OUR GERMAN DWELLINGS...

Warning!!! This post has a couple of semi-long videos (a couple minutes is the longest one)... I've warned you...

So, a couple of my sisters mentioned to me at different times that they wished they could just see where we live so they could imagine where I'm at when I'm talking to them. So, I thought we'd do a fun little post about where we live.

We didn't move to Wiesbaden yet so we decided to get a bigger apartment, thanks to a great new friend we made here. She hooked us up at the last minute. It's been great cuz it has much more room for Spencer to crawl/walk around and, as you'll see from the videos, it's 2 apartments in one, so double everything. I figured I should hurry and show you now, since we've been here for 3 weeks, and we'll be leaving this weekend to move into our house. Yay!

So, if I haven't mentioned it before, we're in a city called Heidelberg. You can see all the fun places there are here from my previous posts when we were here before. It's a city I told you about that has the really cool castle on the hill.

Anyway, the picture above is of the "Gastehaus-Appartements" (pronounced "GAST-hows"...Kerstin you have to tell me if I'm butchering these pronunciations), which is basically a type of "hotel" that people can stay in long term. We have a cleaning person that comes once a week to change the sheets, bring us clean towels, vacuum and basically try to make it look pretty again. I asked her if I could take her home with us when we move to the new house. I think she thought it was funny, that is, if she understood me. I think she did. She speaks a little English, and she's this middle-aged, cute, stout, blond German woman.

This picture is one of the bedrooms somewhere in the hotel. It's off of their website, but it's not ours. It gives you the basic idea though. I thought it was a pretty cool picture. You can see our room, which is a little different, when we get to the videos.

Here's the front of the building. The sign over the door entitled "Dorfschanke" (DORF-Shawnkuh) is the restaurant that, might I add, is pretty amazing. Really delicious, artistically-displayed food. To the right, (without a sign) is the "Backerei" (BACK-er-eye), or bakery. You find these about every four stores along a street. There are SO many over here. The Germans love their healthy fresh bread, pastries and coffees. Gotta love that they're so fit and thin...well, most of them. I could learn a lesson from them...and I'll do it gladly. I could eat all the time at the Backerei!

The Backerei is where we're allowed to come down for breakfast if we feel like it and pick something from their glass case, order something hot from the back (like eggs or pancakes) and/or eat from their little breakfast table that has juices, cereals (like granola) and meats/cheeses. Of course, my favorite thing to get is a chocolate filled croissant, Xoe's is the pretzel bread, and Xanthe's is a plain croissant smothered in Nutella, which she does so for each and every bite.

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We LOVE their hot chocolate. They serve it in a fun mug and make it fun and frothy at the top too. Xoe gets excited when they occasionally drizzle it with chocolate.

Xanthe and her Nutella smothered roll.

While we're sitting there, on any given day, we could see probably 50 people walk through to get a croissant or baguette on their way to work. Some even stay for coffee. And why not? It's so cheap. It's like .50 cent Euro (about 75 cents American dollar) for a croissant or roll, and only 1 Euro (about $1.50) for a cake or pie. Cheap breakfast!

And this isn't just in the morning. In the afternoon, we see people sitting outside reading the newspaper or visiting with a friend, enjoying a rounded mug of frothed coffee and a pastry (served on real china of course).

Xoe with her pretzel bread

In this next video, Xanthe leads you to the bakery so you can see what it looks like inside. We stop right when we get into the bakery cuz there were a lot of people in there and Xanthe was embarrassed to be filming once we got there.

Also, it was in the afternoon so most of the pastries have been sold. But usually if you go in as early as 5:30 a.m., they have these beautifully glazed fruit and cream pies, raspberry creme rolls, chocolate/pear tarts, etc., etc. I could go on. I guess it's a good thing that I have to go up a few floors to get to the apartment to work off the calories I just ate. Actually, we don't go in very much and in the morning I don't have the cakes. I really should though, huh! You only live once. haha. I wish.

This picture of Brian and Spencer is right outside our driveway. (I don't know why Brian is so red. hehe) I should have gotten a picture of the front of this building. It's very cute. I found out it's called "Rathaus" ("RAT-house"), which is not what you think. It's actually where people go to get their wedding licenses and can get married there. Be still my heart.

The next few pictures depict the scenery around our apartment/hotel that we see when we are taking a walk. These houses are specifically on the route to the girls' bus stop. I'm enchanted. Take notice of the cobblestone road.

On our way down the cobblestone street to the bus stop...

Waiting at the bus stop...

Getting on the bus (see the orange "Schul Bus" sign down on the front right bumper of the bus. You can barely see it but it's orange with a shadow of kids walking)...At this point of the picture, the girls are showing the bus driver their bus pass and saying "Guten Morgen" (GOOT-en MORE-gun) to the bus driver and his assistant (the darker lady you see in the window). Most of the bus drivers only speak a little English.

So, now we're to the part where I'm going to walk you through our apartment. I thought that to give you a really good idea of what the apartment actually looks like, I've made a couple videos walking you through the apartment.So, if you get bored, know that I won't be offended if you just shut it off. hehe. Know though that I have a few thoughts about the videos after watching them again, which are:

1. I sound like I have a major Utah accent (sorry Utah people, but you know which one I mean). Do I really sound like that in real life?

2. I tried so hard not to catch myself in the mirror, but did once. Can you find it? It was quite silly because sometimes I was trying to be so conscious about it that I lost my train of thought. Then I couldn't remember where I was in my explanations.

3. In the first video I said i wasn't going to record the whole stairs, and then I ended up doing it. haha.

4. As many times as I've climbed the 6 flights of stairs, I still sound winded going up them. How sad is that?

5. Keep in mind that I was lucky that I didn't have to carry anything up the stairs with me. Usually I have a 30 pound baby, all the crap that goes along with having a baby, and then anything else I've bought while I was out.

6. Let's just admit, I'm really out of shape. haha.

This next video is a bit longer...about 2:30. Just warnin ya! And I had to use youtube for this video since my internet kept timing out waiting for Blogger to upload it. But I felt a little weird about broadcasting it to the whole world. So I made it a private video, which says only 25 people can view it. I don't know if that applies to it being on my blog. So, if it does and you guys can't view it, let me know and I'll just make it unprivate. I'm not quite convinced more than that actually visit my blog. :)