When in Germany, Live as the Germans: Cellphones, and The House Hunt

First item of business upon arrival was getting our phones up and running.  Some back story on having an iPhone here.  Before we left, I called AT&T and explained we would be leaving for Germany for a military move.  They have a program where you can cancel your plan and hold your number for 39 months as long as your provide them with orders that you are going to Germany.  They also unlocked our phones, so that when you put in an international SIM card they are free to use over here.  It was really super simple!

Once we arrived, our sponsor gave us a prepaid cellphone that we could use to make calls.  That was really brilliant and allowed us to get in touch with him, friends, and call about potential houses.  While Ryan was in-processing one morning, I went to this little food court on Kleber Kaserne that has a little T-mobile/Vodafone stand.  Lots of people advise you to stay away from German contracts.  They are super hard to break unlike the States.  Lots of people even with iPhones will get a prepaid card that gives you minutes and data.  Each month you would call or go in and put more money on the card to continue your service.  These options are risk free because there is no contract and sometimes can be cheaper depending on how much data/minutes you use.  We went over the family plan deal with T-mobile that pretty much gave us the same type of plan we had in the U.S.  It costs us about $120 euros per month, but allows us to have 2G data and unlimited calls/texts to German networks.  They also have T-mobile hot spots all over Europe, so if you have a plan you can connect to their WIFI at train stations and other locations while traveling.  I also still have iMessage, so for those of you with iPhones I can still text you using that!!  Basically, to get out of the contract, we must give 3 months notice to T-mobile before we leave to shut off service.  If you do not notify them 3 months ahead of time, you will be paying for cell phones here even if you are in the states.  The cellphone contracts automatically renew, if they do not get this notice, so if you follow this rule, you should have no trouble.

Skipping ahead a bit, we also had to get internet and a phone to call the states in our house.  We decided to go with TKS, because with them you do not require a contract.  We pay about $50 Euro a month and $5 Euro a month for the landline phone that can call the states for free (and vice versa).  It's important here while looking at houses to call the company and see what kind of service they have in that town or village.  Some places still have dial up, cable, DSL, etc.  You could find a house, but have terrible internet.  So if internet is important to you, call and see what connection is available for the addresses you are looking at.  We lucked out and have DSL with a downside that there is a 100GB download/streaming cap.  We will see how this works once we get our VPN(more on that later) and start streaming Netflix/HBO etc.  It could be awful.  I really like having this phone at home to call our families and friends!! If you want that phone number I will gladly give it to you!

 I was determined to find a house!! Finding a house can be the hardest part when you move during peak PCS season.  Everyone is on the hunt and you don't want to lose out of a good house! I had been searching Ahrn.com, bookoo, and Kaiserslautern American constantly.  As I mentioned in the last post, you had to attend a Housing Briefing before you could start looking for a house! One of the things they mention is avoid using a realtor.  We have friends who have and said it was super stress free, and others say its a nightmare.  We actually did contact our friends realtor, but luckily found a house ourselves.  The issue here is it's usually a $3,000.000 fee on top of a $3000.00 deposit for most houses.  The utilities here also work differently so they want you to be aware of how it works.  The Housing Office on post also has an email that you can send a message to and receive approved daily listings.  They go over the Housing contract that you have to use when signing a contract with a LandLord.  Some "landlords" are also "realtors" so they recommend when you call about a house you ask immediately if they are a realtor.  If you love the house and want to rent it, but didn't ask if they were a realtor, they could slam you with a realtor fee.  Additionally, if they try to slam you with a realtor fee and the house is listed through the housing office, then they CANNOT charge you a finder's fee and housing can help you divert that situation.

I found about 5 houses we were interested in on ahrn.com and Ryan called the numbers to set up some viewings.  After work, our sponsor drove us to the first 2 house viewings.  The first house was in Morlautern, a super cute village north of Kaiserslautern.  Holy crap it was windy and hilly and would probably hurt to run those hills!!  We arrived at the house and kinda looked around and in the windows, but the Landlord never showed up.  It also advertised a "yard" but consisted really of a patio with at least a 50ft drop off all the way around the house into the woods.  It was beautiful, but I could just see Molly getting loose and being gone forever.  Not to mention, there was no where for her to use the restroom! So, we moved on to house number 2.  We arrived, the landlords arrived, and it was a dream! They were a super awesome couple who met while he was stationed here.  Her family lives in Hochspeyer, and they built a house down the street from them.  We knew instantly and pretty much agreed to take it on the spot! The next day, they came and picked us up from our hotel and took us to the house to show us some things.  We met her non-english speaking parents, who are super sweet, and filled out the housing contract.  We had until 11 am to get to the housing office as a walk in and get our contract approved by the Housing office.  We made it by 10:50, signed in, and literally waited until almost closing time to get seen by a human!! We sat there until about 2:30 pm, but once we were seen, it went very quickly.

I really love our house and can't wait to entertain here!! We have a balcony with a  view and nice patio below in the yard!  It is also a block away from the train station, which makes it really each to get into Kaiserslautern or head east as well.  We went back to the Housing Office the next day to get reimbursed for our Lodging at Barbarossahof and sign up for FMO.  FMO is our temporary furniture.  We will receive on August 4th a washer and dryer, small American sized refrigerator, a microwave, 3 wardrobes, a couch, and a bed.  The couch and bed will be removed once our household goods arrive, but we wanted to have them so we can get off the air mattress and get comfortable!! Since we don't have closets here, it is going to be interesting organizing our clothes!! I purchased 4 rolling clothing racks on bookoo for 15 euros.  The fit in our laundry room and should hold most of my clothes!!

