Auf Wiedersehen does not mean "goodbye"!

I love how the German words for "goodbye" (Auf Wiedersehen) do not even mean "goodbye"; they mean "until I see you again" (wieder means "again" and sehen means "see"). As with our previous moves, the last 4 weeks are busy with catching up with friends, saying "until I see you again" and of course getting caught up with the last minute things that go hand in hand with each move. I had my finals at uni last week and was busy studying for those. I must say here that Zev has been an incredibly supportive and encouraging husband during the length of my Masters of Laws degree here (it started on October 15th last year and I will graduate this Wednesday!) I also give Glory to God for sustaining me and listening to my constant prayer for peace and patience in studying. The language barrier was the biggest challenge of this degree as well as the challenge to keep going when my eyes were tired and the German words didn´t make sense. So, as a result of a busy past couple of weeks, I haven´t had time to post as often as I would like. I do want to record our last few weeks in Germany and remember the awesome friends we have made here, so here is a blog entry with a sneek peek into the past few days.

1. French Baptism

Last Saturday, our dear French friends, Adele and Romain celebrated the baptism of their baby girl, Manon. You may remember that Adele and I first met in German "A1". We have both shed tears of frustration and joy, all because of the incredibly difficult German language! I can´t believe that Manon is already 6 months old. She is a beautiful baby girl and Adele is so in love with her, it´s precious to see. It was fun catching up with Adele and Romain´s family members, who we met at their wedding in France in 2009! I love that we are introduced as "die Amerikaner" and that their French family members smile and nod their head and don´t say much to us if they don´t speak English (a lot of them spoke great English though!) The baptism itself was beautiful. It was all in French so Zev and I did not understand our word and therefore just smiled and nodded our heads, but it WAS a beautiful day and great to say "Auf Wiedersehen" to Adele and Romain who are off to France for a ONE MONTH holiday. We foresee those guys coming to visit us in the States one day....

At "Uferlos at Katherinenlinde" where we had lunch (mny favorite restaurant. I always order the number 413 salad and Zev almost always orders the Jägerschnitzel or the Tellerschnitzel. We both order "Dunkles Bier" which is so dark it looks black but is oh so creamy and yummy!)

Zev inside the French/ German church. It´s all "Greek" to him ;-)))

2. The "local" festival (across the street!)

Also on Saturday, after Manon´s baptism, we went to the local "Wäldenbronn Music Club" festival which takes place in the field across our house each year. It is such a fun event and it was cool to have "oompa loompa" (ie: traditional German) music playing right outside our front yard. It was all fun and games except for the fact that last week was also my finals week at uni and I really had no other place on Saturday or Sunday to study (EVERYTHING is closed here on Sundays!) Thankfully I was able to study with Zev´s extra-strength shooting ear muffs on and everything turned out fine. Our next door neighbor (who happens to be our landlord as well) was singing with his singing club on Saturday, so we came out to support him and have dinner.

3. The "best" way to end the study year.

Last Thursday was my last exam as part of my Masters of Laws degree. It has been a hard degree to complete, because I had to research and write a thesis in German, but it was probably my most rewarding degree and I learnt SO MUCH. In case you´re interested, I wrote my thesis comparing the approaches to applying Juvenile Criminal Law between Germany and the US. The approaches vary vastly. Juveniles between 14 and 18 are ALWAYS adjudicated before a juvenile court, pursuant to the Juvenile Law in all of Germany (they do not have separate laws for each of the 16 "states" or "Bundesländer"). Also, 18 to 21 year olds also come under juvenile law for crimes, if it can be proven that their crimes were juvenile in nature or they committed a "typically" juvenile crime. (Think graffiti, joy riding but also breaking into cars and stealing a CD player or breaking a window intentionally). The German juvenile law affords a much wider range of sanctions that focus on making the juvenile personally pay for their damages and in most cases apologize to the victime and even spend some time in jail as a "short sharp shock". Although in the US we tend to "treat" juveniles as adults under the law a lot earlier than the German system does, the fact is that the crime rate is significantly lower here in Germany and the incarceration rate is much lower in Germany; they have "only" 150 per 100,000 people in prison as opposed to 750 per 100,000 in the US. I learnt some excellent lessons on how we can improve our juvenile law system in the States. My dream is to eventually teach criminal law at a law school. I have heard that it is hard to get a teaching professor´s job but right now I am praying to see if that´s where God wants me to go. So (before my long digression there), I wanted to mention that after my last exam, my dear German friends, Laura, Philipp and Marco, who I met in Kriminologie I last year, were waiting outside the exam room with a bottle of champagne and a present. They totally surprised me and were so sweet to be there to celebrate with me. They gave me one of the BEST presents ever; a handmade calendar with pictures of them in different parts of historic Tübingen and holding up signs with typically "Schäbisch" sayings. It was so sweet. I loved it. Here are some pics.

