A Simple Sunday

Over the last couple of days has been our preparation for the changes that are going to be coming up. Elise and I are supposed to be moving out on May 10 so we have been searching for an apartment, we did though message our land lord and asked of the possibility of extending our stay since we did see an advertisement up for him renting out the apartment for June onwards. He has not yet gotten back to us which worries us a bit. If we don't end up extending it won't be the worst thing since we were discussing the idea of finding a cheaper place. I officially started my job yesterday and will be working Tuesday-Saturday five hours per day. Even though it was a Sunday it was more a "bond with the family time" rather than actually working. I thought finding my way on my own would be no problem since Elise and I did it once before without any worries but this time it was different. The bus all have their numbers but the bus I take has three different routes under the same number and confuses me and not to mention that I am very DSL and the bus drivers do not speak a word of English. I tried to ask one of the buses drivers but it didn't get me very far. I must have been looking confused and upset because, a guy came over and tried to help me. He talked to a couple bus drivers and finally we found a bus going in my direction. He told me he would take the same bus and see that I don't get lost. Luckily his bus pass was good for two people so I didn't have to pay. I was worried that I was going to be late because of the bus confusion but luckily I arrived at my stop in more than plenty of time to get their on time unfortunately I took a wrong turn on my way there so I ended up being about 10 minutes late. The family had prepared a lovely set up of tea and cake on their back yard patio. After a lovely snack in the sun, we headed over to the park. The children we not yet comfortable with me so they weren't that enthusiastic to play with the non German speaking girl who keeps watching them but a few hours later despite our language differences I was their new friend. I didn't get back my side of Dusseldorf until about 9:45 where Elise happily met me at the S-bahn station. In my absence she cleaned our apartment spotless, washed and folded our laundry and studied up on her German; since I did not notice that Elise had changed the table cloth. I was awarded title of "ungrateful husband who comes home from work and doesn't take time to notice the little pleasant changes".

Köln Cologne Köln

After our few days of recovering from laziness, we decided to join the German world once more. Yesterday, we stayed in bed most of the day and watched Grey's Anatomy and cleaned around the house a bit. I have discovered a German channel that plays most of the sitcoms, like Big Bang Theory and Scrubs, that we have but in German. I enjoy watching them and listening to the voice changes. Germans sound much sexier and not as annoying. Every day is a different show and so it is kind of nice to have that little bit of home mixed in with the language we should be learning. After my show, we ventured out to the Rhein as it was a very warm, sunny day. It was the first time since we came to Germany that we didn't need to wear our coats. We sat down on the grass by the Rhein and got some much needed Vitamin D. As we sat, we were stared down by a Turk gang. They would each in turn, turn around to look at us as they walked by. A couple minutes later, we were interrupted by some German LBs (Little Boys) who thought that screeching at the top of their lungs and smiling at us was the best way to get the internationals attention. Steph was lucky enough to have the LB with the reverse mullet. He liked to turn around every minute or so and get another good look at Steph. Very funny. We also decided to make my Oma's very famous Boterkoek. It is an almond cake that is kind of like a brownie but harder...very delicious. We went to the store and Steph spent almost half an hour trying to find Almond Extract. She even enlisted the help of a Stock Boy but to no avail. Germans must not have a need for almond extract or any extract for that matter. Disheartened by this turn of events, we put our plans of baking on hold...until we got into World Coffee. As we were sitting, Steph spied some of the syrups they had on sale and one of them was almond. They only had it in a large size but we figured we could use the syrups in my coffee as well. Not a problem. So we headed home to make it. Unfortunately, we didn't put enough syrup in and it tasted like butter and, quoting Stephanie here, "It was hard, mushy, not cooked and stale. It was disgusting". So the only logical thing to do was to leave the pan on the counter all night for the Boterkoek to stick to the pan, making it impossible to clean. Today, being one of Steph's last free days, was spent in Köln. The minute we stepped off the S-Bahn into the Hauptbahnhof, we knew we loved it. It was almost like Berlin, it felt kind of like home again. Home being Berlin of course. We had decided that we were going to go to the Schokoladenmuseum of Lindt. It was so neat! The Museum has this mini Rain forest. There is a door that opens to this tiny room and you can't get out until the next door opens (which only opens when the previous door is shut). The Rain Forest felt like Mexico all over again. Steph thought her face was melting off, it was so humid. The next level had all the factory machines and they show you exactly how it is all made. It was really cool. The top floor was all history. It was a very neat museum. They have a cafe and a gift shop (which is full of chocolate, of course) and it was a very big building. After a walk down the Rhein in Köln, which was very enjoyable, we headed more into the shop part. It felt like we were in Paris because there were so many souvenir stores. Steph bought herself a Beer Stein which was only 18.95 euros and that is the cheapest we have seen it. We found a puppet that sings in one of the shops and it sang Usher's Yeah. It was very funny. A couple of German girls were singing along...very cute. Afterward, we headed the hour back to Düsseldorf and had Currywurst for dinner. Probably will be an early evening for us full of our new favourite pass time: Word Challange.

A Day of Rest to Recover From a Day of Rest

Oh the Sundays and Mondays of Deutschland! They rate top on the list of the most boring days of the week. Sundays, Elise and I wear pajamas all day and have marathons of Grey's Anatomy while snacking on our most favourite chocolate, milka. So you would think when Monday rolls around and everything is back up and booming in town we would take full advantage, but this is not the case. We take this extra day to continue to be lazy so we may recover from the ultimate day of laziness from the day before. We indeed cannot be as lazy as Sunday though so we did make a slight effort to go out for a little while. Elise and I decided to head out to Ikea for a little look around since that is one of Elise's most favourite places and I have to say I do quite enjoy it as well. The ticket machine at the train station seemed to be broken but we decided to take our luck and hope the the machine on the train would be just fine. We hopped in one of the ends of the train and to our displeasure the machine was out of service; it seems like most of the time the ticket machines are out of service in Germany. We quickly hopped off and ran to a different section of the train. We almost didn't make it but then a nice German guy half put his body in the door way so we would make it. Ikea wasn't as great as we expected, it was still excellent but it must have been half the size of the one in Vancouver so we were slightly disappointed. Elise and I decided that this evening we would do some baking so we picked up a banking pan and also another pillow for myself since mine is pretty crappy. On our way home we stopped at the grocery store, Real, so we could pick up the ingredients to make boterkoek. Two things I hate about German grocery stores, is firstly everything is impossible to find and secondly selection can be quite limited. The baking section was the worst. There was a million different kinds of canned milk but hardly any baking ingredients. They did not have almond extract or any extracts for that matter. I don't even know how Germans bake. We never found any so we could not bake this evening which is what I had been looking forward to, possibly tomorrow. Instead we cut up a baguette had it Camembert cheese and tomatoes or Nutella. We ate and enjoyed the rest of our night watching Grey's Anatomy once again.

