To answer a few questions...

I received a few questions and here are the answers...

We do live off base. Hohenfels does not have on post housing for officers, just a small amount for enlisted soldiers. We live in the small town down the road from Hohenfels and has a pretty fair amount of Americans living in it, along with Germans and it has been that way since the US took over the base. Everyone tells us we will love our neighborhood and our neighbors and that everyone is very friendly and so far they are correct!

The exchange rate is not that great - 1.48 or 1.49 dollars to 1 Euro.

It is cold here contrary to how the pictures look! It is in the high 30s up to the 40s throughout the day. The sun has been shining ever since Luke and I arrived and it makes it feel even warmer but when you are walking around and you tuck down a shaded street you really feel how cold it is. The picture of Brian and Luke together was taken about 4:30 in the afternoon right before we walked up to Parsberg.

When Brian arrived in Germany, he flew through Frankfurt. All military, until you are field grade, have to start inprocessing in Frankfort. Luke and I flew into Munich, which is about 1 hour and 20 minutes away from where we live. Nuremberg is also an airport that is near us.

Garmisch, the town we are visiting this week, is actualy called Garmisch-Parkenkirchen. They are twin villages in the Alps near the Austrian border. Garmisch is the newer, more modern village and Parkenkirchen is older, more traditional. Apparently we may see people dressed in traditional clothing and traffic may be stopped to lead cattle through the city from their mountain top grazing grounds (I think that might happen in warmer months though, not sure how much there is to graze on in February.) Garmisch-Parkenkirchen is a major Alpine ski resort, the 1936 Winter Olymics were held there. The mountainpeak in Garmisch is called the Zugspitze and is 9,721 ft elevation. Obviously winter sports are HUGE here and they have skiing (Alpine and cross country), snow boarding, snow shoes and sledding hills and huge toboggan runs. Most of the sled trails and toboggan runs are for adults and older children but there are a few mountains where if you stay on the bottom half of the run it is suitable for small children. Hopefully Luke will keep his mittens on and love sledding!

In honor of our trip to an Alpine ski village and an amazing hotel, let's learn some relevant German words...

English word - German word (pronounciation)
Snow - schnee (sh-nee)
Cold - kalt (kahlt)
Hotel - hotel (ho-tel)
Room - zimmer (tsim-mer)
Bed - bett (bet)
Breakfast - fruhstuck (froo-shtook)
Careful! - Vorsicht! (for-zicht)