Zev is finishing up his last few weeks at work and is working hard till the end. I am so proud of him.

Hope you have a great week!

Love Zev and Fi xo

10th military move

This move marks the 10th military move for Zev and the 5th one for me with Zev. Together we have moved across 3 continents in the span of 7 plus years! Luckily, this move is turning out to be very stress-free and sort of fun. Zev and I went for a bike ride last night to the top of the hill behind our house and just admired the beautiful view. We will miss this place and miss living in Europe so much.

The German movers are so efficient and so professional. They seem to be a lot more careful in packing our stuff than any of our previous moves. And they move fast. They arrived today and are almost done packing our house! We have hardly had to lift a finger; just with getting some small things ready and itemising what we want to keep behind. It sure is nice having Zev at home this week! I am studying upstairs while he is on his computer next to me. I am unbelievably cool, calm and collected about these final exams even though there is so much going on this week! I attribute it to Zev and I remaining cool about the move and of course...God!

The Army will loan us some furniture to live on until the end of the month when we move on base to the hotel where we will stay until we fly out. This is exciting!

EZ Lauf Number 3!!

Zev ran in "our" third Esslingen Zeitung "EZ Lauf" today. I say "our" because he wasn't able to run it last year because of an injury (so I ran it with Gena) and I wasn't able to run it this year because of an injury (so he ran it by himself) and the first year we ran it together. In total we have participated in the EZ Lauf 3 times! It is fun to recognize some familiar "local" faces like our neighbor's son.

It was so cool to watch him and take pictures. I am so proud of my man. I really believe that he is the fittest I have ever seen him; he looks in tip top shape and finished the 10km hilly race along cobblestones and jostling people in record time.

He did pretty good for an old guy (Zev told me to write that: he actually did very well for an "any age guy.")

Happy 4th of July weekend to our American family!

Zev and Fi xo

Rachel in Rothenburg ob der Tauber

One of my favorite places to take our guests is the walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, about an hour and 45 minutes from our house.

It is such an enchanting medieval town that has been excellently maintained over the years and has an intact wall encircling the entire town.

Rachel and I headed there yesterday and she loved it too.

Leslie from Louisiana was my first guest to go there, so I always remember her when I go.

I love the "accidental" finds that one makes on trips. We were looking for the WC and went inside this door near the Rathaus.

We ended up going up this incredible old and progressively narrower staircase (all the while I am thinking "where is the toilet already"!!!) and came out what looked like a submarine hull but which actually was the top of the bell tower!! What an awesome view of Rothenburg.

Sweet Rachel is off to Munich today and then Barcelona and back to Australia in a few weeks. It will be fun to reminisce about her time in Germany when we see her next.

Family is so important. We love and pray for our families in Australia and the US at least once a day. Have a lovely weekend and God bless!

Battle of the Fraternities

Today is a public holiday in Germany (they have a lot of those here; poor Zev only gets the American public holidays off though!!). As cousin Rachel is visiting from Australia, I decided to take her down to my university town of Tübingen, to watch the annual Battle of the Fraternities (ie: "Stockerkahnrennen"), which is a race on punt boats along the Neckar River in Tübingen.

I love having my cousin Rachel around. We reminisced a little on the car ride down to Tübingen and I told her that when we were very very little (I think I was 3 or 4 and she was 4 or 5), I remember being distinctly impressed by her white sandals with flower cut outs in them. (See Zev, I have had a passion for nice shoes since a very young age! Ha.) I also love Rachel´s gorgeous, curly hair!

I actually ran into a few of my LLM classmates in Tübingen yesterday, and we organized an impromptu get together to watch the race today.