German Shopping Survival 101

Our lives have slowed down quite a bit since we have come to Düsseldorf. In Canada, our lives were so very busy preparing for Germany and once in Berlin, we were trying to pack everything into two weeks. Now that we are in Düsseldorf, we have all the time in the world (it feels like) and so we take it one day at a time. We relax and enjoy our stay which is very nice but also makes for a boring blog. We woke up late yesterday and spent the day in our pajamas. I have a courier package arriving and so we spent the day waiting for it...we needn't have bothered. The package never arrived and so we wasted the day. I had another dinner with my Au Pair family that night and so I left Steph to her own devices for a couple hours. Since my Au Pair family eats very late, they also stay out late. 10:30 at night is still an appropriate hour to have guests over. I felt rude telling them I needed to catch a train home right away but I was falling asleep at their house...not a very good impression. They had a previous au pair come for dinner as well. She is from Winnipeg and so we immediately became friends. I believe that when Canadians meet other Canadians in a different country, you automatically have a safety net/personal connection. We had a very nice chat about the family and our lives in Germany. She came here as an au pair for 11 months and then came back on a traveler's visa and is trying for a work visa. She is very nice and easy to talk to. As it turns out, the au pair with the family fell through. That is alright. Instead, I shall spend a couple weeks learning the language through my school and then apply at my highest calling: Starbucks in Germany. Today, we went grocery shopping. We hadn't done any grocery shopping in a few days and so we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for food. It felt so nice to be able to have food in the cupboard again. We bought some more fruit and so I shall have to cut up the pineapple once more for Steph. Hopefully it will all get eaten this time. I have discovered that there is a reputation about Canadians. Everyone says we are so polite and easily manipulated...this has never been clearer to me until grocery shopping in Germany. There is no time to ask someone to move in Germany, you just roll your cart right over them. A tall German man mowed me down with his cart in the seasonings aisle. It is also customary for two people to stick their carts side by side, blocking the entire aisle with said carts and not moving for anyone until they are done examining every last ingredient on the food item. It is also customary for people who have only a few items to budge in front of people with more than 5 items. Some German woman budged right in front of us, said something about us having too many items, then turned around with a fake sweet face and thanked us! I was appalled. We tried to switch lines but then another German woman speed up and pushed her cart in front of us again only to move to a different line five minutes later. Maybe Canadians are too polite for the rest of the world. That or I need to grow a backbone. After putting away the groceries, we sat and had some lunch at our dining room table for the first time ever. It was much nicer to sit and talk instead of shoving food in our faces in front of the tv. It was a nice sunny day, the first in quite a few days, and so we went for a walk into town. Steph has found her new favourite hang out: World Coffee. She loves to go in and buy her White Chocolate Wocochino. I feel like we are betraying Oranium. It consists of the white chocolate coffee-mocha drink with whipped cream in a glass. It is very good. After that we went home and enjoyed a lovely German meal of Currywurst. We continued to watch our Grey's Anatomy as the storyline gets much better as the seasons go on. We had wanted to spend our "Sunday In Deutschland" baking as I wanted to make Boterkoek to celebrate our moving in but we forgot the ingredients of course. 
 

Rebel Children with No Manners

Today was an early morning wake up for us, well mainly Elise. After waking up at 7 we headed into the living room for about ten minutes before I decided to head back to bed and Elise decided to continue staying awake and playing spinnicles, a game I will never understand why she finds it fun. I was definitely in the mood for a good piece of toast that morning but after opening up and examining the cupboards and fridge I realized our groceries had become pretty scarce; understandable though since we hadn't done a good grocery shopping job in awhile. My breakfast ended up consisting of two mini oranges and a piece of chocolate. Today was the day that I was to meet the family interested in me becoming their au pair, so I had been nervous for the last day or so and continued to be nervous all day. After catching up on the latest House episode and watching a hilarious episode of family guy, I started to plan out how to get to their house. The family did offer to pick me and Elise up but I decided it would probably be better if we made our own way there. The family wanted us to meet them at their house at five so there wasn't too much time since I had woken up at 11 but we figured we could fit in a drink at our new little favourite coffee shop, World Coffee. The service isn't great but the drinks are quite excellent. We decided to catch the bus back home since we had been running short on time. There was no ticket machine at the stop but since we have discovered they have one on the bus we need not worry that is if the machine isn't out of service, unfortunately this was our case. Elise and I only made it one stop then we hopped off the bus, we were too concerned about being caught ticket-less again. We raced home, only to grab the instructions and then race to the S-bahn station. As we were sitting on the bench some boys across the tracks were hiding behind a sign smoking, they couldn't have been over 13 years of age. Elise and I were repulsed. The boys were little brats, they were yelling at people at the station and attempting to throw rocks at us. Luckily for us their throws only made is about halfway across the tracks. As Elise and I were just about to board the train, I took a last glance at the boys only to witness one of the boys scream "Hail Hitler" and give the salute. We were sickened.
The dinner went pretty well. The house they lived in was pretty large and newly renovated. The children are adorable, they don't speak any English but I still believe they will warm up to me pretty easily. The parents are extremely nice people. The hours seemed a little longer than I wanted to do but the dinner was only a meet the family dinner, the actual business talk would come later. The father was nice enough to drive us home afterward which we were glad about so we didn't make it home too late. We only watched one episode of Grey's Antomy and headed to bed.

