Cleveland Rocks! (Though we haven't lived through winter yet)

It's been a couple of months since our last update. Chalk it up to us being busy settling in here in Cleveland. Here's an update on what we've been up to:

At the end of October, we moved into our new house in the Coventry Village area of Cleveland Heights, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland. We love both the house and the area.

Moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a two-story house means that we had a LOT of furniture to get to fill up the house, and it is still half empty. We've managed to furnish most of the downstairs, including our living room, dining room and eat-in kitchen (though the living room furniture will be upgraded), but our upstairs still consists of a half-furnished bedroom (our TV is resting on two German beer crates -- very classy) and two empty bedrooms. We hope to get our guest bedroom furnished early in the new year, at which point we can comfortably host visitors.

Even though it's still unfinished, our house already feels very much like "home". It's our first house together, and we are really enjoying the experience of making it our own.

The Coventry Village area is great. It's one of the few areas in Cleveland that is walkable; there are a large number of shops, restaurants, pubs and cafés within a 5 minute walk of our house. With Christmas approaching, the trees lining the street are all lit up with lights and it is quite beautiful. We've been to a few of the restaurants and pubs, but still have a number to try. We've heard that the area is especially nice in the summer, and we're looking forward to that very much.

Other than settling in, we haven't done anything too too exciting, except for a short trip to New York and New Jersey over American Thanksgiving with our friends Jodie and Adam. We'll have a separate update on that shortly, but it was a great trip. Tomorrow morning we head to Prince George for Christmas, with a short stay in Vancouver for New Year's before we head back to Cleveland.

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

After Patrick and Bree's visit, we had just a few days left in Germany. Patrick and Bree left town on Tuesday morning, a day which also saw movers come to pack up our apartment, and Erin work her last day in Singen. After being moved out of our apartment, we'd spend three nights in a hotel right in the heart of Konstanz's old town.

Despite living pretty much right in the middle of Konstanz for a long time (3.5 years for Erin, 1.5 years for Tim), the town seemed a little different while staying in the hotel. We got to see the city through the eyes of a tourist, and we realized all over again what a beautiful town it is, and how much we'd miss it.

In between checking in on the cleaners and painters touching up our apartment for the turnover to the next tenant, we were able to spend some time touring the city one last time. We walked through the old town, walked along the Rhein, and had some nice meals at some our favourite restaurants in town. It would have been nice to have a little more time to soak in the town before we left, but unfortunately we had to leave early Friday morning to move to Cleveland.

Our move to the USA is one we're making with mixed feelings. On one hand, we're excited for this next adventure in our life, and to be in a culture way more similar to our Canadian way of life. On the other hand, we will miss some facets of European life that we really grew to love, and we will definitely, definitely miss having all these amazing travel opportunities right at our doorstep. In less than four years, we've seen more beautiful and amazing places than most people get to see in a lifetime, and we've gotten to meet a number of wonderful people that have become great friends. We've had some great experiences here, and we're truly lucky for that.

Konstanz Oktoberfest (with some visitors from Canada!)

This most recent update is coming to you from our new (temporary) home in Beachwood, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland. It's been a busy couple of weeks, but we are starting to get things in order here. More on that to come soon, but first we'll go over our last days in Germany.

Our friends Patrick and Bree were visiting family and friends in England in September, and had mentioned that they had hoped to come visit us for a few days in Germany if we were able to find the time. We had to make sure their visit wouldn't interfere with the movers coming to our house, and after organizing and cancelling their vist a few times, finally we were able to arrange everything, and Patrick and Bree arrived in Konstanz on the Friday night.

Those of you who were at our wedding will remember Patrick as one our MCs; specifically the one with the odd sense of humour. He worked with both Erin and I at our last job in Canada, so we both know him well and were happy to have him and Bree visit. On their first night, we made them a cheese fondue before heading into Konstanz for a couple of drinks; all in all a pretty quiet night.

On Saturday we showed them around the town. We showed them the usual tourist sites of Konstanz: the cathedral, the old town, the waterfront, and the statue of Imperia. They absolutely loved the town.

That evening we went to the local Oktoberfest. It is tiny compared to the one in Münich, but it is still a huge party. We had a number of other friends show up as well: Scott from Tim's German class with his girlfriend Nina, our friends Chastity and Mark, and a number of friends from Erin's work as well. We had a great time drinking the giant one-litre beers, eating pork knuckles and listening to German music while wearing our lederhosen and dirndls.

Sunday we showed Patrick and Bree around town a little more, and Bree, inspired by the night before, went and bought her own dirndl for future Oktoberfests. We took advantage of some nice September weather and had a couple of beers on Konstanz's waterfront beer garden before having a nice dinner on a restaurant on the Rhine.

Monday we were back to work (Tim's last day teaching English and Erin's second-to-last day in Singen), so Patrick and Bree went down to Zürich for the day. They enjoyed it, but said they liked Konstanz much better -- great praise considering Zürich is generally considered one of the nicest cities in the world. For dinner we went to a local Brauhaus to get some traditional German food and beer. We sent Patrick and Bree off to a friend's apartment in Kreuzlingen across the border, as we needed to do some preparations for the movers coming the following morning.

Patrick and Bree were off back to England Tuesday morning, and the movers came and cleaned our stuff out of our apartment. While it was a hectic few days to have shortly before our move, it was really great to see our friends and show off our life in Germany. Three days later we would leave Germany. More on that next entry...

