Latest News

Wow...things are not going well for this blog so far.

I don't know what it is but for some reason it's just not flowing like it did in Kuwait.

Oh well, if I keep putting it off I'll never post anything.

Since the last post:

We got our bikes! Yay! Kerri and Rowan have been riding everywhere on the tandem (at least twice a week to do laundry on the base). My folding bike is awesome too.

We've started riding in to Heidelberg on Sundays for church. It's about 20km and takes about 1.5 hours. But the train is 1 hour and costs 15 euro, so we have some pretty good motivation to bike. And now that the sun is rising earlier and it's not so freaking cold outside, it's getting easier.

We went to the Starkbierzeit (strong beer festival) in Munich a couple of months ago. That was our first trip via train out of town, so it was a learning experience. But we had a good time, travelled with a friend from work, tried the strong beers at least 4 different breweries. Generally we prefer the strong beers because they have more flavor. However, I tried the Augustiner Heller (a lighter beer with a nutty flavor) and was pleasantly surprised. We also met up with an old friend of mine from the Philippines (Sarah for those who know her) and her husband Martin and 3 little girls. They live about an hour west of Munich and drove in to see us and have a lovely picnic lunch in the Englischer Garten. They were really cool and we hope to go visit them again in their little village which is near Lake Chemsie. It was only for the weekend, and there was so much we wish we could have seen, but it's only 3 hours away by train so pretty sure we will get back to Munich again.

We took another day trip to Wiesbaden which is close to us. They have hot springs and otherwise a nice town. The base in Wiesbaden is one of the possible places my workplace may be relocated to eventually.

Speaking of day trips, we've been using 60 Day Trips in Germany as a very useful guide for our travels. It is oriented around day trips that you can get to by train from 4 major hub cities. We're trying to concentrate on Germany since we are living here, so the rest of Europe is kind of on the backburner. I'm sure we'll be back this way again someday.

Between Heidelberg and Mannheim is a cute little town called Ladenburg. I rode through it by accident when riding to church and we've been back several times. They have a lovely cobblestone downtown area, with buildings that are from the 1600s. Restaurants and a green riverbank...it seems off the beaten path and there is little information about it. Most of the "tourists" are Germans out for a weekend walk. This is becoming our "town" that we take visitors to see. It 's about half way to Heidelberg, so about 45 minute bike ride. We figured out how to get there by train the other weekend and took Kerri's dad who is visiting.

Kerri's been to Poland with some friends to buy pottery (beautiful and cheap!), and we hope to go back for our church retreat in about 3 weeks.

As I said before, Kerri's dad is visiting and they are all (including Rowan) currently in Venice for the weekend. She'll put her dad on a boat and he'll do some more travelling on his own.

We're getting more involved at church, as much as we can living where we do and not having a car. I've taken over doing the church bulletin as the guy who used to do it will be leaving soon. Also starting to learn the sound board. The worship leader is leaving soon too and no one has stepped up. We could do it...but being so far away puts a damper on being able to get to rehearsals and such. The local home group we've been going to has started meeting at our house as the leaders (worship leader again) are leaving soon. We hope to keep it going after they leave but so many people are leaving there might not be anyone left. This is normal for around here though, so we hope some others will show up. There is a John Deer factory in Mannheim, so there are some expats living here associated with them.

We took a german class at a nearby "people's high school" (volkshochschule). Once we had our bikes and we heard about it, the price was right, and it was Tues/Thurs from 6-7:30pm, so we signed up. Did that for about a month and half til the class was over. We opted not to continue on to the next part as we got what we wanted and were getting pretty tired of having Tues/Wed/Thurs evenings completely taken over (homegroup on wed). So now we are back to normal.

There was an incredible (and incredibly funny) cultural experience we had a few weeks ago at our landlord's surprise 60th birthday party, but I'll let Kerri write a post about that.

I think those are all of the high points since the last post. We have a few pictures, but really not enough. Getting the pictures off the camera, into the computer and then sorted through is just not happening lately.

