Gaming the system

After my circular rejection from the American hospital, I scheduled an appointment with a German doctor. My visit to the German doctor was similar to the Korean one. They take your word for it. My medical history still has not arrived, but I'm running out of medicine, so I thought I'd give it a try with what I have. The German doctor looked at my limited info, took my word for it and wrote me a script for what I need! Brilliant! They have my shots here, and I can get them at a German pharmacy. Except.

When I started worrying about how to submit German billing to my insurance company, Carolyn mentioned that they stamp the receipts paid, and you have to pay CASH. What?! Cash? The shots are more expensive here, so we are talking about toting over two thousand dollars to the local Apoteka every month. That sounds like a good way to get mugged! And I wouldn't have the grace period of a credit card balance while I wait to get reimbursed by the insurance. sigh. I threw a small temper tantrum, and decided I would just quit taking my medicine if it was going to be such a pain.

Thankfully, Carolyn's in-laws are familiar with the medical care on both base and the German economy. So she called them, and they advised me to try to get my insurance filed at the American hospital and use their pharmacy. So I went today, and I registered at one desk, went to another desk and filed my insurance, and then went to the pharmacy! Apparently, as long as you say nothing about getting an appointment with a doctor, they will take care of you! The pharmacy actually took my prescription! Now, they won't take one from the states, but if you have been referred out to a German doctor, they will take that! Who'd have thought? So not only are they filling my prescription, they are billing insurance for me! I'll only have to pay the copay!!!!!!!

Home sweet haus!

I'll be honest. I'm exhausted. Yesterday was my tenth day in Germany, and with the help of my friends, sponsors, and random knowledgeable acquaintances, I have managed to obtain, a car, a doctor, a phone, and....... a HOME!

I realize that in all my ranting about the car that I forgot to tell you what I purchased...a minor detail compared with the odyssey of actually getting it. I am the proud owner of a Honda accord. It's silver and pretty basic. No automatic anything, and it's a little older, but it met my two standards of under 10years old and 100k miles. I also stayed under my budget with it, so I bought a navigation system for it which has doubled as my Realtor.

In Germany, the realtor gets a fee from the renter if they choose to rent a home that the realtor showed them, and it's usually around 1,000 Euro, which with the current exchange would cost about $1600. No way jose! Even if you find a house in the paper and take yourself to it, if it is listed by the realtor, they still get to charge you a fee eventhough you did all the work. So with some help from my friends and the navigator, I saved a bundle and found my own place. It only took me a week, and that week only seemed like forever, but I'm done.

I am the proud renter of a duplex in Otterbach. It is about 15 minutes from work, and it is close to several people I've met here, so I'll have some good neighbors! The landlords live in the other half, which is only connected to mine along the garage and the bathrooms, so I don't think we'll be bothering eachother. Besides, they build walls here that are over a foot thick and made of concrete, so I don't think it's possible to bother anyone anyway! Melanie, the landlord, is going to show me how to garden in the German style. I'm so excited because my little yard is already gorgeous, and her backyard is a small eden.

The neighborhood is quiet, and it is in a little town that has fabulous walking trails, parks, restaurants, german bakeries, and the current tenant says there is an incredible icecream shop too! And I can get to all of these things on foot! I walked around a bit yesterday, and I also saw two beautiful old churches and I even found a tourist information center right by my house!

The house itself is about 1700sq ft, and it is on two floors. Downstairs is a brand-new kitchen, a full bath, and a living and dining area. Upstairs has three bedrooms and the other full bath. The floors are all laminate wood and tile, and there is a cute balcony off two of the bedrooms. The best part is that there are three closet spaces. Germany doesn't believe in closets, so these are a real bonus. They are really just small empty spaces...no racks, shelves, or bars, but at least they are places where I can put my stuff out of view. :)

Right now I only have pictures from outside because the current tenants weren't home when I came back to sign the contract (In Germany, landlords aren't allowed in if you aren't home). I got really lucky with this one. I came back because seven people saw the house yesterday, and we all wanted it. The landlord chose me! Probably because i oohed and awed over the yard so much. :) I'll post some more pictures once I'm in the house. It is officially mine on September 1st!

