Supermarket

Supermarkets are different...

1. Most supermarkets are small (except for the beer selection) and Germans only buy a few things - not much room in their tiny refrigerators.

 2. The lettuce has just come from the farm - the whole lettuce plant is for sale with all of the farm dirt included.

3. The price already includes the tax. When I paid €1.35 for the Colgate toothpaste, that was all I had to pay for it, VAT (value-added tax) included.

4. You are charged for some glass and plastic containers (PFAND) that you can then return to the store to get your money back (check out the receipt below). On our brewery tour last week, we learned that on average, beer bottles can be reused 40 - 50 times before they become too fragile. In between their beers, Germans find the sobriety to be conscientious of the environment! Go Germans!

5. Check out this AMAZING beer selection... It's great because you can buy just one bottle if you want.

This one I tried last night and it was very tasty!

Now, I'm off to the grocery store to recycle my bottle (and maybe to try another one)!

The Red Man

This is the German version of the WALK / DON'T WALK light:

Red Man standing means DON'T WALK while green man in walking motion signals that it's okay to cross the street. Not so different, right? Well, the difference comes from how the Germans obey the Red Man even when there are no cars around! If you're at a quiet intersection and there aren't any cars, you cross the street even if it says DON'T WALK. If you try to tell me that you wait, I will find witnesses!

Germans don't cross and they capitalize on guilt by putting up the signs that you can see in the picture of the little girl looking up at the Red Man. The sign is translated to: "Set the example. Stay on red. Go on green."  

After the first few days, it started to annoy me, but I've found a solution! For the stop lights and streets with very little traffic, I cross the street in the middle of the block, rather than waiting to cross at the intersection. That way, Germans can't look at me with disgust and I don't have to wait impatiently - a win-win!

Our First Saturday: Schönbuch Brauhaus

We started the day with lunch in the Old Town at a traditional Swabian (the region of Germany where we live) restaurant. The food was amazing! I ordered, not knowing what I was ordering since the offline translator app nor Damian could translate some of the traditional food names. The meal started with an amazing pumpkin soup and then a salad with what I found out later were Swabian raviolis. DELICIOUS!

 Then we met with a group of post-docs from the Max-Planck (where Damian works). There are a few from the U.S., but surprisingly there is a couple from Argentina! We went to a brewery in a local town to learn of the beer making process and to try some local brews.

My favorite picture of the day...

 We ended the evening at the Brauhaus, trying more varieties of the Biermeister's collection and getting to know some of Damian's colleagues.

Our home - Tübingen

Here are some pictures of the town center that I took yesterday.  It was a cloudy day so the photos don't capture the beauty with natural light.  Wednesdays and Saturdays are market days.

Bank Accounts

It was a successful day because I finally got a bank account.

The other day, when I asked the principal at my school for a recommendation of a bank, she told me to wait and made reference to Germans having moral issues with choosing their bank. I don't even want to state what bank I chose on this blog for fear that, later, it might come back to haunt me.

This morning, after Damian equipped me with some important phrases ("I don't speak German. I'm sorry. Do you speak English?"), I went bank shopping.  When I entered the first bank and got to the point of wanting to open a bank account, the bank associate, in broken English, told me I would have to make an appointment. So I made an appointment for the following afternoon. Then I proceeded to talk with the guy in detail about all of my options, he took a copy of my passport, and he told me it would be a minimum of $5/month for the account.  Two things stood out to me from this conversation: 1. After spending so much time with me, why can't this guy just take the next three minutes to establish the account? Why can't he make an official, "appointment to open an account" for now or 10 minutes from now? I'll just walk out the door, stroll through the bookstore next door and come back in 10 minutes.  2. Are you seriously charging me to keep a bank account? I'm giving you my money so that you can go invest it somewhere and make money from that money. Why would you charge me for that?

A similar situation happened at the next bank I went to except this time the monthly charge was equivalent to $6.50/month.

Luckily for some regimented Germans and their appointments, I didn't open the bank accounts with those banks because I found a better deal...

Later in the day (after the German siesta) I ventured out and stopped at another bank (there are A LOT here).  This time, they setup a FREE account within 10 minutes - no appointments and no fees! Win for Katie! I was hoping for an interest-bearing account, but that probably would've been asking too much.

Mail

We got our first piece of mail. Yeah!

So happy for these two - hopefully we can make the big celebration!

Bikes

No wonder why Damian fell in love with this place...

This is a picture from the train station:

For all of the non-bikers of Chicago out there, I need to point out something. It is shocking that all of these bikes (and some expensive) are only locked with a flimsy chain and often just to itself. In my many years of biking in Chicago, if my bike was not locked with a U-Lock to a metal frame that was bolted into the ground, it was stolen.

Germans are smart with their bike lanes on the sidewalk - just brilliant.

They even get traffic lighs.

Now I just need to get one!

Honeymoon...A little bit of France

We started our journey with a belated honeymoon in southern France.

I used my Irish passport for the first time and I breezed through immigration.

Day 1& 2: Nice
We stayed in Old Nice which really felt like France, but in the SMALLEST hotel room. The room was so small that the toilet was in the shower!

The beaches were amazing...

We quickly fell into a routine with our meals: Our days began with a petit dejeuner (an espresso with a croissant), lunch was a baguette sandwich from a bakery, eaten on the beach, and dinner was anything with goat cheese and maybe some seafood for me.

Day 3 & 4:
Hyeres. Our favorite beach was Notre Dame on an island off of the coast (Porquerolles). It was one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen. To get there, you needed to take a ferry and then hike several kilometers along the island - well worth the trip!

Day 5, 6, 7: La Ciotat and neighboring towns

On our first day there, we took a boat along the coast to see Les Calanques.

The next day, we had an even better experience when we hiked them and swam at their beaches.

Day 8: St. Tropez
Our second favorite beach was outside of St. Tropez, Pampelonne. This is a very famous beach and with reason - it's gorgeous and stretches for 5km.

Day 9: Frejus/Agay

We went hiking into the Massif de l'Esterel mountains.

Day 10: Juan Les Pins

Day 11: Antibes, Middle Corniche (scenic driving), Monte Carlo (by night)

Antibes

Picasso Museum

Poor Smart Car...

Middle Corniche (in route to Monaco)

Monte Carlo Casino

Damian and I gambled 50 euros and lost :(

Despite the elaborate, opera house design of the casino, the bathrooms were subpar. The bathrooms in the gas station were nicer than those.

It seemed like there were more Ferraris in Monaco than their were Toyotas in Chicago! Monaco has the highest per capita income in the world and you can tell just by walking down the street.

Day 12: Monaco by day

Day 13: In route to Germany

We stopped half way to Tuebingen at Lake Como. We didn't spend much time there, just had lunch on the lake.

While getting on the expressway at Switzerland, we were stopped by the police on the ramp. We were supposed to have purchased a sticker to legally drive on the expressway. Since we didn't have the sticker (because we were not aware of this), we received a 200 swiss franc ticket (approx $215). Yikes, welcome to Switzerland! I was determined to hate Switzerland forever, but the views and the chocolate won me over. Before we left, I had a list of several towns within 2 hours of a drive from Tubingen were Damian and I will be visiting in the coming weeks/months!