Sometimes there are no speed limits ...

The appliances are really small compared to their US counterparts ...

You need to find translations to operate the machinery ...

You spend A LOT of time using Google Translate ...

The sleeping arrangements are semi-romantic ...

They have sites that have been around since before The U.S. was a nation ...

So the week was full ... We toured the school campuses, opened a bank account, walked through grocery stores, drove the autobahn and had beautiful coffees and pastries ...

And ... We hunted houses.

There were nine options ... Nine!

Some were cookie cutters of every other house on the block. 👎

Some were in little expat enclaves. 👍👎

Two had bidets (a surprising draw for our quirky nine-year-old.) 👍

One had a full sauna in the basement (but also boasted architecture from the era of the Brady Bunch.) 👎

Two were within walking distance of the international school (a perk we have celebrated back at The Bungalow.)👍

We've somehow managed to narrow it down to our top two.

And we are TORN!

Hands down we all love our first choice the best ... The girls have taken the to calling it "The Dream House" ... But we struggle with the location being further from the schools (there is no school bus service).

Our second choice is a three minute walk to the elementary campus, and right on a tram stop ...

Both have beautifully landscaped private yards ...

We are weighing the pros and cons ...

(Would I rather be crowded in the "tram stop" kitchen and have the girls walk to school, OR have more space in general and spend my mornings shuttling to school & my afternoons managing the pick up schedules of after school activities x3?)

Herr Johnson's commute is shortened if we live in "The Dream House" but the girls would get a 20 - 25 minute commute ...

(Although our oldest will get her U.S. Driver's license before we relocate, she cannot get a German license until she is 18, so the option of having her drive ... Which would be a great American solution is mute ... in the land where 16 year olds can legally consume wine, but cannot drive alone.)

We are stuck, but only in a first-world-probs kind of way. We could live in any of the nine we saw!

We are excited to figure out where our addy in Deutchland will be 🏠

This post has camped out in a the back of my mind since last fall ... 

The one where I say we are moving ... 

Abroad ... 

Again ...

The post that in the earliest months of our repatriation from China I had hoped would come sooner rather than later.  During those long and arduous months when we wrestled with the emotions we felt about re-entering our home culture I actually longed to get back on foreign soil (if only to feel the adrenaline rush that comes with living so differently than we do here now.) 

But gradually, over time (it did really take every minute of the 18 months most repatriation guides suggest), we slipped back into our home culture.

We put down roots, we joined clubs, we re-established relationships and began new ones. We started new hobbies, honed old interests, and finessed a new appreciation for a zip code we've known twice. We cultivated an interest in our rural community and life style, whist simultaneously taking advantage of living in such close proximity to the Windy City.

And so, when the call came to consider a relocation to Europe, the urgency that I felt four years ago had waned. We wrestled anew with what an international assignment would mean. Leaving our home, our community, our friendships, family, schools and church ... 

Again ... 

We always new that we would say yes if the chance came again. We told ourselves and each other ... 

And so today we step out on a new adventure ... Flying out of ORD to Amsterdam, renting a car and driving to Germany, and spending a week in Düsseldorf house hunting & school searching and getting ready to live abroad ...

Again 

"It's hard to believe it's only been one day!" - EHJ

It's true. It's hard to believe that just 24 hours ago we were leaving The Bungalow for our official LOOK/SEE Visit.

In the space of those moments we::

• drove to ORD

• valeted 

• printed our own luggage tags at a kiosk (Side note ... What is airline travel coming to? You do everything on your own these days, and while the prices aren't dropping the level of service seems to be!)

• boarded an ancient 767 ✈️ (Between the five of us we had two middle seats, one broken reading light, two broken headsets & a broken tv monitor ... See rant above.)

• we had an uneventful (which is the best kind of) trip ... In eight short hours we traveled from The Windy City to an even windier one ... Amsterdam 

• we got our bags, located our rental car and headed south to the Kinderdijk Windmills (an UNESCO World heritage site). https://www.kinderdijk.com/area/unesco-world-heritage-windmills-kinderdijk

{The Windmills proved fascinating, despite the gale force winds and overcast skies ... And the fact we were touring these 500 year old structures at what felt to our bodies like 3:30 am.}

• we spent equal amounts of Euro coinage on coffees and paying to use the toilets as we crossed from The Netherlands into Deutschland

• Upon arriving in Germany I got to sample the autobahn experience (again an adventure complicated by jet lag.)  