Work is...meh. I could vent more but why? I can make it through the 1.5 years left easy...at least there is plenty of other stuff to enjoy. We are once again aiming our sites at Japan/Korea/Asia after Germany. I heard from several people after the tsunami along the lines of "good thing you weren't in Japan!", but I actually felt sad that we didn't get to be there to live through that experience with the people. Maybe we could have been a more direct help to them. Kerri and I are more and more finding our hearts drawn to the Japanese people and culture. We are hoping to see if after moving there we can find a way to become tentmaker missionaries. The gospel is sorely needed there.

Anyway, that's it for now...it's late...got to ge to bed.

Quarterly Update...

Let's hope not!

I can't believe how long it's been since the last post. Seems like no time has passed at all to us. We are definitely into a day-to-day rhythm that seems to make the time fly by.

We had a very snowy winter, through which I rode my bike to work every day. That's pretty much gone now, and it's mostly grey and rainy now, with spots of sunshine. Kerri's bike arrived a while back, but since Rowan isn't riding yet, she's restricted to using it mostly on weekends or for quick trips. Our tandem and my fold-able will be shipping soon from Bike Friday and we are looking forward to being more mobile as a family.

We found a great church in Heidelberg, Grace International Baptist, and have become members as of last Sunday. We take the train through Mannheim to Heidelberg for about an hour, so Sundays are Heidelberg days. We finally got to the old town a couple of weeks ago and found a local brewery called Vetters. The beer was pretty good, not great, but better than most. The food was really heavy though.

We really don't have much time for exploration yet. The weather hasn't been very compliant either and the most we've done is go downtown Mannheim a couple of times, or eat out at a few of the local restaurants near us.

There really isn't much else to say...not much is going on. Someday soon we might finally put some pictures up of our house and stuff, but not quite yet, still waiting for a few things to be put up on walls and such.

Back in Mannheim

We returned from 2 weeks in the US a few days ago. Well, Kerri was there for 4 weeks, but I was only there for 2. Had a great time seeing relatives and friends, and were very grateful to be able to go to the Portland Holiday Ale Festival with Walt, Ben and Sandy. Northwest beer rules! (seriously...I have yet to find any German beer to compare, but I've just started, give me time)

The United flight from SF to Frankfurt was horrible. No personal entertainment systems (which we've been getting used to lately) and they showed terrible movies. All the kid friendly stuff was at the tail end of the flight when the kids were all asleep. I sat behind a lady with twin toddler girls. They cried in harmony! Also, *both* of them threw up when we landed. Felt really bad for the lady.

Anyway, we made it home in one piece and are starting to not feel like zombies as of today. I slept in til my alarm went off for the first time! We put our 2 beds together in the early mornings of the first couple of days, and unpacked everything we had in boxes so now it's all in piles which is something of an improvement. Last night we took public to IKEA (45 minutes one way) after work and bought everything big that we need and are having IKEA deliver it (90 euro) which is probably how much it would cost us to rent a van or something, and then we'd have to haul it all upstairs. Pity of it is they won't deliver til next Monday, so we are still using the outside porch as our fridge. At least we were forced to stay up til 10pm last night, although we were all pretty miserable at various points. Kerri, Rowan and I took turns having meltdowns.

We've done about all we can up to this point, so this weekend we're going to head down to Mannheim for the Christmas Market and enjoy a bit of christmas. We are kind of despairing of actually having a real christmas this year, but we may just do what we did last year and delay the celebration to a more appropriate time.

Mannheim, Germany

First impressions:

It's gorgeous! We've arrived for Fall and the leaves are yellow and red and falling. The temperature is brisk and it hasn't really rained yet.

I arrived less than a week ago and was whisked down from Frankfurt to Benjamin Franklin Village just outside of Mannheim. I was checked into a nearby hotel (Platanenhof Boardinghouse) that will be our home for the next month. We rented a car and did some initial in-briefing stuff on base. The hotel is about 20 minutes walking distance from the base which is great as I don't like driving here. We have a manual transmission which adds to the stress...it's been a while.

Kerri and Rowan arrived less than 24 hours after I did, and I took the train up to Frankfurt to meet them and we rode the train and public all the way back to our hotel. We then had the weekend to explore a bit, and I had my first day of work on Monday. Mostly paperwork. Had Tuesday off to look for houses, and I'm in the office today (wednesday) as Kerri continues to look.

We've seen a couple of places in Käfertal (very close by), one of which we liked. If we don't find anything by the weekend we're gonna go for it! Eventually we'll post some pics.

