The weather has been unbelievably hot here in Germany this summer. (getting up to the high 90's). Now when we were back in the US I'd think "Ugh.. its so hot as i walk from my air conditioned house, to my air conditioned car, to drive to the air conditioned movie theater/mall/restaurant/etc". Wellllll... boy was I in for a surprise by moving here! Air conditioning?? That's what Germany calls a nice breeze. And your lucky if you get that
Andrew and I travelled to Berlin Easter weekend which also coincided with Andrew's Birthday! (April 2nd). The great thing about Germany is we get off the Friday before and the Monday after Easter, which makes for a perfect little birthday getaway. I also have to add in, we just happened to time it PERFECTLY and we bought and picked up our new VW Golf only days before this trip.
So it has officially been two months of us living in Germany. Quite a few things have happened in those two months! We have bought a new car (a speedy little VW Golf), and I've learned how to drive a manual (ehh... i'm still learning), found an apartment in Nuremberg, been to IKEA about 4 times (each at least 6 hour trips), put together countless amounts of IKEA furniture, received all of our belongings from the boat shipment, and officially moved into our apartment (separate blog post to follow about that experience!).
And you'd figure within those two months of "settling in", things would start to feel a bit more normal as Americans living in Germany, but there are still funny things that surprise us every day. So I wanted to do a follow up of "My first impressions of our first week in Germany", with some more interesting oddities that we've come across.
Finding an apartment in Germany of course, was not as simple as we expected. This past year we spent countless hours watching "International House Hunters" in hopes to prepare us for this experience. We promised ourselves we would not be "that" couple... you know the one who has a huge house in Texas and wants an apartment in the middle of Paris, and is appalled that their budget can only afford a studio apartment? We went into this apartment search with a little bit of knowledge of what to expect, but of course there were some interesting learnings.
For our last weekend in the US before we moved our lives to Germany, we wanted to spend it in Boston.
We stayed in the beautiful Langham Hotel, which was perfect because we were able to walk around the entire city with ease. We only planned one night in Boston, expecting to fly out Sunday, Feb 15, but due to Boston's crazy snow our flight was cancelled and we had another free day to roam the city!
One of my new favorite ways to bring vegetables into my routine is by doing the oh-so-trendy "green smoothie". Green smoothies are basically any type of smoothie where you add in some sort of vegetable (spinach, kale, etc). But the veggies on their own aren't the tastiest, so it's always a good idea to add some fruit to liven it up (Green Apple, Banana, Kiwi, etc).
The recipe I am writing about actually turns out to be a "red smoothie" because of the beets. Beets are SUPER healthy, and is one of the sweeter vegetables. You can also use the "greens" that are attached to the fresh beet. (we've made salads with it).
