Rescue helicopter

Last Saturday the rescue helicopter landed just in front of our house. They were away pretty quick again, so I am hoping it was nothing too serious.

The helicopter is stationed on a little airfield on the other side of Jena, pretty close to the main hospital. It has been here since 1994 and made about 10000 flights (source: Christoph 70). The main use for the helicopter is to get a doctor as quickly as possible to an emergency. The helicopter seems to be too small to do patient transports.

First barbeque of the year

Last Friday Julia and Jeremi came by for the first barbeque of the year. Jeremi specially brought the same clothes that he had on at one of the barbeques last year to make a nice picture. This will also allow him to updates his Facebook picture :-) The weather was not so nice though as last year's picture though. It was about 8 degrees...no problem though for a real Viking-Canadian like Jeremi.

Talking about Vikings. Jeremi should be in Bully sucht die starken Männer. A sort of American Idol for seeking a Viking to play in a movie.

Professional photos: Susanne's attempt

Susanne shot this rainbow on April 13th from our kitchen.

Potsdam

On the way back from Berlin Susanne and I went by Potsdam to check out the place. We always thought it was an example of Soviet town planning. Nothing of this is true. The town has very nice old buildings, lots of streetside cafes and is just a nice place to be. The nice sunny weather also helped :-)

The center of town is actually not so big...not too many shops. Here Jena has more to offer, but look at this miniature Paris picture:

The Netherlands is also present in Potsdam. There is a Dutch quarter which has been built by Dutch workers in the 1700's. I felt so much at home there. It really looks Dutcher than Dutch:

Berlin

In the weekend of 12 and 13 April we went to visit Susanne's parents...in Berlin! They were on a short trip with Susannes mothers sisters and husbands. Since we have been to Berlin once before with Julia and Jeremy (and Brandy and Bruce) we could give them a quick overview tour of Berlin. They were happy to get dragged along town :-)

After Susannes father and I had a curry-wurst we needed a resting break. Here Susanne, her mother and her father waiting for the rest of us.

When we got at the Brandenburger Tor (in the background) there was a strike/demonstration going on. It were the chimney cleaners all in fancy outfits shouting their slogan "Plus is muss": a plus (in wage) is a must. We had some coffee outside at Starbucks where we had a nice view on what was going on.

When we were about to leave 5 people came that played the yellow/orange puppet. They were actually pretty good in making gestures and making fun with people.

Then we went to Checkpoint Charlie. Here the two must-have pictures. One of the checkpoint itself and one of the sign saying "You are leaving the American sector". Note how small it is written in German at the bottom (below Russian and French).

More snowy pictures

The winter was not much of a winter here in Jena. The snowiest picture I could make is here (picture taken March 18th):

The snow stayed for about a week. We live just under 400 meters elevation. In Jena itself (150m) there was really not a whole lot. By the way, here you can see the finished house some people decided to build in our view to Leuchtenburg (castle on a hill about 25km south) :-)

When we were in Denmark with Easter there was a little bit more snow. Especially when we left back home heading for Jena:

This picture was taken March 25th in Marielyst, Denmark. It was actually not a huge problem to back the car out of the driveway again. 

We drove slowly to the ferry in Gedser and on the other side in Rostock the snow was gone and the sun was shining (sort of):

Short skiing trip

To surprise Susanne for her birthday, we went on a short skiing trip in Oberwiesenthal, about 2 hours southeast from Jena on the border with the Czech Republic from 15-17 February. There was enough snow on the mountain (the Fichtelberg) where we were. As you can see ion the picture below looking towards the rest of Germany there was not much snow elsewhere.

I had never stood on skis before, so we decided to hire a teacher for a couple of hours. She did her best to teach me the beginnings. It went pretty good and I certainly want to go again.

Here are the best two winter-outfit pictures of Susanne and me:

Winterlinge

Here in Jena, every early spring people will go out to catch a glance of the Winterlinge; a small yellow flower that grows between the trees. See Julia and Jeremy's blog for more information.

We were there with Tanja, Janna and Uli and lots of other people :-)

The pictures were taken on February 10th 2008 in Rautal, Jena.

Professional photos made easy

With a landscape and a sunrise like this, it is easy to make a professional looking photograph :-)

Taken on February 11th 2008 from our apartment in Cospeda.

Berlin

I efteråret var vi i Berlin sammen med Julia og Jeremy og to af deres venner fra Canada (Bruce og Brandy). I Canada er der åbenbart en eller anden uskreven regel om at man kun kan danne par med folk hvis navn starter med det samme bogstav. Undtagelsen er selvfølgelig Julias bror og hans kone. De hedder Chris og Karen... men det lyder jo som det samme bogstav!! Hmmm...