Seafood Onion Rings

In our apartment, the floors are very creaky and loud when you step on them. As a result, Stephanie wakes up, and visa versa, whenever I get out of bed. I rarely sleep in and so this has cut into her sleeping pattern quite a bit. Today, I, in a vain attempt at giving Stephanie some more sleep, forced myself to stay in bed. I was able to sleep for most of the morning until the pillow on my head was unceremoniously thrown from me, exposing the light through the window. Steph thought I had left and "needed to check". So we were up early once more. We had bought a bag of mini Pain au Chocolat and have been faithfully eating them for breakfast. Much cheaper than buying them from a bakery but not as delicious. I checked my email and it turns out that I got the Au Pair job. One less stress for sure. We decided to watch some of our German cable as well for more German immersion. I watched the news for a good half hour and then Steph joined me for Schön und Reich, a German Soap Opera. I find it a lot easier to understand the German in soaps than the news, obviously. I wanted to take a trip to Ikea today as I discovered where it is but Steph had to do her laundry first. Normally, laundry takes about an hour to an hour and a half to do it at home but this is not the case in Germany. It takes about two hours per machine. We never actually got to go to Ikea. We wanted to get out and about anyway so we went to leave but we couldn't find our keys. After half an hour of searching for the keys in every inch of our apartment, Steph made a startling discovery: The keys were underneath her purse that she had thrown on the counter previously. What a relief. I was thinking up different scenarios of how I would tell our landlord that we lost both keys to his house and our apartment...in our apartment. After solemnly swearing we would keep the keys in my purse at all times, we were able to do our walk...which landed us in World Coffee. This coffee shop had it's menu in half English and half German and sold Hersey's Cookies and Cream chocolate bars (my favourite). It is a cute little place that is fairly inexpensive when compared to Starbucks. For dinner we decided to have Currywurst again because it is so delicious. Steph thought it would be nice to have onion rings with it as a one time treat. We picked out a bag but couldn't see the price of it. We decided to splurge a bit and buy it no matter how expensive. We were shocked to see that it was 9 euros for a bag and not even a big bag at that. We went home and Google Translated the instructions on the back. Turns out we had bought Squid Rings instead of onion rings. Now that I look back, perhaps we should have known because a) we bought it from the seafood section b) it had a lobster as a logo and c) 9 euros for onion rings? I felt pretty stupid afterward. It tasted like Calamari and it was so good so I didn't mind. After watching Date Night, we decided to go to bed early so we can be fully rested for Steph's job interview tomorrow.

Disciplinary Omas

Once again another average day waking up in our little apartment in Dusseldorf, the sun was shinning and we sat and ate our breakfast while watching some Grey's Anatomy. One of the job offers for the Au Pair was to be in Duisburg, a neighboring city of Dusseldorf an approximate commute of 20 minutes. To Germans that seems like a lot but to us Canada folk seems like no time at all especially if you have to go into town for work. On our way out of the house we grabbed our garbage to drop off in the bin and our bottles for return. Elise and I have been feeling quite confident with ourselves about living a German life... well I guess we haven't been following the way of German exactly. As soon as I started putting the garbage in the can, a little old German lady who had just stopped and got off her bike started yelling at us in German... we were terrified.... the only thing that I could say was  "English... English". The woman in awkward bad English and hand gestures started showing us that we weren't recycling properly. She actually seemed mortally offended by our garbage. We of course apologized and told her it would not happen again. She smiled and then ended the conversation by stating that Garbage is heavy for the men... what ever that is supposed to mean :P. As Elise and I turned our backs away from her we debated the idea of her contacting our land lord to tell him of the incident but then we decided that would just be childish and ridiculous for her to do that. It didn't take us very long to drop off the bottles and I needed to stop at home before we took our little trip down to Duisburg. When we were leaving again, we caught that little childish ridiculous woman red handed, telling on us to the land lord! We decided to show her up one and walk over to show her how courageous we are. The land lord wasn't angry but we apologized anyways. He also brought up the fact that we hang blankets in the windows. He then told us blinds are on the out side of the window and we can close those instead of hanging blankets... we were pretty embarrassed.
At the train station to Dusseldorf Elise received a call from another family interested in her, they wanted to set up a meeting with her that evening. So our trip to Duisburg was much shorter than expected, basically we hopped on the train rode it there and then literally got right back on the next one back home. On the train ride home I decided it was a good idea to rest my feet on the seat across from me. Because the train was pretty bare I did not see any harm in it since I wasn't hogging a seat from somebody. Once again an unacceptable thing in the German culture... a little old lady walked by and decided to discipline me with by speaking German and pointing at my feet, she was smiling but I could tell she was secretly frowning. From what I am understanding, Germans like to get mad and smile at you at the same time. Elise had a wonderful meeting with the family, the daughter is such a doll and they told Elise they would get back to her by Wednesday... so fingers crossed! We made it home pretty late since the meeting was quite long so we only managed to watch half a episode of Grey's Anatomy before heading off to bed. All together it was a good day despite our minor incidents; eventually we will get the hang of everything. :D

Another Sunday In Deutschland

Yet again, another lazy Sunday in Deutschland. I am starting to think that perhaps these Germans have the right idea. You have a day where you are forced to stay home and do absolutely nothing. If Stephanie and I worked all week and shopped on Saturdays, it might be really nice to have this but this, however, is not the case. As we have pretty relaxed days of shopping and site-seeing, our weeks do not demand a day of rest. In any case, we stayed in our pajamas all day and watched more Grey's Anatomy. I have discovered German flashcards on my new Learning German site and so we also spent a good portion of the day doing those. It is really good as they show you the word and then only speak the word and then ask you to spell it out. Kind of like a Rosetta Stone. It is really excellent. Trying our hardest to "fit in" in the German culture, we decided to buy Beck's...big mistake! We had bought one regular and one gold one. It was the worst beer I have ever tasted (not that I have tried many before) and so we are too afraid to open up the other bottle we bought. Good thing beer is cheap here. We decided to create a profile on an Au Pair website to get our foot in the door for more jobs. We set me up with a profile first and so we spent a good hour doing that. An hour or so after the profile was set up, I received a call from a woman in Duisburg, a neighboring city, and so I set up an appointment with her for later in the week. Feeling very excited about the potential job, we had a celebratory Chili Vodka shot which we almost spit out. Afterward, we decided to stretch our legs a little bit and walk around our neighborhood. There isn't much to see as it is mostly residential. Walks are much more enjoyable here than in Berlin as the weather is much warmer. I stopped at the corner store (miraculously open) and picked up some juice. I tried to do the whole thing in German and succeeded but at the end, the man asked me if I was from Holland. My roots must be shining through...in my German? I'm not too sure whether it is better to have your accent, when speaking German, be from another European country or North America. Once home, we threw on another episode and then I received another call from another family who is interested in me. It was a very exciting day. Two job offers in one day! Who could resist that? Over all, it was a very good Sunday in Deutschland.

