It’s almost time… starting today we have seven weeks until we can fly to Germany.
The Visa’s have been “pre-approved” and we have our meeting with the German Consulate coming up on Tuesday in Houston.
The process thus far has been LONG and TEDIOUS. It seems to be a lot of hurry up and wait. And if it weren’t for this second surge of COVID we would have booked tickets out and spent the better part of November and December exploring the European countryside/looking for housing/settling in.
As it stands, we cannot go until Matthew’s start date (that’s my amazing husband). Which is Jan 1. At which time we must quarantine for a minimum of 5 days. During that time we are not allowed to leave our place of residence for anything… including walking our dogs.
OUR DOGS.
Now this has been a headache in itself. I cannot leave them here. I just can’t. I will be unable to function especially as they are older and even leaving them with my parents is out of the question. They are my babies.
However, in Munich the real estate is so desired that having a dog (let alone two) is quite a challenge. We’ve had to write motivational letters including pictures of us and the dogs to send to possible land lords (is that a PC term anymore?) as well as letters from prior landlords backing us up in the fact that I have raised two well behaved, house trained and beautiful mongrels. (Jury is still out for Pepe, however, Zucker is a gem).
Then we are tasked with flying them out. American Air and various other airlines have currently discontinued their flight program for relocating animals and no animals are to be transported on any the flights. I nearly had a breakdown at work when I read this. Luckily Lufthansa still allows animal transportation, so that is who we are planning on flying with as of today.
Then we met with a few pet relocation service providers… the average cost to ship them came out to be around 4k…. so! we are planning on doing it ourselves. We already purchased the approved kennels and have been working on the correct shots and approvals with vets and what have you… I won’t go into all the nitty gritty but just know it’s been stressful.
On top of that! I quit my job prematurely due to our original plan being us leaving this month (November). So I’ve got lots of time to do lots of things – all of which I haven’t been doing.
I spend my days working out, writing Matthew and I’s workouts, still buying and selling second hand clothes (due to COVID this has decreased substantially) and playing dress up. I practice German with Duolingo and I plan on starting language classes with Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich on Jan 7. I won’t be working when we get over there so I plan to just immerse myself in the culture and try to learn the language. Deutsch ist schwer.
For now I cross my fingers that I can go on our trip to Portland/Seattle in two weeks. The consulate meeting goes well next week. And we make it overseas with the dogs in tow with little to no more hurdles… who am I kidding, we are going to have tons to jump over.
Until my next post,
Auf Wiedersehen
Nomad Nutrition 