Celle, Germany

We were lucky we didn’t have to head to the airport in Leeds until about 3. That meant we didn’t really have to do any packing in advance. As you can probably guess from my post about the fitted sheet, I’m a very particular packer. I like to make sure certain things are protected, like cameras, my makeup, etc. I also like to make sure the toiletries are wrapped in plastic bags or put in baggies. I’ve had bad experiences where my shampoo comes open and gets all over my clothes in the past and hope that by wrapping them up carefully I’ll never have a repeat. Our flight out of Leeds was delayed a little bit because they needed to defrost the wings. Luckily we made our connection in Amsterdam and it wasn’t delayed because we had someone picking us up in Hannover. We couldn’t see much out the window while we were driving to Celle because it was so dark. I did see a few windmill silhouettes! We’ll get some pictures of those eventually. Daniel thinks they are smaller than the ones in West Texas but they look the same size to me. We stopped at Cameron so Daniel could pick up the GPS and keys from the security guard and then the driver dropped us off at the apartments. We had a little bit of trouble getting in and then finding out which apartment was ours. The 1's here look like upside down V’s but we finally figured out we were in #11.

The apartment is actually a lot bigger than I thought it would be, although it is lacking a couple of things I thought it would have.

This is the living room. 

There is actually a channel in English called Euronews. It has stories from all over the world on various topics; politics, music, sports, science, etc. The only problem with this channel is that it’s on a 20 or 30 minute loop. So I end up watching the same thing over and over. There is also a Viva Germany channel. Viva was a channel I had on a lot in Leeds. It’s basically like MTV was before it started having all those weird shows. During the day they play music videos and at night they have t.v. shows. Viva Germany has a lot of American music videos so sometimes I’ll watch that when I’m tired of hearing the same stories for the fourth or fifth time. It’s also bad about playing the same songs over and over though. I don't get internet during the day. There is a wifi network but you need a username and password and it only works on one computer. So since we already signed with Daniel's work computer, I can't get on with anything else, even when he's not here during the day. I need to try to find a place with wifi but I don't think there's a Starbucks here. I actually wrote this post in Microsoft word and then transferred it, hehe.

The kitchen is one of the main areas I was disappointed in. There’s no oven! 

At first my hopes of baking any Christmas cookies were dashed but we saw that there was a toaster oven on top of the fridge. I’m just worried about how well it works. I’ll still plan on trying so I’ll let you know how it goes. Also, there’s no dishwasher but that doesn’t bother me that much. It will at least give me something to do during the day.

The bed. It's actually two twin beds on one frame.

I didn’t take any of these pictures until Monday, after we had already slept here two nights. The bed itself is not so bad. We do have two separate blankets, which is kind of weird, but the worst thing is the pillows. They are so soft and as soon as you put your head down, all the feathers move so you’re basically laying your head straight on the bed. Daniel folded his half and I folded mine in half twice to make it better. I ended up tying two of the corners of the square together so the feathers couldn’t move as much, hehe. I think we will still try to find some better pillows. 

The armoire with all our clothes crammed inside.

After cramming all our clothes into 4 cubby holes in Leeds, I was looking forward to a little more space. Unfortunately, there’s only this armoire thingy. It does have more hangars, but it still won’t fit all our clothes. I just left the stuff we didn’t really wear in Leeds in the suitcases because I figure we won’t wear them here either.

Here’s the toilet and shower. 

I haven’t really had too many chances to shave my legs since we’ve been in Europe. The hot water would run out after like 10 minutes in Leeds so I didn’t have time there, and here the shower is small so I won’t really have the space. Good thing it’s winter, I don’t shave them that often when it’s so cold anyways :).

 The sink. There's not as much storage space as in Leeds.

There is a laundry service here but it only comes on Monday and Thursday. So whatever you send to have washed on Monday you don’t get back until Thursday. I bought some handwash soap so I’ll probably use that a lot but I’m going to have to get creative to find a way to lay them out to dry because there isn’t a drying rack or anything.

Today it snowed a lot. I tried to take some pictures but it’s hard to see the falling snowflakes.

 You can kind of see the snowflakes. That sign is for the little bakery by us.

 Part of the road and some houses by us. All the houses here have very slanted roofs.

We have driven around a bit since we’ve been here. We didn’t get in until late Saturday night so there was no time to get any food then. Luckily there’s a little bakery type shop right next to us so we were able to get some breakfast on Sunday before trying to find a grocery store. We knew the big one in town was closed on Sunday so we drove by the smaller one, which also turned out to be closed. We saw that there were a lot in Hannover and we didn’t have anything else to do so we drove out there. We couldn’t actually find the first couple on the list the GPS gave us and the one we did find was also closed. We ended up finding a Subway for lunch. Later that evening we were trying to figure out what we were going to do for dinner and we ended up getting Subway again, lol. Good thing we like Subway! We were able to get enough from the gas station right by us for me to have something to eat until we could go to the grocery store Monday night.

The grocery store was a pretty interesting experience. We knew from some of Daniel’s coworkers that we would need coins to get a cart, but we couldn’t see any when we got inside (we later found out most of them are in the parking lot). The only ones we could see had baby seats on them or had smaller baskets. We went ahead and got one with a smaller basket and after walking around for about 5 minutes we realized we were pushing it the wrong way. When we turned it around we saw that it was a handicap cart lol. It was a good thing we brought our German phrasebook/dictionary with us. It was really hard to tell what things were just by the pictures and of course we couldn’t understand any of the words. We did find a section with different foods from around the world. The USA section had A LOT of barbecue sauce hehe. It also had poptarts, popcorn, Betty Crocker mixes, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, and a few other things. We definitely got some poptarts (they didn’t have the brown sugar flavor though).

We haven’t had too much time to explore since we’ve been here but the town seems really cute, especially with all the snow on the roofs. There’s a Christmas Market too! I think we’re going to go there Thursday night. I haven’t been out during the day yet. I keep getting too scared of the language barrier. Everyone we’ve come into contact with so far has been really nice even if they don’t speak any English so it’s stupid for me to feel that way. I’m sure after another day or two, I’ll get so sick of being cooped up inside that I’ll get over my fear and do it anyway.

We don’t have too many trips planned for while we’re in Germany. We do have plans for Christmas weekend and possibly New Years. That only leaves 3 more weekends in January before we leave. We definitely want to go to Prague, and one of Brittany’s friends that I met when she visited the U.S. awhile back, lives in Dresden so we are going to try to meet up with her too.

Even though I think we’ll have a really nice time in Germany, Daniel and I have started counting down the days until we get home. We’re really missing our friends and family. 

Check back tomorrow or Thursday for a post about exploring Leeds.

Bye!