travel | Aufwiedersehn, Deutschland

First of all, for anyone who missed the news, we're headed to Iowa for vicarage!  We found out at the end of April, and we couldn't be more happy with this placement.  After 2 years of being very far away from our families, we'll now be less than a day's drive (around 9 hours) away from Isaac's parents in Hillsdale, and a whopping 1.5 hours away from my parents in Omaha.  In addition, we'll be just a few hours away from most of Isaac's extended family in eastern Iowa!

Isaac will be serving a dual parish - one church in Dow City (where we'll be living) and the second, larger church in Denison.  I was visiting the US with our girls (more on that later) when we found out about our placement.  Since I was just an hour away in Omaha, Isaac's supervising pastor, Rev. Loeschen, invited us (myself, my girls, and my dad) out to visit the churches and see our new home!

Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Dow City, IA

Our Savior Lutheran Church in Denison, IA

We ended up stopping by Our Savior (accompanied by our tour guide, Rev. Loschen's wife, Debra) right as the confirmation service was finishing up, and everyone invited us to join them for the dinner immediately following.  We had a lovely evening, and it was wonderful to get a sneak peek at what our life in Iowa will be like.

The current vicar was kind enough to let us walk through the vicarage house so we could get a feel for things, and it looks like it will be perfect for our family.  As you know, we've lived in a 1 bedroom/300ish sq ft apartment for the past 2 years.  We love it, but it's a tight squeeze with two kids.  It was safe to assume we'd be moving someplace at least a bit larger, but this home is massive compared to our current place!  It's a ranch style home with a full basement, and we'll have 3 bedrooms on the main level.  We'll also have a guest room in the basement as well as an area for storage, and a lot of open cemented space for indoor bike riding in the winter.  We'll be living "in town", but our home and backyard actually backs up to a field giving us lovely views and a great, safe place for the kids to play away from traffic.

Now, the reason I was in the US at all was because my grandpa (on my dad's side) was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer shortly before Easter.  No one was/is sure if he'll make it until we're back in the US, so Isaac and I made the decision that I should make a spontaneous trip home with the girls.  Unfortunately Isaac was in the middle of classes and couldn't come with us, but I'm so thankful that I was able to spend some very special time with my family.   As an added blessing, we were able to find surprisingly good ticket prices considering the late notice of our travel.  Flying with both girls by myself for 17+ hours went as well as could be expected, and we arrived in Indianapolis, IN tired but well.

Though Clara was technically a lap infant, the kind flight attendant bumped us to the only free seat on the plane so Clara wouldn't have to sit in my lap for the entirety of the very long flight.

Mercifully, both girls took their nap right on schedule despite the unusual conditions.

We spent an incredibly special week with my grandparents in Indiana before driving back to Omaha with my parents, sisters, and niece.  We spent a few days in Omaha before flying back to Germany.  My mom had been hoping to come and visit us in Germany again this year, and our last minute trip provided a good opportunity so she booked a ticket as soon as we figured out our travel dates, and she joined us for the flight home and spent a wonderful week with us in Germany before returning to the US herself.  Her help was invaluable on the flight back since the girls both had major meltdowns after 1.5 weeks of jetlag, travel, and all around craziness.  Let's just say the Lord provides, and the Lord knew I wasn't going to be able to do that flight on my own.

A fro-yo date with Nana in Oberursel.

In addition to my US trip, we've squeezed in a few final European adventures.  It's incredibly inexpensive to travel within Europe, and we've been very thankful for the travel opportunities we've had during the past two years that we've lived in Germany.

Isaac and I celebrated our 5th anniversary in Venice, Italy thanks to the generous weekend babysitting gift of our dear friend, Amy Johnson - well, and to Ryanair's €40/per person round trip tickets.  Like I said, travel is crazy cheap here.

Then we toured several cities in Germany (Rothenberg, Wittenberg, Munich, and Cologne) as well as a quick jaunt over to Salzburg, Austria while Isaac's parents were visiting us in March.

Salzburg, Austria

Isaac sent me off for two different girls' weekends.  One to Madrid with my dear German friend (and Clara's godmother), Christina.

