Richard Wad

Back to the story...

May 21st, No more driving.

In the morning, we all went downtown to town hall, because we had to register our address with the local authorities (everyone does within a week). Then we all went to a cute little hotel restaurant where we enjoyed some nice schnitzel and some Hawaiian toast thing and good soup. This was also the beginning of trying to order a regular glass of water. This is actually quite difficult, because, for the most part, all of the water you order at a restaurant has "gas" in it. That's ok for me and Erika, but Jodi can't stand it, and it's a little 'spicy' still for Reese. Anyway, after lunch, we went back to town hall to get our visas renewed - the ones we got in Canada were only for entrance. This was very, very painful. The international office was a hallway of doors, and you were split into different groups based on the starting letter of your last name. There was two doors for S's but one was closed for the day so we all got lumped together. Of course, all the people with S last names had to show up on our day, or so it seemed. The hallway was stifling and small and crammed. We gave Mom a break for the afternoon and brought Reese with us, which wasn't the best decision, as the wait turned into about 2.5 hours. The actual visa process was pretty easy, but of course costed another 150 euros out of our pocket. We had to ski-daddle (yup, ski-daddle) over to the Budget rental to take our car back and meet our personal translator (thanks again Martin) so we could explain that only part of the car was being returned. The beefy (as in built, think stereotypical Arnold-German-woman) was really nice and Martin made the situation a breeze. And we just smiled and nodded. And signed stuff. This all after we showed up late and left Martin standing on the curb for 30 minutes while we drove back to our place to get an extra diaper or something. Actually I think it was for the police information that we forgot. It also gave us a chance to drop Mom off with the kids at home again. Thanks Mom! So, we were now car-less, and Jodi and I had a romantic walk back through the industrial area of Freiburg. We bought a coffee from some random wooden shack along the way and marveled about the past few days and how crazy things had been. Little did we know this was only the beginning... We then had some meat and cheese and buns for supper (spreadable meat this time, mm-hmm. Actually, no it wasn't). So ends Day 3 in Freiburg. Ahhh, home sweet home:

More updates tomorrow.

Jodi and Jeff