In Hamburg!

Hi all! Sorry for the delay - I intended to get this up before I actually left the States. But - better late than never, no?

Just to get everyone up to speed, we left Boston for Hamburg on Monday afternoon with MANY bags. First there was the realization that Lufthansa is now evil about bringing extra baggage (we thankfully were charged the old rate rather than the new one). Then we had to find internet access in Logan in order to (hopefully) download our proof of health insurance so that we had it with us when we entered Germany. We then enjoyed several long airport waits in Frankfurt and Hamburg and finally took a big van taxi with our (embarassing number of) bags to the apartment around 1pm on Tuesday.

Once we arrived there was some momentary confusion since there was no answer to our ring at our apartment. Our landlady appeared before we were able to fully panic but serious props to our taxi driver who a) spoke fabulous English, b) offered us the use of his cellphone, and c) pulled out his portable power supply (!) so we could get the landlady's information off Zoli's computer. The photo below is of our white and yellow building - our apartment is the three windows on the right, on the second (first European) floor. (The little shed is for bicycle storage.)



The apartment is great - the only bad thing is no washing machine, but otherwise it's exactly what we need. It's totally furnished, the kitchen is really well equipped and it's in a great location. And it has huge windows, which seems standard in German apartments. We get CNN so we're not completely isolated news-wise, and we got the internet working so we're all set. Except for the heaters. Our landlady and neighbor tried to explain how they worked but I clearly didn't understand because I could NOT get them to work the first two days. Now they're at least producing heat, which is an improvement.

Basically things are going well. It is all rather overwhelming. We both wish our German were better (my ability to form complete sentences under any kind of pressure has apparently disappeard) but I think we're doing just fine. Ironically, people don't switch into English, they just look at us funny and say things in German a few different ways until we get it. I guess we probably seem a bit daft.

To make up for our inability to communicate coherently we have been doing our part in terms of Kuchen consumption. Yesterday was German National Unity day.

Everyone was off from work and we wandered around the neighborhood just north of our apartment. We happened upon an open BioKonditorei (organic cake bakery) and got ourselves some dessert "zu mitnehmen" (to take away): Schokoladen Sahne kuchen (chocolate cream cake) and Mohn-Quark torte (poppyseed-cream torte), which were both quite tasty.


If the Kuchen is any indication, Hamburg is going to be good.