Saturday of Adventures

Since moving to Germany, I've had a rental car. There is an "Autohaus" near my work that offers employees of my company a good deal on monthly rentals. On the upside, it is very economical. On the downside, the cars they offer are limited to either Skodas or Opals - neither of which is my favorite brand. I'm currently driving an Opal Corsa which looks like a pregnant rollerskate and drives about as well.

Now that I've decided that I will most likely drive to/from work - the traffic isn't that bad, and I like being able to leave whenever I want and not be limited by train times - I've decided I need a "real" car. I've done some research and I narrowed my choices down to a BMW, Audi or Volvo. I looked into buying a used car first; this being Germany, it is a bit more complex than at home. Most people save up and just pay outright. It is possible to get a loan from a bank to buy the car, but this is also a bit more complicated than I anticipated. I've been advised that my best option is to finance or lease a new car.

After looking at the various angebote (offers) from the different companies, I decided that I would probably go with an Audi. I looked at Car & Driver, Consumer Reports and Top Gear to try to find the most versatile, fuel-efficient car that was still something that would be comfortable to drive for about 1 1/2 hours every day. I reached out to one Audi dealership - no response. I got lucky on the second try and found a salesman who speaks excellent English. Now, here's how the car buying process differs from the U.S. (I can't speak to the UK as I had a company car while there):

- There is no just show up and look at a car in the showroom. You need an appointment. You can just show up, but you will then be encouraged to... yep, make an appointment.
- I don't know about used car dealers, but with the dealerships, there is no sleazy haggling. Everything is up front and you can see EVERYTHING - the dealer's price, the dealer's commission, etc. I saw with the salesman and built the car I was interested in, and he pointed out every single cost and item.
- There is no hard sell. My entire experience was completely laid back, friendly and similar to what I've experienced the few times I've ventured into super high-class boutiques.
- I wanted to take a couple test drives. You know what came next, right? Yep, I needed to make an appointment. Yes, you read correctly. I was IN the dealership, LOOKING at a car, INTENDING to buy a car in the near future, and they let me leave. I now have an appointment on the 5th for my test drives.

The whole experience was quite pleasant, and I'm still looking for the "catch". I have everything printed out and will share with some German colleagues next week for their opinion - is it a good deal, is the interest rate right, etc - but so far, I'm quite pleased. I wasn't intending to sign any papers today, but even still, it made me happy that I didn't get any pressure to do so whatsoever.

While chatting with my salesman, I mentioned that my next purchase would be a city bike (stadt fahhrad). He directed me to a really quaint bike shop around the corner, which had been in business for the past 93 years. I was able to explain - in German! - that I was there to look at a ladies' city bike - and I was able to understand the directions to go to the back showroom and ask for help. I ended up finding a really cool bike for a great price (it being end of season here). The best part was that they insist you try it out before you buy it and so I hopped on to take a short ride. I know you never forget how to ride a bike, but I haven't been on one in any real capacity in probably 25 years or something. Those first few seconds were mighty wobbly!

I apparently lucked out into finding a "real German's" bike shop - as they do not normally serve tourists or expats. The man who helped me knew enough English for us to communicate and what I loved is that he helped me find a bike perfect for my midget height.

And... and... a BASKET! AND A BELL! The bike also has lights, but I don't find those nearly as exciting as a BASKET AND A BELL! In my head, I'm already zooming all through the streets of Frankfurt, happily ringing my bell, with a basket full of fresh fruit and bread. (Don't ask me why I have this image in particular - I blame too many subtitled foreign films). They customize the seat and all the other stuff, so I'll be able to pick the bike up when I'm back from my travels - either on the 5th or the 19th, whichever works best for me.

This is the style of bike I have. There will be a basket on the front :)

You would think that was enough excitement for one day, but no!

As I've mentioned,  my good friend W. has encouraged me to sign up for the Berlin half-marathon in April of next year. As it has been a good two years since I was running on a regular basis, I decided to ease into my training with a 10k training plan. I use the Nike app, which so far has been pretty good. Each day I have something to do - whether it is run, run/walk, cross train or rest. Today was my first big day - 8.04km.