Really looking forward to getting our bikes as it will open up our travel options much more.

Kerri and Rowan leave for the US in a week and a half, and I follow in the 27th, so we want to have our house figured out before than, at least so we have a place to put all our boxes (all of which were here when I arrived!).

BTW, if you are shipping base-to-base and using the typical "tough" boxes they sell at the PX, do not imagine they will be used for more than 1 trip. They arrived in much abused shape, wheels missing, cracked casing, etc... The box that made it through fine was a rubber-maid box with more give.

We've explored the post here and are very much surprised (and shocked) by how big the PX/commissary are. It's nothing like Kuwait that's for sure. I'm a bit used to the weirdness of walking through a gate and basically being in America, but for Kerri it's quite the culture shock, but she's working through it.

Germany's gonna take some getting used to also. Everyone's been very helpful so far, but we can already tell learning the language is going to be very necessary as not everyone speaks English and we are not obviously "different" so that people assume we can speak German.

Well, that's it for now, we'll update more as we have news to post.

Cape Town

Click here for an HTML slideshow

We got back from our trip to Cape Town and surrounding areas yesterday. We spent the first few days in Cape Town itself, wandering around the water front area and visiting Table Mountain. The water front is fun, and there are 2 local brew-houses with good beer available (Mitchell's and Paulaner), not to mention excellent german food at Paulaner.

Table Mountain was incredible. We hiked about 3km on the top and had a blast. The weather was perfect and we were incredibly lucky as high winds had closed the cable car for the previous 7 days.

We were able to visit an online friend of Kerri's the next day, as well as head down the Cape Peninsula and see the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Point, penguins, and take a trip out to Seal Island where we saw seals and a glimpse of a great white shark attracted to a research vessel for tagging!

Next we headed off along the southern coast line to Hermanus where we spent several days walking along a coastline path and watching the many whales that swim in the bay. We also visited several nearby nice locations, including the Birkenhead brewing company, another small micro-brewery, and sampled the local beer and wine. The beer wasn't quite as good as the locations in Capetown, but the wine was excellent.

Heading east and north, we ended up in Outdshoorn and ostrich country. Outdshoorn was a nice little town, but we spent only one night there before heading several kilometers east to a small farm where we spent 3 days. It was our favorite location (Rolbaken) and we had a great time there. Dick and Mary were our hosts and cooked a great breakfast and an incredible birthday dinner for Kerri.

Unfortunately, Kerri came down with horrible sore throat and we ended up having to go to a doctor to get some anti-biotics which cleared it up after several more days. Of course, this happened during our 10 year anniversary and her birthday! Ah well...just means we get to do it again to make up for it...

While in the Outdshoorn area we also visited the nearby Cango cave complex and an ostrich farm where we got to ride ostriches! BTW, properly cooked, ostrich meat is our new favorite.

Then we went back west towards Cape Town and landed in wine country. We stayed at a small vineyard named Tanagra for 5 days. This was supposed to be the most relaxing point of our trip, but unfortunately the very large puppy was too rough for Rowan and he couldn't enjoy being outside much, and the area around there is full of ticks (we found over 10 in our room and clothes) so we brought them in with us after walks. Other than that it was lovely and we enjoyed shopping for groceries and cooking for ourselves for a while.

It was at this time that we thought to check our email after over a week with no internet. Our debit card had been declined recently and we figured it was just a matter of our bank forgetting that we would be in South Africa for a while. Much to our horrified surprise, we discovered our bank account completely empty and our overdraft protection line of credit fully maxed out. It appeared as if someone in Cape Town had managed to get all of our information from our card and duplicate it somehow. We were able to call our bank and start the process of correcting the mess, but it was quite a shock to us at the time. Apparently this is common in South Africa and it is highly recommended that when you pay by credit card you should not let the card out of your sight! Nice to know now.

We had a couple of days left so we headed north of Cape Town to the Langebaan area. There was a fossil park there that we thought Rowan would enjoy. Unfortunately the surrounding area wasn't all that nice, so we didn't really do much other than the West Coast Fossil Park (which was pretty cool...it's an ongoing dig site and you can see the dig area itself with all the bones still in the ground!).

