What I'll miss, and what I won't

This is our last week in Germany, and while I've been busy packing I have been thinking about all the things I will miss about Germany, and all the things I won't. I decided to sit down and make a list.

What I'll miss:

• "Hey honey want to go to Paris (or Amsterdam, London, Rome, Prague, etc) for the weekend?"

• The desserts! (Although my waistline won't miss them!)

• The markets

• Made from scratch, whole grain bread

• Burger King (okay I need to explain this one. The Burger Kings and McDonalds in Germany are immaculately clean, the workers are in clean uniforms, and they have the best salads I've ever had at a fast food restaurant. Also, McDonald's has a bistro section called The McCafe that sells awesome desserts and coffee.)

• Apfelschorle, it's a carbonated apple juice that is simply delicious! And it is not made/sold in the USA.

•  Being able to find carbonated water literally everywhere. Drinking flat water is just so, well, flat. 

• Dogs are welcome everywhere except restaurants and grocery stores, and even then the businesses have little water dishes and food dishes set outside for the dogs.

What I will not miss about living in Germany:

• Kehrwoche and Grosse Kehrwoche.  It's the cleaning week that each household in the building share, in our case we have the Kehrwoche every 3 weeks and the Große Kehrwoche (large cleaning week in which you sweep the sidewalk, clean off the snow, and clean the entryway) every 8 weeks. For some reason we have had the Große Kehrwoche six times since we've lived here. We have no idea why.

• EVERYTHING is closed on Sunday.

• People will just stare at you for no reason. On the train, in a restaurant or store, they just stare at you. 

• Driving on the Autobahn. Everyone thinks "0o0o0o0o no speed limit awesome!". No, not awesome. You'll be cruising along at a decent speed then... WHAM! traffic is at a standstill because some idiot lost control and caused a wreck. 

• Staus (traffic jams) I have been stuck in some ridiculous traffic jams in major cities, and the ones here are the worst I have ever seen. Chris works with a guy who lives only 20 minutes from work when there is little to no traffic, but when he leaves work it takes him 2 hours to get home!

• The Germans are ridiculously anal about rules (this could also be a swabian thing too though). It borders on crazy. The best example I can think of are the crosswalks. If the "don't walk" light is on, but there are absolutely no cars coming for 10 kilometers, they will stand there and wait for the "walk" light to change. If you walk when the light isn't telling you to, you will get looks of death from all those waiting. 

•  Not working! I am a workaholic, and I've been getting a little stir crazy not having a job these past 5 months. It will be great to get back to the daily grind, stress and coffee (I know, that probably borders on insane, but I love work stress).

Thanks for reading!