Free as a bird…Jan 22

We rented a car today, for the weekend. A BMW no less (I was upgraded). It’s nice to be free and to go at our own pace and to have all of us comfortable and no whining. It’s nice to go to the grocery store and not have to carry 50 pounds of groceries home. It’s nice to see a forest or a castle in the distance and be there within minutes instead of figuring out how to get there on a train or being too tired to tour the place because we had to walk. It’s nice to give my knee a break. It’s nice to have Oskar out with us. Of course, there are negatives to a car, but I won’t get into it here. It feels nice to be able to get in and go, no hassle.

It’s temporary and we will enjoy it. Back to the feet on Monday. Heading east tomorrow to go to the base of the Alps to drive around some castles and hit the famous brewing monastery for lunch, Andechs. France is only 1.5 hours away and the Black Forest is just south of us, so we will try and hit those in the next few days, too, while we have this fine German machine. 

We shall see what the future holds—where I will be working, how far away it is, etc…we may end up buying or leasing a car of some type. 

In other news---all 3 of our boxes sent from Portland have all been received. It was like Christmas around here—our pillows, bed pad, toys, printer. Mayzie’s CD player! Weird how they came, though. One box arrived Tuesday…our spying, peering neighbor (same neighbor who I thought chewed me out) informed us with sign language that it was under the stairs in the basement. Another box was held at the local post office and I had to pay 8 euros to retrieve it. The third box was way out in the burbs, at the local customs depot, where I had to open it up and show them there were no illegal items in there. Glad I had the car today for those two boxes not delivered to our door. Anyways, all arrived safely!