Germany

Umleitung

Umleitung is a road sign that indicates a detour, so I thought it would be a fabulous one word summary of my first week here because it has truly been full of literal and figurative Umleitungs.

My first detour has been purchasing a car. I found the car I want on Thursday afternoon, but I was not allowed to buy it. You have to have insurance first. How do you get insurance for a car you don't own? Well, the nice man gave me a copy of the title, and believe it or not, that worked. So I come back Friday morning with the insurance....and he still won't let me buy the car. Now, I have to go get a piece of paper that I'm pretty sure was the original bill of sale from the owner to the car lot (it's in German). Maybe to prove it wasn't stolen? Then I can get my own bill of sale. Then you go and get the customs forms filled out, and then you go and get the customs forms stamped....each step in a different office. I took all this stuff back to the nice man, and of course he didn't let me buy the car! He gave me the actual title to the car, and told me to go register it, but of course the registration office is closed for training. I'll do that tomorrow. Then I get to pick the car up and take it to pass inspection. If it passes inspection, I can finally pay the gentleman and take the freaking car home. woof. Who knew?

My next detour is a literal one. My sweet sponsor Carolyn and my friend Mary have been driving me around to see neighborhoods, but we've only found two out of ten houses on the first try. Why? Well, partially because the numbering system is jacked. It follows the rules of numbers in order, and evens and odds on opposite sides....except when a house was built before they developed the system. Those houses were left with their random old numbers stuck amongst the organized new ones, so essentially, you can't find them. Especially when they are at the back of a courtyard behind another house instead of on the street where you usually keep houses. These gems are also usually on the wrong side of the street. The other culprit of our hopeless wandering is the Umleitung. Now the detours on main roads are well marked, and even have a sign at the entrance showing your new route. The residential detours are a little more tricky because you often run into a closed street before you see any signs, and you may have to drive around a bit to find the first one to follow. If you find your new route, it's a little like chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. You'll lose sight of the signs, perhaps take a wrong turn, which usually results in you running into some new construction, and then a detour sign will suddenly pop up again, but it is upside down and thus clearly pointing in an erroneous direction. We were laughing hysterically by the fourth time this happened, and I was tempted to jump out and strangle an Umleitung sign out of sheer frustration. sigh.

The final detour I will share has been my pursuit of healthcare. I call the neuro clinic, and they tell me I can't have an appointment unless I am referred from a primary care doctor, but they aren't taking civillians anyway, so good luck. hmm. So I try to get a primary care doctor, but they won't take an appointment unless you have registered in the health system, but it doesn't matter because they aren't taking civillians either. um..... So I register, and I'm told I can try to call each day for any left over appointment space, but only after 10am. That sounds dicey. In the end I asked if they could give me referals off base without seeing an American doctor. Sure. But don't go straight to the specialist unless you are a trustfund baby. I called to make that appointment and was told I would need to bring 1000 Euro in cash! What?! It doesn't cost that much for an appointment at Vandy! Try a 10th of that! Oi. No thanks unless Bill Gates wants to support my medical cause. So now I have a list of German primary care physicians who are rumored to be much less expensive, and I'm hoping on making an appt. with one of them tomorrow. This process hasn't taken quite as many days as the car, and instead of driving from office to office, I've just had to make a series of phonecalls, but I definitely feel like I've been given the run around on health care.

Wish me luck in wrapping up these adventures tomorrow...or better yet, wish me some patience, and maybe some finished roads.

Das es Scheisse!

