Going, Going, Gone

Sonja: Two thirds of the staff in the company I worked for is either dieting, lactose intolerant or gluten sensitive, hence my ex-colleagues put a lot of thought in providing me with a delicious edible gift which served me as dinner. I am going to miss those guys and gals. They were the best team I ever had the pleasure to work with.

The last morning has arrived.

 Everything packed up and ready to go.

At the airport. 
 Good bye, Canada!

I'm closin' the book
On the pages and the text
And I don't really care
What happens next.
I'm just going, I'm going, I'm gone.
(Source)

The Last Hurrah!

Sunday morning... and the weather looked better than its forecast had promised. So for the last time we went on the Lillooet loop, along Sea-to-Sky Highway a.k.a. Highway 99. In Squamish we gathered some necessary supplies at Starbucks for a coffee break at Brandywine Falls.

While we enjoyed the view, the sun came out and presented us a lovely rainbow. It was fairly nippy but the warm beverages did the trick, and kept us warm.

Blue Jay!

We drove past Whistler towards Pemberton, and those clouds meant business... of the snowy kind.

And yes, we have been snowed on, it's only April.

Posing at Duffey Lake. It's cold and windy!

We left the snow behind, and it got warmer again as we headed towards Lillooet, where we had a quick lunch at the D'Oro Coffee Lounge.

 Seton Lake

The road to Lillooet.

 Along Fraser River.

 Oh deer!

 Rugged roads.

 Oh, mountain sheep!

 Beautiful vistas!

 Spring has arrived!

 The sky is weeping. (... and so are we...)

Our trip and our sojourn in Canada have come to their inevitable end.

Become a German!

 

For re-integration purposes we are going to watch the recently released (April 25, 2013 what a coincidence!) movie: Werden Sie Deutscher! (Become a German!). The documentary is following immigrants for six months while they are taking their mandatory 600 (!!!) hours of language course plus 45 hours of orientation course. The protagonists come from different cultural backgrounds, and have one common goal: to live, work, and/or study in Germany.

Here is a rough translation of the trailer:

Excercise 3: German for Integration Courses

"I work a lot and always come home very late. On the weekend I rest. And if there’s a good thriller on TV I am happy."

*Become A German*

Teacher: Let’s play a little bit “party”. Party? Do you understand party? (Students looking clueless, and so would we...)

German National Anthem playing.

Immigrant lady reading from study book: If you look for work, you shall... (daughter correcting: should...)

Innkeeper to immigrant: Do you have an idea about German cuisine in general? Can you prepare an Eisbein (pork knuckles, yikes!), can you bread a Schnitzel? Can you make Klöpse (meatballs) or Kohlrouladen (stuffed cabbage)? It is not simple! (Immigrant shaking head)

Immigrant’s Wife: Who is supposed to be able to read this when you take your test? (ripping paper apart) Again!

Teacher writing on blackboard: Cultural orientation, rules and behaviour patterns. Time is Money!

Comic strip: Here is a young man who doesn’t do everything right.

Immigrant lady reading from blackboard: You have to follow the laws. Don’t throw away your documents. You must read all offical letters. Pick up after your dog.

Role play 1: Policeman: Do you have an idea why we stopped you, Herr Doktor Schnöbel? Immigrant lady: Oh, boy!

Role play 2: Do you know what my problem is? YOU! You and your music!

Teacher: We are new here, we don’t know each other.

Meanwhile Upstairs...

Sonja: While I was busy supervising the motorcycle transport, Roland was in the last leg of wrapping up things. We had already packed 25 boxes ourselves, and only left the fragile stuff to be packed by the movers.

A team of four turned up upstairs at the agreed time, boxed the 'leftovers' with utmost care, and wrapped up our furniture in several layers of bubble-wrap.

They had their own system of handwritten paperwork (in our computerized world we honestly somewhat expected scanners and handhelds), but Roland recorded everything electronically. Aren't we German after all?