Everyone from the LLM class except 3 members met up in Tübingen this morning and my German classmates, Laura and Philip joined us also.

There were SO many people in Tübingen today (mostly students, as you can tell from the jeans!)

There were some very interesting costumes and "boat scapes" including this one above, that seemed to me to represent a Louisiana Steamboat!???

This boat of the "Royal Wedding" was one of my favorites. They even sang "God Save the Queen" (with cute German accents!) as they went by!

This IS a university town, and so of course there were the "political" punt boats...

The rain held off which was nice. We giggled at the funny costumes and cheered the boats on when they raced by.

Once the race started, the participants had to use their hands to paddle, which made it interesting!

There were a couple of "close calls".....

I have never seen so many people in downtown Tübingen!

After the race, Rachel and I had lunch in the historic Old Town.

Tomorrow we head to the walled city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Hope that you have a good weekend!

Love, Fi xo 

Small church, Big message

This morning in church, we heard from the Pastor of a very small church (20 church participants on a "good" Sunday) from Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic. Our church, International Baptist Church of Stuttgart has partnered with this little Baptist church in the Czech Republic, which only started up in 2001. It seemed that there were about 15 Czech participants there this morning (so about 75% of their congregation!) Our Pastor, Pastor Packer, explained how the Czech Republic has the highest rate on Atheists in all of Europe. There are not many Christians in the Czech Republic. It was very humbling to hear the Pastor of the Czech church speak to us (through Peter, the interpreter!) and to tell us how encouraging it was to see a "big" Christian church at work in Germany. It was humbling because most of us just come to church service on Sunday and try to walk the Christian walk during the week. I am not saying that this is not enough, but compared to the hardships of actually practicing one´s faith in other parts of the world, we really have it relatively "easy" in Germany, or indeed in the USA or Australia. Friends and family who have visited us and our church will know that our church here is not that "big" when compared to churches in the US or Australia. Zev and I had a few words with Peter "the Czech Interpreter" after service. We asked him how long he and the team would stay in Germany. He responded "we have to drive back after lunch. You know, to get back to work and school." I think we were both touched by the love and enthusiasm and humility from the Czech congregation and their hope for the future. Their pastor preached from one small verse in Titus 2:11:

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."

The words after this verse teach us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives and not to get caught up in the worldy things which are just that: worldy. Life is so short and precious. Being gracious and actually "walking the walk" in every aspect of our lives is what it´s about, isn´t it? Not just on Sundays, but every day. I am going to start with today. And then pray about this tomorrow and the next day....

Have a good week friends! 

A Tale of Two Noves

So I haven´t mentioned this part of our trip, because it´s only now that I have been able to "laugh" about it. One place which is on the "must see" list of every military wife that travels down to the Vicenza area of Italy, is to visit the town of Nove, which produces ceramics and porcelains that are sold by stores such as Tiffany & Co, Williams Sonoma and Lenox. A lot of wives stock up on dinner sets and other items from the ceramic factory outlets in the town of Nove. Prior to leaving Germany, I asked Zev if we could make a detour to Nove (using the logic that it was close to the Army base of Vicenza where we needed to make a stop anyway) and he graciously agreed to go there (even knowing that it was highly likely that we would be buying things when we got there).  

The drive through the Dolomite Mountain Ranges was actually quite picturesque. We just followed the TomTom´s directions to "Nove, Italy."

As you can see above, the town of Nove that we finally reached after meandering through the Dolomite Mountain Ranges did NOT have any ceramic shops. Zev then turned to me and (calmly) asked if I had an actual address to navigate to. I did. So I entered it into the TomTom. It was two hours away from the town of Nove. Hmmmm. Tip for young players traveling through Europe: ALWAYS enter in a precise address. Preferably one with a postcode. Apparently, there are more than one Noves in Italy....who knew!?

We finally did reach the "right" Nove; at the end of our trip. We decided to drive there (again, via Vicenza) and were so glad (well I was relieved) when we finally reached it.

Oh the decisions! They actually had chairs out the front for the husbands to sit on, while they waited.

Thankfully, Zev didn´t have to wait for long. He was also very helpful in providing some good advice on designs! We are glad to be home. There really is no place like home.

So there you have it. A Tale of Two Noves. Quite a Shakespearian Tragedy (or should that be Love Story?) don´t you think?