A Kitchen (kinda)!!

Julian and I both had somewhat rough Tuesdays. I suppose his started Monday night actually...

But first things first. Last week was pretty uneventful other than a fantastic holiday on Thursday, which we spent playing beach volleyball in Constance and grilling with some friends. We had a great weekend up in Karlsruhe spending time with Julian's mom (his dad is in Berlin working on a project at the moment), and Julian drove back down to Friedrichshafen on Sunday afternoon. I stayed up in Karlsruhe one more night, as I was heading straight to Frankfurt Monday morning for a 2 day orientation of my new office/geography (there were people from all Austrian, Swiss, and German offices), and Frankfurt is somewhat close to Karlsruhe. Julian's mom Ilona and I watched Germany's Next Top Model with Heidi Klum (very entertaining!) and spent some quality time hanging out with only minor communication issues. I was nervous since Julian is always there to help translate when one of us can't get across what we're trying to say, but everything went really well.

On Monday, I had my orientation, which was mostly repetitive of things I already knew about Accenture, but it was nice to meet some new people, be in an office, and spend the entire day working on my German. We also had a networking event on Monday night, which included good food and wine, and then those of us not from Frankfurt headed back to our hotel for a beer and some more informal networking. I was placed with the experienced hire group (people who have had previous work experience and are not right out of college) for our break-out session so I got to meet some interesting people with different backgrounds from levels all the way up to Senior Executive.

Back home in Friedrichshafen, Julian was expecting our Ikea installation man to come on Tuesday morning, so he was busy putting together all of the "prep" work on Monday night. Shortly after starting to drill things together, he noticed that Ikea forgot our order of a very vital piece - the feet that go underneath the lower cabinets. Without them, we wouldn't be able to do anything because they are the base that the lower cabinets (and therefore appliances and countertop) sit on!! So he jumped in the car and drove the 90 minutes to Ulm, found his way through Ikea, bought the feet, and drove the 90 minutes back to Friedrichshafen. He stayed up until 2 or 3 am building things and getting ready for the installation guy to come.

On Tuesday morning, Julian and the installation guy worked for 6 hours straight (the maximum Ikea allocates for some reason) on putting together the kitchen, which included sawing the countertop (and sawing out holes for the sink and stovetop), assembling and securing the appliances and lower cabinets together, mounting them on the feet, screwing everything into the concrete wall behind them, hooking up the water and electricity, and installing the countertop. Apparently the Ikea guy was amazing and only took about one 10 minute break the entire time, but unfortunately that's as far as the kitchen got. The good news is that ALL appliances are working!!! We now have a kitchen sink, dishwasher, and stove/oven, on top of the already working kitchen!!! SUCH a relief! The bad news is that we still don't have a backsplash, our upper cabinets installed (although the corpses of them are put together), and the drawers/doors of the lower cabinets. We're going to see when this guy has availability and whether we can hire him independently because he already knows the layout and pieces, doesn't charge too much, and was a really great worker. Julian says that he could do the rest with some help from friends, but we would both prefer just to have the guy take care of it.

I took a picture of how the kitchen looks so far:

Hopefully the rest will be done soon! In the meantime, we've already been able to run the dishwasher and use the oven so we are able to reap the benefits of having the applicances hooked up :-)

While Julian was busy with manual labor and fixing minor crises, I was trying to get home from Frankfurt. I was planning on leaving around 6pm, but I found out that the last 5 hours of orientation was going to be spent introducing the newbies to their laptops, Accenture applications, etc, so I decided to leave a little bit early so that I could get home to help out a bit. After enjoying a nice coffee and chat with the HR lady that stepped in and was amazing throughout my transfer process, I got on the 2:10 S-Bahn to the Frankfurt main train station. I had looked up several itineraries on my cool new smart phone, and had plenty of options. When I arrived, everything was delayed (NOT typical for the Deutsche Bahn!) My first choice would miss the connection, so I took the second choice which was only about 5 minutes delayed. Long story short - what should have been a 4 hour, 3-leg, tolerable train experience ended up taking almost 7 hours and included 3 delays, one broken down train, 2 missed connections due to the delays (one by only 2 minutes, argh!), and 4 legs plus Julian picking me up at the less convenient train station in Friedrichshafen. I left 3.5 hours earlier than planned and got in less than an hour earlier than I would have! On the plus side, with the way things were delayed all over, I guess I'm lucky that I did make it home!!

Needless to say - Julian and I were both exhausted when we got back, so we stopped at the recently reopened grocery store right by our place and picked up frozen pizza to make in our brand new oven. We were originally going to cook but just had no energy and needed something quick and easy. We did have a microwave with oven capabilities previously, but it only had heat on the top so everything had crispy cheese and soggy crust. I don't think either of us has ever enjoyed frozen pizza more than last night!!

That's it for now - back to working from home and lots to do in the apartment before our first and highly anticipated guests arrive just one week from Friday!!! SO excited to see Carrie and Adam, and shortly thereafter my parents!!!