 Our house for the next 3-4 years!

 The little restaurant in the woods a short walk from our house!! Our Landlords took us here and it was divine!

Our morning view!

Another perk to having awesome landlords is that they left us a TV already hooked up to AFN, a cordless phone, and the FritzBox router for our internet.  They also left me some shelves, a transformer, a nice wardrobe, and several converters.  Overall, we have been pretty blessed on our move to Germany.  We have had some hiccups, but we are really enjoying the process overall!!

The Trek to Germany

Out last few weeks in Oklahoma were definitely sad ones.  As devastated as I was to move to Fort Sill, I can assure anyone moving there, that it is not that bad! We were so blessed with great jobs, good friends, and lots of learning experiences.   Here are some pictures from a few of our last moments with some dear friends!

We pretty much camped out at our house the last few weeks!! Air mattresses are not fun!! 

The last item of business was getting Molly's 10 day Pet Certificate to allow her to fly to Germany and tell the Germans that she is vaccinated, healthy, etc.  We had to car loaded up and made this pit stop at the vet.  The vet came in and did some routine checks, scanned her german microchip, and filled out some lengthy paperwork.  It was super easy and we were on our way to Indiana!!!

In Indiana we really spent most of the time with our families.  I even got to go to the county fair!!! Oh did that bring back memories of me as the Shelby County Fair Queen!! I showed Ryan all over the barns, 4-H buildings, and fair grounds!  I even ran into some old friends!  We had a great time with both of our families and celebrated the 4th of July with both of them!! 

After a week with family, it was time to go to Germany!! I really think its harder for our families.  I've talked to several military families and we all agree that for us, we are always moving and usually living far away.  While the distance is greater here, we are still far away just like we have been for the last 5 years.  However, for our families they take a bigger emotional adjustment hit than we do.  I guess it's just adaptation for us to our lifestyle.  

At the Indy airport drop off with our loads of baggage and a pup!

Ryan booked our flights on post through the travel office.  Of course when we got to the airport, one of the flights was delayed and would have made us late for our overseas flight.  They quickly put us on a different airline and route to Baltimore, which never happens in the civilian world!! We flew Baltimore and had to get our bags from baggage claim.  From there we made our way to international section and checked in their for our military flight.  We had to pay $100 for the civilian flight for Molly and another $100 for the international flight. It was interesting going through the airport with a dog.  Molly surprisingly did very well!!! People loved her and would come up with their kids to pet her.  It was like being with a celebrity, kind of:)  The hardest part with the dog was being on the planes.  She hated being in her carrier and fought like crazy to get out of it!!! Luckily, on our 8 hour flight the staff did not car if we took her out of the carrier.  She was whiny and crying and so she just slept our laps most of the flight! 

Once we arrived at Ramstein the spouses were put in one room and the Service Members in another room.  They were briefed and we met back up again to line up for customs.  After customs, we went to get our baggage.  This process was quick, but it took forever to find one of those carts for our bags!! We also had to check in with the German vet at baggage claim.  They reviewed Molly and her documents and we had to pay 55 Euros to allow her into the country! 

We then made our way to a room where you had to wait to be called.  After our name was called we were allowed to exit the airport because our sponsor was waiting to pick us up.  We were greeted with water and muffins!! We headed over to the Ramstein Inn where we had reserved a room for the next 30 days.  Apparently, they had booked us for July 7, not July 8 and so since we did not arrive on the 7th they canceled our reservation.  I think I was too tired to freak out and I knew it would all work out anyway!! More on that later.  

We made our way to Kleber Kaserne about 20 minutes away to do some paperwork.  This paperwork allowed us to start in-procesing and get to the housing briefing early the next morning.   I really wanted to get to that briefing because they don't allow you to sign a lease or even really look at houses until you've attended this 2 hour class.  While Ryan was doing that paperwork he called several pet friendly hotels and we quickly got a room!! We headed out to The Barbarossahof hotel.  This place was super cute and pretty close to base!! It also had an amazing breakfast and restaurant that we ate at several times!! 

 front of our hotel

irish pub across the street

outside our room

eating at our restaurant

We were determined to make it through the day without sleeping and I did an ok job with that.  Ryan did not and took a 3 hour nap!!! Needless to say, I still had jet lag for about 3-4 days!! I finally got on track and it was glorious!! 

The worst part of moving here is not having a car or license.  I hate relying on other people to drive us around everywhere!! From getting groceries, to looking at houses, getting to work, doing in processing it all takes transportation and it gets super annoying to ask people! One of those blessed people, I met on Facebook and I am so happy I did!! Not only is it great to have and insta friend in a new place, but she is a wealth of information!!! I met C. for coffee and we chatted and went shopping for things! She showed me around Ramstein and K-town a little and it was so refreshing! She even gave me some house hunting tips before we started that venture!! 

The first weekend here, we had dinner with the JAG that Ryan is replacing and his family at an Italian place in K town called Milano's.  It was amazing pizza!! I was so hungry I ate almost an entire "gros"/ large pizza!! The next night we hate dinner with C. and AJ also downtown K town! It was nice to walk around and see downtown.  We had amazing German food and wine! 

On Sunday it was the big World Cup game and as you know, Germany played! We went to a friend of Ryan's house for some BBQ and to watch the game!!! We met some more JAG people that night and I met another from E. who I had also met on Facebook! People laugh at me, but seriously thank God for Facebook!! I have met so many Army Wife friends through that avenue and I wouldn't trade any of them!! More on life in Germany to come!!! So happy to be here and have the opportunity to explore.