Arrived!

After more than a week of visiting with family and friends, it was time to leave the U.S. to embark on the adventure of our lives!! It’s a bit surreal to realize that just yesterday we were in Washington DC an ocean away and two weeks ago we were in California managing the last minute details for the move. Today we are now transplants to a very quaint little town. (It’s really not so little, Stuttgart has approximately 500,000 people and that does not include the outskirts)

After leaving Washington DC’s Dulles airport at 12:30 pm, we arrived in Atlanta at 2:30pm and trekked on over to the International gates and waited until almost 6pm for the direct flight to Stuttgart, Germany.

The flight was fine except we were packed like sardines. It appears to be the standard for any flight today. I was telling Ted, it really isn’t as much fun as it used to be. Thirty years ago, it was a blast to fly. But today, it’s not much fun. As a result, sleeping was virtually impossible. I think I dozed about two hours in total which isn’t much when considering we left our hotel room at 8:30am on Saturday morning and got to Stuttgart by 8:15am the next day!!

We presented our passports but did not have to go through customs. The airport is beautiful and so clean! What I found amazing is that the ‘smart carts’ you can rent to get your bags from the carousel to the car are so inexpensive here. We paid $4 and $3 for San Francisco and Pittsburgh, respectively. Here they were 25 cents each!!! What’s with the U.S. prices? Someone is making a bundle!

We were met at the gate by James, a co-worker of Ted’s who explained he would be taking us to our temporary housing and then driving us around town all day to see the area and to help us get our bearings.

We loaded James’ car with everything except our laptops and it was a good thing too. After loading his car, we picked up our rental car. We rented a VW EOS until we can get a car of our own. And while it’s a cool car, we wouldn’t have had enough space for the eight bags we brought with us.

After dropping off James at arrivals, we were supposed to meet up with him outside the airport but couldn’t find him. Luckily he left us with a pre-programmed GPS but we didn’t know if it was programmed to go to the apartment or to Ted’s work. We then called James and realized he left his phone in our car. We decided to follow the GPS and hope we could find where we were going and hoped that in the mean time, James would figure it out and meet us at the apartment.

When we arrived at the apartment, I was certain I knew where we were because I had done a satellite lookup last Thursday to see the apartment we would be staying in. After looking up her phone number we called her. We had gone three houses down but found it easily enough because she came out. Thankfully, she speaks a little English but I mentioned that I want to learn German. She smiled and seemed happy that we were making the effort.

It turns out, we are in an upstairs apartment and the landlord lives downstairs. The building is very modern but yet maintains quaintness about it.

After depositing our bags and getting our keys, James took us to Ted’s new workplace so he could see the building (and his cube), gauge the time to get to work and be able to find his way tomorrow morning. With GPS, he should have no trouble at all.

We then went to three military bases to check them out. After parking our car, signing in and showing our passports, we were allowed entrance to the three bases. By tomorrow, Ted should have his ID card that will enable him to get on base without going through what we went through today. We checked out the BX/PX which is where the military do their department store shopping. It was like a Mall and had many of the niceties that we take for granted in the U.S. We were shown where we would get our mail. Hopefully, we will have a new address this week sometime so we can do all of the address changes we need to do. We are hoping that I will get a military ID as well but James could not tell us either way.

We then went grocery shopping at the Commissary to supply us with a few things to tide us over until we get our own ID’s. It’s amazing how the military supplies its people with all of the “stuff” we get in the U.S. It REALLY made me feel at home. That’s not to say that it won’t be fun to shop on the economy. I’m totally looking forward to it!!

I was falling asleep in the car and requested to go back to the apartment. After doing some unpacking and calling family members to let them know we arrived safely, it’s just about time for us to go to bed.

Tomorrow is another day of an exciting adventure. Stay tuned for photos of our new tiny apartment.