Blood Shot Burning Raccoon Eyes

Saturday seems to be the most busiest days of the week in Germany, since everything is closed on Sunday and school children and the older working crowd "typically" work Monday to Friday that leaves only one day of the week to go out in the city and shop... Saturday.
After a waking up from a very restful sleep Elise and I made ourselves some breakfast and turned on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. We have caught up on all episodes of My favourite, House, and  Elise's favourtie Grey's Anatomy and have finally gotten sick of watching so much Family Guy so we now are starting to watch Grey's Anatomy from the very start. Elise and I decided since we never did or really accomplish anything yesterday, thus no blog, we should really go out and do something today. We grabbed our coat and scarves and headed out to old town since we love it down there. This time going down we had to walk, since there is no where that we know of that sells tram tickets and not wanting to risk the police, we walked. 45 minutes later we made it, streets were crowed full of people but into the cobble stone streets full of hustle and bustle we entered. We only window shopped and people watched since this did seem like the best day to do that due to fact that money is limited until we can find employment and that fact that there are just so many people, not watch them would be issuing me a challenge. After getting enough of the crowds we wandered down to the Rhine, it seems to be a custom down there to climb over the safety fence and sit on the edge of the walk way beside the Rhine. So after Elise coaxing me against my fears of randomly tumbling off ledges to my death/heights that is exactly what we did, dangled our feet above the water like the rest of the Germans. After a half hour of talking, enjoying the scenery and watching the crazy skidoer in the water we headed home. We decided it was probably the best to buy a ticket for the bus so we headed down to bahn station to pick up a pass. We were stumped by the ticket machine, it was super ghetto and had no option for language selection like the one in Berlin so after a few minutes of conversing and looking confused a nice woman at the machine next to us gave us a hand. In the end we decided to not worry about a pass but to just buy one ticket home and we would deal with the pass later. After a good meal of tortellini we decided to get ready for bed, I was pleased because we had bought make up remover that after noon and I had been sick and tired of looking like a raccoon. I bought the one with pads with solution already on it to make it easier. I took one out of the package and rapidly rubbed it on my eye. It only took less than a few seconds for the burning to kick in, I screamed out of pain and hurriedly threw water on my face trying to flush out my eye, I yelled at Elise to Google translate the packaging of the make up remover. I look up in the mirror, my mascara and eye liner smudged all around my eye, and my pupils blood shot; My eyes were blood shot burning raccoon eyes. I had not been rubbing eye make up remover on my eyes but nail polish remover instead, I really need to be learning German a little more.

Elise and Stephanie : German Criminals

It was another cloudy, rainy day in Dusseldorf. Steph and I were especially tired today. We rolled out of bed, watched House, and then crawled back into bed for a quick snooze. Today was not a day we were going to do something special. After much back and forth conversation consisting of: "We should probably go soon" "Yeah" and then continuing House. It must have been something in the weather because we were very tired. After eventually kicking ourselves out of the house, we decided to walk around and try and find a mall. Instead of a mall, we found a street full of very expensive stores. We wanted to look in the likes of Chanel, Hugo Boss, and Louis Vuitton but they seemed to be the type of stores you go in when you want to actually buy something. So we stood outside and eye-shopped, reassuring ourselves that one day we would be rich enough to buy something from there. I think that Europe is all about the fancy shopping stores that no one can afford. We continued to walk around until Steph realized that her eyebrows "were bushes" and needed them waxed. We wandered around until we found Senzera, bodylicious waxing. It seems to be a chain in Germany as we have found three of them in Dusseldorf and one in Berlin. Once we found it, we walked in and waited fifteen minutes for someone to come down the stairs to serve us. Lucky for us, we got the woman who spoke almost no English. Another joy of not knowing the language of the country you currently live in. After our half German half English conversation, Steph's appointment was booked and we went to Starbucks to celebrate...and kill an hour. Steph noticed that Starbucks is hiring and as working at Starbucks in Germany is my highest calling, I considered dropping off my resume. After Steph's appointment, we went to the grocery store to pick up some veggies and Joghurt mit der Ecke, which is my new favourite thing in the world. It is yogurt cup with a something with it. I like the chocolate crisp ones the best but they also have berries to go with it as well. Very delicious. Then we hopped on the bus and after two minutes, we had a man with a weird ticket printer in hand, asking us where our tickets were. I panicked and pretended I had forgotten it at home and so we would get off the bus. This was not allowed. The man then continued to speak in German to us, but we didn't understand. He then called his friend over to speak to us. He told us to pay 40 euros, which we both paid half of and then said that that was only for one person. We didn't have anymore money and so we told him we would go to the bank for him. This also was not allowed. He told us "40 euro or Polizei". We were panicking so much and then he told us to get off the train with him. We stood in the bus stop and he told Steph that I was going to jail and that she would come later with the money to get me out. Steph begged him to let her go in my place as she is so terrible with directions. This was not allowed. He kept saying "No, your friend go. You come later". His English was very bad and broken. Then he went to his other friends and they spoke German for a bit and he printed out a receipt for us. He said, we think, that he would wave the other 40 Euros but we must go get a pass right away. We thanked him profusely and got out of there as fast as we could. We couldn't believe our luck. Steph didn't really want to be put in the German Criminal Records and I didn't want to have to bail her out of jail with more non-English speaking men. We arrived home feeling very shaken and very relieved. We decided to make curry for dinner with some of the tofu we bought. Tofu is also one of the things that taste different here but not in a good way. The dinner was still pretty good anyway. Once we had gotten over the shock of our almost jail time, we laughed about almost being put in German prison. I wonder if I would have had a jail cell...or been stuck there overnight with all the other people who ride buses without paying...Still wondering as to why I had to go to jail instead of Steph when we both paid the same amount of money to Balding Turk...

