Guten Tag!! WE MADE IT!!! After HUGE amounts of stress, grief, tears and paperwork we finally made it to Munich! We left California on September 24 - we are renting out our home there, we sold our cars, put our household items in storage and here we are. What a ride it has been already! We feel so lucky to have this opportunity to see the world with our kids!! We visited Munich for a week in August and fell in love. With the help of a relocation consultant we found a fully furnished house to rent in Gauting, a little village south west of Munich; where young and old get around by bike. Polly & Henry are attending the Munich International School (MIS) in a nearby village of Starnberg and after a rough morning on their first day, they now love school! Phew!
All their classes are all taught in English and they learn German 4 days out of 5 and then they come home and teach us everything they've learned! We are in our first week here and they both already have met some fun friends which is a trendous relief for Nick and I. Henry has made friends with a little German boy who "won't follow me because he doesn't understand what I'm saying but he's still my friend". Polly has many friends already; kids from the UK, USA and another girl from Melbourne, Australia. While the kids have been in school this week, Nick and I are slowly working our way through all the jobs that need to be done ... obtaining resident permits & tax numbers, buying a car, getting a bank account, arranging mobile phones and of course, joining a gym, taste testing the bread, chocolate & beer ... sooooo much paperwork, so many interviews, then more paperwork and more paperwork, did i mention the paperwork? Thank goodness for the relocation consultant! Nick has been so tremendously organised with all the documents required for this relocation so while all these jobs have been tremendously tedious and time consuming, everything has gone very smoothly and we are now ready to enjoy living in our gorgeous little town and experience the European lifestyle!! We are so excited to be here ... it still feels so surreal but we are bursting to get out there and soak up every moment of this wonderful opportunity!! The children here learn English at school so English is very widely spoken however we are trying to learn German and the locals have been very helpful as we struggle and butcher their language - but we are trying!! We are working on it and hope to struggle less and less as the weeks go by! We are definitely learning from our mistakes ... whether it be using the wrong cup at the gym so my latte macchiato totally overflowed all over the place or trying to speak German in a Bulgarian restaurant or trying to figure out household appliances with German labelling ... we are "trying" and we are loving every minute .... EVERYTHING is new and it's such a fun adventure. There is sooooo much history, so much culture that we are overwhelmed that there will never be enough time to soak it all in!! My favourite sight this week in our little village so far is the field we pass on the way to school that is full of blumen (flowers) ... they are sunflowers and gladioli right now and it is right by the side of the narrow road - you pull your car in off of the road, put your euros in the bucket provided and go and cut down the blumen you want and take them home! How cool is that?!
While I believe there has been a heat wave in sunny California this week ... it is cold here - bone cold .... so, yes, I miss the weather but more than anything I miss my peeps!! :( I hope to host many, many visitors here - use our stay here in Gauting as an opportunity for you to experience this gorgeous part of the world too! Please come and visit!! Tschüss!
