This time we drove to Berlin, just a short 6 hours drive and we are there.

We spent our first night at Grand Hotel Esplanade http://www.esplanade.de/. Our room had one double bed and another extra bed.

Usually we would have asked to replace it but the room was sooo huuuge that we didn’t mind… another thing I discovered it that when you get a room for three you get everything for three (three towels, three shampoos, three robes etc…).

The bathroom was also big and the highlight of it was a heated bath!! Maybe now you can’t understand how amazing it is but let me tell you, when you are back from a 1 degree outside you will understand. The bed was amazingly comfortable and we also got a good night chocolate on our pillow (yes, they still do it!)

For the second night we went to Crowne Plaza Berlin city center http://www.crowneplazaberlin.com/ Crowne Plaza is always a safe choice as it’s a large hotel chain. This one is located 2 minutes walk from the main shopping street of Berlin (kurfürstendamm) and 5 minutes from a train station, which is a huge advantage. Being a priority club members we were upgraded to a superior room which I assume is pretty much the same as all the other rooms, only in a separate “superior rooms” floor… it’s a rather small room but well equipped. they have a “pillow menu” and you can choose between a synthetic anti-allergic pillow, feather pillow, foam pillow and so on.

Almost in all of Crowne Plaza and Holliday Inn hotels (which belong to the same chain) there’s a kettle in the room with tea, coffee and sugar. I think it’s great that you can make yourself a cup of tea before you go to bed or the first cup of coffee when you wake up (even if it’s not the best one you ever had). There were complimentary chocolates and a bottle of water in the room and we also got a good night tissue which gives the bed a relaxing scent right before you fall asleep…

Both hotels have SPA, pool and fitness area but we didn’t get to try it. so when you are there please let me know how it is, Thanks. We also didn’t take the breakfast since in all hotels when breakfast is not included it’s ridiculously pricy and we prefer coffee and sandwich at Starbucks just around the corner

So, the conclusion is:

Now, what would be your choice…?

So, how do you get your Führerschein? 

If you have a driver’s license that was issued by a European Union country it’s valid in Germany. If it was issued by a country outside the EU (Israel for example…) , you can only use it for six months from your arrival. You can also get a six-month extension to use your license. After a year you must obtain a German driver’s license .In some cases it’s just a matter of exchanging the license for a German one. In others you’ll need to take an exam or a driving test.

We went to the ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V.) ) which is kind of the Ministry of  Transportation combined with MEMSI…  we gave them our licenses and got it back translated to German after two weeks. With our translated licenses we went to the city council (RATHOUS). Three weeks after (and some amount of Euro’s…) we were the proud holders of a German drivers license.

It sounds fast and simple but at first it didn’t look like that. We were told at the city council that we will have to take an exam. Only after insisting we managed to convince the nice lady that we just need to replace our licenses. Then we were sent to ADAC for the translation of our license. At ADAC we were told that we have to translate our license by ourselves from Hebrew to German. Again we had to insist and explain that this license is in an international format and written both in Hebrew and English. After further negotiations and clarifying  the actual format they agreed to translate our license. when we got our license back, translated, we were able to replace it for a German one. 

I always thought that in Germany you don’t argue or insist or try to negotiate. But I guess I was wrong. And come to think of that, why shouldn’t you insist if you think something is not reasonable? Doesn’t it sound crazy that I’ll take an international license written in English and translate it? then what’s the point of having an international license? Or taking an exam after driving for 16 years just for issuing the exact same license I already have??

And all that just because people do exactly what they were told to do. I can’t say anything bad about the people at the ‘Amt’ (the state office) because they do their jobs. But there are times I feel like they are not meant to think, or go out of the box.

I guess sometimes you just have to be an Israeli.

This is not me, it's a man with a spagetti colander on his head

The royal wedding is today and I really wish I could be there. For some reason I’m excited about it, don’t know why. Maybe because it makes the fairy tales look more possible and more real. So Mazal tov to William and Kate!

It’s spring time and the weather in Israel is crazy. One day it’s rainy and the other hot like inside an oven. I hope I will make it to spent some spring time in Cologne as well…

Don’t worry, I’m keeping this one as well

www.fraumaya.com

You would think that this should be pretty simple, just go to the store, pick a sofa and swipe your credit card. But you are wrong. At least for the first part. Yes, we did go to the store and find a nice sofa, But you can’t just give your credit card and forget all about it.

 We are used to the system of paying installments, when you divide the total amount into equal monthly payments, just by using your credit card. Here it’s not the same. In Germany, the concept of buying with a credit card almost doesn’t exist. People here rarely use their credit card, if they even have one. Most of the people use debit card or cash. If you do want to purchase something and not pay everything at once, usually when you buy furniture, electrical appliances, etc, you use a method that is called “Finanzierung” which is similar to monthly payments, except that the store you bought from provides you the ability to pay in installments directly through your bank account. Before the store approves this financing for the purchase they check against “Schufa” which is the german credit system http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/SCHUFA . Schufa is the credit rating system which tracks your entire financial conduct. If you apply for credit, the store checks your Schufa and if your Schufa number is appropriate they approve your purchase. The Shcufa ”rate” is determined based on your continuous financial conduct.

So far it sounds quite simple, but it was exactly the opposite… The guy in the store was asking for all kind of details – where do we live, where do we work, what was our address back in Israel, it was almost as if we are going to buy a house and not a sofa. It took him about half an hour to fill out all the forms, like there are no computers in the world. He had to take a copy of my identity card and Asaf’s passport, his boss had to approve and sign the forms and send it to their Bank, and the whole process started to feel like this is going to be a long-term relationship with this store.

