Arrived in Germany!

Multiple delays in Dallas later, I finally arrived at Frankfurt au Main yesterday at 8:45am local time after a ten hour flight.  I found Brooke at the airport, and she and Nate drove me to their home an hour south of Frankfurt in the tiny village of Horbach.  Horbach is outside of a bigger town called Kaiserslautern, all of which is in the Rhine Valley.

It's absolutely beautiful here.  The land is wooded with lots of rolling hills, and there acres and acres of vineyards.  The tiny towns are very picturesque with all of the houses clustered together on narrow streets, usually centered around a tiny church with a bell tower.  Horbach is no different.  Nate and Brooke live on a hill, and when you step out onto the big deck off of the kitchen, the town is sprawled out underneath.  It's breathtaking.

Yesterday on the way home from the airport, we stopped and I had my first German lunch... scnhitzel.  It was delicious.  After we drove to the house, Nate went back to work at Ramstein Air Force Base.  I took a nap, and when Brooke woke me up, we took her car to drive to the base to meet Nate for lunch.  To make a long story shorter, we couldn't get onto the base because of a drill, and then we ended up with a flat tire.  Hours later, Nate and his friend Greg finally were able to change it, and we went home and I went to bed.

This morning, Brooke and I were able to get a long term visitors pass for me to get onto Ramstein.  That's where all of the military people do most of their shopping, etc.  There's a commissary, which is a grocery store, the BX (base exchange), which is kind of like a Walmart and JC Penny combined, along with a food court with lots of American eateries.  The base is huge, and I'm sure we'll explore more of it later.

After we met Nate at the base for lunch, Brooke and I went home and watched Glee.  Very German of us, I know.  Nate came home a while later, and we've spent the evening eating dinner, talking (a lot), and playing Kinect on the xbox.

We've been talking about the trips we're going to take while I'm here... lots of small day trips and definitely a five day trip to Paris in June.  I can't wait to see France.  This weekend, we're going to drive to Wissembourg, France, which is about a half hour away from here.  I'm so excited!

Off to bed, more tomorrow!  Tschüss!

Annie