Spring has finally arrived in Bavaria!! The sun comes up around 5am and doesn't set until after 9pm! It's amazing!! Here are a few spring pictures, including Romas mowing the lawn with our electric lawn mower!! Crazy, I know :) The man said, "Don't worry, we'll give you an extension cord." Well, ok then! Can't argue with that!! It's hilarious to see the cord and have the start button literally be a button and not a pull-cord. There are yellow flowers blooming all over! It seems like every field we pass has beautiful yellow flowers covering it. Between the green grassy [View Full Entry]

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May Day (May 1st) is a national holiday in Germany. We went to a nearby town, Weiden, for their annual festival. We saw carnival rides and lots of great food. We brought Inmate so the rides were out of the question, but we did have bratworsts and crepes. Just when we thought we'd seen the entire place, we saw....the Beer Tent We should have known that a festival in Germany was nothing without its BeerTent!! We saw the Oom-pah band inside and it was just too much to resist!! Waiters and waitresses dressed in traditional clothes (yes, that means Lederhosen!!) serving [View Full Entry]

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From the bus we could see the change in landscape as we crossed from Latvia into Estonia. We literally drove around the former checkpoint border crossing and straight into Estonia. Almost immediately we began to notice that there is more money in this country. Even the farms and houses far from any major town were quaint and well-kept. Some of the small towns we drove though almost had a Scandinavian feel (the Fins in particular love to vacation in Estonia, only a ferry-ride away from their coast). There seems to be more economic stability here than in Latvia. We arrived at [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at the airport in Riga on Friday afternoon. (Both Latvia and Estonia are 1hour ahead of Germany.) As we taxied to our gate, we saw an airport in need of some work. The runways needed paving, the airport terminal itself was tiny, and there appeared to be a Soviet plane graveyard in the middle of it all. Once inside the terminal we found an ATM to withdraw LATS (the local currency). Knowing a bus ride was only 40 LATS cents, we needed to break the new 50 LAT bill we got from the ATM. We walked into a small [View Full Entry]

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WE LOVE AUSTRIA!! We were excited to see Vienna and Innsbruck because we love to travel and explore. We never expected to fall in love with the country and leave wishing we could stay forever!! Now that we have spent a few days in both cities, we find ourselves wondering why more Americans don't travel there as well. We always hear of trips to Europe with such destinations as: Paris, Rome, Madrid, London, etc. It's not everyday you meet someone who has been to Austria just for a vacation. We found Austria, even a large city like Vienna, to be clean, [View Full Entry]

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So after 2 weeks of unpacking, cleaning, trips to IKEA, and a trip to XXXLutz...Here it is! We had fun decorating and we still have more pictures to hang and decorations to put out. We're just pooped and ready to relax for a couple days!! It's been awesome to live in a brand new house! Plus, after living in Germany already for a couple months in a German house, we can appreciate the American-sized refridgerator and oven!! Cookie sheets and baking pans fit now!!! (not to mention it's in Farenheit!!) We head to Austria in less than 2 weeks...we should have [View Full Entry]

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Today was a big day for us!! We moved out of Schweinfurt this week and into our new(est) house in Eschenbach, Germany. Romas had to work and spent a few days with the bigwigs in Heidleberg so I handled the move. Everything went pretty smoothly (except for the Polish packers labeling everything in Polish!!! It meant a lot of boxes in the wrong place and with 3 floors...well, you can imagine the bad words I was saying!!) Anyway...I had just about everything unpacked, save the electronics and Romas' office, and Romas came home for the first time. He had never seen [View Full Entry]

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PISA We flew into Pisa on everyone’s favorite ghetto airline: RyanAir. We get so excited when we buy cheap plane tickets online…until we have to drive 3 hours to get there and then wait in line like cattle to claim a seat on the plane!! It’s at that point that we wish we had splurged and bought tickets on a real airline! The best way to describe it would be a cheap version of Southwest. At least with Southwest they are civilized enough to give you a boarding group. RyanAir makes you pay for airport check in, pay to check even [View Full Entry]

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Last time we were in Nürnberg we loved the city but were unable to spend time at WWII sights...so we went back today!! We went to the Dokumentationszentrum (Documentation Center) and the famous Courtroom 600 from the Nuremberg Trials. We were also inspired to go to the Nürnberg Tiergarten (zoo) after our history lesson! We arrived at the Kongresshalle and were amazed by the size of the building. Hitler had wanted to outdo Rome's Colosseum - and what he created was massive!! The structure itself was never completed (along with some of the others he planned for his rally grounds). One [View Full Entry]

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Yup, we're moving again! For some reason, the Army has decided to relocated the brigade in Schweinfurt before this summer. So we are moving and we still haven't finished unpacking from the last move!!! When we heard a couple weeks ago that there would be a relocation we had only had our boxes for a week. At that point we were about 75% done unpacking and we just stopped. There would be no point in unpacking when we weren't sure how long we'd be around before they packed us back up again! Unofficially we'll be leaving sometime in February. We're moving [View Full Entry]

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