Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

The best thing I can say abut the European Championship final between Germany and Spain is that we slept well afterwords. Germany was not having a good game, and the Spanish were on top of their game, so it was pretty certain that they would take it early on. Lehmann (Germany’s goalie) did an amazing job at keeping out most of the attempts, and there were many.

The good thing about Germany losing is that we weren’t kept up all night by the fans. That has been the case for the last two Germany victories. I also realized that I don’t like watching soccer when Germany doesn’t win. What fun is that? I thought that was how the game was defined!

An interesting note on a cultural shift over here. Matthias was amazed that the team and half of the stadium sang along to the national anthem! That may not sound strange to an American, but it was unheard of here until the world cup in 2006. The fact that the fans started spontaneously singing it in the middle of the game was even more impressive. The Germans have not been very attached to their national anthem, for very good reason, for a long time. It is nice to see Germany proud if itself again.

According to European Commission Regulation No. 1277/88, if a cucumber bends more than 10 millimeters per 10 centimeters (0.4 inches per 4 inches) in length, it cannot be categorized as “class one” and may therefore only be sold as a second-rate cucumber. But who wants to buy one of those? Most second-rate cucumbers — at least according to conventional wisdom — never make it to market.

What do they think people use cucumbers for that requires them to be straight??? - I’m just sayin’

They are considering changing this VERY import import rule. Can you imagine the chaos if they allow bent cucumbers to be sold as first-rate produce?!

A Bavarian man (with a Bavarian beer belly) walking around wearing a speedo on the construction site across the street….. Just thought I’d share.

I received a note in the mail this morning that a starter pack for the cloth diapers had arrived and was waiting for me in the customs office because I needed to pay taxes on it. I picked Matthias up after work and we drove over before going shopping. It was a much more stressful event than I had planned.

First, on the short ride (maybe 5 km) from Matthias’ office to the customs office took about 20 minutes as there had recently been a huge tractor trailer accident on the autobahn that we needed to pass on the way. Once we got there, Matthias got to experience the joy of the customs guy, whom I’ve had to deal with twice already. First, he speaks “Tief” Bavarian! (meaning I have no idea what he is saying most of the time). Luckily, he LOVES to talk and does, ad nauseum. There were literally no other people in front of us and it took 40 minutes to get our stuff, pay and get out! And speaking of paying, we made a tactical error on getting the diapers I wanted.

Most things that I get over here are sent by my mom and are gifts. The diapers came directly from the company, and at the end of the day, we had to pay 30% of the total price (including shipping!!) in order to get the damn things. Plus, like I said, we had to sacrifice 40 minute of our life with the customs guy - Matthias said he would have paid 50 euros more just to make him just up. He wasn’t the only one who took a long time. The cashier, who is another guy at the office f course, wrote out a beautiful, hand written receipt. Not only that, but when he had to make a few lines on the receipt, he used a ruler to do it! I actually started laughing as I watched him use a ruler to cross out a word on the form, because I couldn’t imagine anyone working any slower than these guys. Matthias was not quite as jovial about the whole situation as me, but he survived.

Anyway, after 40 minutes in customs purgatory, we headed out, into the autobahn traffic with our package. As soon as I got home, I immediately updated the baby registry. I had a few things from Amazon.com and other U.S. sites. I added a note to those items (over $25) with info on shipping to mom in Phoenix. I need to tell her that tonight. It will be easier for me to pay for shipping from there than to go through the customs game here! Poor mom, she mails me so much stuff! If anyone sends us something from the US, please make sure it is categorized as a gift - stupid customs fees.

Germany will play Turkey On Wednesday night. For those of you who don’t know, there are many Turkish people (and Germans of Turkish descent) living in Germany, particularly in the north. When Turkey won there last game, there was as much celebrating as when Germany won. It will be an eventful night on Wednesday when the two teams go at it again. This may not have been an issue a few years ago as German fans were not so proud up until the 2006 world cup when the team got back some of its old glory. Now, you actually see people with German flags flying out of their cars!! Before 2006, I don’t think I ever saw in public displays of the flag outside of government buildings. The kind of people who did proudly fly their German flags before then were not the kind of Germans most people I know would be comfortable with.

