London Baby!

This past weekend, Julian and I went to London! We took off on Wednesday afternoon, and met up with Julian's oldest friend (and best man) David near the airport in Memmingen, which is Ryan Air's "Munich" airport (although it's a good 75 miles outside of Munich). The three of us flew the 1.5 hour flight to London and took a bus into the city to meet up with one of their good friends from High School, Anne. Anne has been living in London for college and several years of work now and her roommates were out of town so it was the perfect weekend for a group to come in to visit. Also, it was the first time to the UK for both David and Julian so they were well overdue for a visit!

Another of their close high school friends, Chrissi, has also been living in London for a while now, so we spent Wednesday - Friday hanging out with Anne and Chrissi. Then on Friday, two more high school friends came in - Cem (another groomsman and very old friend, who is an ENT surgeon resident in Heidelberg) and Helle (originally from Denmark, now living in Berlin where we visited her two summers ago).

We had such a great time! On Wednesday night, things were pretty low key - we walked along the Thames and went to dinner but didn't do too much sightseeing since it was evening and also rainy when we got in. We did however have a rousing Rock Band Session at Anne's which was a lot of fun.

On Thursday, we got up and cooked a huge traditional English breakfast (see below), with eggs, bacon, roasted mushrooms and tomatoes, beans, and toast. It was delicious!



On Thursday morning, we got up and went on a bus tour! We saw all the typical sights briefly, which gave us a good overview of the city.

On Thursday night, the five of us had a couple drinks at Chrissi's place and then went to a really good Indian restaurant for dinner.

The above picture is me, Chrissi, David, and Anne (Julian was forever the photographer so missing in many pictures unfortunately)

On Friday we got up and went straight to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. It was PACKED and we didn't see too much but it was cool to be there anyway.

Julian and me at Buckingham Palace

After Buckingham Palace, we walked around (the below picture is in front of Westminster Abbey)



We also went to the Tower of London, where we saw all of the old armor from Kings and the Crowned Jewels. There was also a great view of the Tower Bridge from there.






Friday night, David, Anne, Julian and I all went to see the Lion King, which was unbelievable!!! I think it was the best musical I've ever seen, so engaging and the costumes were just great.



After the musical, we went back to Anne's to have a few drinks and wait for Cem and Helle to arrive. They got in and we ended up staying up way too late playing Rock Band and hanging out!



Me and Chrissi rocking out :-)

On Saturday, we all got up and went to the London Eye to get some great views of the city. It was actually really cool and well worth it to do.

The rest of the day we walked around, enjoyed the beautiful weather at an outdoor cafe, and just relaxed. We went out on Saturday night until Julian, David and I had to leave to catch our bus to the airport at about 3:30am. We were exhausted and slept the entire ride to the airport (and the entirety of our 6:20am flight), but it was nice to get back in the morning and have the rest of Sunday to nap, do laundry, and get ready for the week.

Overall it was just such a nice weekend! So great to spend time with some of Julian's oldest friends and see such a cool city!

Our Apartment - "Before"

Since we get our big Ikea delivery tomorrow, I thought it might be nice to post some "before" pictures of our apartment!

Here is the living room. We'll be getting a new couch and eventually probably a new coffee table too, but that's less urgent.


This if looking out towards the balcony, with the living room to the right and the kitchen to the left.



This is outside on the balcony. You can see the nice promenade down below with restaurants!

And here is the view! On a clear day like this, it is just unbelievable.

The guest room is a disaster of boxes right now, but not for long! Once we have cabinets and the new furniture, we'll go through everything here and clear it all out for our upcoming visitors :-)

Here's the bathroom. The shower is tiny and separate from the tub, so we're thinking about getting a door for it instead of using a shower curtain. The curtain hangs in a bit during a shower which gets kind of annoying.

This is the washer room and will also become the guest bathroom when we get a toilet and sink. It's small but definitely worth it to put in a half bath.

