Wir lieben Deutschland!

Time to pack our bags again. We are moving to Germany! We'll have to get some German lessons from Uncle Paul and Alfonso will have to quit Intel and go work for AMD (there's a plant in Dresden.) Okay, maybe we aren't quite ready to move yet -- but we'd like to. We went for a quick trip last week and completely fell in love with the country. It hadn't been top on our lists of places to see, but Alfonso has a high school friend stationed at the Army base in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is a beautiful city that wasn't damaged much during World War II. The Allies didn't think there was anything worth bombing I guess, but the German troops blew up the bridge over the Neckar River the day before the Allies liberated the city. The old town is so quaint with outdoor cafes and beirgartens. We skipped all the big cities and spent almost all of our time in the Bavaria region -- gorgeous picturesque country side with lots of villages with white houses and red roofs . We headed south near the Austrian border and got to see the Swiss Alps. We visited various castles including Neushwanstein after which Disney modeled the Sleeping Beauty castle. Alejandro would go room to room calling "Cinderella! Where are you? I'm here to rescue you!" Then there was Dante who would point at the stautes of the little nude cherubs at the Linderhof and shout at the top of his lungs "Naked boy! Naked boy!" Kids always pick the most inopportune moments to show off their language skills.
We had a bit different perspective visiting Germany after being in Israel the last two months. Instead of seeing all the signs and saying "Oh, we can't read German", we were excited because everything was written in the Roman alphabet. We ate pork, bacon, sausage any chance we had. Oh, it tasted soooooo good! Although we can get some pork in Israel, it just doesn't taste the same. Germany was so nice and clean without all the Israeli litterbugs to muck it up. We also ate lots of icecream as there were shops on every corner. One almost felt out of place walking down the street without carrying an icecream cone. I don't know if I mentioned that the icecream is worthless in Israel. We have the same container from our first trip to the store. Alfonso asked me the other day why I don't eat as much icecream -- it's lousy! Who wants to eat cardboard? Anyhow, I think I gained 5 kilos last week (sounds better than 10 pounds.) On second thought, we might not want to move to Germany -- I'll turn into a hippo.

Staying on the US Army base with friends also left a different impression than if we'd been in a hotel or B&B. His friends have lived there three years and speak minimal German because they have little use for it. The base is like small town USA with schools, stores, church, parks, bowling alley, mini-golf, fast food, bars, etc. all there with everything in English and all the products brought from the States. So while they are still far from family and still have the opportunity to see new places, their adjustment to living abroad wasn't as drastic as ours. (Of course, we don't have the risk of Alfonso being shipped off to Iraq any time soon either.)
So we got a taste of home and Alfonso got to relive his glory days of high school track with his friend. The two of them sounded like Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. The family we stayed with was very gracious and we really enjoyed their company on top of all our sight seeing.
I actually feel frustrated because I can't find the right words to encapsulate our experience. We took hundreds of pictures and they still don't do the place justice. My explanations and anecdotes are so inadequate to describe how fabulous our trip was.
Anyhow, now we are back "home" again and going to the beach every day. Oh, how we suffer!

Love always,
Debi