What a Week!

So here we are, one week in. It's been quite a busy, exciting, frustrating, and fun week. From where I left off last time, we did do a bus+boat tour on Friday. We really like and recommend bus tours when new to a city because it's the easiest way to get acquainted and see a lots of different areas and how they fit together. This tour was good and the guide did most of it in English and the parts he only said in German Benoit could interpret for me. After the bus we had lunch at an "imbiss" which are ubiquitous fast food snack bars located throughout the city (and country). We both had mini fish sandwiches and a beer, though I had cooked fish and Benoit had marinated herring filet that he's been talking about for weeks.

Fried Fischbrötchen and Matjes Brötchen (little bread/roll) from the imbiss.

 The boat tour was an add-on bundle and really interesting though by the afternoon it turned cold, cloudy, and very windy. The boat tour was also only in German and Benoit could not hear much so we mostly just looked at things. Afterwards we were quite cold from the 2 hour open air boat tour so we stopped by a coffee shop for some Kasekuchen and lemon cake with coffee. They also had incredible looking gelato!

Some random photos from the rest of the afternoon:

Frozen Turkey! 

Post woman's bike! So cool the Germans deliver mail by bike.

Saturday morning started with a trip to a small but incredible outdoor market close to where we're staying. We bought veggies, meat, cheese, fish, and fruit! I loved how the mushrooms were packaged for us:

Benoit bought these by the "handful." He asked the vendor how to say, "I'd like a handful of mushrooms" and she said, "das hand-full!"  

We bought some things to make a chicken soup and also for lunch because we had a special guest! Benoit's friend Damien from uni was in town for the weekend with work so we got to see him Saturday and Sunday! Here's the 3 of us close to our apartment.

Damien, me, Benoit

 After lunch we walked around the city and headed west to check out Altona and Ottensen which are neighborhoods we're thinking about living in.

The street in St. Pauli red light district where women are not allowed.

 Saturday night we went to a Halloween party put on by one of Benoit's colleagues. We saw lots of kids out and about trick -or- treating and we were both really surprised by how into Halloween folks are here. Sunday we were lucky enough to get to go on a road trip with Damien North East to the Baltic Sea and to Lübeck. Our first stop was a beautiful little beach town on the Baltic Sea, Timmendorfer Strand.

Lunch was more Matjets for 2 of 3 of us, I'll let you guess who didn't eat it. :) 

Fall exists in Germany! Not as vibrant as NE but still pretty good!

 After lunch we headed to Lübeck where Damien left us and he continued on to his next location. Benoit and I walked around the downtown for a few hours before taking the train back to Hamburg. Some photos of Lübeck, a beautiful city that we will be returning to, plus it's only 45 mins on the train!

"Texas has nothing on Germany." - Benoit

Monday was Benoit's first day back to work but we went to register with the government first thing. Benoit's HR woman met us at the "Welcome Center" to help us which was really nice because a new rule went into effect that morning so we were all a little unsure if we'd be able to register. Everything turned out in the end and I have an appointment to go back in January to register myself for permanent residency because I'm not a EU citizen. Benoit enjoyed his first few days back and I've been getting back in my "housewife" mode. There's still lots of paperwork to do and apartment searching as well. I've been leaving the apartment and talking to people in German everyday so it's getting less nerve racking to buy bread, but I still feel really lost sometimes. My language class starts in 2.5 weeks and it feels so far away. Hopefully time will fly by and while I'm at class I bet I wished that I wasn't. ha. It was much colder this week than last and really really foggy for 2 days - more so than SF which surprised us. We're both on the look-out for winter coats, hats, gloves, and Benoit might even go for a scarf. To end on a high note, I was running an errand at the main train station yesterday and look what I found!?

The pride of Eastern MA in Hamburg, Germany!