Taking Advantage of Sunshine

So last Sunday, we had a lazy start to the morning wit'th a casual trip to the Cactus for some groceries and some pastries for breakfast. We had our coffee, we ate our pastries, we put away the groceries, and then were just kind of muddling around. Andy suggested we go for a walk, Les replied with a whiny, "I don't want to go for a walk, I am tired and I just want to lay on the couch." We were supposed to go to the IKEA (not to shop, it is mercifully closed on Sundays) for manual transmission driving lessons for Les, and she was quite excited about them and wanted to lay on the couch for a while and get a good dose of CNN International until they started to repeat the same programming (about an hour) and then head to Belgium for the infamous driving education. Sounds glamorous, but it takes less time for us to get to the IKEA in Belgium than it does to the office during rush hour traffic. It was a gorgeous fall day, Andy pointed out that we shouldn't waste it, so Les begrudgingly agreed to a revised plan of a walk, lunch back at the apartment of Indian food leftovers from the night prior (God, the Indian food. That is a topic for another blog entry altogether!), and then off to the IKEA parking lot.

So we packed up the camera, a bottle of water (which will prove very wise in a little bit), and a bag of potato chips in case we got lost and needed sustenance whilst they sent out a search party for us, and we were off! Now, up to this point, several locations had been discussed, and in the spirit of excellent relationship communications, Les thought we were headed towards the woods behind the apartment, Andy thought we were headed to a historic part of the city overlooking the Grund (sort of a valley with a river and lots of really old pubs and shops and restaurants). Andy suggested they drive, which Les thought was odd since they were going for a walk, but didn't say anything and got in. When Andy started to turn one way instead of the direction of the woods, Les said, "Why are you going this way?" A confusing convo ensued, with Andy ended up turning around and heading for the woods, both parties insisting neither cared which way we went or what we did. So we drove about 100 meters (a football field) to the bottom of this hill where there is a bike path leading straight uphill to the woods behind our apartment with some bike trails and running paths. When we say straight uphill, think about another 100 meters of a 20% grade. No lie, it is really a 20% grade and there is a sign to prove it. We both were sucking wind. Luckily there is a bench at the top for the weary climbers to pass out on, we chugged some of the water and vowed to start exercising and running again, as clearly a few weeks of IKEA furniture assembly was not the cardio workout we were pretending it to be! We have both run marathons, remember, so this is quite an embarrassing display.

Once we had recovered and could speak again, we spent a few minutes admiring the view (one of the pictures attached is of our little neighborhood, Beggen, and one of the buildings in the front of the picture is our apartment) and then set off down a tree-lined path. If we haven't mentioned previously, sunshine is a rare event in Lux, and certainly one to be celebrated! It was a gorgeously crisp fall day, and while the trees were prettier a few weeks ago, they were nothing to sneeze at! We walked along a little bit, took some pictures, enjoyed the peace and quiet. Moving to Europe together when you are just dating makes you have some convos you probably wouldn't normally have, so while not officially engaged, we pretty well knew we were going to get married someday, so somewhere along the walk, Les realized, "Hmm...this might be a nice place/day/time to get engaged" and started to get a little excited/nervous/giddy/whatever. A few minutes later, nothing had happened, and Les was relaxing back into her normal state, and was secretly a bit relieved as she hadn't showered and was wearing Adidas pants and a fleece pullover. We agreed to head back to the car for the rest of the day of Indian food and driving lessons, when things went awry. At this point, we cease the joint telling of this tale and turn it over officially to Andy.