Rain Rain Go Away...

It was our first rainy afternoon in Dusseldorf and our first real rainy day in Deutschland. The sky was dreary and the rain pounded the pavement and for the first time since we have arrived in this country we just stayed in. Elise made a pot of coffee and I made myself a piece of toast. We curled up on the couch with our food and drinks in our nice warm blankets and pjs and watched a few episodes of House. It was lovely just to relax. We did though eventually get dressed because we did need to pick up a couple of things from the store so we headed out for a quick bit. In Germany it is custom to pack your own groceries so Elise and I have created a little system so we can be the most efficient and not get in anyone's way. Elise will stand closets to the cash register so as the cashier rings the food through Elise will pack it with the excellent skills she has acquired from her many years at Fairway Market and I will hand the cash over so once that transaction is done we will be packed and headed out the door; objective completed since no traffic jam is created since there is very little space at the end of the till. Today was different though, the cashier insisted on helping Elise pack the groceries and while I was counting out the coins from my hand, since I insisted on paying all in loose change, the cashier gently pulled my hand towards her and counted out the coins herself; German coins almost all look the same so I was a little slow. As Elise and I left we couldn't decided whether it was just really good customer service or she was just a wee bit pushy. Yesterday I bought the Sex and the City movie at Media Mart and so to feel even more at home we watched it over some dinner. We did though indeed want to educationally benefit somewhat from it so we put on German subtitles as part of our German immersion and to possibly learn a word or two. Since the translation was not a direct translation, the subtitles got frustrating and we turned them off, not even ten minutes into the movie. Next time we will watch it in German with English subtitles, maybe it will be better then.

They ID In Germany???

It was a day like any other day when you are waking up in your own bed rather than a hostel bed. We got up, caught up on some of our shows we have been missing since we arrived in Germany such as House, Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. We keep getting this feeling of "Don't stay in the house, there is limited time and so much to see". We forget that we have a long time to do all those things and if we take it a day at a time, we will have more than enough. So after lunch, we headed out to Old Town again but this time, we went down a street full of stores. Steph was on a quest for pajama pants and so after searching stores for an hour, we found a store and they weren't too expensive. We also found an English Tea House and so Steph went and bought some Green tea. On the way home, we stopped in at "German Costco" and attempted to make our favourite meal Currywurst. We got home, put all the groceries away and promptly forgot the drinks. Off to the Penny Markt for us! Once we picked up our (my) juice, we spied a couple coolers on the shelf and thought to ourselves "Why not?". At the counter Too Much Foundation Turk Cashier asked us "Ausweis?" To which we responded with blank stares. She repeated herself and I asked if she spoke English and being as helpful as she was, shook her head and repeated herself. Thankfully, Woman With The Baby in the lineup spoke English. Turns out we needed ID to buy the 5.9% cooler. Steph said she didn't have ID but that she was 19 which, strangely, Too Much Foundation Turk Cashier took as sufficient evidence of our age. We left the store feeling very confused as we had never been Id-ed before. We went home and looked up the age limit in Germany and the cashier must have thought we were 16. We were shocked to say the least. The Currywurst turned out alright but we picked the wrong sausage. The cooler turned out to be a nasty carbonated wine cooler...Germans sure do love their carbonation. We had bought some DVDs earlier in the day of popular movies at home that we could then watch in German. Our landlord had provided us with remotes but not batteries in said remotes. We couldn't manually get the machine working so we will pick some up today and then begin our German immersion. It was a very quiet night followed by a pretty quiet day.

The Fact That You Are Calling Me Names in English Doesn't Mean I Don't Understand

The loud booming sound of German festival music awoke me and Elise this morning. Yesterday we had thought that was the last day of Karneval but we were pleasantly surprised this morning to hear it was one more day. This holiday is so big that they even closed schools today so everyone could celebrate one last day. We ate some toast with Nutella and caught up on the desperate housewives episode missed from the previous night then headed out to brace the streets of Dusseldorf once again. First day of Karneval seemed to be the children and parents, second day seemed to be teens and young adults... today it was everyone. Everyone gathered in the streets dressed up, Elise and I wore out German flag coloured leis so we could try to blend in as much has possible. As we were walking down the street a guy yelled to us in English and said "Hey girl, I am liking that bandanna" I firstly getting thrown off by the fact he was speaking English and secondly confused by the fact he liked our "bandannas" since we weren't wearing any gave him a weird look and then turned away without saying anything; it seemed like the logical thing to do at the time. Unfortunately this was unacceptable to him he yelled once again "Hey thanks for ignoring me!" paused then called me a "B****". I then thought up multiple rhetorical things I could have said back but it was too late, probably for the better anyways. Even though after this minor upset, Elise and I managed to have a blast, we crammed ourselves into the crowed to watch yet another parade go by, and man do these Germans have some good parades. We all dance and yell and sing and wave our arms, while people throw candy at us. Unlike the parades we have back home when the people in the parade gently hand the goodies to children, Germans throw the stuff around everywhere and everyone goes for it and it sure is a battle. Adults throwing themselves on the floor to beat that little 4 year old to the pieced of crushed, half unwrapped candy that was just thrown into the crowd. It is pretty nuts! One lady even hip checked Elise so she could get to a piece of candy that had just fallen right next to a little child, luckily she managed to get it before the child or Elise could ;). The buses were closed due to the Karneval so Elise and I had to walk home. On the way we stopped at a store that I thought looked like it could be a grocery store, so we decided to check it out and by golly we found the Costco of Deutschland. We were so happy and relieved since our grocery selection so far had been quite limited. We planned out a nice dinner of tortellini soup, unfortunately when it came down to it we lazied out and just had tortellini with tomato sauce instead, maybe tomorrow we will cook something more exquisite. Elise and I today have been down to our last pair of clean clothes since we were confused about the washer and our landlord had been out of town so no wash had been done. Luckily that evening there was a knock at our door and it was our good old landlord Marcel, he showed us how it worked so tomorrow we shall be looking our freshest!