Here is the master bedroom. Julian and his dad already got a wardrobe (of course German apartments don't come with closets) and put that together, along with the drawers. Julian also got me a little table to sit at while I do makeup or my hair, which has already been really nice!

I'll post more pictures after we get everything looking nice with the new furniture!

Death by Ikea?

Overall I had a very nice, productive first full weekend in Friedrichshafen!

On Friday night we tried out a Greek restaurant that happens to be directly next door to our building, and it was fantastic! I had a delicious souvlaki and Julian got a combo meal with souvlaki and gyros. We will definitely be frequenting this restaurant and I'm really excited to have good Greek food so close! It'll make me think of Gran and all of her delicious cooking. Other than setting up our balcony furniture to enjoy a glass of wine overlooking the Alps, Friday was pretty low key as we had had a long week and knew we'd be getting up early to head to Ikea on Saturday.

We were out the door by about 9:30 to head to Ikea in Ulm, which is about 90 minutes away. The drive went pretty smoothly and we got there right around 11. We started by looking at couches, kitchen tables, a work desk for me, a new bed, etc. We had all of that picked out by around 3:30, when Julian's dad arrived to help us with the biggest task - the kitchen.

We had done plenty of prep work on the kitchen, and Julian and his dad (an architect) had done even more before my arrival. We knew roughly what we wanted, what could fit in our space, and how to organize it, but things were pretty tight (the big question was whether we could fit a lower cabinet of drawers since everything was taken up by the dishwasher, sink, and oven underneath) so we had to arrange and rearrange. Ikea has this nice "Kitchen Planner" software where you can enter your measurements and then pick stuff off of their website to fit it. It's even 3D so that you can see how everything will look. I had NO idea how much work went into building a kitchen from scratch. We had to chose cabinet material, color, handles, counter top material and height, what to put in the space between the floor and the bottom of the cabinets, upper cabinets, sink, faucet, backsplash, drawer size, and on and on and on. Overall this part alone took probably 4 hours! Then we had to work with a consultant and print out our (VERY LONG) list of kitchen items while they went through to see what was in stock.

After all of that, we went downstairs to pick out some smaller stuff that we could take with us right away. New pillows, some lighting, and a few other things were taken care of and finally we were ready to check out. After the line and checkout though, we had to organize the delivery and kitchen installation, which also took plenty of time. We'll get everything (couch, table, kitchen, etc) delivered one week from today but unfortunately the earliest installation time we could get was June 7th, so we're going to try to find someone local that can install it for us. I'm getting anxious to have a real kitchen, especially since I work from home all day!

All in all, we spent TEN AND A HALF hours at Ikea! We didn't leave until 9:30, so by the time we got home at 11:30 (after a quick dinner at McDonalds - the only restaurant in town still serving food), I was so pooped that I just took a shower and immediately went to bed. It was an insanely long, exhausting day but also fun to be able to pick out everything for our apartment.

Sunday was quite a bit more relaxing! I slept in until about 11 and then spent most of the day reading and watching/helping Julian rearrange and clean our living room. It's in pretty good shape now so that when the couch arrives we'll just replace the futon with it and should be good to go!

I'm very excited because this is my last day of work this week - tomorrow we leave for London! We're flying with Julian's good friend David (who lives in Nürnberg) and meeting a few other close high school friends there. We'll all stay at their friend Anne's place, because her roommates are out of town so we can just take over the whole apartment. I'm really looking forward to a mini vacation and especially to stay with someone who lives there!

I'll report back after London with hopefully some good stories to tell :-)

Progress

Well, some positive progress and some hold ups so far this week... I went to the local city hall in Friedrichshafen to change my official address to where we're actually living (HR recommended registering in Munich first so I could pick up my residency permit immediately, and then switching a day later), and it turns out that the work permit they gave me is only valid in Frankfurt (based on Accenture Germany's headquarters address). So technically I am not allowed to work here yet, but I'm not officially employed by Accenture Germany until next week, so they are trying to fix it before then.

