Living the German Dream

Some of you may already know the news from Facebook, but I wanted to share the full story.

A couple days ago, my Sponsor, Katie was driving us back to our hotel room from running some errands on post.  On the way back, she wanted to stop and check out an M3 sitting in front of the BMW dealership.  Being BMW fans ourselves, we clamored to accompany her.

We looked at the cars on the lot and then accompanied Katie while she spoke with the head salesman. That's when we found out BMW offers their cars to US military members for 15% off.  And I could get an insanely low interest rate.

Let me back up for a minute here.  Ever since I first saw one on display at the mall in Colorado Springs, I've wanted a BMW M3 more than any other car.  As for Sharay, she got to drive one for a little while and would love to have one again.

Unfortunately, BMW is going to stop making M3s with a V8 engine this August and will return to an inline 6.  Well, we didn't want an inline 6.  Plus, the V8 version is pretty much perfected.  We didn't want to get the new model before all the kinks have been worked out.  Finally, the M3 only came with a V8 in the current model, so it's going to become a limited edition quite soon.  If we wanted one, it was now or never.

However, we weren't the ones there to get a car.  Instead we listened to the details while Katie looked at the dealer's available M3s (she ended up getting one).  We expressed some interest, but didn't really say anything.  When we returned to our room, I crunched the numbers on our budget and determined that if we traded in our 328i, we'd be able to afford it.

The next day, after returning from my trip to Amberg, I linked up with Sharay and we walked to the BMW dealership.  We expressed our interest and looked at the available M3s.  None of them had the options we wanted.  We talked about ordering one to our specs directly from the factory, but production on the 2011 V8s ends in August and we were too late.  Luckily, the dealership had a few already on order, and they could make changes to match what we wanted.

We slept on it for another night to double check the budget and make a final decision on the options we wanted.  In the end, we decided to go big or go home and get exactly what we wanted.  Thankfully, it fit our budget.

Today, we walked back over there, paid our down payment, and ordered our car.

I'm kind of bummed we'll be giving up our 328i after only 6 months.  It was a good car, and it treated us well.  However, it's worth giving it up to have this sitting in our garage:

The City of Amberg

Every new soldier who arrives here is required to go through what's called "German Head Start", which is a week-long class that covers the basics of living in Germany.  Beyond basic language instruction, it includes information about living in the country, including shopping, traveling, setting up cell phone contracts, et cetera.  On the last day of the course, the class takes a trip to the nearby city of Amberg.  Unfortunately, the class was only for Soldiers, so Sharay was unable to accompany me.  Nevertheless, I'm planning on taking her there as soon as we get our car.  It was too nice for her to miss out.

On a side note, I forgot my camera, so I had to use the camera in my phone.  I apologize if some the pictures are blurry or poorly exposed.

The trip started with a stop at the city's largest grocery store, just to give us an idea of what one is like in Germany.  It really wasn't much different from one in the States, so I didn't bother with pictures.

The next stop was much better.  We drove to the top of the hill that overlooks the city where we visited a Franciscan church that was built in 1699.

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The view from the church's steps

Upon leaving the church, we went next door to a nice restaurant that served authentic German food.  I had baked ham covered with cheese, all on a bed of steamed, white asparagus.  It was delicious.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to drink on the trip since we were considered "on duty".  Luckily, I've already been able to try German beer a few times.  Let me just make this clear right now: nothing I've ever had in the States comes close.  There, I said it.

Anyway, the nice thing about German restaurants is that you can stay there as long as you'd like after you're done eating.  There's never someone trying to hurry you out the door like back home.  Needless to say, with the view from the patio, we took full advantage of this custom.  We ordered coffee for dessert and chatted while enjoying the cool breeze.

Our final stop was in downtown Amberg, which sits inside the city's old defensive wall let over from the Middle Ages.  The city itself has expanded far beyond the walls, but the area within has become the upscale part of town with apartments and excellent shopping.  Even better, only a couple of streets allow cars in the downtown area, so pedestrians have nearly free reign.

Amberg's cathedral dominates the city square.  I'm not sure when it was built, but it's definitely been there for a while.

The other side of the square that faces the Cathedral

The main square's fountain

We wandered down the main street for a while, checking out the shops.  I even found one that sells loose-leaf tea, so there's no doubt I'll be back.  

At one point, we crossed over a river that bisects the city

Finally, we made our way back to the square and looked inside the cathedral.

The trip was short, but I got a great taste of what a Bavarian city is like.  I can't wait to go back with Sharay and show her around!

A bit about the local area

Now that we've been here for a couple weeks and have been able to explore the surrounding area, we wanted to share our observations of the region with you.