The Frauds

It was another Sunday in Deutschland. Steph and I, foolishly thinking that Dusseldorf would be a bit different from Berlin, have some stores open on Sunday; we wanted to go buy Tesafilm (scotch tape). The other night, in a vain attempt to shield our eyes from the rising sun, Steph tried to hang a blanket on the door and ended up breaking the top mini-curtain piece off the door. Our landlord is away at the moment and so we figured that if we fix the thing ourselves, we wouldn't have to admit that we are wrecking his place. So off we went to the Superstore equivalent "Aldi Süd " to find the parking lot deserted and the lights off in the store. Disappointed and dreading yet another Sunday in Germany, we sent off for Old Town. Since yesterday was a parade, we assumed there would be another one today...what actually happened was even better. All the young adults has turned the streets into their party zone. As we entered into the crowd, one of the German boys who was standing outside one of the beer gardens, looked at our German coloured leis, looked at us, smiled and said something about having a nice lei..or so we think. As we continued in closer to the heart of the party, the crowd got thicker and there were a group of Germans all huddled together singing at the top of their lungs. In Germany, it is custom to drink small bottles of alcohol and smash them on the ground so we were walking through a sea of glass...very dangerous. As we walked through the sea of Germans towards the Rhein, a "fairy" tapped Steph on the head and then tapped me on the head with her wand and said "Und selbst" and gave us Fairy Dust. Feeling pretty pleased with ourselves, we walked down the Rhein to look at the water. Steph, for some unknown reason, thoughts we should lose ourselves in the crowd again. We made our way through, avoiding the beer bottles, getting stuck to the cobble stones (made sticky by the beer), and the lit ends of cigarettes teens were waving around, and we found ourselves on the quieter side of the festival. There are many alcohol stands littering the streets (I am still fascinated by the concept of public drinking) and we found one that didn't sell beer but different cocktails. They had Sex On The Beach, A Capri (no idea what that is) and a Karneval Cocktail. Deciding to be brave we asked for the Karneval Cocktail and found it to be half berry juice and half tequila...very strong! It was pretty good anyway. We walked around a little bit more and we were pretty used to shouting and singing but then two German boys started yelling at us. As we don't speak German, we ignored them and so they felt the need to run up to us and continue talking in fast German while waving their arms in excitement. It seems as if the one guy had started his drinking binge quite early as the blank expressions on our faces didn't seem to phase him. Steph told him we spoke English and he gave her a three second blank stare and then asked (in perfect English) "Yes but are you from England?" Steph responded with Canada and he shook his head and said: "Canada, that's some f***ing crazy s***". We laughed and laughed as he ran past us and jumped air. It seems that in Karneval, lots of people get together and yell, sing, and dance and as Steph and I are two non-German and non-German speaking frauds that we should go home. If we spoke the language, it probably would have much more fun for us but it was still quite the experience anyway. As we waited at the bus stop, an old German came over and sat beside us. He began speaking to us in German, which I proudly responded with "Sprechen Sie Englisch? Ich spreche nicht viel Deutsch". This to him must have sounded like "I speak Spanish" and so he spoke in a mix of German and Spanish which was even more confusing. I pointed this error out to him but he was probably too drunk to realize as he refused to speak any English. From the little bits of German we know, Steph and I took turns responding to his odd questions. I was very proud of us for our German. Once we got home, Steph decided to start mucking around on the television and got it to work. We've been watching the parade we watched yesterday for the last half hour. Maybe we can get the tv in our bedroon to work as well...

Germans Only Laugh Twice a Year

Most people wake up to light shinning through the window, in the case of Elise and I, we wake up to a florescent orange glow coming through the window. Since there are no curtains in the bedroom we hung up two of the spare blankets in the window to block out the light in the morning in which conceals us in a tint of orange every morning. After rolling out of bed we made ourselves some toast and put on a pot of coffee to enjoy as we watched an episode of Family Guy our "Saturday morning cartoon". Our hair a mess and no make up on we finally felt at home. Afterward we got ready to head out to celebrate "The Karneval", the holiday for absolutely no reason except to give the Germans an excuse to party in the streets and party in the streets they do! From young baby to the seniors everybody dresses up and just have a good time, people drink, dance and sing in the streets. Germans really know how to have a good celebration. The parade was today, and I must say parades are not a thing you would usually catch me going to watch and if I did would get bored within the first 5 minutes but this one was exciting; everyone dressed up so intricately and people were cheering all around. Tomorrow is the last day of the celebration and so should be the most exciting, Elise and I are pumped. On our way home we stopped in at Vodafone since we needed to get cell phones if we are to apply for jobs, Casual Yet Business Turk started setting us up with a phone, he made many jokes during the process to attempt to make us laugh, we of course laugh to be polite. The Turk explained how he wouldn't recommend staying in Germany more than a year because it is boring and how Germans are grumpy people who only laugh twice a year, once at Christmas and Now, at The Karneval, he followed up this discussion on how he though indeed laughs all the time because he is not German. Elise and I just smiled and nodded, knowing inside that this was just crazy talk. We had one more thing that needed to be done before heading home which was stopping at the Penny Markt for our daily grocery shopping needs. As much as we love the Penny Markt, the selection is still limited because for some reason Germans feel no need for large Super Markets like back in Canada.  Confused on what to have for dinner, Elise and I finally agreed on Chicken Wings.... BAD MISTAKE.  The chicken wings look promising and smelt almost good as they came out of the oven  but the first bite was absolutely repulsive and unbearable. The chicken wings were quickly moved in a well deserved spot for them, the garbage.
I finally figured out the problem with the video on why it wouldn't upload, the size of the video, I was able to shrink the video so here it is:

