Liebe Leser und Leserinen!

I promise, that will be almost the last German you will have to read…it says, “Greetings readers (male) and readers (female)!”

As I type this we are 2 days away from having lived in Berlin for 3 weeks. It is difficult to believe that we have been here for almost a month already. What’s more difficult to believe is that we still don’t have internet! I should clarify that we have a nice neighbor who is letting us borrow his wireless signal. Unfortunately, the lovely neighbor’s router needs to be reset, and he has been away for almost a week, and thus we are relegated to restaurants with free Wi-Fi and hotspots for most of our interweb dealings. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m sure, but I am unclear as to how anyone did anything before Al Gore invented the internet. Nevertheless, I figure that I had better start recording some of the goings on here because if I wait until we have an internet connection to get blogging, most of this first month will be a distant memory. I will try to keep it as short and sweet as possible because:
1. No one has time to read a short novel about our day-to-day shenanigans.
2. I don’t have time to write a short novel about our day-to-day shenanigans.

A good portion of this will be to keep family and friends abreast of how/what we’re doing. In addition, my documenting of the highlights will be helpful when it comes time for Neil to write his year-end reports for the Olmsted program. I am aware that many people have moved to a foreign country to live/work/study, and there are thousands of “We’re American and We Live Not-in-America Right Now” blogs out there, so why should you read this one? I’ve never been good at self-promotion, but I believe photos like these will help set mine apart:

Lederhosen.

Annika's reaction to the new apartment.

Having said that, here are a few early observations about Germany so far:

• Nutella is their peanut butter. It is delicious but lacks any discernible nutritional value.
• I’ve seen a fair number of adults drinking Capri Suns.
• There is a lot of in-line skating…like instead of a 5K run/walk, there is a 5K skate.
•  Sunday is really a day of rest. The only places open are restaurants.
• Matte black paint jobs on cars are all the rage. Some of these cars are more awesome than others.

Awesome

Not as awesome but more awesome with this paint job.

Apologies for the multiple posts all at once. I’ve never been very good at keeping up with these things, so it they will most definitely become more spread out moving forward.

Tschüß! (See ya!)