I hvert fald var det en fed tur. Masser at se, Berlin kan klart anbefales. Og maden vi fik på denne tyrkiske restaurant var bare fantastisk - ikke noget at sige til at vi smiler. På billedet ses fra venstre Bruce's hånd, Calin, Jeremy, Julia og Susanne. Det var Brandy der tog billedet.

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In the fall we were in Berlin together with Julia and Jeremy and two of their friends from Canada (Bruce and Brandy). Apparently in Canada there is this rule that you can only couple with people whose first name begin with the same letter as your own. The exception is off course Julias brother and his wife. They are called Chris and Karen... hey wait a minute, that sounds like the same letter!! Hmmm...

Anyway, the trip was amazing. Loads to see, we can clearly recommend Berlin. And the food we had in this turkish restaurant was fantastic - so off course we are smiling. In the picture you see from the left: Bruce's hand, Calin, Jeremy, Julia and Susanne. Brandy took the picture.

Pictures from our apartment

So, our apartment is finally finished. The workers are still working on the last apartment and there is also some other stuff that needs to be done, but our place is looking good! We also got a long way with decorating the place, although there are some boxes still left unpacked. Here are some picture that Susanne's mom took. She actually tidied up each place for the picture and then moved excess stuff to another room, etc. etc. :-)

Our terrace with a view on the nature area and Susanne's mother drinking coffee.

Our new terrace furniture with Susanne's dad.

Our guest room bed, which is also a couch.

Susanne's father cooking in our kitchen (unrealistic!).

Our living room, the kitchen is to the left, the terrace outside the windows.

Our bedroom.

The hallway (it only looks so tidy on this picture...)

The bathroom.

For viewing the rest and from all angles, please stop by!

Our beautiful plant

We could not bring one of our plants. The was simply not any suitable space left for it in the van. Normally it is just green, but look what happens when Susanne's mother takes care of it:

We sleep well!

So we finally have our own place here in Jena. We picked up the keys last Friday morning. Friday afternoon we drove to Denmark, to Susanne's parents. There we could rest a bit before the big movement weekend. On Saturday we drove to Copenhagen and there we packed all our stuff, plus we got rid of a lot of stuff at the recycling station. Then, the next day we got some help from Mikkel, Ebbe and Sveinn, and together we carried all the stuff down from the third floor and filled up the rented truck. We ended up loading it pretty efficient and almost used all of our 13 m3. After a night over at Susanne's parents on the way back, we arrived at our new place Monday late in the afternoon. We packed out half of our stuff and I reassembled the bed. We slept good after all the hard work! On Tuesday, Dennis and Julia came to help to carry up the rest of our furniture. In the afternoon we picked up our stuff that we already had in Jena, it was stored at Julia's place. There we got some help from Rona. Since, Tuesday was a holiday here in Germany, one of the restaurants in Cospeda had put their grill outside and served nice meat, bratwurst and cold beer. We thought we had deserved this and sat down a little while. Thereafter we took a tour in our new backyard (a nature reserve). We went to bed early and slept incredibly well again :-) Now slowly everything is getting right, but there is still lots of decoration to do. Also missing: our terrace floor, which should be built on Monday.

Thanks to everyone that helped us moving!!!

Still waiting for our apartment...

We already decided on an apartment a couple of months ago. It is a nice apartment in a town on top of a hill just outside Jena. It is just next to a nature reserve and has great views. Especially from the big terrace. When we visited it back then, the apartment was not done yet. The outside was pretty much done, but the whole interior needed to be built.

Our apartment is the middle one on the right.

We could see that this would take a while, but thought we could move in at the beginning of April. It became clear to us that this wouldn't happen. We did visit the place and took some pictures.

This is our kitchen/living room. The kitchen is red yes, but it is actually kind of nice with a bit of color against the white walls. There are missing some electric installations and the change between the tiles and the rest of the floor.

This is a view on our 15m2 terrace. It is facing directly south and has a good view. The floor is still missing on this picture. All windows have these metal shutters on the outside.

This is the other living room. Here the status of the doors can be seen (or not seen, because they are missing).

All-in-all there isn't that much missing:

• Some electrical work
• Placement of bath, sink, toilet
• All doors on the inside
• Terrace floor
• Some other small things like list between the floors and the walls at some places.

so we hope to move in at May 1st.

Now we are online!

Hello everybody.
So we finally got our blog started. Here you will be able to find pic's and pieces of our lives here in Jena, Germany. We first moved here about 5 months ago when Susanne got a ph.d. position at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, but since it takes a while to get settled and such we didn't get around to it until now. So hopefully in the next week or so we will get you all updated on our experiences with german living so far. Have fun with it.

Calin and Susanne