We drove back to Cape Town our final day and drove to the western areas that are between Table Mountain and the Atlantic ocean. This area was delightful and we wished we could have spent more time there.

Our flight back was delayed at Jo-berg and we missed our connecting flight from Doha to Kuwait, so we got to spend an extra 6 hours or so in the airport there. None of us slept for about 36 hours straight and we were very grateful to collapse into our beds last night. 12 hours of sleep later and we are doing great! I'll be heading to work tomorrow and back to life as normal.

Qatar

We just got back from Qatar. I had to go there for work and we figured we could make a trip of it. Rowan and Kerri hung out at our hotel while I worked and then we had a few days after for looking around.

The verdict is...meh. There are some positives...better food selection for one, and it feels less dusty (cleaner maybe?)...but that's all I can think of. It's much like Kuwait, but with a smaller feel (if that's possible).

The best part was Souk Waqif, a very nice area that was an old market and still is, but has been remodeled and done up nicely for the tourists with lots of restaurants and shisha.

We rented a car one day and drove around the area outside Doha. It feels much like the entire country other than Doha is one big construction site with lots of debris and such. Very uninteresting.

Sorry to sound so down, we had a good time really! It was nice to get out of Kuwait for a while, but we were very glad to be home.

Beirut Trip

We took a short weekend trip to Lebanon. Truly a delightful place. The short 2 1/2 hour flight was not enough to drain our energy, so we arrived full of vim and vigour. The airport experience was surprisingly pleasant, with no fee for the visa (as we had read there would be online) and very efficiently laid out. We headed straight for the car rental section and got a little Renault for $40 a day. Had I known how crazy they drive and how tiny the back roads are, I might have had more trepidation about bringing it back in one piece!

So we headed into Beirut with a vague idea of the area our hotel was (Manara) and that it was beyond a trendy area called Hamra. So we took the Center Ville (city center) roads and looked for signs pointing to Hamra. It turns out that all of the street signs are in Arabic and French, not English. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that it was a special day, as military had blocked off major roads and were redirecting traffic! So we just sort of pointed ourselves in the general direction of the sea and hoped for the best. Amazingly, we found ourselves driving almost directly to the hotel we had in mind and found it with no trouble.

The Bella Riva Hotel was more than adequate and we were surprised to see the price keep dropping as we discussed what we wanted (the opposite of the usual experience) and ended up paying about $104 a night, not bad for the very nice area we were in. Checked ourselves in and set out to find some lunch as it was only noon.

Heading down to the road that curves along the coast and the beginning of the lovely corniche, we kept an eye out for a Lebanese restaurant of the type that we like (relaxed family atmosphere, not too posh, plenty of people smoking shisha). The first one we found was 5 minutes away, the Manara Palace Cafe. Since we found it so soon, we figured such places would be everywhere, but amazingly this was not the case, at least where we were looking. We ended up coming back there 3 or 4 times.

Then we walked all along the corniche up to where it dissipated into the new downtown area that looked remarkably like some of the new neighborhoods downtown Portland (riverside). As mentioned earlier, it was some sort of celebratory day, and sure enough, as we walked along we were treated to the young-uns driving down the road yelling out the windows, waving Lebanese flags and generally making a lot of noise. The military was out in force, rolling by in huge deafening tanks, and the corniche was absolutely packed with people out having a good time. Some were out in the water and rocks, some sitting down and smoking their own shisha pipes, many were jogging or riding bicycles.

After walking back home via the Hamra district (think 23rd street in Portland), we made it back to our hotel with sore legs, but a very pleasant experience. Ate dinner at the Manara Palace, where I tried a lebanese dish I have avoided in the past: kibbeh nicewas. This is ground meat (lamb or otherwise), pounded or ground into a paste, mixed with spices and nuts, then shaped into finger size chunks (kind of like nigiri) and served raw. Generally I stay away from raw meat (except sushi) as I just don't feel the need to roll the gastrointestinal dice, but I figured if there was ever a time to try it, it would be in Lebanon itself. Of course, it was delicious and not at all like what you might think, resembling a pate in texture. The shish tawouk was not very good unfortunately (I really need to start making it myself so I can make it the way I like) but the kebab/kofta was surprisingly good, as were the other side dishes.

