Our (Empty & Undecorated) Home

I promise to post some decorated and colorful photos soon! It was in the weeee hours of the morning when I took these, so the outdoor shots look a little darker than usual.
Also, keep in mind that you kind of walk in a spiral as you head up each flight of stairs, each story has about 1-2 rooms...therefore, it was kind of hard to take photos that really show what our house is like. I did my best!! So for now, here is what our little Bavarian home looks like!

Above: Our very necessary Welcome-Gnome! Below: Eric bringing our suitcases to our front door.

Our entryway. The front door is behind us, the spare bathroom to our right, the kitchen to our left. The door you see is for a large storage closet, and the stairs are leading up to the living & dining rooms.

A peak into the kitchen, there is a large window to the left that looks out onto our front door area.

Further into the entryway, heading into the living room.

Our living room! It's actually pretty big.

View out our back door. We have a little porch and a small dirt/grass area. The back field is where our photos were taken in my last post.

Looking into the dining area of our living room (backdoor behind us).

The view out of our dining room window (more of that back field).

Looking back down the stairs from the living room. The entry way is allllll the way down there. The stairs on the left lead to the office.

Going up the stairs to the office. The laundry room is to the right, before the next flight of stairs.

A peak into our office. Actually the landlord called it the "baby's room"...uhhh, not quite yet.

Our office door. There are a few doors like this throughout our place, and I totally love them!

At the top of the first flight, office behind us, looking back down into the living room. The room you see at the top of the next flight is our master bedroom.

Our laundry room. It's so big and I love having it in a fairly central area of the house. Our last place had the washer and drier next to our dining room table...not very convenient.

Up the next flight of stairs looking down at the office (left) and laundry room (right). Our bedroom and bathroom are behind us.

The back wall of our bedroom. The wall to the right has closets, to the left will have our bed. Behind us is the door and to our left is our big bathroom.

Here's a better look at the closets. They are more like built-in armours and are in each bedroom.

We have such a pretty view from our bedroom. It looks out over the fields and forests from my previous post. See that big house back there? That's our landlord. Pretty huh?

Going up the next flight of stairs. You can see our bedroom at the bottom. The 1st spare room is behind us, and the 2nd spare room & bathroom is at the top of the next flight. Are you lost yet? Dizzy? Legs tired?

Our 1st spare room. I love the slanted ceilings! There is also a big closet like in our room.

Here's the view out of those windows. You can see almost all of Eschenbach. It was so exciting looking out of these windows for the first time.

The door to the room is another glass one...I love it! The stairs are leading to the next room & bathroom.

The 2nd spare bedroom. And Eric, talking to one of his brothers on the phone. He was trying to get away from me as I was photographing the house, but he got cornered when I caught up with him here. This bedroom is actually pretty big...and has that ceiling I love!

Another great view! This room has a spacious view of the field and woods behind our place. We feel so secluded--in a good way.

This is the closet in this bedroom, and a good look at how much storage space we will have.

A look at the tipity-top room down to the 1st spare room. The 3rd bathroom is to our right, directly outside the door to the 2nd spare room.

Looking down some of the stairs. 6 staircases in all!

Well, I hope you all love it...because we definitely do. I am anxious to post some photos now that our place is set up. It's super cozy and we feel really comfortable here. We can't wait to show it off to visitors!

Class Trip to Amberg

After much anticipation, and threat of the weather ruining our plans, our class still ended up going to Amberg yesterday at around 10am. We piled onto the bus and after about 30 minutes on a windy road, that left me feeling a little dizzy, we arrived at the base of Mariahilfberg Kirche, aka: Mary's Cathedral (pictured above). We walked up the steps and were all amazed at how beautiful it was on the inside.

This Baroque sanctuary was adorned with murals on almost every square inch, and each wall was more beautiful than the next. Originally this church had been used for pilgrimages, and each ceiling motif represents a certain part of this history.

From there we all went to lunch at a restaurant called Bergwirtschaft which was right at the bottom of the church steps. It didn't look like much on the inside, but the food was so tasty. Eric got the Rehmedaillion (venison medallions) with Kroketten (think of really fancy & fluffy tater tots). I got the Gebratenes Lachsfilet (grilled salmon) with boiled potatoes. Frau Ray (our teacher) had given us the food options days before, so we had plenty of time to practice ordering in German. You could tell we were all pretty nervous, though.

Everything tasted great, except for the side salads. Each person's salad was 3 tiny piles on 1 plate. One pile was shredded lettuce, one pile was sauerkraut, and one pile was shredded carrots. Everything had a vinaigrette dressing on it, but it was so saturated that everything was dripping wet--even the carrots. Out of all the classes, nobody finished their salad. I think it was just a little too different for us.

After eating, we piled back into the buses and headed to downtown Amberg. Like Nuremberg, Amberg also has remaining city walls around it's "old town". Parts of the wall even have bullet holes from the war, which you can see in the top left corner of this next photo.

(Above: St. Martin Kirche/Church)

It was another 20-ish degree day, so we went in and out of lots of shops to warm up. Eric and I started with heisse schokolade (hot coco) and from there went to a few different clothing/souvenir shops. It was actually a pretty fun afternoon. We will definitely be coming back to this area now that we know what it offers. It's also a lot closer (by train or bus) than Nuremberg. Note how many different colors the buildings are below; it seems like they love pastels here in Bavaria!