After getting back from the bike store, I made a sandwich and did some laundry. I then changed into my running gear for my big adventure. According to my Nike coach, I was to alternate between running and walking - run 1K, walk 1K and so on. I have been curious about the path along the river, so I decided to run that way - forgetting that it was Saturday (aka tourists everywhere in the city center). I headed out of my flat and all was good until I hit the Zeil area. This is the main shopping (and thus tourist) area. I walked my first 1K and then shifted to running. This became a bit like my own version of frogger - only instead of cars, I was dodging clueless tourists. About halfway through the run, I had to switch to a fast walk because there was just no room to go. Once I got to the river, I noted my time and adjusted when I walked and ran to make up for the switch, ensuring that I had an even balance at the end. The path along the river is really pretty but not very long. I ran to the end one way, and then almost to the end another way. I think if I cross the bridge towards Sachenhausen, then the path may go on longer. I'm okay as long as I'm doing under 10k, but when my half marathon training begins in earnest, if I want to be outside, I'll have to find more places to run. There's a gorgeous park near my house, but I exhausted that path just doing 6k.

So on my way home, I decided to stop into the local gym. I'd been trading emails with them for a couple weeks and - yep, you guessed it - they kept asking me to make an appointment. I never got around to it, but I thought I'd take my chances on just showing up. Worst thing that could happen was that I would be asked to make an appointment.

The gym is very small but fully equipped - treadmills, elliptical, weights, TRX, etc. In addition, as part of the membership, I will get 3 initial sessions with a trainer - session 1 has me do a circuit to evaluate my overall fitness, session 2 has the trainer give me exercises and a plan to maximize what I want to do and session 3 is a calibration session to see if everything is working. Then I have a session every 3 months to track my progress and make any necessary adjustments. The price was really surprising - just 59 Euro/month - and the nice manager also gave me access to the new club in Bornheim that has a sauna and swimming pool - and is just 15 min drive (or about 25 min bike ride) away.

I'm trying to run outside - as the half marathon will be outside - but for the colder months, it will be nice to have somewhere to go inside. In addition, I really need to work on my cross-training. I have resistance bands and weights at home, but I can really do with some concentrated weight training and core work. I have missed this since I left the UK as my personal trainer Andy used to really put me through my paces, and it made a huge difference to my overall fitness level.

Last weekend I had my first guests in (yay, E. and A.!) and while we had a brilliant time, I am not sure I can go hard again. There is a music event tonight featuring greatest hip hop of the 2000s - and I'm very tempted to go - but I'm still aching in weird places after busting several moves last weekend. (For anyone curious, this is where we were: www.cookys.de.) A and I were trying to teach E how to drop it. I believe there even was a pretzel involved as a prop. Suffice it to say we weren't entirely successful, but I got a hell of a workout doing all those squatting moves.

And so now I'm home, after what was the most amazing hot shower. (Something about showering after exercise... so very, very nice. Although nothing beats the shower I took after the Mudathalon a few years ago - that was like a religious experience). My big plans for the evening include ordering in sushi and a combination of catching up on some shows on my iPad and reading.  Good times :)

Turkish Delight & Other Adventures - Part 2, SO MUCH FUN!

So, finally, I get around to updating my adventures in Turkey. I had the best time on this vacation, and I highly recommend Sarigerme to any of you planning future travel.

I <3 td="" turkey="">

Highlights from the trip include:

1. I JUMPED OFF A MOUNTAIN!
2. I JUMPED OFF A FREAKING MOUNTAIN!
3. I JUMPED OFF A HOT DIGGITY DOGGITY MAMA SAY MAMA SAH MAMAMAFUSAH MOUNTAIN, Y'ALL!

Straight kickin it about 6,500 feet in the air. No big deal...

