Lis and Tyler in Germany

Herr and Frau Stevens have officially arrived in Germany. Our flights were rather uneventful and smooth. We squeezed onto an earlier flight to Chicago and didn’t have seats together. Tyler got to be best friends with his seat-mate, a 7- or 8-year old little girl who played dolls with Tyler for most of the flight. From Chicago to Manchester we had a whole row to ourselves and enjoyed the impecable service from the Brits, including a hot towel service, delicious bread and cheese, a tiny glass bottle of oil and vinegar, and several tea courses. One tiny little flight from Manchester to Frankfurt and we were finally here! Four HUGE bags, One guitar, One backpack, One laptop and two tired travellers were met at the airport by Miriam, our host and my employer. We talked the whole hour and a half drive home, with no awkwardness or language barrier. I think this relationship is going to be a good one.

Our apartment is decked out with everything imaginable to make us feel at home, including framed pictures on the wall of us! There are some of our favorite foods, candles in our favorite scents, very cool furniture that, if we could fit it in our luggage, might “accidentally” find its way to Seattle. There is apparently an Ikea close by, and it seems as though Miriam bought out the store to furnish our darling little place.

We went with the family (Miriam and Thomas are the parents, Ben (3) and Nicolas “Nico” (1)) to the ruins of a castle, which was absolutely amazing. It is crazy to see a building that has been here since medieval times, and that was actually lived in and used as a refuge during war. We climbed around, played with sticks, “worked” on a wall building project of Ben’s which I didn’t quite understand and got to know our new friends. When Ben asked me to get him out of the car when we got home, I knew things were going to be good between us

Tyler and I, so far, have completely avoided any jet-lag. We’ve been enjoying lots of time with the family, as well as time to ourselves. We’ve taken a few walks through our new neighborhood and it wasn’t until we got home and uploaded the pictures today that we really felt like we were here…wow. We live in a tiny little town, but it’s not as in-the-middle-of-nowhere as I expected. It seems to be a farm-town, with horses, cows and barns and tons of cool old farm equipment. I think we landed ourselves a pretty good gig here. Everything is amazing.