Eventually we went home, with all the papers and with a promise that we are now the happy owners of a new sofa which will arrive to our home in a month and a half. 

Lesson learned   – Germans are thorough, they take their time, but things are getting done.

I came back on Thursday. Luckily the snow was waiting for me so we woke up Friday morning to see that everything is white!!

You can imagine we were very excited.

The next day we drove to Detmold to visit our family, my niece Alma, her mother Anna and her mother Ulrike. Three generations of beauty, fun and warmth… It was Ulrike’s birthday and she was having a birthday party. lots of food, wine and nice people, just as we like it.

On saturday morning we took a walk in the streets of Detmold. Detmold is a small town, two hours from Cologne with a population of about 80,000. The streets were already prepared for Christmas and everything was very festive. Alma took a ride on a carousel and she was so sweet and funny we had to take a photo of her as a brave firewoman.

Alma is the girl in the front, driving the truck...

All five of us couldn’t last long outside as it was frrreeeezing!

We left Detmold at noon so we will have enough time to arrive to Cologne and go to the Weinachtmarkt. Weinachtmarkt (Christmas Market) is this big market with many many stands selling food, drinks, gifts and all kind of traditional Christmas items. You could feel the Christmas atmosphere all around.

We met Daniel there. He’s our new friend in Cologne and he’s funny and nice and it’s so much fun hanging out with him. For us the best thing in Weinachtmarkt is Glühwein, it’s a warm wine usually red, combined with spices and it is a traditional drink during Christmas. Thanks to Daniel we found a new kind of Glühwein, combined with melted caramel. As my young sister sais “mmmmm yammiiii”. The photo is not the best quality but it will give you the general idea…

Well, that’s all about our weekend.

It’s a new week and it’s been snowing all day today. It seems like we’re going to have a white week

I though it would happen much faster, that I’d miss old style, traditional Israeli food. Happens to be that I actually didn’t have time to invest in looking for such food until some friends, Avi and Chava took us to a place called Habibi http://www.habibi-koeln.de/ (I think it is the first Schwaramaia that has a web site). Now the funny thing is that they also have Habibi 2, which I didn’t check out. Wonder what’s going to be next (Habibi: the movie…)

I can say that by then my hummus craving was going crazy and eating that coarse chickpeas paste which didn’t resemble hummus at all was proven to be coliformically disastrous but the schawarma was pretty decent and the portions were good sized and served nicely with salad and pita bread. Pictures will follow on our next visit to Habibi.

Besides that, I arrived home late a few days ago after long days of travelling and was dead hungry for sometime fimiliar rather that the old pizza, salad, freezed junk you buy at the supermarket when you don’t have any strength left to prepare something. Suddenly I found myself missing a good ‘ol Shakshuka with warm bread and soft eggs that crumble into the sizzling tomatoes and peppers . The fridge had everything I wished for and a quick stop to REWE, our local supermarket , to get some Bulgarian cheese completed the task. I gotta say that after 5 months of no Shakshuka (also not very often back home) I can declare that this was one of the best I ever tasted, let alone made (I think its my first attempt at making shakshuka)

I name this ‘Diabolo Shakshuka’ mostly cause of the Jalapeños that were thrown in just to give it that zing.

To my beautiful wife, I know you haven’t had the chance to scrape that pan together with me, but be sure a re-run will occur once we are reunited.

Diabolo Shakshuka

We came to pick her up from a small town called Laren and drove to Amsterdam city center. Batel insisted that we should take tome photos but it wasn’t a good photo day for me as my personal hairdresser and stylist don’t work on saturday.

As you can see I was trying to take the camera from Asaf  and at the end I agreed for one photo of the three of us, to capture the moment.

The weather was nice so we had a long walk around the shopping area (well, what else??). surprisingly, I didn’t buy anything. I think that I  should make it up to me soon, and the sooner the better. Batel and Asaf on the other hand had a very nice purchase and bought some radioactive candies. You can see that it made them very busy.

I wanted to show you a short video Asaf thought he took but apparently he doesn’t know how to operate the HTC desire camera so no video was taken. Too bad.

we ended the day meeting Anna, Batel’s cool sweet friend and eating cheese fondue, which made my day perfectly perfect (is there anything perfect than that?).

I’ve been to Amsterdam a few times before but almost every time I walked in the city alone. I actually felt like a tour guide this time!! but seriously, it was much nicer walking around in this cool city with friends.

Next time you’re in Amsterdam you should let me know, I will give you the tour for only half the price.

We decided to have a symbolic small celebration by eating sushi, which we really like!! There are actually some pretty good sushi restaurants in Cologne. The one we went to this time was Tokyo, it was kind of empty but nothing stops us when we have a mission.

I had a tuna tataki,  which was good the same as it looks, more like a sashimi, my second favorite food (I assume you are curious about the number one but that worths a separate post).

There was no choice but eating lots of rolls, not because we wanted to, just because the waiter insisted. This could be related to the fact that  he was totally stoned, walking around singing and dancing  (for real!!)

This is Asaf, enjoying his sushi he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying  but you can blame the cell phone camera if you want.

This is me. also enjoying

And this is just sushi, alone, not necessarily enjoying,  half way eaten

So that was our small celebration, we are humble people and “all we need is love…” (and sushi of course).

Last but not list – as you probably read in my first post (I’m sure you wouldn’t miss it for the world) I refered to a cool blog which inspired me, and although I declared  a war I have to admit it’s really good! This is it: theeliad.com

Good for them.

Now, they think that opening a blog makes them cooler than us, so think again! We have a blog too, and it’s pink (well, kind of, it’s not like I’m 12 after all). beat that!

So my first post is dedicated to them for giving me the idea of writing this blog from the first place.

And now –

May the best expat wins!!!!