Today was my first day on a new schedule to support our German office.  I’m basically working a 9-5 day for Germany now, but since I’m still in Florida, my day starts at 3 AM. (I still don’t have a date for my relocation; we’re still waiting on my paperwork with the German government.)

As you can probably imagine, this has me really turned around and very, very tired.  Luckily for me, my first day on the new schedule wasn’t too busy.  Sophie from our German office told me this morning that today is German Unity Day, and I got to do some reading on that.

I’ve been living with the same basic set of holidays for my entire life so far, and having to get a sense of an entirely new set of holidays is an interesting mental challenge.  I intellectually understand this holiday, but I don’t have a sense of what it really means to Germans-  I don’t know whether this is as big to them as Independence Day is to Americans, or if it’s only observed as much as, say, Flag Day here.

Note to self:  Read up on other German holidays as soon as possible.