The whole pack & wrap took longer than anticipated, so we were quite happy that we had already done our share of boxing the day before. Everything is packed up now, and tomorrow our stuff will be picked up and shipped.

We even received an approximate arrival date (although this does not mean too much yet as we will have to store our goods for a while anyway, until we have a final destination in Germany).

Downstairs: Getting the Bikes moved!

Sonja: Today the bikes got picked up for crating. The Sportster will get shipped in a metal box the moving company procured from a local Harley Davidson dealer, while the Vespa will be protected by a wooden custom crate.

With combined muscle power two men and myself pushed the motorcycle on to the road, since it got no insurance left. I noticed that the gentlemen in charge were no motorcycle experts. The concept of using the levers for breaking or pulling the clutch to get it into first gear to prevent the bike from moving seemed fairly new to them...

The Sportster merely fit on the lifting ramp, and again I had to make sure that the guy in front used the hand brake to prevent the bike from rolling further.

While maneuvering the Harley into a better position the battery cover came apart, and one of the rubber thingies that hold it in place got lost in the process...

Quite skeptical I watched their efforts to strap the Sportster to the wall of the truck. I was tempted to jump into the back of the vehicle and do it myself.

Next in line was the Vespa. I almost lost it when they tried lifting the scooter by its accessories, and got quite verbal about it.

I explained that the accessories are not made for heavy duty and that they should please apply appropriate care when handling those babies. I can only hope that the bikes will arrive unscathed at the warehouse and that the craters will do a good job of wrapping up the two-wheelers for the upcoming ocean transport.

Flights are booked!

Roland: Things are getting serious now since we have booked our flights to Europe. We will have a stopover in London, and to ease the transition from Anglo to German culture, we decided to spend a few days in England's capital before we fly home to Düsseldorf. We will leave on April 30th with destination London and arrive in Düsseldorf on May 4th. We are starting to get excited!

Also, we had to wave another goodbye today, this time to our trusted and beloved Audi A3, maybe the best car we owned so far. We are both pretty sad that it cannot accompany us on our trip to Europe, but this would just have been too expensive. But it would certainly be nice if we could buy another Audi in Germany, and I already laid my eyes on a certain model...

Lots of errands to run!!!!

Roland: I am back in Canada for a week now, and Sonja keeps me REALLY busy with all kinds of errands, e.g. to deal with our bank, our real estate guy, and the notary, to have our Audi appraised for the lease return, to prepare the move that will happen next week and so on, and so forth...

Currently my most important job is to get rid of junk (fortunately we do not have a lot of THAT!). Some of our stuff can be donated, other sold on Craigslist and the likes, or given to friends and colleagues, and so I continue to clean out the closets and cupboards, while the wife is still working.

Moving boxes will be delivered tomorrow, so the weekend will be all about packing up!

Another Day, Another Interview

Saarschleife

Roland: The next day the alarm clock rang at a more reasonable time, and at 8 AM I was on the highway to Saarland, a small Bundesland (= state in US; province in Canada) at the French border.

The job interview was in a small town right at river Saar. I felt very welcome, and it was a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere as I already knew some of the people at the company from a previous life. This job opportunity certainly made it on my short list!

Saarburg in Rhineland-Pfalz(Palatinate)

A Day in Bavaria

Roland: I had a job interview in Salzburg, Austria, right at the Bavarian border. This meant setting the alarm clock too early for my taste (4:30 AM) to catch the first flight out of Dusseldorf. With arrival at 8:30 AM, but the interview arranged for 4 PM, there was more than enough time left in the day to explore.

I rented a car to check out the cities on the German side of the border, just in case that the interview went well, and we would have to look for a place to live. Unfortunately it was a very cold day, and with the jet lag taking its toll, I did not have the energy to leave the warmth of the car for too long.

I had breakfast in Bad Reichenhall, an old German spa town with various salines, and had a look around. It is a very beautiful city in the German Alps, surrounded by snow covered mountains. Spring was still a couple of weeks away, though. This picturesque area could definitely be a good place for us to live, although we would likely help reducing the average age significantly...

