A trip to Heaven on camouflage wings...

Today was a big day around our household. DD#1 and I got to take a trip to the PX at the military base in Hanau. We giggled about the Popeye's fried chicken and considered the Taco Bell. We shopped briefly at one Wal-Mart-like store filled with clothing, electronics, and health & beauty supplies. But we genuinely salivated at the grocery store - American Heaven!

We have a list of American groceries that we've been unable to locate in Germany, or for which the German substitutes are unsatisfactory. This list includes Oreos - in big demand with my daughters. Although we've found the European package of Oreos at several stores now, they aren't the same, according to my daughters. They don't dunk as well. :)

Also on the list are chocolate chunk granola bars (without nuts), chocolate chips, butter-flavored Crisco sticks, raspberry-lemonade flavored Crystal Light and sunflower seeds, salted and in the shells. All of these, save my favorite flavor of Crystal Light, we found at that PX. Those and so much more - all for a very reasonable price.

We were able to shop at the PX today because I met and made friends with a woman at our daughters' Girl Scout meeting last week. She moved here with her daughter and husband a couple of weeks before we did. They live on the Seedlung - the compound attached to the US Consulate in Frankfurt. By the way, I was fascinated to learn that the Frankfurt Consulate is the largest in the world.

Anyway, her daughter is in the same Girl Scout troop w/our girls, goes to the same school and is even on dd#3's Destination Imagination team. We got to talking during the meeting and she noticed the overflowing bag of groceries I had purchased at the Quick stop mini-market that's in the building where the Girl Scout meeting was held on the Seedlung. Since I was in the meeting, they let me shop at the Quick stop. I told her how excited my family was to see real American Oreos and flour (German flour isn't the same - which is a pain given that we like to bake a lot). So, she offered to take us to the base w/her.

We picked her up in dh's car this morning and took the long way to Hanau, since I took a few wrong turns in Frankfurt. The navigation system voice was very patient with me and eventually we made it to the base. We bought dd#3 her Halloween costume and presents for a birthday party she's attending next weekend, as well as hair color, eye drops, greeting cards and lots of other items in the discount store first.

Now, my friend had told me to bring cash, but failed to mention that it had to be US dollars. I've noticed that those who live on the Seedlung have US currency and US checking accounts and seem to operate on the American economy. But those of us not connected with the Departments of State or Defense live on the German economy. I haven't seen any US dollars in weeks. So, when she told be to bring cash, I brought Euros. So, she had to pay for me in the first store and then we went to the ATM, where I was able to pull US dollars out of my US checking account with my US debit card. Amazing.

My friend is allowed to bring 4 people onto the base with her, as long as she brings her Consulate I.D. card, we have our US passports, and she signs us in and out. However, I found it interesting that they'll let us go onto the base with her, but we can't really buy anything. She has to pretend she's paying for me, take my cash surreptiously and hand it to the cashier. We can't even talk about the fact that I'm really the one buying anything when we're standing in the store. But, if I wasn't going to buy anything, why would I go with her onto the base at this area where I saw nothing but retail stores?

Anyway, on to the bookstore, where I was able to pay directly with my debit card and all the books and magazines were in English. This was definitely a treat and I'll want to go back there before Christmas for sure.

Finally, on the PX - Mecca to dd#1. She was so excited, she made my friend's daughter laugh with her excited squeals of delight. We bought root beer - something dds #2&3 really enjoy, but isn't available anywhere that we've found in Frankfurt. We bought several boxes of cereals, cans of soups and vegetables for US recipes I've been wanting to make, and lots of snack foods. Oreos, chocolate chips cookies, chips, candies - you name it, we found it. And all the baking supplies we could want. The only thing on our MIA list that wasn't there was the particular flavor of Crystal Light that I like best. Not a bad day's work!

We brought it all home and the rest of the family oohed and ahhed over it appropriately. Given the supplies that dh's former boss brought with him from the US last weekend, we're in good shape for quite some time. We've invited my friend and her daughter to go with us on Tuesday to Luxembourg. It's a national holiday here - German Unity Day - so the kids have off school and dh has the day off work, as does my friend. She works part-time at the Consulate. Since their car hasn't arrived from the US yet, and neither of our cars is big enough to hold 7 people, we're going to drive both of our cars. It's about 2 1/2 hours away and is supposed to make for a nice day trip from Frankfurt.

Anyway, now that we've been shopping at the PX, dd#1 has a much shorter shopping list to take with her to the US when she flies to O'Hare this coming Thursday. She's going back to Illinois for a long weekend as her best friend's father is getting married. It's also Homecoming weekend at her old high school, so she'll be able to go to the football game, see her friends and even go to a party, as well as attending the wedding. She's very excited, even though she gets back in Frankfurt at 5:30 a.m. on Monday morning and then heads off to school. Good thing she's young and very motivated!

Meanwhile, I think everyone's getting fairly adjusted to our new life. The big news of the week, at least before the shopping trip today, was that we finally got our televisions. We've had cable installed for 7 weeks but had no TV sets. We got 2 plasma screens this week - one for the family room that's hooked up to cable and one for the 3rd floor alcove, where the girls can watch movies and play games. Hopefully we'll have a little more family time in our family room now.

This week proves to be interesting, as dh has a vacation day on Monday, everyone has the day off Tuesday and we're going to Luxembourg, dh leaves for Italy early Wednesday morning and won't be back until the middle of the night Friday night. DD#1 leaves for Chicago on Thursday afternoon and won't be back until early Monday morning. Meanwhile, dd#2 has a teambuilding outing at the school all day on Saturday, dd#3 has a birthday/Halloween party at a friend's house on Saturday night, I hope to go to the Frankfurt book fair during the day on Saturday, and we're having our landlords over for snacks and drinks on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully the water that we got in the basement during a bad storm last night will have dried out by then, so we can discuss it with the landlords. Anyway, it'll be busy but should be a fun week for everyone. And we should have some good pictures to post after the day in Luxembourg. Until then...