As we were headed back along the path towards the car, it seemed like Les was looking at me all funny, like something was up. Granted, I had been carrying the water bottle on my left side the entire time and tried my best to keep her on my right side, but I thought I was being sly enough to not make it obvious. Anyway, we were walking back and I had a place picked out in my mind where we could stop and talk for a little bit...until I saw a slow moving family of 4 coming our way. So instead of stopping we just kept on walking until the end of the trail. At that point, I figured I had carried this thing in my pocket long enough, slow moving family of 4 be damned. So as we stood on top of the 20% incline, I took a knee, more excited than nervous (all those previous conversations meant this was going to be like taking candy from a baby), and pulled out the small jewelry box from my left coat pocket and popped the question. A kiss and a giant bear hug later, I looked her in the eye and said "well, are you going to take the ring?" After the look of "I had completely forgotten about that part" left her face, she put the ring on and gave me another bear hug. Strangely, this one did not feel like the first one, probably because while there were two arms around me, there was only one hand as the other one was outstretched so she could check out the ring some more.

So that is the story, and we are sticking to it. Luckily for Les, she agreed to take the walk, and the trail was beautiful, because no walk or an ugly trail meant she was going to have a naked ring finger for a few more days.

In case anyone is interested, we are getting married August 8, 2009 in Evansville, Indiana. For all you who are now mumbling things like "why there?" and "where is that again?", rest assured that there is a riverboat casino nearby (good old Casino Aztar) to entertain the degenerate gamblers that we count among our friends.

A lazy Saturday morning

Bon jour! I hope this finds you all well. We are currently doing pretty much nothing and it is fabulous. I have some laundry downstairs in the washer, so eventually I will have to go get it and put it in the dryer. Laundry here takes about two hours to wash and one to two hours to dry, so it is quite a time consuming project. The laundry room in our building (and all buildings in Luxembourg) is in a common room in the basement, but we have our own dedicated washer and dryer (that we also own -- just another thing to try and sell in two years!). The dryers don't vent outside, they are condensers, so it pulls the water out of the clothes and deposits it in a reservoir that you occasionally empty down the drain or use as distilled water for ironing. I'll pause while those of you that know me well howl at the idea of me ironing something. I will have to suck it up and do a little ironing later this weekend, though, as our shipment from the US finally arrived on Wednesday after being en route since August 21st. I am a happy girl. Some of my suits are pretty wrinkly and will have to go to the cleaners, but a few I am hoping can be ironed out okay. Andy's suits were beyond hope and are now spending the weekend at the cleaners with all of the other Luxembourgish suits. I am sure they will play nice but will be glad to be back home.



We went to Cologne, Germany last Sunday. I can't say it was our best performance as the seasoned travelers that we are...we pretty much got in the car, programmed "Cologne Zentrum" in to the TomTom and were off. We were about an hour away from our destination and while in slow traffic, this little "ding" went off and some sort of warning light in the car was flashing. Andy was driving, so I was charged with the task of reading the owners manual (in French) to try and figure out what the symbol meant. I thought I was reading that it was an indicator of a flat tire, so we pulled off at an exit and found three very nice German motorcyclists, who spoke a tiny spot of English and could read a tiny bit of French. After some gesturing and pointing at the manual and some kicking of the tires, we finally figured out among the five of us that the light must mean that something electronic was bad in the car, but that the tires were fine. So off we were back on the Autobahn (max speed for the day was a little shy of 200 km, or about 120 mph, and we still got passed) and later in the week figured out how to reset the electronic system and the car has been fine ever since. Every day is an adventure! Cologne was nice, but we had no map, no idea of what to see (other than the Hard Rock), and pretty much wandered around for a few hours looking for the Hard Rock or an internet cafe, only to eventually find out that it was about 150 meters from where we were, we had just turned right instead of looking down the street to the left. Amateurs! We had a delectable dinner, even though sadly Andy's favorite dish (chicken spinach artichoke dip) was no longer on the menu. At least the nachos were there.

We are close to finalizing our car orders, so hopefully they will get ordered this week. They are made to order in Europe, very few dealerships have more than just showroom cars on the lot. They usually have some that you can test drive, but no true inventory. Andy's will be a manual transmission, and since I am going to have to drive it to the Frankfurt airport on our way to the US for Christmas (Andy managed to fenagle his flight to the US as his return trip from his flight here, so he is flying from Lux to Frankfurt -- I will drop him off at the airport and then drive to Frankfurt and he will join up with me there and then we are on the same flight to Cincinnati), I am going to have to finally learn to drive a stick for real. I have been taught a few times, I think I could get through it in an emergency, but it would definitely not be pretty. We are going to have our first lesson tomorrow in the vacant parking lot (because everything is closed here on Sundays, even gas stations and grocery stores) of the, wait for it, IKEA. I hate that place and never want to go back, but there are not many large parking lots here so we will have to make another trip there this weekend. At least we don't have to return anything or buy anything. Ugh. I am sure driving lessons will make for some entertaining stories!

