Eighteen Days In The US

On December 17, 2012December 17, 2012 By StevenIn The U.S.9 Comments

I traveled to the US with a series of lists. I had places to go, people to see, food to eat, and crap to buy. In eighteen days, I drove my rental car over 1200 miles across three counties. Here’s why:

I had a Culinary To-Do List, because there are just some foods that have no good analog in Germany.

I ate at Friendly’s with Lorrie on my first night back in town. After a year in Germany, it was a little bit jarring to be handed the check before were finished eating.
I got my diner fix, including the aforementioned Friendly’s visit, the Moonlite Diner with Vicki and Ilona, iHop, and Denny’s (in which I ate the Gandalf’s Gobble from the Hobbit Menu. Hilarity ensued.)
I got proper Thai food, having dinner one weeknight at Chaiyo Thai with Vicki.
Plenty of good burgers were eaten, including Jack’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, and Charm City Burgers, where I also fulfilled my tater tot needs while lunching with Marc.
I had lunch at Muddy Waters with Karen.
I met my Tex-Mex cravings by joining my brother and his boyfriend for Taco Tuesdaze at Tijuana Flats.
I had Sushi with Holly at Katana, a fantastic tiny Sushi place in North Miami Beach.
I had a proper and delicious steak with my elder brother at the local Longhorn.
I finally got around to trying The German Bread Haus, a German bakery on Commercial Boulevard, East of I-95. I brought some pastries into the office with me, and they were quite good.
I also ate at the Cheesecake Factory, the Melting Pot, Rotelli, Miller’s Ale House, TGI Fridays, and Jimmy Johns. I may be forgetting a few places- this trip was all about the food.

I had an Acquisitions To-Do List.

I stopped at Costco to get a ginormous bottle of Excedrine and some Flintstones chewables for myself. I also picked up some generic Sudafed, another thing I haven’t found a satisfying version of over here.
I managed to find a pair of New Balance shoes I liked to replace my aging and slightly less comfortable pair. I also picked up some more work pants and long sleeved t-shirts in Target.
I went back to the ski store in Delray Beach to get another scarf and wound up buying an awesome neck fleece that I already love beyond all reason.
I went to Abercrombie & Fitch to get a pair of sweatpants that Jenny asked me to bring back to Germany.
I also went to the grocery store for some other requests- I came back to Germany with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Nerds, and A-1 Steak Sauce.
As an aside, shopping makes me kind of looney. This results in bad product based puns. For example:

I had an actual task-based To-Do List.

I successfully moved my stored stuff from a 5×10 unit in one location to a 5×5 in another facility. The place I was using claimed to be climate controlled and pest controlled, but it was near a canal and the doors weren’t sealed very well. As a result, I had various droppings and former insects, frogs, and worms in and around my stuff, along with live silverfish in the books. As if that weren’t bad enough, there was already humidity damage starting to show on some of my books. The new facility is immaculate and completely indoors. Also, the smaller unit in the new facility will save me roughly $65 a month in storage fees. You can see what’s left in storage in the picture to the right, including my beloved coffee table.
I snagged an International Driving Permit. I don’t drive here, but if I need to, this could be handy.
I got a haircut at Kathleen & Company, the place I went to for eight years before I moved to Germany. I can get a haircut anywhere, but this place deserves loyalty.
I worked a week in the Florida office.
I went back to my Neurologist for a followup. I haven’t made the time yet to find a Neurologist in Germany.

I also had a Gatherings To-Do list, which originally contained just a few shindigs, but wound up including much more.

