Happy 4th of July!

Well after 2 months and couple of days...we are finally reunited with our furniture.


At the end of this week Whit and I finally received our furniture, or household goods (HHG) for you military types. Furniture delivery in France is like a roller coaster. On Wednesday morning Whit sat on the floor waiting patiently for the movers to arrive as scheduled, but they never did. So after an animated discussion with the shipping company Wednesday afternoon, we agreed to a delivery Thursday for some furniture and Friday for the rest. Thursday comes and no delivery truck, of course... Why not? Well, the story was that the truck broke down in Paris. All was well though, when the furniture finally arrived at 6:30 PM. And Friday, our luck continued when the second delivery was on time. We worked all afternoon......Whit unpacked the kitchen and I set up the office. I think we both finally feel like we are actually living in Strasbourg now as opposed to just on a really long vacation.


PS. The Celica arrived in one piece as well. She will be taking her inaugural international drive next weekend when we go to the base in Germany to stock up on some tax-free staples.

Saturday morning we awoke to an apartment full of boxes that desperately need unpacking and organizing, but we decided that we needed to celebrate the 4th with a little more excitement than that. So, we left the boxes and hopped on our bikes for a ride to Germany. (It sounds more impressive than it is..... Germany is only 10 k or so from our apartment.) It turned out to be a great day and totally worth the 30 minutes of convincing that it took me to drag Whitney away from her compulsive desire to organize. We rode across the "Bridge of Europe" which you might recognize from Obama's trip here for the NATO summet. He walked across it with Sarkozy and Merkel during his visit to Strasbourg. It is a really beautiful bridge with parks on either side and is a symbol of the post-war reconciliation between France and Germany.


The bike paths that originate in the German park go on for miles past beautiful corn-fields like this one.


The park even has a huge tower built with lumber from local trees that offers a beautiful view of Strasbourg and Kehl.


Of course, Whitney wanted to climb it. I sucked it up and climbed it with her, despite the fact that it was swaying with the breeze a little bit too much for comfort.



After a morning of riding, we were ready for lunch and a beer, so we rode into the town of Kehl, Germany. In addition to a delicious lunch and a refreshing beer, we also discovered a random beach volleyball tournament. It was strange to watch because they were playing American pop music and it was easy to imagine that we were actually back in the states.




We ended our 4th with a night on the town in Strasbourg. We ate a traditional Independence day meal of Indian food.



And we finished with a stroll through the city center.



We will update the blog soon with a couple of posts from the cruise and hopefully, some pics of our apartment post-unpacking.