We made plans for the next day: drive north to the Jeita Grotto and then on north to Byblos for the afternoon, eat lunch and dinner there, then drive home in the evening to Beirut. We missed the turn off to Jeita unfortunately, but were able to turn back and wade through the traffic back to the correct location. We were very disappointed to find the Grotto closed for the entire month of February for "the annual vacation." Apparently this is not published very well as several other cars drove up while were there, as stunned as we were. Oh well...we took some pictures and bought some nuts and dried fruit from some local entrepreneurs and decided to drive north to Tripoli, about an hour further than Byblos.

Tripoli was kind of interesting...we didn't see much, but got nice and lost in the downtown area. The impression was of a much more conservative community and it felt similar in some ways to Kuwait. After getting unlost, we found another nice lebanese restaurant by the ocean, which we pretty much had to ourselves. Our waitress Miriam seemed quite stunned that we were here by ourselves and didn't know anyone. She took a liking to Rowan and we really enjoyed the entire staff (the restaurant was called Sirene I think). Oh, and it had the best shish tawouk we had the entire time.

Driving south to Byblos, we got there around 1pm and found a lovely little souk area that has been done up nice and is filled with little merchant stalls and fancy restaurants. I had been told by a co-worker that he had eaten at a restaurant he counted among the best in the world in Byblos. We hoped to find it for dinner...

First however, we went into the Crusader's castle, a crazy hodgepodge of stones taken from the many settlements of the past. Byblos has been an operational port for some 6000 years and there have been so many settlements there that it's an archeologist's dream. There's the crusader castle, the Roman ruins, the mausoleum, a greek amphitheater, and ancient Phoenician tombs. All of this in a tiny little area that we could tromp about on as much as we wanted. Needless to say, we spent several hours there.

After this we searched all through the restaurants for the one that looked like what was described to me as fusion-lebanese food. The Locanda a la Granda turned out to be it, and oh...my...gosh...yes, it deserves it's place in my friend's list of one of the best restaurants in the world. We tried the suggested dishes in the NYTIMES review that was printed on the place mats (pasta coated in cream, Roquefort and nuts) and were very pleased. The locally brewed "dark" beer turned out to be unimpressive (to me), but the amazing honeycombed rum cake (baba au rhum) was amazing (and I don't usually like deserts without chocolate).

Needless to say, I gained 5 pounds during the trip.

Our last day was spent driving around Beirut. We headed to the downtown area which is a series of concentric circles expanding out from a clock tower. The area was blocked off to traffic, so we had to drive around for some time finding a parking spot. There are tons of little restaurants and we decided to try something a bit different and ate at the chinese place...not a good choice unfortunately...oh well, you win some you lose some. The area was lovely though, and there was a cool looking mosque (similar style to Hagia Sofia) and some old Roman ruins that are being actively worked on.

We wanted to find a local grocery store to buy some local wine and beer (I had found some in a restaurant I wanted to buy cheap and try out, 961). So we drove back north to get to the mall we had seen from the freeway. First, we had to get back on the freeway, but this in itself was quite a challenge as we attempted to navigate the back streets to find one that would let us get on the freeway. Then we had to figure out how to get off and over to the other side...all his took a good couple of hours through the crazy traffic. Seriously, this is the worst traffic I've ever driven in. They have traffic lights and lanes, but these are generally ignored. Except when they aren't...but this seems to be random. You just try to do what everyone else is doing and not get your rental car dinged up!

Anyway, we found the mall and found the grocery store. They had some local wine, but sadly the only 961 beer they had was a lager, not the amber or red that I was hoping for. We got it, but it was very disappointing and we never found it. Ah well...gotta leave something for next time we visit.

It took the rest of the day to make it home and of course we ate at the Manara Cafe again for dinner. Did I mention the fabulous shisha? Their double apple was excellent, better than most in Kuwait. I tried the turkish/persian dry tobacco and was not very impressed. I prefer saloum which is plain tobacco soaked in molasses to it.

Next morning we headed back to the airport and were home in Kuwait by 2pm. We absolutely loved the european feel of Beirut and want to go back someday if possible to do some of the things we didn't get to do. This was one of the first times I've come back home to Kuwait and wished I had more time to stay where I was. Must be getting time to move on!