This was the first German that I heard on my trip that I recognized, and unfortunately it was being yelled into the phone by the man driving my shuttle from the airport. Yes, I was only in Germany for 90 minutes before I had my first breakdown on the autobahn....I guess I'm glad I got that out of the way early. :) It started with some ominous rattling, and then I realized that our driver couldn't get out of second gear without stalling the van out. We consequently were cruising at around 30mph on the autobahn!! whoosh! I mean people were passing us so fast that the van would rock in their wake. Besides that, it is not exactly legal since the minimum speed on the autobahn is around 40mph.The last straw for the driver was when our ride started belching smoke out the back. He finall pulled over and called another shuttle to pick us up. Then we had the fun of switching our luggage and ourselves on a teeny tiny shoulder with people blowing past at 100mph. It was harrowing, but in the end, I made it to the base safely (though slightly carsick from the windy roads). Once here I found the ID station and the drivers' testing classroom. Now I'm just fighting to keep my eyees open a few more hours.

S T E part 2.... it didn't kill me!

Well, I finished round two of my travels around the US this summer, and I seem to have returned to Huntsville unscathed. Our first stop was St. Augustine, FL where all 18 members of my dad's immediate family crammed into a beach house for the week. Not only did we not kill each other, we had a REALLY great time! We played in the waves, explored the old city, made crazy jewelry out of seashells, and even managed a few trips to the gym. We celebrated my dad's birthday with bubbles and crazy hats, and a few of us ventured to an alligator farm and a kayaking adventure. Dan was quite brave and joined me for this trip. Not only did he have to live with all of us, he had to meet the entire family. They all loved him, and I think he enjoyed himself too. whew!

From the beach, my mom, sister, and I, along with the nieces headed north to our farm in West Virginia. We stayed in the old yellow cabin on the river for a week and hung out with mom's family. The farm is a novelty in this century...no TV, internet, or cell phone reception for a week. It was awesome. We went swimming in the river, painted rocks, did crafts, hiked, had camp fires, and just chatted up the cousins. My cousin Jason came down and took us for rides on the four wheelers and fishing up at the pond. We all ate our weight in fresh produce and homemade pie, and my friend Lauren even made it out for a night!

After a week of rest in the hills, the girls all headed home to Alabama, and I flew to Washington to spend time with Dan's family. Dan's parents have a cabin on Lummi Island, just off the coast from Bellingham in Puget Sound. You have to take a little ferry to the island, and I must say it is a little distracting to drive onto a boat, but it was fun. I met his sister and nephews for the first time, and we had a great time just wandering around the island. We went to a little lake for swimming since the ocean is so cold, but we did at least wade and throw some rocks on the beach. :) We also took an excursion to Fairhaven, an artsy little town on the mainland, to shop and look around. I think my favorite part was sitting on the deck and looking across the water at Mt. Baker. It was just beautiful there.

Dan and I left Washington together to spend a few more days in Kansas before I returned to Huntsville. We did some normal date night things together like cooking dinner and going for dinner and a movie. It's still funny to me how novel a normal date night is for us. :) I also decided I needed to do at least one day this summer of Kansas tourism, so Dan took me to the WWI memorial and museum, where we strolled through the park and had great views of the city. Afterward we went to the River Market. It was established in the early 1900s, and continues as mostly a farmers' market. The coolest thing to me was how ethnically diverse the consumers were there. I heard many different langauges and admired native clothing from all over the world. Dan and I ate lunch and then picked out a bunch of produce to make a pasta dinner. It was fun and yummy. We also found some local wine and beer. :)

I'm now back in Huntsville after traveling for 33 straight days. This includes staying in seven different houses, ten different beds, and taking four different methods of transportation. Yes, I'm tired, but mostly I'm sad. I leave for Germany in a week, and that adventure will be completely exciting and consuming once I start it, but for now I just get to contemplate leaving my family, friends, and Dan. Again. sigh. I can't complain though. All in all, this summer has been quite the vacation. :)

This slide show is a compilation of pictures from all the trips mentioned. I narrowed it down from over 300 to less than thirty. Enjoy!

Summer 2009 Slideshow