The second was to visit my friend, Anna, who is studying for her Master's degree in Scotland.  We had a mini college reunion along with two of our other friends from College who made the trek from the US to join us.

In May (on Clara's 1st birthday, actually!), we flew to the UK for a seminary-sponsored trip to our seminary's sister-school in Cambridge.  Every year the students from both schools take turns visiting campus', and this was Germany's year to go to Cambridge.  There's always the traditional soccer (excuse me, football) game followed by a grill out.  We had a great time, and the girls were really troopers with our late night/early morning flights (sometimes those cheap tickets do come at a price).

Punting on the Cam.

As I mentioned - Clara is ONE now!!  Our little German-born baby isn't so little now, and she's about to get her first real taste (literally and figuratively) of the USA.  Clara is walking, talking, climbing, and all around doing her best to keep up with her big sister.  She's unbelievably sweet, and she brings so much joy and laughter to our lives.

Clara's 1st birthday party.

So that basically catches us up to now, the end of June, and we're preparing for our move back to the US in less than 3 weeks.  Please keep us (especially the girls) in your prayers as we make this transition.  We're so excited for this next step, but we'd be lying if we said we weren't a little heartbroken about leaving.

life | what we eat for (a little more than) $29 a week

*Edit: I didn't realize that the original challenge (you can learn more here) allows for $29 PER PERSON.  $29 for a family of 4 (2 adults/2 children) seemed really tight (though likely doable with sacrifices), but the $29 per person actually sounds quite generous and reasonable to me.  Whoops, guess I should read the original source and not just a repost before writing next time!  The post below was written based off my mistaken understanding of a $29 TOTAL budget.  According to the challenge, our family would actually have a grocery budget of $116 to work with for one week.*

Yesterday, my friend, Julie, sent me a message asking if I would be interested in writing about what $29 buys our family at the grocery store.  The idea for it came from a facebook post by Gwyneth Paltrow:

While I'm sure the intentions behind her post were just fine (uhh, giving the benefit of the doubt here), it struck both Julie and me as a little ridiculous that one would include 7 limes, a bunch of cilantro, and an avocado if you were really trying to feed your family on $29 for a week.

As it happened, I received Julie's message just as I was heading out to Aldi with my meal plan and list in hand.  I usually meal plan and do my initial shopping trip for the week on Mondays, and I didn't change my list at all after receiving Julie's message, so I was interested to see how far off I would be from the $29 mark.  My goal is to keep our weekly grocery budget around $40, but sometimes I'll go up to $50 if I need to replenish a pantry item like olive oil or buy paper towels.  Since we don't have a car here in Germany, I usually shop every other day since I can only buy as much as I am able to carry home.  However, Isaac did airport drop-off for a friend of our family, and that friend loaned us his car while he was traveling - very generous and super helpful especially when it comes to grocery shopping!  So I was able to buy just about all of my groceries for the week all in one trip.

Here's my original meal plan unaltered for the "experiment" (please pardon my hand writing - I'm well aware that it's horrible):

You can print off your own copy of this lovely meal plan (sans my best imitation of dr. handwriting) here.

Unless we have company coming for dinner, we usually eat our main meal at noon (as most Germans do).  Since we live on the seminary campus, it's not a problem for Isaac to come home for lunch between classes and studying in the library.  We then usually eat a lighter dinner of fresh fruits/veggies and Brotchen (German bread rolls commonly eaten for breakfast/dinner) with cheese, deli meat, and a variety of spreads.  

Isaac has been practicing his pizza skills this year, and he now makes the BEST pizza you will ever have.  Promise.  He even makes the dough from scratch.  It's better than any pizza I've ever had delivered or in a restaurant.  I bet you'd like to come visit now, huh?  Pizza day is Friday.....so you can plan ahead. 

Anyway, back on track, here's my Aldi receipt this week:

My total was €35.50, but €3 of that was Pfand (deposit) for the bottles of sparkling water.  I'll get that  €3 back next week when I return the empty bottles so my actual total at Aldi was €32.50 (approximately $34 USD).