Anyway, as a result of the upcoming excitement, I got the following message passed along from Democrats Abroad today (message coming from the US embassy):

June 24, 2008 Warden Message

We remind American citizens in Germany that even mass gatherings and demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and possibly escalate into violence. American citizens are therefore urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations if possible, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any demonstrations. American citizens should stay current with media coverage of local events and be aware of their surroundings at all times……………

It goes on from there with information about registering with the embassy, etc. I am already registered, so I didn’t pay much attention. If the US Feds need to track me down, they can find me.

I am just starting to enjoy a professional sport, so I hope things go well for the disappointed fans. I, for one, am planning to route for whoever comes out of this game. I feel a bit of a kinship to Turkey since coming here.

Christina, Cliff and Julie have already posted, sometimes numerously, about the Expat weekend. Christina (with some backup Friday night by Sarah) arranged a great weekend around the European Cup in Baseball - they actually do play more than soccer here, but you wouldn’t know it at the moment unless you have people like Christina in your life.

So the game plan was: beer garden on Friday night, City tour on Saturday afternoon, another beer garden to help cool down after the tour, dinner at a new Italian place, and finally, the European Cup final on Sunday afternoon. For those of you wondering, the game was Spain versus Italy, and Spain took the trophy 12 to 11. It was a close game. I don’t have that many photos from the weekend, but I uploaded a few on Flickr.

Some Expats from Munich came up to join us, and I was happy to meet some new people and learn about a new blog (’This non-American Life’), which I have just added to my reading list. A friend of mine from Munich also came down as she complained that she only seems to know people from work these days, and though I enjoy astronomers, it’s nice to have some variety once in a while. I think I can safely say that everyone had a good time.

The weather was cooperating as well. It was definitely warm, but it was breezy and sunny, so it was totally manageable. The tough part was trying to work around the busy schedule to do our first shopping for the blob preparation. Andrea handed down a bunch of old clothes last week, and the need for some storage space became evident. They have these nice changing table/dressers here, so we headed out Saturday morning to look for one. We ended up a Hiendl, a large furniture store in the area. We were also looking for a rocker or just something that we can feed the baby in comfortably. After looking at the chairs labeled ‘breast feeding chairs’ we were unimpressed with the lack of back support. Instead, we headed down to the ‘fancy chair’ section to see if anything looked good. We came by the Stressless models that we had first tested out over a year ago on a trip to visit Matthias’ parents (there is a big store near them as well). It didn’t take long to go with the fancy chair. We also picked up a changing table.

After all of that, we had just enough time to drive into town to meet the folks for the city tour. Being Regensburg, we weren’t too worried about anything happening to our stuff while we left the car parked in the city.

Sitting in the shade and drinking was SOOO nice. They even served the apple juice in a beer mug so I felt like I was enjoying good beer. It was nice to get to know new people too. The game was really fun on Sunday (even though I was tired from building furniture all day). The stadium was really relaxed, and they had tents set up, and I pretty much hung out there most of the time. I missed most of the game action because I really don’t care much about baseball, but it was fun just to be there. We heard a lot of American voices as well. The U.S. is playing Germany in July, and I think we’ll go back for that.

It was one of the busiest weekends we have had in a long time, and we really enjoyed being part of it. Thanks to Christina for being the inspiration (and the one doing all of the organizational heavy lifting)!!!

To me, setting up a registry feels a lot like putting a big sign on my forehead that says “Please give me stuff!!”, and for several reasons that I won’t explain today, I have never been so comfortable with that. This explains why I have never been registered for anything anywhere in all my many years.

On the other hand, I decided that we should set up a baby registry for three main reasons:

• 1 - Several friends and family on the other side of the Atlantic have asked me about it when we announced the news.
• 2 - It is totally normal in American culture and one of the few national traditions. Having been able to take part in the NUMEROUS German traditions, it’s kind of novel to find myself in the rare American one though I am still trying to explain it to my in-laws without making them feel obligated to give us more stuff.
• 3 - (this was a big one) I have to admit, I have found registries set up by friends and family to be really useful in sending them practical gifts in celebration of transitions in their lives. It was particularly helpful when friends and family lived far from me - and I live far from a lot of friends and family these days.

