Hamburg Welcomed Us!

Germany has decided we are good enough to live there. :) After three short hours in the "Hamburg Welcome Center" we have our Visas!

Paul even walked out with a German "Green Card"! Pretty good deal for 500 euros! (...considering we spent $5000 on his American Green Card, which they just took away because we missed one appointment, this would be a WHOLE different topic!)

Here's how our German Visas worked. In case you care. :) We showed up at 9:00am at the Hamburg Welcome Center. Actually, we showed up at 8:15 and spent 45 minutes trying to park... but once we made it inside the kids played with toys and Paul went back and forth between another room and the "kid room" so I could sign when needed. After about an hour we left to get some breakfast across the street. Andrea had a full blown meltdown which was just great; she was exhausted because we had to disturb her beauty sleep that morning at the hotel... We returned back to the Welcome Center 45 minutes later and we were handed our passports with new shiny visas in them.

My favorite part of the whole deal was when we got the visas they gave us a little bag of goodies: Hamburg pens, Hamburg lanyards, Hamburg luggage tags, and some Welcome to Hamburg books in English. :) It made me happy to get the bag. The first thing I thought when I saw the bag was, "Gee in Denmark I GAVE BIRTH and I didn't get me a "Freebie Bag". So I like Hamburg because they gave me a bunch of Hamburg paraphernalia that will sit around my new Hamburg house.... it's the thought that counts.

PS. In AMERICA... when you have a baby you get a huge basket full of fruit, non-alcoholic champagne, diapers, baby clothes, bibs, free coupons, and other baby things... even a diaper bag and insulated bag for food/milk. :)

We did go check out our house again too... just to remind ourselves what it looked like. Good thing we still liked it. Michaela and Sierra made sure they wanted the rooms they picked, and Michaela traded rooms. She switched the "sink" room for the "bookshelf" room. :) ...so now Scotty has a sink in his room. We will make it a place for his boats to play. :)

I didn't remember it being so old... but it is. It's a little ghetto-y. :) BUT IT'S CLOSE TO THE SCHOOL. ...and we can make it a perfectly fine house for us. It won't look so ghetto-y once our things are in it and it doesn't look so empty. Empty houses always look sad.

We even met the owner who gave us the full story on the house which has been owned by his family forever. Here's the story... in short.

- Used to be one big house. Top floor for servants
- After war... top two floors were given to those who lost their homes... German law said if you had space you had to share.
- Then it was an apartment for three families... (hence the kitchen above)
- Then the two top "units" were combined into one for a family.

...or something like that.

Off to make a list of what we own to give to the moving company...