Odds & Ends

1. I just finished reading Ian McEwan's Atonement and am on to a second book of his called A Child in Time. I'm sure many of you have heard of Atonement since it has been made into a recent film (one that is up for some Golden Globes, I see). I have to recommend it and very highly. Some of it is set in the British retreat from Dunkirk--the way that McEwan describes what the character is seeing and experiencing is absolutely riveting. I couldn't put it down. And there's a strange sort of twist at the end, something I've not encountered before that makes the reader really think and wonder what was real and what was fiction. Hopefully the movie will live up to the book.
2. I am officially in love with all Haribo products. Haribo is a German company that makes gummi candy. It is soooooo good. And not overly sweet and hey--gummi candy doesn't have any fat! Whoo-hoo!
3. I am currently washing a load of clothes in the very nice German washer. It takes about an hour to wash one load and about three hours to dry. No, that's not a typo. I have no idea why it takes so long, but damn...these are the cleanest clothes that I have ever had!
4. Still don't know what's going on with housing. Hans is going back again today. The base commander was supposed to let people know if they could live "on the town" on Tuesday. Well, he still hasn't made up his mind, so we still don't know if we're going to be allowed. We may have to live at Robinson Barracks, which yes, we were supposed to visit yesterday--the housing office told Hans on Tuesday that we now won't be able to go over until next week. But as Hans says, "What difference does it make if the commander decides we can't live offbase?". And he's right. We don't have a choice. We have gotten confirmation now that there was one unit available on the main base that was a 1,300 SF four bedroom unit. As far as I know, someone ahead of us on the list has taken it. We'd have to wait until April to get housing on the main base. Hopefully we'll have some news today.
5. My husband is awesome. He is out there beating the pavement for us, running errands and seeing that everything important gets done. I am super-thankful to have him here with us. And he's happy now that his car is here and he can speed around on the Autobahn.
6. Hopefully, we'll have something interesting to relate later this weekend. We're going to try to go downtown to the Koenigstrasse, the big shopping street. We may not get internet in the room until Sunday or so...it is 20 EU for 24 hours, so it's a bit spendy. I'll try to post again soon.
7. Dad, your comment about the umlaut over the "u" in Kuehl intrigues me. Since technically you would pronounce an umlaut-ed "u" as something like "ewh", does that mean that everyone who pronounced Kuehl as Kew-ehl have been right all these years? All the people who got it wrong were actually getting it more right than we were? A thought to ponder....