Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.

We have arrived here in DC safely! After getting through customs and everything, I started crying. It is just so hard to accept this move for some reason. Even with yesterday's post of things I am looking forward to here, even those things are difficult to accept knowing I am here permanently. So on with the things I will miss about living in Germany!

1. Friends we have made there. The friends are always the hardest to leave.

2. The girls learning German. Not that we haven't learned a little ourselves, but they have so much more potential to retain it and have perfect pronunciation. Both girls have a decent German accent when they speak the language.

3. Village life. I love being in a village where we can walk anywhere, get fresh groceries everyday, and know tons of people. Taking the girls to school in the morning is a pleasure. The last day I walked them home from school, we ran into several of their friends and teachers from school while passing by their houses. So close knit and comfortable. And then there are the church bells that go off every hour.

4. The Backerei, or bakery. Getting fresh pastries or bread is so much more fun in a tiny bakery in the village. Fitness Brot and Vollkorn Brot with some butter, Butterbrezel, Schokocroissant. Yum! Yum!

5. Other traditional foods, like Flammkuchen, Kasespatzle, Knoblauch Suppe, Spargel, Heisse Schokolade, Pommes frites. The list goes on. Hopefully, I can find ingredients (I shipped some) so that I can make some of this in the states, but it won't be quite the same.

6. The scenery. The vineyards on the hillsides are amazing. Even just going for a walk in our village is so beautiful. The mountains and rivers and green green forests are everywhere. It makes driving more peaceful too, which leads me into my next one...

7. Driving. Besides the scenery, the autobahn rules are just far superior to the states' highways. People have to drive on the right and only pass on the left lane. It makes things flow so much smoother with less traffic. And, of course, there are the higher speed limits. This is only safe because of all the other rules that go along with the autobahn. Plus they have roundabouts that I love. They eliminate so many stop lights and once again keep the traffic flowing. There are hardly any stop signs at all. It is just a yield to the right rule at any unmarked intersection. Speed limits are pretty much streamlined too, so you never find yourself not knowing what the speed limit is. DC traffic is going to hurt.

8. Safer feel. Kidnapping is almost unheard of there, and I don't worry about the kids talking to strangers like I do in the states or about locking the doors.

9. Culture of responsibility. They do not have the litigation we do in the states and so they don't have six million rules to keep people from getting sued. Kids can ride any ride the parents will let them with no height or age restrictions. There are not a bunch of fences and gates keeping you from rides or circus animals, and you can actually see all of the history up close without being forced to observe from 50 feet away behind a rope and under cover of plexiglass, since the Germans know that no one would ever damage or place graffiti on the castles, churches, artwork, etc, etc. It's more of a "at your own risk" kind of society.

10. No billboards. Need I say more?

11. Women hanging their down comforters out the windows every morning to air them out. Laundry strung all over the place on a line. Even though I am too lazy to actually do it myself, I love that they have such a slow pace of life that they take time to do those simple things.

12. Slower pace of life. Simply put they do everything slow, but drive.

13. Lack of bugs. They have flies, spiders, and bees (Isaac in fact had a run in with a bee and his foot this past week.) There are not just solid bugs and gnats flying around outside like there seem to be here in Virginia, and NO MOSQUITOS!

I am sure there is more and I certainly grouped things broadly, but I think I got the main ones. I am not quite through mourning Germany yet. I think the pregnancy hormones must be making this a more sentimental move for me. I usually look ahead much better than this. But a few tears won't hurt and just might heal. Good bye, Germany! Maybe we will meet again someday.