Of course, where you live can have a great impact on the cost of groceries.  I've found that while some items are more expensive here in Germany, others are cheaper, and it seems to balance out pretty well in the end.  The seminary my husband attends is located in a nicer suburb of Frankfurt, and the cost of living is quite a bit higher here than elsewhere in Germany.  Nonetheless, I've found that if I buy the bulk of our groceries at Aldi, we are easily able to keep our costs quite low.  If I shop at the main grocery stores, my weekly cost can get out of hand pretty quickly.

Here's what I purchased:

Plus I stocked up on sparkling water since we had use of the car.  I bought 2 cases at €1.15 each.

I also usually buy a few fresh pretzels.  Total cost of 3 fresh pretzels: $1.  Using pretzels for kid bribery: priceless. 

I am able to buy most of our groceries at Aldi, but there are usually a few items each week that I go to Edeka or Rewe (larger/more expensive shops) to purchase.  For example, Aldi (in Germany) only carries one kind of shredded cheese - ementaller (a type of swiss cheese).  Since we're having pizza this week, I walked to Edeka today to buy two bags of shredded mozzarella.  Those two bags of cheese cost €3 (approximately $3.25 USD).  A bit pricey, but the pizza is totally worth it, and it's still way cheaper than ordering one for delivery.

Additionally, I buy fresh Brotchen from one of our local bakeries most days adding a little less than €1/day or around €5/week.

That brings my grand total grocery cost for the week to right around $43 USD.  That's a week's worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a family of 4 for around $1.53/person/day.  More than $29 sure, but we're also eating 4 types of meat this week (salmon, chicken, beef, and ham) which we don't always/usually do, and certainly don't need to do, especially when we want to cut costs.  I could also have purchased less fresh produce, but we like fresh produce (our kids eat it up FAST), so I like to keep plenty on hand.  I also could have saved a few cents by buying regular tomatoes and carrots instead of bio (organic), buuuuut the bio ones taste better.  Plus, Elise will sometimes help herself to an unwashed/unpeeled carrot, and buying the organic ones makes me feel better about that.  Should it?  Eh, maybe not.  Do me a favor and don't tell me if I'm wrong on this one.  Anyway, the point is that I could have cut out a bit more, but this seems to be a good balance for our family between saving money and eating well.  I have fresh rosemary, parsley, basil, and green onions on my window sill that I use most commonly for our seasonings (so long as I can manage to keep them alive).  I also have regular pantry items like olive oil, yeast, butter, coffee, jam, and dry oats that we use regularly but don't need to buy weekly (thus the fluctuation between our usual $40-$50).

Just for argument's sake, had I not bought the salmon (I bought 2 packages since we were having company for dinner on Monday) or sparkling water (both awesome but not necessary to survive for a week), I would have almost perfectly hit the $29 mark.  But hey, I love salmon and sparkling water, and it's the little things in life, guys. :)

Just to break it down a bit further, let's compare......

Produce

Gwyneth bought:
lettuce, kale, 1 ear of corn, 1 onion, 1 tomato, 1 pepper, 1 sweet potato, 1 head of garlic, green onions, 7 limes (?), cilantro, and frozen peas

Not a bad selection, but it won't come close to feeding a family for a week.

I bought:

6 apples, 5 pears, 1 bunch bananas, 1 large bag bio carrots, 1 head broccoli, 3 bell peppers, and a large bag of onions

Dairy

Gwyneth bought:
eggs

I bought:

eggs, 2 liters milk, 1 package gouda slices, 1 wedge brie, 1 container Frischkäse (cottage cheese), a large package of plain yogurt, and the 2 bags of shredded cheese (not pictured)

Meat/Protein

Gwyneth bought:
1 bag black beans  

^^I gotta say, this is a good one.  Beans aren't super popular here, and as a result they tend to be more expensive.  Definitely not the budget-friendly food they are in the US.

I bought:
1 package chicken (2 meals), 1 package ground beef, 2 packages salmon (unless we don't count the salmon to keep us at the same $29), 1 package sliced ham

Dry Goods/Misc.

Gwyneth bought:

1 bag of rice, 1 package of tortillas

I bought:
1 jar pesto, 1 jar tomato sauce, 1 can tomatoes, 1 can corn, 1 bag flour (which makes 2 weeks worth of pizza dough, 500g bag of pasta (2 meals worth), and a week's worth of fresh bread/Brotchen (not pictured)

I do try to keep our canned foods to a minimum, but Aldi's corn and tomatoes have proven to be quite good.