We're in the northern part of the German state of Bavaria in a region called the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz in German).  We'll be living in the town of Eschenbach in der Oberpfalz (the last part distinguishes it from another city in Germany named Eschenbach).  The town is about 10 minutes from Grafenwoehr, which will make commuting extremely easy for me.  The entire region is mostly rural, so there's not a whole lot of excitement.  However, there are several nice restaurants and biergartens (beer gardens).  The area also has several protected forests with hiking paths.  The nearest big city is Nuremberg, which is about 45 minutes away.  We're looking forward to seeing it as soon as we're able.

The area's extremely green and picturesque.  In many ways, it looks similar to the Pacific Northwest, except with more farmland and not quite as wet.  Still, it's rained several times since we've been here, and the area supposedly receives quite a bit of snow in the winter.

As for our house, we signed the lease yesterday get to move in on June 6th.  With any luck, our car will be here by then, making it much easier for us to get around.  If not, we might have to rent something.  Wish us luck!

That's it for now.  Thanks for reading, and please leave any questions in the comments (which should be working now).

Comments should be fixed

Several of you have mentioned that your comments don't appear.  Luckily, I found the problem.  There was a default setting on that prevented unregistered users from commenting.

To make a long story short, you should be able to comment now.

Question Answered

Question:

So the landlord said Sox can live there too? He will love the cat

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To Mom:

Well, this is a different house. The Landlord's rules for this one is that up to two pets are allowed, so there will be no problems with Sox living with us in the place we have officially signed for today, the one with the virtual tour link in our earlier posts.

We saw many different places in the past two weeks, I'm sorry if I was unclear about which one we went with in the end.

Compared to the house with the nice cat and goats, the one we signed for is a bigger house (5 bedrooms and 2 baths) and in a different town. (Eschenbach.) Best of all, the Landlord is living in Texas right now so we have the entire property all to ourselves. It has a HUGE lawn Mom, I can't wait until you see it, if you are able to make it out here to visit us after all. I think Sox will be very happy there, I know Justin and I will be too.

Thanks for commenting Mom!

If anyone else wants to comment, just click the "comment" link below any entry. We will be glad to respond when we can!

Nothing New

Hello, there was not much going on this past weekend. Justin and I watched Iron Man in our Hotel room, went walking around on Saturday, and yesterday Justin's sponsor drove us to Pottenstein where we had an amazing dinner. She called it "steak on the stone" but it's real name was in German, began with an S and was quite long. Katie (Justin's sponsor) told us that she had once asked the owner of the restaurant how to pronounce the name but he just laughed and gave her the rough translation that I mentioned above. :)

The restaurant was very nice and so was everyone working that night. The scenery outside the windows of the restaurant was also very pretty. Katie told Justin and I that we were very close to a forest with caves and other neat places to walk, too bad it was raining so much.

Justin had the Kangaroo, Katie ordered Ostrich, and I tried the Wild Boar. After a short time, they brought the sizzling cuts of raw meat out to our table which were neatly arranged on platters containing a hot stone in the middle, accompanied with different dipping sauces and bread. It was a lot of fun to be there and eating something new! Justin and I agreed that when we finally had guests over to visit us, that we had to show off our newest find. I know one person in particular who would probably love the fact that there is Crocodile on the menu. (My little brother, Austin.)

Anyway, today is another slow day. We got the Lease Agreement approved by the Housing office, so we need to drive over to Grafenwoehr and get it printed, signed, and scanned to be sent back to the Landlord of the house we want in Eschenbach. It will be so nice to be one step closer to having a home of our own, this Hotel room is making us feel a little cramped, and I miss being able to cook real meals with real ingredients on a stove as opposed to different variations of ramen noodle dishes a la microwave...Très Bien! (Yes, that was sarcasm, sorry.)

I love my new phone, I have my email set up on it to let me know the second anyone writes. Justin and I also downloaded the Star Wars Lightsaber app and have random battles with our phones. I love our geekiness, not going to lie.

That's it for now! I will write again if there's anything else going on!

Our Search is Complete

I just got off the phone with the landlord.  Thankfully, she agreed to lower the rent from 1400 euros to 1250 euros, which the army will cover.  In short, we have an amazing home to look forward to!  Within a couple days, we'll be official with the lease agreement and we'll have the keys on June 1st.

Needless to say we're ecstatic!  Time to celebrate our first small victory!

If you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to the virtual tour of the house (just bear in mind, our Feng Shui will be superior):

http://manuspaur.point2agent.com/Listing/VirtualTour.ashx?ListingID=34783956