Chicago Sports and Shopping

Well, I have just returned from a week in Chicago and I must admit that I am starting to get excited for the move. Chicago has never been that appealing to me for some reason but now that I have actually spent some time there I am starting to think that this may be fun after all.


Most people know that Chicago is a pretty big sports town and while I am not a big fan of baseball, hockey, basketball, tennis, handball, track & field, dog racing, laser tag & Wii Fit, all of those sports are more popular than soccer. To open the paper and see non-soccer related sports news will be a wondrous treat, even if that news is about Harry Carey's. If I never, ever hear about Bayern Munich ever again I will know that Walter Payton is smiling. Also, the Bears are terrible, so the series of endless Jay Cutler interceptions will deflect attention away from my hapless Raiders.


I went shopping on Sunday which was amazing. I have not been shopping on Sunday in 8 years since Germans would rather spend Sundays stuck in traffic on the famous autobahns. We are looking at places to live in the western suburbs of Chicago and I now know for sure that shopping opportunities are plentiful.


Update on getting rid of stuff:
We have made the big deal and sold our car! I know that walking is for suckers in the USA, but it is quite acceptable to walk here in Munich. Plus the public transportation system is excellent. Our 1998 Opel Astra did not pass inspection this year, so rather than throw money at it for another 6 months of driving we simply sold it. We were able to sell it quickly because of the awesome Oakland Raiders sticker on the back window.

Halloween is a ghost town

When we first moved to Germany, Halloween was basically non-existent. There were no trick-or-treaters, elaborate costumes, jack-o-lanterns or zombies. It was tough for the kids since they were still quite young and therefore did not understand why Germans were so clueless when it came to Halloween. Sterling did have a pretty fearless friend named Sven. They did go out and knock on doors. What they got was typically confused or angry old people and sometimes just a little candy that some people had lying around.


Over the years, Halloween has grown in recognition and popularity, but oddly it is not a children's holiday. There are still relatively few trick-or-treaters (our street was a ghost town last night), but now adults are dressing up and having Halloween parties. As if Europeans need another excuse to dress silly and drink alcohol...What do they think soccer games are for?!? A travesty of the candy harvest I say!


My daughter had a Halloween party with her friends last night. A house full of 14 year old girls is scary...so Sterling and I retreated to the comforts of shooting virtual zombies.

Update on getting rid of stuff:
-Playmobile Zoo: SOLD!
-1 book: given away!

Slovenia is not Buffalo

As I have already hinted at in previous entries, life here in Germany has been pretty swell. Not only is Germany pretty cool (I can even write this blog with extra letters... like ö and ü and ä and ß) but we have traveled to all sorts of strange and wondrous places. If we drive for five hours from our house, we can be in Slovenia. When we drove for five hours from Steeleville, NH in August, we were in Buffalo, NY. Not the same.

So, here are some photos of our travels. The kids become older and older while Jenn and I stay amazingly youthful! Swell!

2002 Munich, Germany at my friend Henrik's wedding 

2002 Garmisch, Germany

2003 Sweden 

2004 Switzerland

2005 Sovenia 

2005 Salzburg, Austria 

2005 Normandy, France 

2006 Utah (OK, not Europe but still cool) 

2007 Vienna, Austria 

2008 Prague, Czech Republic 

2008 Amsterdam, Netherlands 

2008 Munich, Germany in the backyard 

2009 Munich, Germany 

Chicago is next...

The Last Time

Well, Oktoberfest 2009 is finally over. I am not a huge fan of Oktoberfest. It is fun to go with Jenn and the kids and go on the roller coasters and eat a chicken (the secret ingredient is salt...a lot of salt), but essentially it is a giant Vermont country fair with thousands of drunk tourists. Imagine drinking 2 or 3 liters of strong German Beer and then trying to pick up the hot chicks (or dudes) and then eating some salty meat and then going on rides where you speed up and down and around in circles. I am pretty sure you know what happens next. Multiply by ten thousand and then multiply that by two weeks.