I drove out to Wellington for my sister’s fabulous Thanksgiving Extravaganza. In the past, our family has sometimes splintered off into different directions for Thanksgiving, but this year most of us were all in the same place. A small portion of the group is visible in this photo, including both of my parents, one of my brothers, my brother-in-law and his brother, my nephew, both nieces (2 and 22), and my niece’s boyfriend. Not pictured, but present: The other brother, my sister and my sister-in-law. Like I said, it’s a big and convoluted family, but we’re a fun group.
I went to a “Friendsgiving” dinner that was being held by John, another long time friend. I arrived between their dinner and dessert courses, which was perfect timing for chatting and being social. It also gave me the opportunity to give him one of the two Bavarian beers I brought with me from Germany. He was pleased.
I had a pair of birthday shindigs- one with friends, and one with family. The friends party was held on the Saturday night before my actual birthday- I had friends join me for a fantastic dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Season’s 52, followed by some drinks at a Ft. Lauderdale Irish pub.
My aunt, uncle, and cousin were in Miami for a wedding and since the timing matched up, they joined part of the family for brunch on that Sunday.
Sunday night was the second birthday shindig- my father put together a dinner at another restaurant and I got to see more family there, including a few who weren’t at Thanksgiving dinner.
I have a lot of friends outside of Florida who I wanted to see, but I only had the time to travel to one other state. I took the dart-board approach to selecting who to visit, and I wound up going to Minneapolis to hang out with Debra, another old friend there. We had dinner in the Mall Of America, which I had never been to. That place is HUGE, and has a theme park in the middle of it. There are roller coasters. In a mall. Amazing.

Last but not least, the most important to-do list item of all was to remember to come back to Germany.

I’m On My Way

On December 10, 2012June 6, 2014 By StevenIn The U.S.4 Comments

This post is being written at 37,000 feet. In-flight Wi-Fi is a nifty, nifty technology. I’ll write up a proper trip report after I’ve gotten back home to Regensburg, though- I haven’t yet sorted my pictures or my thoughts from the last two and a half weeks.

In another five hours, I’ll be back in Munich. Another two hours after that and I’ll have collected my luggage, taken the 635 bus from MUC to Freising, and hopped a train from Freising back to Regensburg.

After that, I just have to try to stay awake until around bed time to stave off jet lag. Maybe I’ll finally get around to doing the homework from my German class that I’ve been putting off all vacation long.

Longer posts coming up, now that I’ll be back in town, and it’s snow and Glühwein season!

Still in the US.

On December 3, 2012April 11, 2014 By StevenIn The U.S.8 Comments

I’ve been back in the US for a week and a half now, with one more week to go before I head back to Deutschland. I’ve been making the most of my time, visiting with as many friends and family members as possible. In the first four days of my visit, I refilled the gas tank of the rental car twice from criss-crossing the lower three counties of Florida. I had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s place, and there were lots of dinners and brunches over my birthday weekend.

The rental car isn’t too bad on gas consumption. Since I was going to be in Florida, and away from the cold and damp of Germany, I opted to go topless for my choice of rental car:

…however, Florida is doing a pretty good job of making me want to leave again. I worked a week in the Florida office to stretch out my trip a little bit, and my commute to and from the office each day looked pretty much like the photo below. Lots of stopping, with an average top speed on I-95 of about thirty miles an hour.

Once I get into the office, though, things get better. I missed the sense of humor of my Florida co-workers though. It’s a really fun group. Here’s a small example… this is the hot-n-cold water dispenser in the office. In case it’s not clear, the little post-its say “Health” and “Mana.”

Speaking of things that I missed, there were tater tots. Oh, such tater tots. Despite the very wide variety of potato offerings in Germany, I haven’t ever seen tater tots there. Whenever I try to explain tots to a German, they always get this blank expression, and the always suggest rosti, croquettes, and making my own… it’s just not the same, though, and my culinary to-do list for this trip included proper tots. These little beauties are from a joint in South Florida called Charm City Burger.

Getting back to my birthday, I decided that I wanted to start my new year on the ocean, so I snagged a hotel room on Ft. Lauderdale beach. This is the view I woke up to on Sunday morning:

When I get back to Germany, it will probably be snowing. Oh well, at least the Christmas Markets are open now.

Sorry, Sorry…

On November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 By StevenIn The U.S.1 Comment

I neglected to prepare a post for today. I assumed that after four days back in the States, I would have a lot to talk about. However, I forgot to account for the fact that I would be so busy catching up with friends and family that I wouldn’t have time to actually sit down and write something before the very last minute. Oops!

I’ll get back to writing new material as soon as humanly possible. For now, however, I’ll just be over here eating this awesome cookie that was given to me as soon as I stepped off the plane on Wednesday.