My good friend Wendi got me to not only sign up for paragliding, but to actually do it. Which, for me, is a HUGE thing. I'm a big fan of say, standing in line for the roller coaster, totally intending to do it, and then getting to the front and just flipping up deuces and bouncing. For me to get all the way up the mountain (in truth, the van ride up was far more scary than the trip down - have they never heard of guardrails?!), stand on the side of the mountain, watch other people run off the side of the mountain, and STILL then run off the damn mountain myself ... well let me just say I ended up surprising myself. I wasn't convinced I was going to do it until I was actually, in fact, doing it. There was a moment where my body and mind disconnected - mind was going "ok, ok, we can do this" and body was going "HELL TO THE NO, ARE YOU CRAZY?!" and that's when I stopped running and tried to just stop. Thank goodness they have a "helper" who pulls you and the guide along to ensure that you actually do, indeed, get off the mountain.

Hi, that's me! Off the mountain! And my SUPER SUPER patient guide Baris.

This is me, in all my paragliding glory...

Aside from JUMPING OFF A MOUNTAIN, I also discovered a love of all things catamaran.

I am normally not a huge fan of boats. I get on one and the refrain from Gilligan's Island comes to mind. I start humming "Three hour tour" over and over again. When I was on a boat tour in Dubrovnik, I got horribly sick after we transferred to a smaller boat. When I was on a boat tour in Hong Kong, I spent most of it either head between my knees or sick in the tiny bathroom. I was determined that this trip would be different, so I came equipped with Bonine. A lot of Bonine.

Me after Bonine. 

The first boat trip we took was a 12-island tour leaving from Gocek. I absolutely loved this trip. The water was stunning and we had a great time with our guide, Kenan. The worst part about the trip was all the other people on the boat. We were surrounded by very loud and annoying tourists, several of them with children who seemed to be hopped up on a combination of meth, sugar and helium. This is not intended to be a complaint about children in general - as we happened to meet a very nice family from the north of England who had the most delightful daughters; rather, I'm pointing out that there were very SPECIFIC children who seemed to have zero adult supervision. Running through a boat up and down stairs which are wet and slippery is just asking for an accident. These kids were all over this boat, playing tag, throwing things, splashing everyone and everything - and there was nary a responsible adult in sight. I spent most of my time in the water trying to avoid the havoc.

The water. So beautiful.

I loved the boat trip so much, I was super happy to do the catamaran tour. We heard about the tour from our new best friend, Ahmet. Ahmet works for the hotel and his job is to sell water sports. He stopped by every day just to say hi and to enable me to practice my horrible German. I should say that maybe the reason Ahmet was our friend for life was that I tried out the few words of Turkish I know - those being, "Hello", "Thank You" and "I love you".

This was our boat capitan - Yugel aka Das Kapitan

This would be Ahmet.

And I found that put me on a catamaran and I'm happy happy happy times a thousand. I think I like being closer to the water and the sense of control that offers. I also like that it goes fast with the wind, but not too fast. Of course, Wendi's favorite part had to have been when I was stretched out catching the sun and we hit a huge wave and I got completely drenched.

El Capitan (of the catamaran), Wendi and me - and yes, I AM rocking the life jacket. Don't hate.

I learned this trip that I need to be near water, much more often. I also look a lot better with a little bit of sun. Considering I regularly slather myself with SPF 50, I'm usually the color of Casper the Friendly Ghost. But the Turkish sun meant that I somehow got to be the color of a semi-healthy individual. I didn't really burn - except for the top of my left foot (yeah, weird, I know). But now I want to be near the sun all the time so I look reasonably alive.

Other highlights from the trip include:

- The weird waiter guy who gave off a definite creeper vibe and who seemed to pop up everywhere and kept inviting us to town - we kept saying no.
- The time we went to the Blue Lagoon and on the way back our tour bus got into a wreck with a car because one of the passengers decided to open the left hand back door - without looking. That was fun.
- The time we were on the tour bus with a guy from England who KNEW EVERYTHING. No joke. No matter what the subject, he KNEW ALL ABOUT IT. Wendi cracked me up by pointing out that for someone who had been coming to Turkey for like 10 years (he shared this with the whole bus), he somehow had yet to learn about sunscreen
- The time I played DJ and danced all over an empty dance floor while Wendi controlled the smoke machine and I drank too much and woke up the next day feeling like I had been beaten in my sleep
- The time we all jumped off the boat and ended up leaving Ahmet in charge - and he had been drinking - and we were all sort of scared the boat wouldn't come back.
- Me realizing that I really, really, REALLY need swimming lessons. Upside: I taught myself to swim at age 12 and I can keep myself afloat. Downside: I have no idea how to actually properly swim in the ocean - thus, the life jacket.