That is about all that is new here, other than we had a bad experience with grilling pork steak a few nights ago and ended up throwing it over the balcony into the woods. I am sure some animal was happy for a treat. I think we will stick to chicken for awhile until we learn our cuts of meat a bit better. We would have failed miserably on Letterman. Hope you are all happy and healthy!

Love,
Lesley

PS It is foggier than San Francisco here most mornings until about noon. Crazy.

Video Tour

Hi everyone, here's a link to a video tour of our apartment in Luxembourg. Be kind, it is hard to narrate a tour of an apartment with a video camera in your hand without sounding like a total goob.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9052395014433324937

Four weeks down!

Hi everyone,
Well, today marks exactly four weeks from the day I left the US and two weeks for Andy. We are doing well, we are finally mostly settled in to our new home in the Beggen neighborhood of Luxembourg. Any day now I will find the time to take pictures and maybe some video of our new place. The furniture is all assembled, thanks to Andy's hard work while I was at training in Geneva! We have some rugs down to soften it up a bit, since the entire apartment is floored in ceramic tile. The walls are completely white, which, for any of you who know my penchant for bright colors of paint can probably guess, is driving me a little crazy so the next big project will be to find some artwork for the walls and a way to hang it on the walls, since the walls are sometimes plaster, sometimes drywall, and sometimes some sort of painted or coated concrete. I wasn't there to witness, but apparently the handyman we had to install our ceiling lights had quite a time drilling into them. Rumor has it IKEA sells adhesive hooks for just such a purpose, so with a few things to return and ONE MORE piece of furniture to buy, we will likely head back to IKEA this weekend to see what we can find. We are also planning to go car shopping either Friday afternoon or Saturday as whatever we decide on will then have to be approved by Deloitte for our budget and then ordered from the factory, as they will make our cars to order. Crazy, but I guess that is what happens when you are probably only about two hours from the factory itself. We have a day trip to Cologne, Germany planned for Sunday (about a 2.5 hour drive). There just happens to be a Hard Rock Cafe there, so again, any of you knowing my collection of Hard Rock shot glasses will fully understand the purpose behind this trip! I am sure we will squeeze in some sightseeing along the way.

Andy started work this week and it seems to be going fine, although I will let him fill you in more on that separately. We also have a trip planned to Vienna with some friends from London for a Christmas market on the first weekend of December, and are hoping to make one other trip somewhere sometime in early November.

We are having fun getting settled, our motto remains, "Every day is an adventure!", and we are doing fine. Tonight's big event will be to cook a real dinner with actual meat and vegetables. Grills are not common here other than in summer months, so we are hoping to get an electric grill cook up some chicken on our terrace. I cooked pasta on Sunday night and we had a bottle of wine with it, but other than a can of ravioli and a frozen pizza, it has been a lot of evenings at restaurants. We are both getting a little tired of that and are hoping to get into a better routine of cooking soon. Our freezer compartment in our fridge is the size of a freezer compartment in one of those 1.3 cubic feet fridges you find in dorms, so we will be making a lot of trips to the grocery! Speaking of the fridge, it is the size of a taller 1.3 cubic feet fridge, so there is not a lot of room for storage of cold stuff, either. Not to worry, though, we have managed to find plenty of room for our beer.

That is the main story from here for now, we are getting better at navigating life, the roads, the grocery, etc. Now if we could only get the VOIP phone and the Slingbox to work! Oh, and rumor has it our ocean freight shipment arrived last Monday in Antwerp, so hopefully soon we will have our 19 boxes delivered so we can then realize we still don't have quite enough storage for clothing and can go buy some more IKEA closets. Fun times! I will just be glad to have something else to wear other than the clothes I brought with me. I have been now wearing the same 5-7 outfits to work for nearly two months. I might burn them when the replacements arrive.