So You Want To Visit Germany

On November 19, 2012November 19, 2012 By StevenIn Life In Germany7 Comments

I posted a while back about Dining Out In Germany, and I realized recently that whenever someone I know visits Germany, there’s a bunch more stuff that I tell them. As I prepare to head back to the US this week for my first visit home in over a year, I have some observations from my first year here that I think might help an American visitor to Deutschland.

The Bathrooms Are Different.

Not the plumbing. A toilet is a toilet is a toilet. The basic size and shape are pretty much the same. The differences are in other areas. Here’s what I know:

There are almost always stairs to reach the loo. I’ve been in perhaps three restaurants in all of Germany that didn’t involve a quest down three flights of stairs to reach the bathroom. I’m pretty sure I saw the guy from Pitfall in one of them.
The labels are a little different. This stands to reason, since it’s not English, but if you don’t know that Damen is Ladies and Herren is Gentlemen, your first trip past that door can be mildly embarrassing. Sometimes the doors just say H and D, which is even less help if you don’t know the labels ahead of time. At least the little silhouettes that some places use on their doors are pretty universal.
When traveling, hold on to your fifty cent and one Euro (1 €) coins for your bathroom needs. Europe is very fond of the pay toilet. Restaurants and airports and trains usually have cost-free restrooms, but pay-to-pee is the norm in lots of other places. In some train stations, there’s a chain of attended restrooms called McClean which has very nice, well maintained restrooms for a per-use fee. There are also street level restrooms in many cities that involve fees to get in. Sometimes there’s a coin plate near the door as if to suggest that a donation would be a good idea.
Don’t be surprised if a restroom attendant of a different gender than your own comes in to clean the place, especially in train stations.

Getting Around An Unfamiliar City.

Most cities around Germany have a nice public transit system. If you’re lucky enough to be in a larger city like Berlin or Frankfurt, you might even have a variety of modes to choose from. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Nuremberg all have underground metro systems, referred to as U-Bahns or Untergrundbahn. Most cities have a form of S-Bahns, or Stadt-Bahn. This is just a basic above-ground rail system with trains tying locations together. Some places have Straßenbahn, or streetcars. And of course they all have bus lines.

In most instances, your best value is going to be a Tagesticket or day ticket. These are typically good for use on all the forms of public transit in a city, so you can hop between them. For example, to get from the Berlin HBF to my favorite hotel in Berlin, you need to take the S-Bahn (S5, S7, or S75) to Alexanderplatz, then switch to the U-Bahn (U8) to go one more stop. Every Bahn station will have kiosks where you can buy tickets for the local transit system, and a full day of unlimited rides is generally more cost effective unless you’re only planning on one or two journeys.

Here Are A Few Words You Might Need To Know.

Entschuldigung – Apology/excuse me. You’ll hear this when someone wants to get past you in a hallway, for example.
Ist hier frei? – Is this seat open? Useful in crowded trains and restaurants. German pronounciation note: ‘frei’ is pronounced like fry.
Geöffnet – Open. If a bar or restaurant has this word in front, you can go in.
Geschlossen – Closed.
24 Uhr or 24 Stunden – 24 hour.
Tankstelle – Gas station. If you’re driving, you’ll need to know this one.
Apotheke – Drug store. If you need aspirin, paracetamol, cold medicine, skin lotion, or pretty much anything you would get in a pharmacy back home, this is where you’re going to find it. Unlike the US, aspirin and other pharmaceuticals are generally not available in other types of stores- you’ll have to find an Apotheke.
Eingang/Ausgang and Einfahrt/Ausfahrt– These are entrances and exits. When you’re on foot, eingang means entrance and ausgang means exit. When the suffix -fahrt is attached, it refers to cars. This leads to one of my favorite jokes, “Ausfahrt must be the largest city in Germany- there are signs for it all over the Autobahn!”
Besucher – This means visitor. Some form of this word usually appears on visitor’s entrances.
Einbahnstraße – One way street. I thought these were all pointing to a specific highway for my first two months in Germany, and I couldn’t figure out why they all seemed to be pointing in different directions. I’m not always the sharpest tool in the shed.