Busy Shopping
We got a lot done today. Tom and Brennan’s visa’s are expiring at the end of the month so we had to go to the German passport office. They have the strangest hours. 8-12 Mon through Friday with Thursday’s also from 2-6PM. Since Brennan is in school in the mornings, we only have one day we can get there while they are open. This is one of the hardest things for Americans to adjust to here I think. Businesses and government offices just aren’t open for as many hours as they are in the USA. Many businesses close down for weeks or even an entire month in the summer so the whole company can go on vacation!
Tom’s new permission to stay will be his permanent one! Brennan will have permission to stay indefinitely but it’s a bit different than Tom’s. While Tom’s is a permanent EU residency, similar to a US green card, Brennan will have permission to stay in Germany only. If he leaves Germany for more than six months, he has to coordinate with the passport office.
iPhone
We finally got to T-Punkt to figure out what to do about replacing Brennan’s stolen iPhone. We brought our original iPhone with us fortunately as the replacement would have cost 400 or 500 Euro!!! Ouch! They gave us a replacement SIM card that works in the old iPhone so we only had to buy a protective case for it for 10 Euro. Brennan loses GPS as this is the first version of iPhone. I think he’s happy he has ANY phone. He can still play games and surf the web but not with 3G. Anything is better than nothing though!
Sea Food For Dinner – Mussels!
NordSee-Fish
Since we were downtown, we were near the only decent seafood place in the area. Even that isn’t the greatest selection, but it’s the best we have. We were thinking of salmon but we asked if they had mussels and they did! I checked the date and they expire in four days, so they are pretty fresh. We bought four kilograms! All of us like Mussels, even Merlin!
Crocs
While we were looking for Brennans’ judo outfit, I discovered some Crocs. I’ve heard a lot about them, I’ve seen people wearing them too. My old slippers are starting to rip apart, and I’ve been thinking about replacing them with something more practical for in the kitchen. The slippers I have, are felt lined, which causes some trouble working in the kitchen.
Gaby's Crocs
I tried them on and it took me less than 10 seconds to decide that these are the ones I want. If I spill flour on them, I just have to rinse them off. If I spill veggies on them, I happily pick them up and return them back to my cutting board. No one knows, so who cares? That’s the secret extra flavor sometimes!
I’m very happy with them, and started to take shorter steps just to enjoy them more in less time.
I don’t think they are safe to wear in a commercial kitchen. I would rather enjoy my horse riding boots with steel toes.
Death of a Department Store
Karstadt-RIP
Karstadt is was the biggest department store in Kaiserslautern. We heard some rumors that it was going to close soon. They closed the doors to their customers yesterday.
It gives you a strange feeling, when all of sudden, you see these closed doors, and behind it the empty shelves and counters… I don’t know what happened to the business, but it’s sad to see them leaving.
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