• When we arrived in our apartment in Düessdorf we were all content to crash on the soft furniture, log into wifi & allow the effects of jet lag to finally wash completely over us ...

• tomorrow we explore Düsseldorf 🇩🇪

The April team is celebrating.

This weekend found us in Wicker Park brunching alfresco in honor of Bei Bei turning nine.

It was cool, and the sky was gray ... Mr Johnson lamented wearing short socks & Bei Bei quickly decided it was better to leave her jacket on ...

But somehow being outside, with the Sears (Willis) Tower visable, in the midst of a quaint urban setting felt right to all of us.

After a charming meal @ Prasinos, we headed over to Lincoln Park for a walk through the conservatory & a stroll through the zoo ...

After coming out of one of Chicago’s worst winters on record, we were so ready for our holiday in Aruba. We were somewhat undiscerning in how we arrived at our destination choice … it had to be warm, the tickets had to be reasonably priced, it had to be somewhere we hadn’t been before … and that was just about it!!

Mr Johnson arrived on Aruba after plugging in dates and playing around with travel sites. We bought tickets before we picked a place to stay. We lucked out getting a great condo, in a wonderful location … a place we can perhaps even see ourselves returning to.

We’ve generally, on holiday, made an effort to make sure we learn about local culture and history. We have even typically spent a day or more on said information quest. On this holiday we simply watched a couple of YouTube clips in advance and through our Lonely Planet guide into our carry-on roller case.

As we cruised at 35,000 feet above the blue waters of Caribbean (somewhere below the clouds), we dutifully filled out our immigration forms, ticking with great satisfaction the box “Sun, Sand, Sea” as our reason for traveling to Aruba.

We filled six days with Sun, Sand, Sea. (They could have added wind … because every day was raucously windy. But it kept the bugs down, and not once did we feel too hot, even as the mercury climbed to the upper 80s.) We swam in the complex pool which was largely ours alone. The majority of others in the community were East coast retirees, who might linger pool side for a few hours each day, but rarely actually got in the water. We drove three short minutes to a craggy beach area, where we climbed down into tide pools and could snorkel off the shore.

The water was at times churned up … with the wind creating a cloudiness, especially in the afternoons. Still, we saw fish galore, including a spotted moray eel lurking in an eerily shallow depth of six feet! We saw pipefish (that resemble snakes), wrasses, parrot fish, box fish, trumpet fish and angel fish. When Mr Johnson spent a day diving, he saw the same times of fish, more plentiful and larger, lurking in the forgotten hulls of sunken vessels that have created an ideal coastal habitat. 

Our plans for DC have been a long time in the works. 

We had always wanted our girls to explore the US, but I remember the specific catalyst for our capital adventure: In 2010 we sat down on our Chinese Jetson's-style pleather sofa to watch a pirated copy of Night at the Museum II in our faux marbled floor living room in China. 

The film opens with a shot of the the US Capitol building, and one of the little girls piped up, "Oh look! The Taj Mahal!"

The littles where then five and eight. 

They had visited the capital cities of China, Malaysia, South Korea, and The Philippines. But, they had not been to Washington DC. 

Someday, we promised ourselves and our girls, we will go to our nation's capital!

Three years after the Taj Mahal scandal, we finally made it to DC.
{Here are the littles outside the Capitol building.}

We got to tour the inside of the Capitol as well ... visiting the grand rotunda with its fresco painted dome and grand marble floors. We identified statues of famous Americans we knew, and pondered again what we did in US history class to not know so many of them. 

Neither house of congress was in session, but we did get passes to visit the empty Senate gallery. It's a cozy affair with is blue carpet and dark wood desks. We identified the seats of our senators, Sen. Durbin (D) and Sen. Kirk (R). 

We took the obligatory tour which started with a video presentation and then donned headsets and traipsed after our geriatric tour guide who kept our girls enthralled. He added details on the paintings and gave history background to the structure. Bei Bei especially  hung on his every word ... and jettisoned to the front of the line to be the first to raise her hand to answer questions. 

Note ::
 We TRAVELED over Spring Break 2013, and are now belatedly blogging it!