The picture above is showing Café Reber where the famous original Mozartkugeln are made. I resisted the temptation to buy some and had to take a beating later from the wife for not bringing any home....

Afterwards I drove up to Berchtesgaden and to Lake Königssee, but again it was too cold to spend more time outside than necessary. By that time I got really tired from the combination of jet lag, getting up early and fresh mountain air, so I went for the next picnic area to take a nap. Zzzzzz...

The interview went ok, but it will take a few weeks before I can expect any feedback. I flew back at night arriving home shortly before midnight and slept like a log after...

ALDI Talk!

OR: Where to buy a cell phone contract? At the grocery store, of course!

Source

Roland: With a population of 82 Million people - and probably just as many cell phones - competition is extremely fierce on the German market. Hence, even some of the supermarket chains offer their own cell phone contracts.

After thorough internet research I went to the next ALDI store and purchased a SIM card for €15 ($20). The package already includes a credit of €10 to consume during the first month. The monthly fee for 300 minutes of airtime and 300 MB of data costs €7.95 ($10.50), and the contract can be cancelled at any time! Additional roaming is available for purchase online using your cell phone and at €5 per week!

Setting the phone up was a easy as pie, and two hours later the phone was activated. Sometimes life can be very simple (and cheap)!

At the Einwohnermeldeamt!

Roland: Presenting Leverkusen's City Hall during the last 50 years:

Sources: 1, 2, 3

All three of them were pretty much at the same location, the first one still being mourned for by the people here. The second one was hated by everybody, and nobody shed a tear when it was demolished to make place for an integrated shopping centre / City Hall.

Leverkusen is a city of 150,000 inhabitants in the Rhineland area near Cologne. It is not exactly a beautiful city, and it exists for just one reason: the Bayer headquarters. When I was little everybody in the family used to work for Bayer in some capacity; if the father worked there the son would be finding a job there as well. These times have changed for sure now, but my mom and my dad worked and met at Bayer, I was born in this city, and my mother and sister still live here, so it seems a natural choice to start the European adventure!

The first thing you have to do when moving to Germany is to go to the 'Einwohnermeldeamt' (Resident's registry office, one of these beautiful long words in the German language that combines three words into one!) and inform the powers that be that you are back! Germany has a compulsory registration system for residents, which means you MUST notify the registry where you live. So you better get over this rather sooner than later!

I went there on my first day, and the very first thing I noticed is how grouchy Germans are. Everybody has to pick a number ticket and wait for their number, but everybody does so with a grumpy face. I occupied a seat in the waiting area, and an old Lady came and sat down next to me. She asked me if I could help let her know when her number came up, because she could not see very well. 'Of course', I said, and right after the old Lady switched to complaint mode, about not being able to see properly all her life, 'this is not an old age problem, I was born with that!', about only getting 80% disability pension, all the forms you have to fill in when dealing with the public services, and how slow these registries are: 'I have other things to do!'

I did not dare to ask what other errands were she had to run that day, but I helped her finding the way to the right counter when her number came up. Then I waited for another thirty minutes before it was my turn. Everything went pretty smoothly from there, and after showing my German passport and answering a handful of questions I was 'gemeldet' (registered). Next thing on the list is to get a 'Personalausweis' (Identification Card), but first I need a new passport photo for that.

I rewarded myself with a Currywurst for my successfully achieved first target, but no historical document of this moment exists...

On my Way Home

Roland on the plane to Germany

Roland: I had a good flight back to Germany. Although the plane was slightly delayed the pilot still managed to get it to Amsterdam in time. I had booked a small upgrade for a seat that could lean back further than standard, so I was actually quite comfy and able to sleep a few hours. Luckily most people were too scroogy for the upgrade, so I had the whole row for myself although the plane was otherwise pretty full!

Now it's time to adjust for nine timezones!