Our Home and Village

school buslooking down into the village. Our house is a bit to the left, the pink onepower converters- I collected them throughout the house to show the varietyplug outletsfamily room with the dining room in the far cornerfamily roomdining roomfront of house. Our side is enclosed in the little brick planter in the yardback side of house with balconies that open from Dallin's room and guest roomlovely blue stair case that leads to the basement and upper levelstorage room directly off the laundry room

laundry room!








I guess it's time to show everyone who hasn't already seen our house and village. Our village is pretty small with about 400 people or so. There are maybe 30 American families here. There are a lot of farms around us, many villages have done away with the farming. We have a bakery (but I've found other bakeries around are better) that we get bread and treats from several times a month. The German kids keep to themselves and play among themselves. We have quiet hours during the middle of the afternoon and on Sunday. We are to not mow lawns and make lots of noise. Some people are very strict with the noise enforcing during the week, I've not run into that with my neighbors. The scenery around is beautiful and green with lots of evergreens and shrubs. We are nestled in between forests and back roads that lead to farms. The girls go to school on the army post near by. The school buses are nice and look nothing like the school buses we know in the states.
The electricity here is 220v unlike the 110 v in the states. The transformers are used on anything we brought from the states that isn't dual voltage ie : kitchen aid, vacuum, toothbrush, stereo, tv etc. The bigger transformers are quite heavy and a nuisance to carry around while doing house work. I use my American vac only when I'm doing my rugs, the other times I use the German one.
The houses here have doors on each room which help when you only want to heat the specific room. We American like open spaces so many people take them off the hinges and just store them in the basement. I like closing off rooms and enjoying the quiet especially when the girls are on the piano. I can sit in my kitchen and enjoy semi-quiet moments and carry on conversations with guests. Our house is a duplex, another thing that is common here. We have 3 floors 5 bedrooms, 2 storage rooms, a huge laundry room with plenty of room for my mounds of clean laundry...and the not so clean piles, 3 bathrooms, a mud room where we keep our shoes, jackets and other junk that we collect, a dining room and family room which is one weird shaped room.
Oh, you'll also notice on the outside of the windows are rolladens. They're shades that you lower from the inside of the door to keep the sun and heat out. You pull on a ribbon attached to the wall or some houses have electric ones. These completely blacken a room and make sleeping in wonderful!! I'll truly miss these beauties when we move back to the states! Hopefully that'll give you a glimpse into our living space and life! This has taken entirely too long and I need to get back to laundry.