Sunday, August 29, 2010

Fashion!






















This is European Hannah!
Scarfs, boots, and belts seem to be the thing here. We love the fashion. Most people dress very clean and classy. There are several designer items. Although, there are no Abercrombies, Holisters, or Aeropostale's, there are similar stores like H&M and The New Yorker. I am attaching a picture of a pair of jeans that we thought were unique. Shopping here we come!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Butter!


I had to throw away my old butter dish! All butter is sold in this size here.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

A view from the top of the Town Hall Building!






There is a diagonal lift that takes you to the top of the New Town Hall (The Rathaus). The lift has a glass bottom and a glass top. Once you are up to the top, there are several tiers where you can view the city. As soon as we got to the top there was writing on all of the walls. This was one of our favorite parts, because it was very interesting to see the names, dates and places of all of these visitors. For example, we saw one that was a person from Poland who signed and dated the wall in 1943. I wanted to add or names, but I chickened out!
The view was gorgeous and we think we were able to spot our apartment.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Escalator for Shopping Carts!


It is these little things that amaze me sooo much! This escalator holds the carts in their place as they are going up and down it. How I do not know, but bravo to the inventor(Cool Idea). No need to panic when you are behind a filled cart, it is not going anywhere.
I choose to avoid taking a picture of the cart on the escalator, because I was pretty certain that who ever would have been pushing the cart would have wondered why I was taking pictures. I knew that would be hard to explain.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Breakfast in Germany!


Breakfast or "frühstück" in Germany usually consists of breads of various types, butter and jam. When a bigger breakfast is served it will have cheese, fruits, hard boiled eggs, and meats. When we first arrived in Germany we were invited to a friends house for breakfast. They had it set up soo nicely. She even put gummy bears on the plates for the kids. The food was served in a very traditional German way. There were several choices of breads and cheeses. Some pieces of bread had chocolate sprinkled on them (Hannah was in heaven) and some where just out of the oven. It was a nice warm welcome to Germany.
I am posting a picture of a common type of bread served here. In the picture you can see that it has a type of sour cream/chive spread on it, cheese and salami. Typically it is eaten this way. One side at a time. No more stacking for us. It works better. It fits in your mouth easier and it seems like you are having two.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Biometric Photos!

When we went to apply for our Visa's we were told that we needed to have Biometric Photos. I had never heard of this before. For those of you who had no clue like me, here is what a Biometric Photo is. It is a photo that requires you to meet certain standards. Here are just a few: hair behind ears, picture centered, 32-36 mm from top to bottom of face, uniform background, and my favorite is neutral facial expressions and the mouth closed. Needless to say, I am not loving this photo of me, I looked everything but attractive! That is why I am not posting it. It is bad enough it will be in my passport/visa.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Ice Cream









Ice Cream here is called "Eis" pronounced (ICE). In the grocery stores they have a huge variety of ice creams. Although, they are packaged differently than in the United States. The majority of the ice creams are sold in containers like the one that I have shown and have some special toppings on them. This area is also know for it's Spaghetti ice cream. It is usually vanilla ice cream that is put on the plate in the shape of noddles and then topped with a strawberry sauce and sprinkled with nutty crumbs.

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Hannover Zoo!












Today I am going to share with you a little about the Hannover Zoo. It is beautiful. What we loved most is how close you can get to the animals. As you can see in the pictures. We were able to pet the pelican, watch the polar bear eat lunch and almost kiss a kangaroo.














































They have a boat ride through the whole zoo.
I have a picture of one of the boats going through the flamingo area and a picture of a slide that they have there. Hannah made sure that I took a picture of the Guinea Pig house too.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

DVD rentals!

It took us awhile, but we are able to rent DVD's from a local video rental store.
Why it is soo important to us to be able to rent videos:
We get two English channels. The News and MTV. The kids have seen enough of the Jersey Shore to get them through all of their teenage years (Hannah is not even a teenager yet) and Sponge Bob Squarepants just isn't the same when you don't know what he is saying!

(Ok, that is a little over the top, SpongeBob is always funny)

They don't have nearly as many movie rental stores here as the USA has and their selection is not as big as most stores in the USA. But, we are thrilled and I am a proud owner of a "Video Busters" card. We did run into some problems along the way. First, we wanted to make sure that we could get the DVD's in the English language. That was easy because the woman at the video store reminded us that on most DVD's you can just switch the language to English on the main menu. Second, German DVD's do not work in American DVD players. We had to buy a new DVD player. No big deal. We will get plenty of use out of it.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Movies

Once a week at our local movie theater you can find a movie playing in it's original version. This week it was Karate Kid and it was in English. We went to see it and it was Great! The characters in the movie move from the USA to China. They had to learn a whole new language and they had to learn a whole new way of life (we could relate). So, here is what I observed about the movie theaters here. First, the popcorn was a little disappointing. It wasn't that it was bad, it was just not what I am used to and love so very, very much. It had almost a carmel taste. Next, you get assigned seats. I am not sure if this is completely followed through with or not, but we were given a theater letter, a row letter and a seat number. We got good seats, so I will not complain. The seats were very comfortable. Finally, they had an intermission. We liked this. Potty breaks were needed, and dad was trying to call us on our cell phones (which we forgot to turn off).

Monday, August 2, 2010

Learning German!


We have been meeting with a German tutor 3 to 4 times a week for about 1 and a half hours each time. She is a very good teacher. We have been learning basic words and have started with some of the grammar. We have post-its all over the apartment, we have a computer program and we have flash cards. We are getting better every day. The first day that we met with her she gave us the pencils that you see in the picture.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Schloss Marienburg


Ok, so I know where I think Hannah should get married now. I still want her to wait many of years, but I have it all planned out. She will come back to Germany and get married at Schloss Marienburg (Schloss means castle). We saw a wedding there yesterday. It was the most beautiful wedding I have ever seen. They have ceremonies in the church and receptions in the courtyard.
This is the castle of George V. of Hannover 1857-1867. We went on a tour. I could in- vision the dinning room filled with people that, after dinner, would go to the ballroom for a dance and take strolls outside on the balcony (der Balkon). My mind started in-visioning in the library during it's day too. Not to shabby for a single family home. It was in the rotunda. It had about fourteen single sitting areas and shelves that went all the way around the rotunda walls (Each wooden and hand-made).
To all of my library loving friends, it was sweet.