Moving is such a pain in the ass! It seems to be raining every time I even think about packing a box and I have had the pleasure of relocating four times now over the Christmas/New Year’s break. Two of those holiday moves were from one continent to another and that is its own special brand of pain and agony. The logistics of organizing such a move can be a two month long full-time job with all the phone calls, e-mails, and the complicated rules and international regulations of what can be imported and what cannot be exported… It can be maddening. With the stress of a new job or position, a new city, and a new house it becomes a time of high anxiety and hair turns gray and falls out at an expediential rate.

I accepted a job offer in Seattle, starting in early January 2009 and we started the process of arranging for our stuff to be shipped out via an ocean container ship three months ahead of that date. It took Laurel about a month of constant, everyday work to find a company to ship our goods at a reasonable rate. We didn’t go with the lowest bidder (never trust your treasured Weiß beer glasses to the lowest bidder), but they weren’t crazy expensive either. One company sent us a quote for well over $13,000 to pack, pick up, ship, and deliver all our treasured junk. That was without insurance, which would have added another $3,500! As it was the first quote we received, my heart almost stopped when I opened the e-mail from them.

Our stuff was packed and picked up just before Christmas and we spent the holidays with friends in Hamburg. We flew with about six huge suitcases and two boxes into Little Rock a couple days after Christmas. As a note, traveling with a cardboard box is humbling. Your fellow passengers at the baggage carousel look at you as you reach for your battered container like you are about to spread leprosy and back away from the belt as you manhandle the now not-so-square, not-so-together carton onto a luggage buggy (baggage handlers worldwide are “super-friendly” to boxes…)

We flew into Little Rock, Arkansas to pick up our car that I had bought the previous August on a trip to the States. One of my oldest and dearest friends, Herbert, had graciously stored for us in his garage. He may love the car more than I do and I think that he may have rubbed his naked parts on it while it sat in his garage, but I am ok with it - everyone needs some auto-love now and then. And let’s be honest, my Karma bank is in the negative when it comes to being fully clothed in other peoples vehicles. My dear friend, Matthew, had a Mercedes S-class, a truck, and an Outback that I may have been naked in more than once with my lovely bride. He MAY have even forbade me to remove any cloths in the Mercedes and I MAY have waited until he went out of town, snuck into his garage, taken all my clothes off, rolled around on his Italian leather seats, had Laurel take pictures documenting my evil, and then surreptitiously put them in a slide show of his trip pictures for him to “happen upon.” He MAY have gotten upset… Consequently, if Herbert did decide to have a Roman orgy on top of, inside, or under our Subaru it would only be the universe equalizing vibrations from my evil little soul.

We got into Seattle on Saturday before I started work on Monday – a schedule that I do not recommend. No speeding tickets for either of us, and Laurel drove a good bit of the time. Our Subaru is her first car with a standard transmission, but she is learning quickly. There was only one incident of clutch related frustration/tears on the whole drive. I was really proud of her for picking it up so quickly as a 285hp Mystery Machine is not the easiest car to learn the nuances of the clutch on.

We have been back in the US for a couple of months now and Laurel and I are good and happy to be back in the States. There has been some adjustment: the food proportions at restaurants are massive, we notice that the people here are larger than in Europe. Seattle is a “lean” city and I think it would be even more noticeable if we had moved to Atlanta or Houston. Everyone here drives everywhere – we have a Starbucks and a taco place across the street from work and people will pile in and take a 150-yard drive instead of walking across the street. I had forgotten what a free refill of coke was like and the first time it happened here I was pleasantly surprised. The high level of retail in-your-face-helpful customer service is scary. After living in Hamburg, which is a customer service wasteland, I expect the sales people to ignore me and it is weird when they are too helpful. Other than those quirks, we are adjusting OK. The sushi is great here and the beer is pretty good, though not quite up to par with the fresh Süd Deutsch stuff.

We miss a lot of things about Germany, but life is MUCH easier here for us. We go to one store for our grocery needs, we understand everything being said to us, chocolate chip cookie ingredients are super-easy to find (the brown sugar and chocolate chips in Germany are much different), bank transactions are effortless, mailing a postcard doesn’t require a slide rule, and being able to read and understand 100% of the mail is still a novel experience.

Laurel is on the hunt for a position near my job so we can carpool on days that I don’t ride to work. We have found a house 25 minutes from work via the bike path. We are really happy with both the location and the house: garage big enough for a shop, bike/kayak storage, with room left to park the car at night. Laurel is excited about the big back yard as we are planning a furry addition to our family - a French bulldog.

I really like the job and they have kept me pretty busy. Our stuff was delivered the day we moved into the house. The timing was perfect as I was starting to twitch waiting for my bikes. I wanted them under my roof so I could pet and rub them lovingly.