It’s been 20 months since our arrival in Germany and we are preparing
for our first trip back home. We both
think that such a long interval of remaining in Europe was critical in order to
beat the homesickness as well as establish Munich as our new home. And even though we have succeeded on these
fronts, we could not be more excited for this trip to see our family, friends,
and have that warm fuzzy feeling of our home country. There is nothing else we would rather be doing
(including another romantic European getaway or an exotic trip to Thailand)
than having an American cheeseburger and milkshake amongst a room full of
people speaking our language. This might be the vacation of the year!
 |
| The 'American' diner in Berlin didn't live up to our hopes |
Nowadays we pretty much only blog about travelling or having
visitors, but there have actually been lots of other important things going on
this summer too. Although it may not
seem like it, we do work to live here and thus comes all of the mundane, but
not insignificant activities which go along with it.
For instance, Julie
has successfully started (with help from her previous colleague Laura) a “new
employee” social group at work. This was amongst some pretty strong
opposition from long standing German employees who are not able to understand
the struggles of a newcomer or foreigner trying to find their way at a new
company. Thankfully there are now enough
non-native team members who could give her the votes and support she
needed. Now the next generation of
Julies will have a much easier time adjusting to Intel. Also, Julie is still making her 36 hour trip out
to Karlsruhe every quarter for work.
Although she doesn’t exactly look forward to the trips, I know she is
enjoying her binge of English language TV ( BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3) and room
service dinner!
 |
| Even in Karlsruhe, Julie is trying to find that American flavor |
My German is
still getting better! I’ve started
meeting a tandem language partner once per week, where we spend about 30
minutes working in English and 30 minutes in German. Together we both learn how awful the
idiosyncrasies of a language are. This
is in addition to my weekly German lessons at work. I’ve reached a pretty high fluency level,
which allows me to speak, read, and listen a lot easier than before. The only problem is now I notice all of the
mistakes I make in real time, which adds a bit more hesitation in
speaking compared to the “fluent but ignorant” stage I was at before. For example, I just finished reading the
first of the Eragon fantasy series in German; whereas 6 months ago I was
reading Goosebumps stories (yes R.L. Stein!).
Also now I can use my German in more advanced situations such as writing
the Munich tax office to change our tax class, applying for jobs (most
difficult cover letter ever), and avoiding $25 cleaning penalties on our rental
car for dog hair.
My work at Roche
has been going really good lately. I’ve
been supporting the development of the next generation Vitamin D test (one of
Roche’s top-selling products). I’ve
produced some very important, but unfortunately confidential, results which
have been creating a lot of positive attention for me. In addition, I attended a scientific Roche
forum in Mannheim where I spent a very long day interacting with Roche
colleagues (entirely in German). We had
scientific/networking meetings until about 5 p.m., then a tour of the Carl-Benz
museum (very cool!), and then a 3+ hour dinner (fine German cuisine).
 |
| Carl-Benz Museum |
Our dogs are
healthy and doing well, though they both have been picking up a few ticks
lately. Julie discovered and removed the
first two on Rita’s belly (two of the biggest we have seen) all by
herself. Thanks to the help of Sandy
last summer, we discovered this method of lightly spinning the ticks in a
circle (more of a gentle circular rubbing motion) which after a few minutes
causes the tick to simply release itself in defeat (or perhaps dizziness?). (No idea why it works, but it does – you just
have to keep spinning the little bugger much longer than you would expect. And don’t tug him out!) But Julie got a big surprise when she smashed
the fat tick in a paper towel and there was so much blood that it exploded
through the towel onto the floor.
Gross! More recently, Sadie has
turned into a little devil at the Biergarten.
Both the dogs love to scavenge any scraps hidden in the stones beneath
the tables, but Sadie has become obsessed with these hidden treasures. We were having an after dinner stroll through
the park side of Hirschgarten (off the leash), and she ran away from us back to
the enticing scents of the Biergarten.
We had about a 30 second standoff, about 50 yards apart, where we using
our ‘we mean business’ dog voice to call her back. She had one eye looking at us and the other
towards the tables. The little devil on
her shoulder won, and I ended up having to chase her down as she wormed her way
underneath several different tables of people.
She then made a big dramatic yelp as I caught her and fussed at her,
making me look like an abusive dog owner amongst the crowds. Her punishment – we marched her back to the
apartment, left her, and took our angel dog Rita back out for another
stroll. Wow….is this what having
children is like!?
 |
| She's lucky she is so cute |
We don’t go out in Munich very often because of our busy
travel schedule and commitment to the dogs at home. But we made an exception this weekend and splurged
on a rooftop dinner overlooking the
old city. The Mandarin Oriental hotel
offers rooms starting at about $500 per night, so we weren’t sure what the
damage would be for an evening spent on their rooftop. We lucked out with perfect weather and a
beautiful sunset behind the Munich skyline.
If the pool was not only for hotel guests, I think Julie might have just
jumped in. In the end, the cocktails are
as pricey as they come, but the food is actually quite affordable. I’ve purchased ice cream in Paris which
almost cost as much as the Sushi Bento Box we ordered. But for the views alone, this was definitely
an awesome evening and something I would recommend to anyone looking for a
special evening in Munich. Of course, we
took lots and lots of photos. J
 |
| The only shots of us together were taken in mirrors. We were hipsters. |
It is exactly moments like this which remind us that we live
in the most beautiful place we could ever imagine. But even with all of this beauty and
experience, we are still looking forward to that cheeseburger in our home
country more than ever before.
