II.II.MMVII

We had a hard time deciding what to do for our first anniversary. On Friday, we moved into our new place. Our first shipment arrived, undamaged, in boxes. Herr was able to set up our air mattress and install light fixtures I had to buy while I worked very hard on cleaning the kitchen to put away some of our dishes.

The other major issue around our anniversary was a lack of money. I was supposed to receive an advance to pay the rent and make the move more seamless. I still have not received that advance, and so my rent and the deposit (which is an additional two months’ rent) still go unpaid as I wait for payroll to do their job.

We had picked out several beautiful places to go for our brief weekend anniversary. We were lucky to have a Saturday for our first anniversary to plan this. Some ideas we had were Stockholm with its many islands and bridges, Dublin, Leipzig (Bach’s museum), Fusson (a bed and breakfast with the Alps and Neuschweinstein castle in the background), and Salzburg (Mozart’s home town that was running a Mozart Festival).

Here’s what we actually did. We unpacked a bit before we joined my brother and Tamtam on a trip up to Ramstein. We had a large lunch at Chilis (the only one in Germany) and went to Landstuhl to shop at a large air force base for furniture. We saw a lot of nice pieces, and in the end I picked up two large rugs to cover some of the hardwood floors. In commemoration of our anniversary, one rug is green and the other is orange. Our wedding colors. Fitting them in a BMW with four people took some strategic planning.

We watched Groundhog Day while trying Caramel Sutra (it’s a Ben and Jerry’s flavor that is hard to come by) and tried out our new bath before crashing. The baths here are very deep, which is so much better. We’ll have to try the sauna soon too.

What we decided was to postpone the actual celebration of our anniversary like we did with our honeymoon. Once we’ve settled and the paperwork is taken care of, we’ll consider a place to visit to truly celebrate.