Emo-Grunge Youth And Cobble Stone Streets

It was the first morning we were able to awake to nothing but ourselves. We awoke when we were no longer tired as opposed to our usual wake-up-because-of-someone-else habit. It was so nice for me to be able to take the laptop into the living room and muck around on it while Steph slept peacefully in the other room. Having an apartment is very nice. As we are in the residential part of Dusseldorf, we needed to bus into town. This was a little confusing as Dusseldorf, like Berlin, has the bus system, the S-Bahn, a sky train (type thing), and a U-Bahn. Unlike Berlin, these are only in certain areas. After hours of translating a few German websites into English and looking up Dusseldorf on multiple maps, I figured out we could take the 712 sky train (for lack of a better term) into town. In Berlin, we always caught the S-Bahn or U-Bahn and there were always ticket places outside and like Victoria, you pay for transit when you hop on the bus...this was not the case in Dusseldorf. Not only was there no ticket machine but no one in Germany seems to pay to take the public transit. There are a few honest ones in the crowd but the majority don't. I also have not seen a single cop ride the train to check people's tickets. Steph and I have decided that Germany must run on the honor system. In Paris, you couldn't even get into the subway without paying. We finally found a ticket machine once we hit the middle of Dusseldorf (a 5 minute train ride) but it was weird and not in English. I guess I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow. After hopping off the sky train, we found a little outside shopping center with cobble stone streets. It was so cute we decided to check it out. One thing that is going on in Dusseldorf right now is the Karneval which, I have gathered, is a big celebration where people dress up and party in the streets. We saw many costumes which ranged from doctors to animals to Peter Pan. We bought little German coloured leis for 2 euros to blend in a little bit. To Steph's great pleasure, there was a crepe stand where she promptly left me standing by the lei stand to get her Bailey's and Nutella crepe. She says they aren't the same as in Paris but they were still good. One thing I appreciate about Dusseldorf is that smoking does not seem to be such a big deal as in Berlin. Not very many people seem to do it which is nice so Steph doesn't feel like she is dying from second-hand smoke. We walked down to The Rhein which is very beautiful. It reminded me of the Inner Harbour. The weather is much nicer here (a sunny 11 degrees) as opposed to Berlin's minus 6 and so a walk by the river was actually very enjoyable. There was a beer garden down on the strip running down the Rhein and Steph and I witnessed a drunk German man, yelling at five other German men who were chanting away after him. It was so funny to see. After a stroll around, we headed back to our apartment and to buy some groceries. There are only a handful of brands that are the same as in Canada and so it is a little bit of a hit and miss when you don't know the language. We have found our new favourite grocery store: The Penny Markt. This place is so cheap but the service is so poor. We were standing in the line up of about 5 people in the one till that was open and the cashier was putting bags away. He would look up and see all of us standing there but continue to put bags away. It was incredible! That would never happen in North America! It wasn't until one of his co-workers came over and yelled at him did the Emo-Grunge Youth actually do his job. For dinner we had tortellini that wasn't refrigerated and chili pepper sauce because I didn't pay close enough attention when I was taking the jars off the shelves. In Germany, the fridges are smaller and so you only buy food for the week. This phenomenon was quickly understood and embraced by Steph. I, however, look at the empty fridge, think about grocery shopping every day and miss Canadian refrigerators. After dinner, Steph and I cuddled up to the laptop with a Tim Horton's French Vanilla Cappuccino and watched some more Family Guy. How nice it is to not be bothered about watching it every day. Steph also took a video tour of the apartment for you but it failed to upload so picture will be put on later :)

Everyone Knows Sexy Europeans DO Snore

Last night after writing our previous blog and a couple episodes of family guy we decided to go to bed, the Sexy Blond Fin made a joke about snoring and then we all went to bed minus the Sexy French Guy who had not yet come home. Elise proudly announced before turning off the the lights that there was no need for ear plugs because the snorer in the room was gone. She was wrong! I abruptly awoke at 2:30 AM to the loud sounds of a bear growling, confused by such a sound I opened my eyes to see the Sexy Fins and Elise awake as well because of this monstrous sound coming from Sexy Frenchie. The best way to stop a snorer is to disturb ones sleep but in such a way not to wake the person fully but to take them out of such a deep slumber; turns out this is an impossible task when it comes to The Sexy French Guy. After multiple attempts by slamming the bedroom door, coughing, talking and making loud screeching sounds Sexy Frenchie's snoring remained as loud as ever. We looked at The Sexy Fins and The Sexy Fins looked at us and we just all laughed. Elise and I discussed other possible ways to solve our problem because no sleep did not sound like a good compromise, then The Sexy Blond Fin stood up and walked over to his bed, he proceeded to "accidentally" trip and fall on The Sexy French Guy, shaking him. The sound of The Sexy Blond Fin say sorry was the last thing that was heard that night, the snoring stopped and we all fell back asleep. It was decided that sexy Europeans do indeed snore.
That morning nothing was said about the night before, the European men all said their goodbyes to Elise and me and then we sadly went out separate ways. Just out of the hostel the wheel on my suitcase broke. At first I didn't believe it was that big of a deal to have a missing wheel, oh but it was! The suitcase was heavy and almost impossible to drag on the cobble stone sidewalk. Frustrated, angry and out of breath we finally made it to the train station, the bottom of my suitcase had torn and a piece of metal wire stuck out. It made me want to scream. It was a relief to finally make it to our new apartment. We walked in and immediately felt at home, the place was wonderful and done up so nicely. A bottle of wine and two bottles of sparkling water greeted us in the kitchen, fresh towels in the bathroom and little treats left on our pillows in the bedroom, everything was so clean and better than what we remembered. The land lord came down to give us the code for the internet and to answer any other questions. After talking he said he had something, he left coming back with two bottles of some sort of Russian alcohol and brought out shot glasses; we all did a celebratory shot.
Elise and I went to penny mart to buy a couple of groceries then came home and made ourselves some good old Canadian Kraft Dinner!

