Apparently, that last post was my 100th post! WordPress notified me after I published it. This got me thinking that the anniversary of me starting this thing was in the fall some time…yep, Sept 2. So I have been blogging for 3 years, 3 months, and 13 days.
Thanks, for wading through the sea of misspellings and grammatical errors to read about the quirky adventures of the Frost Clan.
Escape is actually a poor choice of words, Grand Island treated Gillian, Elena, and I very well and we feel incredibly guilty for leaving. We made some wonderful friends, gained amazing job experience, had a great house, and welcomed our first child in that town but both our families are in Omaha and I was give an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.
Conductix Wamplfer, a division of the Delachaux Group, yep most of that has a red squiggly line underneath it as I type, but trust me, it is spelled correctly.
This unpronounceable French American German conglomerate is what has brought us back to Omaha…brought us home.
Not only am I working for a tongue twister of a company, I am also working in an industry that is completely new to me. My title is Development Engineer, working in our Transit Division. Transit as in trains, but more specifically I develop electrified conductor rail systems that power people movers like monorails and subway trains….yea, a little different than farm equipment.
I will spare everyone the technical details, but I will say that I really do enjoy my new job, it will allow me to use my PE license and hell we have a 3D printer!!
So after we landed, and found Brandon and Erika, and I stopped drooling over the cars (Ok, I never stopped drooling over the cars) one thing became obvious, Germany is very old. Dan would argue that we only saw the Bavarian part of Germany and that the rest of Germany is not like that. I can only blog what I have seen, so I will stick with Germany is old, but that is not a bad thing.
The plan to help us acclimate to the time change was to have Brandon and Erika tour us around Munich immediately after we got off the plan and then bring us back to their house for dinner and keep us awake until about 8 pm. It was a good plan and as Linda, Gillian, Elena, and I stepped off the plane we were all raring to go, at least I know I was and Elena was running back and forth under the ropes leading up to customs so I know she was as well. We got through customs surprisingly quickly, grabbed our bags and headed out to where Brandon and Erika were going to pick us up. They funny thing about going to a foreign country is when you get there your cell phone doesn’t work and when your ride is running late they really have no way of telling you that they are stuck in a “stau“. So I waited there with three women that were all starting to get hungry and when Gillian gets hungry she starts to get a little impatient, this was a trait she inherited from her mother and passed on to her daughter…lucky me.
So in an attempt to do something and to get away for a group of women that would surely start yelling at me for no reason any minute, I took my laptop and wondered off to find wifi. I had an e-mail with Brandon’s cell number, I am not sure what calling to tell him we are here was going to achieve, he knew we were here, but again this was more of a self preservation move than anything. So after signing up with T-mobile in German and paying 6 euro for an hour of internet, which I think is like $130 US, I got Brandon’s number and made my way to the pay phone. Now, I am not sure I could operate a pay phone in States successfully, if I could even find one, but trying to do it in German was a futile effort at best. First off phones don’t ring in Germany they beep, so when I put my credit card in and dialed the number and pressed the button that I thought looked the most like “send” I got a few beeps then nothing. I also wasn’t sure how many of these numbers I had to dial since I was not calling from the States. Anyway, after some struggling then an overly gestured conversation between Linda and a pair of shockingly attractive female police officers, I was able to get the phone to do the German version of ringing only to get the voicemail of a very husky sounding German man that was not Brandon.
Two minutes later Brandon and Erika should up, so I had accomplished nothing but entertaining the ladies for about 30 minutes.