I would love to go back to Sarigerme. I had such a great time. I relaxed, learned a great deal about myself and I JUMPED OFF A MOTHERTRUCKING MOUNTAIN!!!

View from Baba Dag - the mountain we paraglided off. No words.

Oh, Happy Day!

Today is a good day. Why? Because today, I finally have a couch in my apartment. When I moved over, I sold/gave away my older furniture with the plan of purchasing new furniture in Germany. Once I found my apartment, and knew the measurements, I promptly went - in June - to buy a couch and a spare bed. In America, I would have had both of them within 2 weeks at the latest.

This being Germany, I was told 10-12 weeks was the absolute fastest anything could show up. So I marked my calendar and about 9 weeks in, began following up. At this point I was told 12-14 weeks due to "summer holidays". Thank goodness I had kept all my email conversations and a copy of my contract- both of which stated 10-12 weeks being guaranteed. And thank goodness I have such a nice co-worker who took the time to call the furniture store and negotiate a delivery for when I was in town, and for when before my first guests arrived.

And so today, I now have my guest bed and my couch all set up and ready. While the deliverymen came almost 1/2 hour early, they were by far the nicest deliverymen I've had so far. They even tried to pull a couple jokes - and yes, they were German! When I let the first guy in, I explained that I was sorry, but that I only spoke a bit of German. I was proud of myself for saying this correctly in German. He then said no problem, and wanted to confirm that he was here to bring me my refrigerator, wardrobe and sink. When he saw my look of utter confusion, he then started laughing uproariously - and then explained, he was just kidding and that he had my bed and couch.

While he was bringing in the bed, enter my landlady. I'd just like to say I hit the landlady lottery. She lives on the 1st floor and saw the delivery truck. Remembering all my drama with boxes and boxes and boxes, she had come up to ensure that the deliverymen did their job this time, and actually took away all the packaging materials. She had quite a firm discussion with them about this - and I could tell that even the deliverymen were appalled that the boxes had been left with me before. My landlady then explained about various meter readings and maintenance events coming up, and wanted to make sure I was okay as she never sees me. I told her that I travel quite a bit, and I tend to leave early in the morning for work. She then had a look around my flat and complimented me on my furniture and was sure to let me know it was fine to hang pictures. Otherwise, my house would be naked (direct quote). And no one is wanting a naked house!

The couch is here! And it has a drawer and it also folds into a bed.. and yes, I need pictures on the wall, I know.

One of the delivery men also felt the need to show me several YouTube clips, which were of German public figures trying to speak English and not doing the greatest job. To be fair, their English was better than my German, but this guy thought it was the funniest thing ever and seemed a bit crestfallen that I didn't share in his extreme enjoyment.

The jokes continued when they tried to tell me that the second part of my couch was not gray, as ordered, but actually red. They were able to keep a straight face for about 3 seconds until my landlady actually smacked one of them on the arm with a piece of paper and told him to be nice. I ended up tipping them 20 Euro - for timeliness, cleanliness and also for overall entertainment value.
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I think I've referenced my desire to try to take a more positive outlook on life. I'm generally a positive person but I suffer a bit from getting overly frustrated and angry. As part of an overall overhaul of many things (diet, exercise, stress level, etc), I've been trying to see the positive of every situation and not get bent out of shape by stupid things.

This morning, I went to the bank to take out the money for my delivery. I was told by the furniture company that cash was preferred as not every delivery driver would accept card. As a side note, I find the whole cash on delivery model pretty odd - especially considering a driver could end up with a healthy amount of cash in a given day - but apparently this is totally normal.

