After months and months of waiting, we‘re finally in Germany! This move has felt particularly messy, probably because everything has been so spread out and uncertain. Since it wasn‘t our first overseas rodeo, we knew it would take about three months for our household to arrive in Europe, so we opted to pack out super early. So from the beginning of May through the end of June we were essentially house camping with our air mattress and folding chairs in Alabama. In hindsight, this was so worth it since our stuff is already here, we just need to find a place to put it in!

The other half of the mess had to do with my car and our dogs. We had zero issues selling Mark‘s truck and the boat (pour one out for the homie), but my car had a mix up with the title… aka it got mailed to our house four addresses ago. And then there‘s the dog thing.

At the time of our move, the only airlines shipping cargo pets overseas were Delta and Lufthansa. Due to the way our flights are booked, we were not able to use Lufthansa. We also discovered our male dog, Jackson, does not do well on flights (he gets super aggressive) during our move from Japan to the states. This is why we have road-tripped for all of our stateside moves. With these factors all in play, we decided our best (and pretty much only) flight option was a direct from Atlanta to Frankfurt. The final item we had to consider was weather. Cargo pets are not allowed to fly if the temperature is over 80 degrees.

After about a week in Atlanta obsessively tracking NOAA reports and storm-chasing, the call was finally made that there was no way the dogs would be allowed on the plane. We had feared this might be the case, so luckily my parents agreed to join us in Atlanta and take my car and dogs back to Dallas.

Sans dogs, we made our way to Germany. Our days have mostly been filled with everything involved in a relocation — filling out necessary paperwork, house hunting, car purchasing and learning our way around a new country‘s customs and culture. We have made some time for fun with a quick day trip to Heidelberg, a day of solo city wandering for me, and a weekend in Ramstein to visit friends. A surprising amount of our friends are in Germany currently, and it‘s been wonderful to see everyone again.

Now, that we‘ve rounded out the first week, here are a few of the key things I‘ve noticed or learned:

FOMO IS A VERY REAL THING
There are so many things I want to see and do not only in Germany but Europe as well that I panic almost every day. I feel like I must do something every single moment or I wouldn‘t get to see it all. Mark has already reassured (?) me that this is correct and there will be some things we just don‘t get to… but we can always come back.

ALWAYS GONNA BE AN UPHILL BATTLE
Stuttgart was built in a basin, surrounded by hills and vineyards. The way the city is situated, everything is on a hill or involves hundreds of steps. There are a lot of apartments in the city, and most of the buildings don‘t have elevators. We‘re looking forward to how ripped our calves will be by the time we leave!

IT‘S KINDA LIKE JAPAN?
We took the express train (der ICE) from Frankfurt to Stuttgart and were amazed at how familiar it felt to taking the bullet train (Shinkansen) in Japan. Buying tickets was a breeze, it was clean and efficient, and getting a beer and pretzel onboard was easy. There‘s also a lot of rules that everyone follows, like only standing on the right side of an escalator so people in a hurry can walk up the left side. And my personal favorite about living overseas… losing that mile-wide gap in toilet stalls.

DU MUSST SPRECHEN
As soon as we found out we were moving to Germany, we downloaded Duolingo and dedicated about 20 minutes a day to learning German. We got about halfway through the course before arriving in country, and it has helped immensely. We still have a far way to go, but I can at least pick out enough words at a restaurant or advertisement to figure out what is going on. I’m still working on my confidence level in responding, but I think this will only get better as we continue to learn and practice. Unlike our trip to Berlin a couple of years ago, there are fewer English speakers in Stuttgart, so I‘m glad we started when we did!

SATURDAY… IS FOR THE BOYS
Even though Stuttgart is a sizable city (the sixth largest in Germany), everything stops on Sunday. We had heard that things were closed on Sundays, but it‘s no joke. Saturday is vibrant and alive all across the country and then Sunday is a ghost town. Almost every department store, grocery store, restaurant… you name it, is closed. It seems like all that is open on Sundays are the Asian restaurants, which has been much appreciated while we are still living the sans car hotel life.

THE AUTOBAHN IS DIFFERENT THAN YOU THINK
I feel like when Americans hear about the Autobahn, all they know is that there isn‘t a speed limit. While this is technically true, there‘s some pretty big asterisks on that. What you should know is there are portions of the Autobahn that do not have a speed limit. For these portions, the recommended limit is 130 kph (~80 mph). You can most certainly go faster (and we have), but if you are involved in any accident whatsoever you may be liable if you‘re going more than 130. And these unlimited portions? They usually only last about 10 miles before you enter a speed zone where you must go anywhere between 60-120 kph (~37-75 mph), depending on what‘s posted. Also, don‘t even think about not doing those posted speeds. Cameras are everywhere and it‘s pretty guaranteed everyone gets a ticket of some sort while they live here. The Autobahn is serious business, so you don‘t see people texting while driving or hanging out in the left lane the whole time.

TRASH IS COMPLICATED AND I‘M MOST DEFINITELY MESSING IT UP
The trash can has rules and they are surprisingly hard to follow. You have your bio trash (everything food-based), your plastic/aluminum and paper. You can‘t put anything soiled into any of the trashes. I‘m sure there are more rules, and I‘m probably doing a whole host of things wrong at the moment, but this is what I‘ve learned from our friends so far.

THE BUTTONS WORK AND YOU MUST USE THEM
You know how in the states the crosswalk, elevator buttons, etc. don‘t actually do anything? Well here they do and things won‘t open or change unless you push them. The train doors don‘t open unless you push the button. The crosswalk doesn‘t change to a walk signal unless you push the button. I‘m glad we had already learned this in Berlin, otherwise I would have been standing at a crosswalk for hours.