I was successfully able to register in the city (so I can legally live here even before I have the work authorization extended), and after that I was able to open up a bank account too.

Last night Julian's colleague and Detroit roommate Georg came by with his fiance Aline to see our apartment, which is still very messy and not put together at all... but it was great to see them and then we all went out to dinner at a cute Italian place just a couple doors down from our building. We sat at a table right on the water and it was really nice. There are restaurants all along the lake (the promenade area right in front of us is empty now but they are putting in another Italian place in the ground floor of our building), so it'll be fun to try out all of the local spots!

I have a full evening of meetings tonight (after a mostly full day of regular work) so I am very anxious for the weekend! Julian and I will be going to Ikea on Saturday to get moving on our kitchen and other furniture that we need.

That's it for now!

Arrival

Hello! I arrived in Germany about 48 hours ago determined to stay in touch with everyone back in the US. After a couple days of emails I thought it might be fun to start a blog so that I could post pictures and update you guys on what is happening over on this side of the Atlantic!

My flight went smoothly and Julian picked me up in Zurich in our new (used) car! We drove the 2 hours back to Friedrichshafen and I saw our new apartment for the first time. Although it still needs plenty of work, I LOVE it!! It's directly on the lake, with a huge balcony and a great view of both the lake and the Swiss Alps. We're right above the lake's promenade, which is full of tourists walking around and sitting at the cafes and restaurants that line the ground floor of these buildings. Although Friedrichshafen is a pretty small city (only about 60,000 people), it is huge for tourism since it's right on the lake. Germans love to vacation on the "Bodensee" (Lake Constance in English) so it has a really neat atmostphere. Behind our apartment is the fußgängerzone (pedestrian zone) which is the cobblestone city center and has all of the shopping and cafes. I'm so glad that Julian found a place with this location; working from home everyday would get a little too boring if we were in a small Dorf outside the city!

Yesterday, we got up early and were out of the apartment by 7am, heading to Munich for a surprisingly very productive day. We first went to the city hall, although it unfortunately wasn't the beautiful "neue Rathaus" that Munich is famous for but a complex of buildings slightly south of the city center. After registering in Munich, presenting all my papers and passport, getting "Biometric" pictures taken (without being allowed to smile... so German), and having a meeting with an official, I received my German residence permit! So I am now an official, legal resident of Germany with authorization to work.

After that was taken care of, Julian and I met up with his uncle, aunt, and cousin for lunch. It was the first time I had met them so it was nice to get to know them a little bit better. After lunch, we went to the Accenture Munich office so that I could pick up my new laptop (which I am now writing this from). It's actually exactly like my Accenture US laptop but with the crazy German keyboard format that is definitely taking some getting used to!

After the 2 hour drive back to the Bodensee, we stopped by a couple kitchen stores to find out about ordering a kitchen for our apartment. As I mentioned, our apartment needs plenty of work. We have a fridge hooked up, but our stove/oven and dishwasher are still in boxes, and we currently have no counters, cabinets, or kitchen sink! This is our top priority for obvious reasons, and once we heard the standard order-to-installation time of 4-7 weeks, we decided that we may have to get a temporary solution until the final thing is complete. Apparently the counter top is what takes the longest since it is not a standard size, so we could get an imperfectly fitting one sooner and then just have someone exchange them when our real one is ready. I would gladly pay an installation fee twice if it means having a usable dishwasher, sink, and stove/oven! In the immediate meantime, Julian has a microwave that has oven capabilities, so we are able to heat stuff up, make frozen pizzas, and other small things.

Today is my first work from home day, and it's been going well so far. I have a few very late meetings this week (11pm-12:30am) so my schedule is going to be a little shifted, but it's worth it to be able to work from here!

Well I think that's it for now. Hope to hear back from everyone on all of the exciting things happening back home!

Sarah