Croatia Part III - Dubrovnik

Our last stop on our trip through Croatia was "The Pearl of the Adriatic", Dubrovnik. We had heard nothing but good things about Dubrovnik, and it didn't disappoint.

We stayed at a waterfront hotel in the Dubrovnik suburb of Lapad, just north of the old town. It was too far to walk into town, but luckily the bus stop was right in front of our hotel, so we were able to commute easily between our hotel and the old town each day.

We arrived too late on Wednesday to head into town, so we just spent an hour or so at the hotel before going to bed. In the morning, we went for a swim off the rocks on Lapad Bay right by our hotel. As in Split and Korčula, the water was great. After our swim, we cleaned up at the hotel and took the bus into the old town of Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik's old town is surrounded by a huge wall that dates back centuries. The entire old town is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was quite a sight; marble streets, narrow side streets, houses stacked up side by side and one on top of the other. It was great seeing another city so well preserved (despite the fact that 2/3 of the buildings were damaged during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's -- when doing the repairs they made sure to do the repairs in the original style they were constructed in).

Despite being a major tourist city, Dubrovnik is quite small, with a population of only around 40,000 people, so we were able to see a lot of the city in our 3 full days there. On Thursday, we walked around the city walls, which offered great views of both the city and the Adriatic Sea. On Friday we went to a beach just outside the city, and afterwards enjoyed a nice dinner on a patio overlooking the old harbour before having drinks at one of the coolest bars we've ever seen. Dubrovnik has two bars outside of the city walls, located on the rocky cliffs above the Adriatic. Having drinks on these rocks, with the city wall behind us blocking out all sounds of the city while we looked out over the sea was a great time, and a great memory we will have for years.

Saturday, we intended to make a day trip to the nearby island of Lokrum, but a huge thunderstorm thwarted our plans. We would have been happy to go to the island despite the rain, but the boats that take tourists there weren't running. So instead, we spent a bit of time running around in the rain looking for a decent restaurant to eat in (only to be disappointed with the one we found... oh well), before heading back to the hotel and exploring the area of Lapad a little. After a nice dinner in Lapad, we headed back into town (now that the rain had stopped) for another drink at one of the cliff top bars outside the wall. Despite not getting to do everything we wanted this day, we learned a valuable lesson: if it starts raining in Dubrovnik, get inside ASAP. In a town where everything is made of marble and stone, there is nowhere for the rain to go except on you. The streets became rivers and we got absolutely soaked.

We had an early, early flight on Sunday, which of course was delayed 2.5 hours. Luckily they held our connecting flight in Zagreb for about 40 minutes to let us on, and we were able to get back into Zürich only about 30 minutes late. Despite the minor troubles our last couple of days, we had an amazing time in Croatia, and it was a great final vacation to have before we leave Europe for the USA.

Croatia Part II - Korčula

The next stop in our trip was the island of Korčula, about halfway between Split and Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian Coast.

We arrived in the evening and checked into our hotel, which was possibly the worst hotel we've stayed in in Europe. Apparently many of the hotels along the Croatian coast were built by the communist Yugoslavian government during the 1970s. This one probably hasn't been updated since then. The accommodations were pretty dingy and the staff was incredibly rude, but the hotel did boast a nice location right on the water, just a 5-10 minute walk from Korčula's beautiful old town.

The old town of Korčula is a walled city dating back to I think the 13th Century or so, and has a small population, only about 5,000 people. It is designed in an interesting way, with tall (for the time) buildings and narrow streets, and if you were to look at it from above, a map of the city streets would look kind of like a big fishbone. There is one main street down the middle, with side streets fanning out along from it. The sides streets were angled in a certain way so that cool summer winds would blow through the streets in the hot summers, but strong, cold winter winds (coming from the other direction) wouldn't penetrate the city. We went into the town, had some dinner, then went back to the hotel for some sleep.

In the morning, we decided to go to the beach right after breakfast. When we booked the hotel, we were under the impression it had its own beach. We wouldn't really call it a beach, it was more a bunch of rocks along the water, which wasn't what we had hope for, but was still alright. We walked along the rocks for a little while and found a quiet, semi-private spot where we could go swimming. The swimming, as in Split, was great. Perfect temperatures, nice and calm, all you could ask for.

For dinner that night, we followed a recommendation from our guide book and went to a really nice family-run seafood restaurant. We had some great fish, caught that very day, on a nice sidewalk patio along one of the narrow side streets looking down to the water. It was probably the nicest dinner we had on our trip.

When we got back to our hotel at about 11:00, we were not-so-pleasantly surprised to find out that there was an outdoor rock concert going on right next to our hotel. This was something our hotel neglected to tell us, both when we booked the hotel and at any other point during our stay. It kept us up until after 2 AM (and this was on a Tuesday night too), which made for a pretty miserable night. The hotel of course didn't care at all, and brushed of our complaints.

However, we didn't let it ruin our time in Korčula. The next morning we went for another swim off the rocks, and had a nice lunch at a pizza place along the water in the old town. Later in the afternoon, we had our next ferry trip, this time to Dubrovnik. Korčula was great, despite the awful hotel. It made us wish we had more time and were able to see more of the Croatian islands.