At this point the plan was back on track and we made our way the parking lot to put our bags in the car, this is where I saw the true beauty of Germany…it’s cars. Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches for as far as the eye could see and these where German spec cars, so they are just better than the ones we can get in the States. Those watching the Flickr updates may have noticed a lot of pictures of cars, some parked in garages, some on the street and some in museums, the later being the topic of another post, if you don’t understand why I was doing this then let me enlighten you. Germany does many things well, beer, chocolate, scary sounding dialect but first and for most is das auto! Nowhere else are they making all wheel drive, manual transmission, wagons designed to go 155mph and that 155 mph is electronically governed because any faster and the windshield wipers rip off…or something. I will be honest I am a bit of a BMW fanboy, we bought Gillian our BMW about 5 years ago and about two years ago it became mine, thanks Elena! Even though it is nearly 8 years old I still prefer my all wheel drive, manual transmission, German sports sedan to nearly everything new coming out of Japan, Korea, Italy and the Unites States. In Germany though my car would be nothing, about as boring and common place as a Toyota Camry. German cars are just better, except any new Volkswagen. Hell, even the “American Cars” built in Germany are better. Brandon rented a Ford Galaxy, no not a mid-60s sedan, it was a minivan with manual transmission and a diesel engine, and it would go at least 120mph! Why can’t I get one of those here in the states, I mean it is a Ford.
Okay, so this was supposed to be a post about our first day in Munich and I really only got to the parking lot of the airport and then made a hard left into a rant about cars, that never happens, so Munich will be the next post. I’ll give you a little taste though, Munich is where I learn the word “Dunkel”…though I had a hard time remembering it.
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My biggest concern about our trip to Germany wasn’t the cost, it wasn’t foreign language, it wasn’t even sauerkraut, I hate sauerkraut, it was the nine hour flight with a one year old that has a reputation for being “busy”.
This should be a post about Gillian, Elena, Linda and I’s trip to Germany to visit Brandon and Erika and Dan and Ines, but it is not.
The Friday before we left for Germany I had a job interview with a company in Omaha called Conductix Wampfler, no I didn’t make that name up. Three days before coming home I was offered the job, via e-mail. After spending the last three days of our trip a bit stressed out over the decision we had to make, I accepted the job. This job is a great opportunity to further my career and use my professional license, it gets us to Omaha, where we have wanted to live for some time now, and it is an increase in pay. The only problem is the news of moving to Omaha has completely over shadowed our trip to Germany.
I promise on the next few posts I will get into the details of our trip with all the run-on sentences and poor grammar you have come to love.
So needless to say we are selling our house, commuting is just not an option! So if there is anyone in the Grand Island area looking for a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch on the Southeast side of town, do I have the house for you!!
Gillian has started her job search as well and managed to line up three job interviews last Friday! This is why I had to find a job first, Gillian is in much higher demand. All three interviews went very well and I would not be surprised if she has three job offers next week.
Now we just need to sell our house (seriously buy our house!) and buy a new one…easy right?
Until I can get to blogging about our trip, head over to Erika’s Blog she put together a post about her hectic July, which has a nice summary of our trip. As always I have hundreds of photos of the trip in my sets of Flickr.
Ok, so it was almost a month ago now (we have been a bit busy), but on June 30th 2011 our daughter celebrated her first birthday. We planned the party for Sunday the 3rd of July the day after the Frost 4th of July Extravaganza which was held on the 2nd, there was a little confusion about that in the beginning. The 4th on the 2nd was a good time as always but more people actually showed up for Elena’s party the next day, she is quite popular apparently. Hosting a one-year-olds birthday party was yet another adventure in parenting. Honestly, I think Gillian did most of the work but when it came to the toys, assembly is a Dad’s job. I had plenty to assemble too, a baby doll stroller, a water table and a little red car (Mark and Linda helped) all needed to be assembled…while Elena and her friends where trying to play with them. It adds an extra challenge when the parts and pieces and tools keep “wandering off”. Despite the fact that Elena was not feeling well, I think she had a good time or at least that is what I will tell her when she is older. As a thank you for everyone coming to her party, Elena gave nearly everyone a present of their own…the stomach flu. Thanks to everyone that came to celebrate our daughter’s special day and sorry for the rough Monday.
Elena’s first birthday, Forth of July, Two weeks in Germany, two international flights with a one-year-old and an epic amount of jet lag. Stay tuned for all of this and more but for now my brain and my hands are not working very well together.
I know we have been to Omaha and Lincoln a number of times and even out to Denver once as a family, but our trip last week to The Outer Banks of North Carolina is what I am calling our first family vacation and not only a vacation but an adventure, an adventure in parenting.
This is where you read about Gillian and me trying not to fail at life. I will probably be doing most of the failing, it's inevitable.
Frozenrobot 