We survived our first 24 hours here with sanity intact. The continental breakfast at the hotel was amazing. Meats, cheeses, breads, yogurts and oranges with a juicer to make your own orange juice. It was a welcomed change from pancakes and microwaved eggs. The walk to base was beautiful. Lots of leaves falling and large sidewalks which helps when you are walking with six people and people need to pass on bikes We probably walked over 5 miles today. There was a large playground on base the kids played at I met another spouse there who kindly answered my many questions. Jon tried to meet with someone at work but couldn’t get in the building because he didn’t have the right ID yet and we don’t have cell phones to call locally so we ended up searching for WiFi on base so he could call via Skype. At the recommendation of the lady I met at the playground we headed to Aldi to get prepaid SIM cards for our phones. We took the bus and when we went to get on we didn’t know how to pay the fair and the drive didn’t know English and we don’t know enough German yet so he just let us on without paying. We searched our German dictionary while we waited for the second bus to try and figure out how to ask how much to pay and on the bus back we tried our best and thankfully that drive spoke English and was kind enough to walk us through the process so we should be good to go next time. We stopped at a little burger stand for lunch and all the kids ended up trying sour kraut for the first time on hamburgers. They reluctantly ate it. Trying to activate SIM cards online on a German website is proving difficult. Jon can call from his phone now but it keeps wanting us to add credits to it which we need a German Bank account to do and the SIM card keeps telling us it’s locked when his phone goes into standby mode so we have to keep entering the pin. On the agenda today for the kids and I, open a German Bank Account and hopefully resolve the phone issue. Jon is at in processing so hopefully we will know today if base housing is available or if we need to look out on town. We have been searching on the economy just in case and aren’t coming up with much we can afford that will house all of us so it should be interesting.