So I walked to my local Deutsche Bank. As the banks here keep super (in)convenient hours of 09:00 - 12:00 and then 13:00 - 16:00, I needed to go on a day when I was working from home. The walk to the bank is about 6 minutes and it is through leafy streets in my neighborhood. I got to the bank, and when I walked in, I was immediately greeted by this young German man and given a sunflower. He then proceeded to rattle off about 3 minutes of German not seeming to notice my completely confused face. I finally interjected to explain my limited language skills and to tell him that I was pretty sure he was trying to get me to fill out a survey about my account but that I had no idea why I had a sunflower. He switched to English and did confirm that they were trying to better their branch, and wanted feedback on customer experience. At no time, however, did he explain why he was handing out sunflowers. So now I have a sunflower.

I went to the counter, and in my best Germlish, explained that I needed to make a withdrawal from my account and here is my account number. All was well until I was asked for my passport. I pulled out my license only to be told that a driver's license is not considered proper ID in Germany and that they absolutely needed my passport.

I share this story because at this point I had two choices.

Choice A would have been to argue, be frustrated, let off a bit of passive aggressive snarkiness and stomp back to my flat, complaining to myself (and others) the entire way.

Choice B would have been to smile, thank the cashier for her help, and enjoy the walk back to my flat to get the passport - appreciating that it happens to be a beautiful day and that I'm seeing an area near where I live that I haven't seen before.

Choice A has been my default for a very, very long time. So today, I deliberately went with Choice B.

And I know this sounds really, really silly to a lot of you reading this, but Choice B was SO EASY!!! Yes, it was extra time. Yes, I had to hustle a bit to make it back in time for the delivery. And yes, it is a bit annoying that Germany doesn't take driver's license as a suitable form of ID. But I can't solve that, and getting upset was going to do me no good.

So I walked back and forth, kept a smile on my face and ended up making a nice contact at the local bank. And getting not 1, but 2 sunflowers! AND, I got a good look at the ubiquitous cigarette machines and gumball (?) machines which seem to be on every other corner.

Yep, These are everywhere. To buy them just swipe your ID. Germans LOVE cigarettes.

Looks like a gumball machine... not sure why it is hanging out on street corners.

___

Oh, and in other news, I also registered myself for the Berlin half-marathon next April.
So there's that...
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Oh, Deutschland

Last night I was driving home from a work dinner, and as I pulled up to a light I noticed a German police car in the opposite lane. The policeman in the car flashed his lights and waved at me to stop. I did. He made the universal roll down your window sign. I complied, only to be greeted with about 40 German words which all sounded very bad, and very much like I might be seeing the inside of a German jail cell. My heart was racing as I tried to calculate what I could have done wrong.

When I explained that I only speak a little German, so sorry, the police officer actually laughed and tried again in what I have come to refer to 3-year old German: "Lichts! Nicht Auf!"

My lights weren't on.

I turned on my headlights and got a thumbs up from the police officer and then a friendly wave as I drove away.
___

This morning, I walked out of my apartment only to be nearly run down by an older man in very short shorts and a tank top (keep in mind it is about 12 degrees out - which is 54 for my American friends) riding a unicycle. A mothertrucking for real actual unicycle.

Let's all just take a moment to appreciate this. Seven a.m. Chilly. And this 60 year old dude in a Richard Simmons getup is rocking a UNICYCLE down my street.
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This morning I also learned that Germany doesn't do coffee. Rather, Germany does coffee but only itty-bitty tiny espresso versions. I greatly confused the lady in the canteen with my seemingly preposterous request for a large coffee. No, not an espresso. No, not a cafe creme. No, not a macchiato. Just coffee. A large, piping hot, delicious vat of coffee. It seems her machine just didn't make that. I tried suggesting an Americano - espresso + hot water - only to be told that they had no hot water (which I found decidedly odd as they also served tea). A man in line behind me offered to help - and after a bit of back and forth with the woman behind the counter, I ended up with what would be a Starbucks tall-sized coffee in my hand - and lots of weird looks, as apparently Germans like their coffee in munchkin size only.