Hope you are well and happy and heavily invested in cash.

Love,
Lesley

My first Luxembourgish post

Hello everyone,

Well, the other blogger has officially arrived, but now the other one is missing. She is currently in Geneva, leaving little old me to get the place in order. Things have been going well here at the new place, although I have put together enough Ikea furniture to drive even the most docile Swede nuts. We are living in a 2 floor, 2 bed condo/apartment/duplex (crazy Euro term) but whatever it is, it is home. It is new construction so we are the first to live in this space, but as new construction, I think it breeds dust.

The last few days have been quite hectic so let's see if I can recap. I know how to get to Ikea, and I have practiced getting there 4 times, including Friday after I arrived, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. We made our big purchases on Saturday morning in under an hour, and then proceeded to take 3 more hours to leave. After we had pulled all of our merchadise and had the rest brought from the back, we decided we would rent a truck to bring it back to the new place. And now the fun begins...the "truck" was nothing more than a hatchback on steriods so Lesley and I decided we would each drive one since one just wasn't going to cut it. Lesley was still finalizing some things inside when I took the first load to the first truck. That is when I noticed the truck was manual, not automatic. Now Lesley claims to be able to drive stick in an emergency, but in a rented truck, full of stuff from Ikea, on the autobahn did not represent a big enought emergency to test the theory. So now we were down to one truck (Lesley's was returned free of charge) and the sweet station wagon that Lesley has been driving. While Lesley was returning the truck, I loaded up my truck and prepared to put the queen size mattress in it. We knew it would be tight, and after much pushing and pulling it was in, or almost in. Apparently hatchbacks on steriods are not on the long side, so a queen mattress hangs out the back door by a good foot or so. After I sent Lesley in to get some rope to tie the doors shut, a nice guy told me driving with the doors open, even tied shut, was not exactly legal. Great. Truck #2 returned and time to get the stuff delivered. Returning the truck ended up being a blessing in disguise, because that is how we met the nice Belgian girl from Ikea whose parents just happen to live near Canton, Ohio and spoke perfect english. I think she was so excited to meet people from Ohio, especially one from so near her parents, she decided to be our little helper. She helped unload the truck and arranged our delivery with the french only speaking delivery guy. We recieved our delivery about 3 hours later, which meant we had to lug in over 600 kgs (1320 lbs to you Americans) to our place. We spent the rest of the day cleaning and setting stuff up, did the same on Sunday, and I have continued to do that all this week. As it is, everythings except for one kitchen table chair (missing piece), the kitchen table (damaged) and one armoir is put together and ready to go. The armoir is tomorrow's task.

What else...we also got lights yesterday. These crazy Luxemburgers just have wires hanging from the ceilings when you rent, you need to supply your own fixtures. I can make my way around US electricity well enough to put up a light, but figured I would let a professional take care of it here. It is a good thing I did, as I would have needed to drill through what I think was concrete or something of the sorts. That would have been mighty difficult considering I do not have a drill here. And after watching the guy for 3 hours or so, I am pretty confident that if I would have done it, I would sitting here typing in the dark.

Today we got our washer and dryer delivered and had our cable and internet hooked up. Our cable has a whopping 7 channels in english, all of which are news channels. And Luxembough seems to lack any pubs with American sports being shown so I am wallowing in self pity.

One other item of note is that since we now have the internet, we should have phone, but that is not quite true at this moment. I cannot seem to get a dial tone yet, which means I have to figure out what I doing wrong. When I figure it out, I will let everyone know. The phone number will be my old cell phone number, so it will just be like calling me in Cincinnati, except with a 6 hour time difference.

Well, I am sure I have bored you to death with my new-ish update but hopefully with my co-author back tomorrow, we can work up some witty humor for everyone to enjoy.