At around 3pm we all got back on the buses and headed out of Amberg, but first stopped at a grocery store. The teachers wanted us to get a feel for the differences German stores have so we are surprised if we frequent one later on. Mainly the only major difference was there aren't any bags/baggers (like I've written of before). Eric stocked up on some favorite German chocolates (you can see how overwhelmed he was in the photo below) and then we were back home by 4:30.

Like I said, we are anxious to head back soon. We feel like we love each place even more than the last, and can't wait until we have the visitors to show this place off to!

Our Second Trip to Nuremberg

(Above: Shöner Fountain--"Beautiful Fountain" and Church of Our Lady)

Today we decided to take another trip to Nuremberg, now that we have a better idea of the lay of the land, and also know some basic words & customs. We grabbed a taxi to the train station at about 11am and we were off!

The train from Vilseck to Nuremberg was actually pretty entertaining. From what we could tell, there was some sort of sporting event happening that day in Nuremberg--soccer?? So there were some rowdy (but fun) fans cheering and drinking on the ride. Then the second we got into the Hauptbahnof (main train station in Nuremberg) there was so much cheering and yelling that it was echoing down the tunnels. The station was a happening place! It actually put us in a great mood, even though we had no idea what they were even saying.

We then headed out into Old Town and took some photos, went into little souvenir shops (look at the cuckoo clocks below, they were everywhere!), and tried to find a place to eat. Our German classes have taught us the basics on food names and restaurant etiquette so we wanted to test our skills.

We decided on Paulaner Im Pillhofer (pictured below), a small restaurant that also has a Gasthaus (hotel) above, which I guess is pretty common here. It was a little nerve-wracking, but since we knew the basics (seat yourself, etc) we did fairly well. The menus were 90% in German, so we picked out items that we recognized from class and hoped for the best. I opted for Bratwurst and Eric got a pork dish with a potato dumpling.

We also both got Radler beer, and before you react to the description let me just say that it was delicious! Radler is actually very popular here in Germany. It is half beer and half lemonade (lemonade in Germany is actually more like Sprite). What it does is makes the beer taste super light, very refreshing, and really sweet. It tasted like a much sweeter, less carbonated version of Ginger Ale. If that's not too confusing. According to Frau Ray (our German teacher), Radler was actually created because German bicyclists wanted a refreshing beverage to drink while they rode, but also wanted something alcoholic. And thus, Radler was born! Seriously though, we both were shocked with how great it tasted. Neither of us are beer drinkers at all, but now we are hooked. (Below: The delicious Radler!)

After the meal we shopped til we dropped. Well I shopped, and made Eric carry my backpack. There are dozens upon dozens of women's' clothing & shoe stores here, and everything was really inexpensive. I ended up getting a peacoat and a blouse. Poor Eric. Maybe next time it will be his turn, haha.

After about 4 hours in Nuremberg, we were frozen solid (another 23 degree day) and pretty exhausted. We hopped on a train...which ended up being the wrong one...then back on the right one, and ended up safely at home with plenty of time to Skype with mom & dad Holland.

Great day.

(Above: Us over the river Pegnitz)

And now, a couple fun facts!
1. Waiters and waitresses in Germany get paid very well and even receive full benefits. Also, the price of your food includes a gratuity for them. Therefore, most Germans hardly ever tip. We gave a Euro to our waiter and he couldn't have been happier.
2. Dogs are welcome pretty much everywhere here. We saw countless dogs around town, in clothing stores, on the train (without a leash!!), anywhere! But, the German people are known for being very punctual and law abiding, so their dogs are very well-behaved. I love it, so point out every single dog to Eric. Him, not so much.

Nuremberg!!

(photo: St. Lorenz)

Well we are home safe and sound from our first trip off post! This morning we woke up, went to the bus station at about 9am and took the (free) shuttle to the train station. The train ride was fast (about 45 minutes) but a little nerve-wracking once we got off at the Hauptbahnof (train station) and realized we had no idea what we were doing. The station was quite large: full of coffee shops, bakeries and stores. So we bought a map of the town and tried to figure out our next step.

It ended up being pretty simple. Hauptbahnof is technically in the "new city", and all the things we wanted to see were in the "old city". All we had to do was go through the city walls and we were in a giant pedestrian area full of historic buildings and unique shops and restaurants.

Bakeries were everywhere, and everything looked/smelt better than the next. It was only 20-ish degrees outside, so after walking around for a bit we stopped into one called Kamps and enjoyed!

Here's me with a hot coffee and a "kaffeestange", which tasted like a toffee bear claw. Eric had a "nougatstange" which was a bready strudel cookie. Great descriptions right?

There were also pretzel stands all over the place. So we of course HAD to purchase something there. Eric had a pretzel with salami and I tried one with brie. Both were very tasty. We sounded totally ridiculous ordering them though I am sure.

Another quaint thing about this area were all of the coffee shops and restaurants still had outdoor seating. They were just equipped with lots of wool and sheepskin blankets to keep warm.

We saw a lot of really great buildings and churches just in the short while we were there. Below is a side view of St Lorenz (Lorenzkirche) and the next photo is of An der Mauthalle.

And now, 3 new and exciting things about Germany:

1. There is a store, AND a magazine, named Brigitte

2. All the taxi cabs in Nuremberg were Mercedes

3. You have to pay to use public restrooms, but it's worth the cost! They are super safe, clean..and quite fancy!