We usually go once a year...like here in 2006

Now that Oktoberfest 2009 is in the books, it got me to thinking about things that I will miss when we move to Chicago. I was thinking about it because people keep asking me if I will miss Oktoberfest. No. No I will not. I also will not miss the traditional vomit puddles.

But I will miss:

Weisswurst: White sausages that I eat every Friday morning. Breakfast of Bavarian Champions

Krustenbraten: Fantastic roast pork that I really like as a sandwich. mmm...

The alps: See my last blog entry for details

Bier: German beer is better than American beer. That is a simple fact. I will miss German beer

Go outside!

Like most teenagers, our children spend what seems to be a huge amount of time in front of either the computer, the television, or some other kind of electronic device that you hold in front of your face. It probably isn't as much as it seems and I cannot really tell them to reduce their time since I spend a lot of time on the computer and Jenn even got a Netbook so that she would not take away valuable Left4Dead time from me. Yes, I spend quality time with my son by killing zombies.

While the summer has not be overly awesome in terms of weather, these last few weeks have been pretty nice indeed. We always talk about doing stuff outside, but we often do not get around to it. For example, we live quite close to the Alps, but we have never gone skiing in our 8 years here! We just never seem to get around to it. Lame. So anyways, we went for a 2 hour bike ride yesterday through the villages south of Munich and today we are going on a hike in Schliersee.

It is really cool to be able to do these activities so easily and while we have not taken advantage of the Bavarian countryside as much as we should have in our years, we will definitely miss it. Or we will at least miss the possibility to do these things. Let's see what Chicago has to offer...

Here is a bike ride shot from May 2005

Hiking in Sept 2006

Sterling is playing Mass Effect right now...

evidence of growth

Today I went through our old digital photos from 2002 to 2006. I had copied them onto CDs since my first computer in Germany had only 8gb of space, was of course was pretty big way back in the early 00 decade but is comically small now. Kind of like when Guns n Roses sold a billion records in the nineties but only sold 3 million copies of the last one. Ha...3 million copies...what a joke.

Anyway, my point is that our children have grown up in the past 8 years. I realize that this is not fark.com worthy information, but it is still amazing to see the transformation. We have traveled to some pretty fantastical places these past few years and it is truly hard to imagine Sterling and Kimeko being so small. But the evidence is there in my digital photo viewer.

Here is a picture from almost exactly 7 years ago at Andechs which is a monastery/beer garden in Bavaria...

Wanna buy something?

Since we still have about 10 months until we move back to the glorious United States of America, there really is not that much to do now by way of preparation. Hopefully we won't wait until May 28, 2010 and then scramble to pack all of our junk...but packing now seems kind of silly.

Instead we are just figuring out what we might be able to sell. Jenn and Kimeko have spent the morning putting together a Playmobile Zoo Set and a fancy house. They will of course fall apart the moment they are touched, but in the meantime Sterling will take some pictures of how great these toys look when you build them and never touch them and maybe some unsuspecting fool will buy this stuff. Hopefully.

One lingering concern is how we will transport our amazing cats to the USA. Yes, our cats are awesome, especially Catboy. Your cats are lame and snooty (maybe not Fluffernutter), but not my cats. Catboy does not do well with other people or cages or dogs or some other things. So we really need to figure that out. No, we cannot leave them in Germany since they do not speak German. Like me. It really is not necessary to speak German to be able to live in Germany for 8 years. I am living testament to that fact.

Starting Point

We have lived in Germany for almost eight years now. We do love Munich, but the time feels right to get back to the USA. We plan to be stepping off the plane somewhere in North America following a one way flight in June 2010.

We will move a family of four. Two cats. 800 cds. a cast iron skillet. European fashion sense. And a bunch of other stuff. A lot of other stuff...from old Europe to Chicago.

I plan to write at least once a week to chronicle this smooth operation. We will see how it goes