Everyone Knows Sexy Europeans Don't Snore

Just like any other day, we woke up around the same time. I had put in my ear plugs so that I could sleep through the snoring but unfortunately, Steph and I could not avoid the bright light blaring through the windows. We went to Oranium and discussed plans for our last day in Berlin. We had our usual Früchtetopfs and Heisse Schokalade. We were feeling sad because, once again, Sexy Florian was absent. Afterward, we went to buy our train passes, which for 230 euros you can get 50 percent off all train tickets for a year. As we will be doing a bit of train jumping around Germany, we figured it would be a good deal. Trying to choose a good activity for our afternoon, we (Steph) decided to go on an "adventure" by hopping on the first train we saw and riding it for a while. Once we felt like we were quite out of town, we hopped off the train...in the middle of the slums of Berlin and promptly got back on the train and rode it to another stop. It was the residential apartment area of Berlin. Steph thought it would be a good idea to walk around without a map for a while...just to see the sites...I mentally made a picture map in my head so we wouldn't get lost. After returning to Berlin, we laid in bed and watched Family Guy as we were feeling a little ill. Everyone in our room has asked us at one point how our Family Guy watching was going. The French guy even asked which site we've been watching it on. It is quite embarrassing.  For dinner, we had a couple of Jagerbombs and by couple I mean Steph had 6. We continued our quest to see Sexy Florian by having the super good desserts that tempt us every morning on the Oranium menu. On our way there, a group of drunk German guys walked by us and one called out to us in a sing-song voice: "Can I sleep with you tonight?". We laughed and laughed. After sitting in Oranium, it soon became apparent to me that Sexy Flo was not there. It wasn't until Steph, during mid sentence, gasped, broke out in a smile, and unfocused her eyes did I realize that he was there in our midst. Our eye stalking ensued. After our fabulous Black Forest dessert, Steph came up with the brilliant idea of asking our waitress what Sexy Florian's real name was. Tall, Brunette Waitress came over and struck up a conversation with us. She told us how they all love us at Oranium and that it is very nice that we come all the time. Steph then struck up the courage and asked about Sexy Florian...who is now Sexy Peter Who Prefers To Be Called Pete. The Short Blonde Waitress With The Bad Piercings is called Susie...two very German names. We ran out of the restaurant laughing and screaming. Once back in the room, we had another great surprise. The Isreali With The Twisted Ankle was leaving our room to make room for Sexy Brunette Finnish Man and his friend Sexy Blond Finnish Man Who Speaks With A British Accent both of whom have excellent senses of humor. Now we have the two Sexy Fins and Sexy French guy (Steph and I are tempted to stay another night). Tonight I shall sleep without ear plugs surrounded by Sexy Europeans!

Another Jagerbomb Please

I am really starting to look forward to having our own place for one really good reason: NO ROOM-MATES! Well, except Steph but she doesn't a) get up early b) snore the whole night through c) turn on all the lights in the wee hours of the morning and d)try to start conversations with people at inappropriate times. These are the qualities of one of our new room-mate The Israeli With The Twisted Ankle. During the night, he walked in, talked very loudly and took a shower. Steph feels bad because she shut the light off on him but "that was before (she) knew he was a cripple". He seems very nice though and very sweet. Well, it was an early start to say the least. We went to our usual spot but there was, once again, the absence of Sexy Florian. Steph believes we have become the favourites at Oranium as they always come over and talk to us and ask if they will see us tomorrow. This is only from the female waitresses because Sexy Flo is our only male waiter. We received a message from our counselor about our visas which we were very happy to pick up. We cleared our new apartment with him and so everything seems to be smooth sailings. As it is the last of our Berlin days, we opted to going to Alexandarplatz for some shopping. Since we are moving to one of the biggest shopping capitals of the world, our shopping trip turned into window shopping. We also decided to get me a haircut because my hair was becoming denatured from the 14 euro straightener. Surprised? I sure was. So we booked the appointment and headed back to the hostel craving Currywurst. We had decided we were not going to drink tonight but the bartender saw us and said "Jagerbombs? You are starting early". I think word of our expertise in drop shots has spread because another girl that works at the hostel seemed very excited to see us do them. Another bartender walked by Steph, while she was getting her next two Jagerbombs, and said he wanted to be at her 23rd birthday party. Not exactly sure what that means but I think they are pleased with the way we hold our liquor. After dinner, we headed over to Alexandarplatz for my appointment. The hairstylist hadn't used his English for a while and so he was a little rusty. He had a little trouble figuring out what I wanted exactly. At one point he pulled a chunk of my hair, showed me the split ends and said "Wow, your hair is really f***ed up". I laughed and laughed and thought a) I am a client b) That is my hair you are talking about and c) You are using one of the worst swear words in another language. He was very kind and made my hair look very healthy so I can look past the vulgar language. Back to the hostel and we are ready for bed. Watched a bit of the Duisburg soccer game and are finishing off the night with another movie. The Israeli With The Twisted Ankle made a comment about how many comedies we watched...stuck up snob.

A Train By Any Other Name is Still a Train

 There was no sleeping in and lounging around before breakfast this morning, we were up and out by 7 am to catch the train to Dusseldorf. Elise and I stopped at a cafe at the train station and stuffed our purses full of baked goods and water for the 4 hour ride there. Within the first 10 minutes we wolfed down our Schoko-Croissants. If there is one thing Elise and I especially despised about Germany it is their love for carbonated water, luckily the 3 bottles of water we bought for the trip were all carbonated. 4 hrs later of cramped legs and mouths as dry as deserts we finally made it to Dusseldorf. The city was not at all what we expected but it was very nice. We cabbed our way to the first apartment, the outside wasn't the nicest but it seemed like it would be more promising inside; we were wrong. The inside was small and cramped, the bed room was a mattress on the floor with two half blankets on it, lamps were ripped out of the ceiling in all rooms and a sink and hot plate with a mini bar fridge acted as a kitchen. We left feeling disappointed, I being so desperate for a place to live almost settled for the shit hole, Elise wouldn't have it. Feeling let down and discouraged we headed to next and last chance for a place. After getting lost and walking around for half an hour instead of the actual 10 minutes, we finally found it. The outside was very nice and new looking, we were greeted by a tall skinny German man who showed us the apartment. It was all we were hoping for, a large kitchen with washing machine and dish washer, two bathrooms, large living room with fold out couch and t.v with cable, the bedroom was large and had two beds and a good closet. We also had a screen door that lead out to our backyard with a porch; our landlord says no one really goes out there except himself and once and awhile some guys(we were sold). Elise and I told him we loved it and he said it was ours. In Germany washing machines are a wee bit different and little bit more confusing such as the temperature of the water isn't cold,warm, hot.. they have actual degrees for the temperature; Elise asked out new landlord if he would show us how to us it properly he jokingly responded "This is the kitchen you are the woman and I am a man so it is your job to know" we laughed and then he agreed to show us. Afterward we had lots of time to kill and we were feeling quite hungry so we found an American bar and restaurant to eat at, turns out it is part of a "smokers club" so after good hour of secondhand smoke and a case of lung cancer we headed to catch our train.