signed the rental contract, to start on June 1st. Yay! That’s one big thing out of the way.

On Monday May 9th we drove his car up to the Port of Oakland, where they were going to put it into a container & load it on a ship. It was supposed to ship out May 12th, but the shipment didn’t clear customs quickly enough so it shipped on the 26th.

The evenings of the 9th, 10th and 11th, I went to a going-away party each evening. It is all starting to sink in that it’s going to be the last time I see some of my dear friends for a while. What the heck am I doing?

We had visions of just loafing around our last week in California, but it turned out to be the hardest work of all. We spent Saturday and Sunday packing the suitcases we were going to take on the plane and segregating the stuff we wanted to ship to Germany in one area, as the movers were coming on Monday the 16th to pack the rest of our things for storage. Once we got our ‘ship to Munich’ stuff in one place, we started packing it.

May 16, Monday. The movers showed up this morning; Severin and Kenny. Thank god for strong 23 year-olds. They worked from 8 until about 2 packing. We continued to pack through the evening; I was working on clothing and Logan started breaking down the bikes to pack them. We got to our hotel around 10 that night; we stayed at the Saratoga Oaks Lodge, about 5 blocks from our house. Weird staying in a hotel that close to home, but O My it was wonderful to get to that quiet, furnished room with no chores waiting in it!

May 17, Tuesday. Severin and Kenny showed up again at 8, and they brought along Dave and Gerrel. They continued to pack and started hauling stuff into the driveway to load onto the truck. It still took them until about 2 to finish. The last thing they packed was the big dragon by the front door. They crafted a custom box out of a couple big ones, wrapped him in bubble wrap, and used up the 3 bags of styrofoam peanuts that we had been collecting in the basement. Yay! Dragon packed, and another chore finished. (I was going to have to take the peanuts to UPS for reuse, otherwise.)

Logan finished up packing the bikes, all 4 of them. (My bike, his road bike, his mountain bike, and his cross country bike) He had purchased 2 shipping crates for his mountain and road bikes, and got 2 shipping boxes from the local bike store for the other two. Made a final run to Goodwill, as I was setting aside clothes to either store or ship I made some hard choices and tossed out more stuff. I then headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up and met a friend for drinks at The Basin, one block from the hotel. Logan joined us later and we had dinner there.

May 18, Wednesday. We slept in and went over to the house a little later in the morning. Finished packing up the clothes. I headed off to my last Entrepreneurial class; I’ve been a volunteer couch at the Girls’ Middle School for their 7th-grade Entrepreneurial class, and this day we reconciled and cashed out. My team did a pretty good job tracking their expenses and their sales, and they made a profit of more than $500!

Wednesday evening, we did the final walkthrough of the house with our tenants. Then we drove the rental car and Logan’s truck up the hill to Kristen’s house, as she and Rick were buying the truck. It was a rainy, foggy night and I really didn’t want to be driving the rental minivan up 17, but this chore had to get done. Took along all the booze I hadn’t managed to get rid of and some stuff from the kitchen.

May 19, Thursday. Logan broke down all the boxes that we had been collecting that we hadn’t used. (old Xerox paper boxes, etc.) We collected all the trash – and there was quite a bit of it, and called for a special pickup for Friday. Took the final load to the storage space, including the phone. I got the call about my car pick-up around 1:00. Oh yeah, did I mention that I sold my car in the middle of all this? I had wanted to keep it but got convinced that it just would not do well in storage for 2 or more years. So I offered it to my brother, who had always said he wanted it when I was done with it. Zoomed back to the Lodge, and handed my car over to the drive of the Dependable Auto Shipping truck.

That evening, we met 2 friends for a movie (The Interpreter). Logan and I ended up for dinner at Willow Street in Westgate. Headed off to bed early, as by now we’re so tired we can’t really think straight.

Friday morning we had breakfast at Holders, for some ‘pancake therapy’. We called about the flight, and discovered that it was pushed back from 9:30 p.m. departure to 11:00 p.m. departure. Logan had an errand to do, and went to do that. He got back to the hotel and we finished up the last bit of food we’d had in the mini fridge. I had to pick up one final bit of vitamins at the doctor, so we got all the suitcases into the minivan, and headed up to Palo Alto. Got there around 3:30, and since we had time we stopped at the movie theater to see if there was something playing at 5. There wasn’t, so we headed into downtown PA, walked around a bit, and had dinner at the Empire Tap Room. Then we walked back to the minivan by way of Borders and picked up some books to read on the plane.