You can draw your own conclusions here, but my takeaway from this is that I don't feel deprived or destitute on around $29/week.  I get the point that Gwyneth was trying to make, but I think it falls short.

Some weeks we do spend a bit more, some weeks a bit less.  We've been blessed to have the flexibility in our budget to do that.  Some weeks we buy a little beer (my husband loves those weeks....and come on - we live in Germany!), and some weeks we add a bottle of wine to our cart.  We're trying to be good stewards of what we've been blessed with, and that means taking care of our family while taking care of our finances.  We're not living this way because we can't afford to spend any more on groceries, we're living this way because we don't need to spend more than that on groceries right now.  There's a difference there, and it's not something we take for granted because many people don't have that flexibility in their finances.  For a number of years WE didn't have that flexibility in our finances.  Isaac and I got married when we were fairly young (21 and 20 respectively), and we've lived our entire marriage (almost 5 years now) on only my income + whatever academic stipend Isaac has received (and he's been in school the entire time).  Just because you can spend more money on food doesn't mean you necessarily have to, and right now we'd rather put that extra money towards paying off the rest of Isaac's seminary student loan debt!

home | a new year and a new apartment tour

Originally we were planning to come to Germany for one year.  We said things like, "One year - it's an adventure! You can do anything for one year!".  However, about this time last year we totally changed our plan of heading to vicarage in July and instead decided to stay in Germany for another year.

Needless to say, we love living in Germany.  We love this lifestyle, we love our friends and neighbors, we love our community, and we're endlessly thankful for Isaac's educational opportunities here (a little more on that later).  We wouldn't have decided to stay another year if we didn't value all of those things greatly.  At the same time though, it was a very difficult, even painful, decision.  It was a decision that left me in tears for an entire day last year because I couldn't imagine being so far from our families for yet another year.  I couldn't imagine our soon-to-arrive new baby not seeing her grandparents for nearly her entire first year of life.  I couldn't imagine all the Christmas celebrations, Thanksgiving dinners, and birthday parties we would miss.  It didn't help that I was also hugely pregnant (read: hormonal) and struggling with the fact that we would be on our own, in a foreign country, for the birth of our second child in a few short months.  We had to make the decision to stay quickly, and we only had about a day to decide because the April vicarage placement service was swiftly approaching, and the seminary needed to know asap if we still wanted a placement.  Ultimately, after a full day of tears (me), prayers (both of us), and some serious logistics talks with our parents, we made the decision to stay.  However, we also decided, since we already had round trip tickets booked for our return to the US, that we would go to the US for an extended visit between the semesters.  We flew to the US in late July right after the summer semester ended.  It was a little hectic with Isaac finishing up classes, packing for an almost 3 month long trip, preparing our apartment for our extended leave, and - oh yeah - a brand new baby.  However, it all worked out pretty well in the end, and we had a fantastic visit back in the US.  In case you missed it, I wrote an update about our summer travels here.

Initially, it was also hard to not think of staying in Germany as "pushing back our finish line".  You know, that grad school finish line that everyone is aiming for.  Where you finally have a real job with a real salary instead of a barely-making-ends-meet academic stipend, and a real house instead of a 1 bedroom apartment, in a place where you hope to live for more than just a year or two.  Yet, with Isaac desiring to pursue a PhD in reformation liturgical studies immediately following his M.Div, and his research requiring a full fluency in German, we knew we were going to be in this for the long haul.  We'll probably be lucky if we get out with only 8 years of post grad.  And really, if anything, our 2 year Germany "detour" has probably pushed us a bit ahead in the grand scheme of things.  Isaac is coming out not only with a full academic fluency in German, but also hours upon hours of reading and research in original German texts that has given direction and fuel to his doctorate plans.  Our "slow and steady" route is also allowing us to focus on paying off a greater portion of our prior student loan debt since tuition in Germany is free.  So while it took a bit for me to get my brain adjusted to the idea of staying, I'm incredibly thankful that we're here.

