Little Tidbits

Well, after a lot of stress and drama that I don't want to get into, I'm back in the hotel. My new room is about half the size (seriously) of my original room, but I'm sick of packing and moving, so I won't complain. I'm very glad to be in walking distance of work again, and I'm glad not to have to deal with traffic and unfamiliar roads and rules. Even filling up at the gas station was an adventure that I'm glad to be done with. I do still have the car through the weekend, though, and it's a holiday in Germany (the day East and West Germany reunited) so I decided to take a little day trip to the Black Forest today. My guidebook (Rick Steves) recommended Baden-Baden as the best town to visit in the Black Forest. It's about 100 Km (60 miles) from Stuttgart, so I thought it'd be a quick jaunt. Unfortunately, all of Germany seemed to have the same idea. I was in a traffic jam at least half way to the Baden-Baden. It took about 2 1/2 hours. When I finally got there, it was raining and I couldn't find anywhere to park. I drove all over town and couldn't find parking. So I took a picture of an old church and came back to Stuttgart. I'm sure Germany is a great place; I'm just not seeing that yet. So far it's been very frustrating. I'll be glad when I'm back to taking trains and buses and won't have to worry about finding a parking spot, figuring out if it's a metered spot and how to pay the meter, and then remembering which tiny road I parked on.
Let me say a little about my office. We take up just one little corner suite of what looks like a fairly new office park. It's very nice. We have a big screen tv and game boy in the break room, but I've never seen anybody using them. My coworkers are very international. We have a few Germans, a few Americans, and people from Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, and French Canada. I thought I was going to be the odd one out, with everybody having to speak English for my sake. But English is the one language everybody has in common, so that's what everyone speaks anyway. But I do still hear a lot of German going on, and I'm starting to catch on to little tidbits. It's kind of fun.
Here's today's interesting fact (sorry to be going on about cabbage, but I love cabbage, and there's a lot of it here): there's a variety of cabbage that only grows in this region of Stuttgart- nowhere else in the world. I'll post a picture if I remember. It's the color and texture of cabbage, but one side of the head grows into a pretty tall point. It's pretty cool. Oh, and brussel sprouts are called rosenkraut here, because they look like little rose buds.

I rock!

Well, today turned into a much bigger adventure than I was ready for. I'm not good at change. I hate it. So I figured moving across the world to a place where I don't understand anything and everything is new was a big enough change. And I was starting to get comfortable. I had unpacked everything into my hotel room and I found my office and the train station, so all was well. When I got to work this morning, the secretary told me she had booked an apartment for me (even though I told her a couple weeks ago I had already booked a place) and it was already paid for so I had to take it. I asked my manager in Michigan if he could change this, and he tried, but in the end (because the apartment costs one-third as much as the hotel), he asked me to give this a try. So, while my hotel was about half a mile from the office, I'm now living in an apartment about 20 miles away. I thought I was in the suburbs before- this place is the boondocks! I went for a run tonight past cabbage fields and flower fields. Tractors were driving by and horse poo was in the roads. Now, there's good news and bad news to all this. I'll start with the good news. Since I'm so far from everything, they gave me a car. It's a stick shift Jeep Compass. It's fun to drive. I get to fill up for free, even on weekends. So my weekend trips just got much easier and cheaper. I think I'll go to the black forest this weekend. The bad news is, they gave me a car. I'm a bad enough driver in America- I don't even want to know how scary it's going to be to drive in a new country with new rules and signs I can't read. One of my coworkers showed me the way here after work. I followed him since he has navigation. Tomorrow he'll meet me here again and let me follow him to work. He'll bring in an extra navigation system he has that I'll be able to use. And then I'll be on my own! I don't think anybody can imagine how terrifying this is to me. I just know I'll end up going the wrong way on one-way streets or running red lights when I thought I could turn or something. But, since the title of this post is that I rock, let me explain that. After my coworker left me here this evening, I had no food and there aren't any restaurants anywhere nearby. So I managed to meet one of my neighbors who spoke just enough English to direct me to a grocery store. I drove myself there, finding it without too much difficulty, did a week's worth of shopping, and even made it back without getting lost! Yes! It's a very empowering feeling!
Interesting fact about Germany for today: the cabbage here is huge! The fields I was running past were full of cabbage heads at least three times as big as anything in American grocery stores. No wonder it's so popular here!

I'm blogging!

I've decided it's time to start blogging. I don't know how long this will last, but I'll try to be good about it. And since I'll be having all new and exciting experiences (and no English tv or radio or friends) over the next couple of months, maybe I'll be able to get into a regular habit of posting.
So let's see...
I arrived in Germany on Saturday. I took a cab from the airport to the hotel, and the only English my cab driver knew was "Obama" and "Frau Clinton". I guess that's not even all English. Anyway, we had as good a political debate as two people can have who don't speak the same language. The radio in the cab was on, and the first song I heard was Kid Rock's 'Summertime in Northern Michigan.' I didn't like that song before, but it was kind of nice to hear it when I got here.
My hotel is kind of in the middle of a suburb of Stuttgart, called Vaihingen. My office is about a 15-miunte walk away, and the train station is about 10 minutes in the opposite direction. The hotel sits on (or maybe next to- I haven't figured it out yet) a shopping mall. My room looks out over a courtyard full of tables for a couple of restaurants. Not a super view, but I like people-watching, and there are always people out there.
I've learned two interesting things about Germany so far, one frustrating and one amusing. I'll start with the frustrating. The internet is different here. I can't access some of the websites that I use all the time in America. I didn't know that was possible. I thought "world wide web" implied that it works all over the world. Guess not. Now the amusing. The toilet in my hotel room has two flusher buttons, one big and one little. And I think the button sizes represent the jobs they can handle. I think we should get that in America. It saves water, and for some members of our family, the option for more power might come in handy (specially for keeping roommates happy).