And one other big reason is that I just need to get over myself sometimes and help people who love me to celebrate big moments in my life - I am not so good at that and neither is Matthias.

That being said, my friend Christina gave me a link to a website that lets you set up a registry using online stores. Given the international distance and the cost of shipping, I figured that would be easiest for most of you who wanted to use it. At the bottom of this post is a login to get to our list, and it should also be on the sidebar of the blog under the floating baby on the right. All of the items listed have a link to a site where you can buy it. I tried to find English language international sites or just amazon.com for most things. There are a few items listed on German language sites though.

****Some others are only on American sites (like the diapers). If you buy anything over about $25 from the U.S. sites, I have listed my mom and dad’s address in Phoenix. We have to pay HUGE customs fees if we get things directly from the companies, so please send them to mom, and she and I can work out how to get them here (for a lot less money).****

If you would like to use this site and have any questions, just send me an email. The password is ‘blob‘ because that’s lour little blob’s name most of the time.

For the few people who asked me about gift certificates, I figured the easiest way to do that is through PayPal. (to me, this feels more like wearing a bit sign on my forehead saying “Forget the gifts, please send money”, which doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable). This PayPal site allows you to send money to an account under my email address - tlbosler@yahoo.com. We can use it toward most things on the registry. Unfortunately, you need to register with PayPal to send money, but I couldn’t figure out how to get around that.

So, without further ado, enjoy shopping!! you can find the site here and type in my name to find our list (the registry is under ‘restricted lists’ because you need a password to access it. It is not under a ‘wish list’). You can also use the log in below to see the list itself.

I had my check up with the OB this morning, and our little girls is already someone I like. The exam starts with the medical assistants hooking me up to an instrument that measures her heart rate. The problem was, they couldn’t find her heart rate. I wasn’t worried because she was kicking me from the inside so I knew she was alive and well. Regardless, after two people came and rubbed my belly with the monitor for like 30 minutes, they gave up. After the ultrasound exam, the doctor figured out what position she was in, so they could guess where they could get the strongest reading. We could hear a faint heart beat, but that was dominated by the noise of her moving around (she seemed annoyed with all of the belly rubbing by this point). After another failed attempt, they had to give up and hope that the midwife can find her next time. I love that she is already giving doctors a hard time. the one assistant ended by saying “Sie ist fit” (She is in good shape!). That’s my little trouble maker.

On that note, I came across this post from Female Science Professor who also has a little trouble maker -

The other day, my daughter and I were walking and talking.

I hope my kid says things like “I thought it was stupid, so I ignored it.”

I make a better husband than wife - if we lived in the 1930’s…

20 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

75 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

My mom surprised me today with ‘virtual’ shower at my Aunt Louise’s house in PA! My cousins Niki and Tara were also there along with Aunt Sue and Aunt Louise. Matthias knew what was up and arranged for me to be here. It was SO nice of mom to do all of that for me!

I sat here with my camera on while we played some games over Skype and mom opened some amazing gifts on my behalf! They eve handed out some great tips on how to make the least amount of mess with the blob. I uploaded photos here and mom should be sending more soon, so I’ll update.

They played ‘diaper the baby’ (blind folded) - here is Tara giving it a shot. I don’t think I could have done it even without a blindfold - they had to use diaper pins!

They gave us some wonderful gifts along with some other members of the family who couldn’t make it to the party. We have some really cute clothes for the baby who will, apparently, be better coordinated than her mother.

A BIG Thank you to mom for thinking of us and going out of her way to celebrate this great time with us. I love that you have learned to use the computer to make it possible! It makes me feel closer to the family - It was so nice that they thought of us. Thanks to Matthias too (who will never read this because he doesn’t read my blog) for helping to coordinate it - I know it was fun to have a secret