We never thought we would have two kids in this apartment long-term, since we were planning to head back to the US when Clara was just a few weeks old.  With the change in our plans, our apartment has also transformed a bit over the past year.  As a refresher, here's what our apartment looked like shortly after we arrived almost a year and a half ago.  A family of 4 in a less-than-400-square-feet apartment is pushing the limits of family togetherness a bit, but we've figured out a few tricks to make it work.

We've rearranged our bedroom to better suit sleeping 4 people.  Thankfully our kids are both pretty heavy sleepers (usually), so we don't have much trouble with them waking each other up.  I figure it's good practice anyway since they'll probably be sharing a room for the foreseeable future!

If you remember our toy box from shortly after we arrived last year, then you can see from these photos that we've added a good assortment of toys and books to the playroom thanks to the generosity of grandparents, aunts/uncles, friends, and hand-me-downs from other expats in the community.

This little table was passed along to us from a teacher at the Frankfurt International School who was moving to Vietnam.  She also gave us Elise's toddler bed, mattress, and bedspread set.  We've been very blessed by the generosity of others during our time here in Germany!

Clara is on the move and into EVERYTHING.  I think I underestimated the utter destruction two kiddos can render on a playroom.  Also, be sure to notice Elise in the background wearing the block basket on her head.  She was saying, "Look mommy, I la la la love my hat!". These two keep us laughing!

We finally got around to hanging picture frames which we had previously avoided doing thanks to the "just one year" mentality.  We have a trio of frames in our kitchen, and I've been trading out their photos to suit the season/celebration.  It's such a small thing, but having things up on the walls has made our apartment feel more like a long-term home.  I made silhouettes of the girls back in February, and we put up this particular trio for Valentines Day.

Elise helped me make this set for Easter while Clara napped this morning.  The banner says, "Frohe Ostern" which is Happy Easter in German.

We also have a little collection of flowers and herbs that Isaac faithfully waters because he knows how much I love them (but apparently I don't love them quite enough to remember to water them).  Last year I avoided getting any plants because this was "temporary".  Who was I kidding?!  It would have been a miracle if I could have kept a plant alive for an entire year! :)  Regardless, I love having some green in our home, and Elise loves watching our flowers bloom.

IKEA has become our best friend since moving to Germany, and it's our go-to for the little organizational things we've needed to make a small space work for us.  We added these coat hooks this year upon returning to Germany, and they've been great for controlling the mass amounts of outerwear we have between 4 people.  We put one at Elise's height so she can hang up her stuff and Clara's stuff.  She loves being able to help and do things for herself!

One of the BEST things I purchased at the end of last year was a set of large vacuum seal bags!  These have been a lifesaver since we have very limited closet space (gotta love European apartments!).  The only closet in the entire apartment is in the bedroom, and all four of us share it.  We don't even have a broom closet or a hall closet for coats (thus the need for the hooks I mentioned above).  We do have a set of shallow 3 drawer office organizers that we use for some of the girl's clothing, but that's our only dresser type space.  I've been pretty vigilant about only keeping the current season's clothing (and only in the size the girls are currently wearing) actually hanging in the closet so we have enough room for everyone's items.  I still have to do something with the off-season stuff though, and the vacuum bags are perfect for keeping our items clean, protected and low-profile.  A totally full bag compresses down to barely an inch thick which means we can easily slide them under our bed, stacked in a bin.  This was especially helpful in storing all our bulky outerwear over the summer.  I went from two of the large/tall IKEA storage bins full of coats, vest, snow pants, etc. to two vacuum bags taking up a total of about 5in of vertical space under our bed!

I won't lie, as hard as it was thinking about staying, it's even harder now thinking about leaving Germany in a few more months - leaving everything we've built here and starting over again, leaving the friends who have become like family, leaving our church and community.  It's also hard not knowing if we'll actually be any closer to our families (practically speaking in terms of hours it takes to travel) than we are now.  Though I can just about guarantee it will be cheaper to visit even if it takes us about as long to get there.  We actually find out where we'll be placed for vicarage on April 27th!

So it's bittersweet - loving where we are now, but looking forward to our next step. We definitely appreciate your prayers as we start our preparations to move back to the US once we find out the location of our new home in April!  No matter where we end up though, we're pretty thrilled to at least be on the same continent as these people: