- Joined
- Oct 23, 2002
- Messages
- 6,451
Yep, its not a rumor, Im moving to Germany.
For those of you that dont know yet, here is my official Iwaters announcement.
My wife (of four weeks) is a Civil engineer for the Navy right now in Charleston SC, we have always talked about the possibility of traveling overseas if she had the oportunity to work for the military, we were seriously persuing Italy as our destination. Lots of things happened, and Italy kind of fell through much to our dismay. She saw an opening on the federal job website for the Army Corp of Engineers position at the Ramstein Army/Airforce Base in Kaiserslautern Germany.
A couple days later she learned that her resume' was strong enough to land an interview, which then turned into a job offer. It can be somewhat hard to get selected to go overseas for the Governement as a civilain, so we made the descision to accept the position. Its something weve wanted to be able to do while we were still young (both age 26) and do not have children. I am told I will not be able to work while im over there except on the base and jobs are scarce due to the amount of enlisted spouses there, but the University of Maryland has a college program on the base for the spouses of government employees (me) and I will probably go for my Bachelors in Business. I have always wanted to own a hobby shop, and this will provide the perfect opportunity when we return so i figured I should know how a small business is supposed to work...
We are going to be over there for 3 years, with the option of staying for an additional 2 years after the first term is up.
Needless to say we have LOTS of stuff to do in the next 7 weeks to prepare to move our lives as we know it to Germany, so Its been kinda busy. We are scheduled to leave on Oct 2nd.
We have been very lucky thus far, weve managed to sell our House for what we wanted to get out of it without it ever going on the market, simple word of mouth and we sold it. we close on it next week. The new owner is going to rent it back to us for a very genrous amount until we are ready to leave for Germany. We have sold two of our three vehicles, as we can only ship one over there, there was no need to keep the other two Stateside.
We had a huge wedding planned for the end of October, but we had to get married quickly (justice of the peace, on the beach, one Sunday morning) due to the amount of paperwork and other crap that was needed to for me to be able to go with her. We were officially married on July 6th, but we have decided to still have a religous ceremony to keep the parents happy, and the fact that they already had a large amount of nonrefundable money tied up with various wedding related things. It is now scheduled for the 20th of this month.
Anyways, My life has been utter chaos for the past 5 weeks, and its not getting much better anytime soon. I am VERY glad I got to go to the Internats this year and see all of my long distance friends one last time before we depart. My next and last stateside race will be at our C.M.B. O.B. Tunnel Championships. its the last weekend before we leave.
Now for any Germans or Americans stationed in Germany, what is the Boating scene like over there??? what is the sanctioning body over there? is it Naviga? are there any clubs in the area that I will be in (Kaiserslautern) ? Can I use my 75mhz radios over there?? if not, what do I use? 40 mhz?
what classes are most popular? any tunnels run in Germany? Is there any English websites that I can view to get info on European racing? tons of questions....
~James
P.S. I read somewhere that Kaiserslautern has more Bars per capita than any other place in Germany :blink: :blink: and they sell beer by the Liter! My kind of country!
For those of you that dont know yet, here is my official Iwaters announcement.
My wife (of four weeks) is a Civil engineer for the Navy right now in Charleston SC, we have always talked about the possibility of traveling overseas if she had the oportunity to work for the military, we were seriously persuing Italy as our destination. Lots of things happened, and Italy kind of fell through much to our dismay. She saw an opening on the federal job website for the Army Corp of Engineers position at the Ramstein Army/Airforce Base in Kaiserslautern Germany.
A couple days later she learned that her resume' was strong enough to land an interview, which then turned into a job offer. It can be somewhat hard to get selected to go overseas for the Governement as a civilain, so we made the descision to accept the position. Its something weve wanted to be able to do while we were still young (both age 26) and do not have children. I am told I will not be able to work while im over there except on the base and jobs are scarce due to the amount of enlisted spouses there, but the University of Maryland has a college program on the base for the spouses of government employees (me) and I will probably go for my Bachelors in Business. I have always wanted to own a hobby shop, and this will provide the perfect opportunity when we return so i figured I should know how a small business is supposed to work...
We are going to be over there for 3 years, with the option of staying for an additional 2 years after the first term is up.
Needless to say we have LOTS of stuff to do in the next 7 weeks to prepare to move our lives as we know it to Germany, so Its been kinda busy. We are scheduled to leave on Oct 2nd.
We have been very lucky thus far, weve managed to sell our House for what we wanted to get out of it without it ever going on the market, simple word of mouth and we sold it. we close on it next week. The new owner is going to rent it back to us for a very genrous amount until we are ready to leave for Germany. We have sold two of our three vehicles, as we can only ship one over there, there was no need to keep the other two Stateside.
We had a huge wedding planned for the end of October, but we had to get married quickly (justice of the peace, on the beach, one Sunday morning) due to the amount of paperwork and other crap that was needed to for me to be able to go with her. We were officially married on July 6th, but we have decided to still have a religous ceremony to keep the parents happy, and the fact that they already had a large amount of nonrefundable money tied up with various wedding related things. It is now scheduled for the 20th of this month.
Anyways, My life has been utter chaos for the past 5 weeks, and its not getting much better anytime soon. I am VERY glad I got to go to the Internats this year and see all of my long distance friends one last time before we depart. My next and last stateside race will be at our C.M.B. O.B. Tunnel Championships. its the last weekend before we leave.
Now for any Germans or Americans stationed in Germany, what is the Boating scene like over there??? what is the sanctioning body over there? is it Naviga? are there any clubs in the area that I will be in (Kaiserslautern) ? Can I use my 75mhz radios over there?? if not, what do I use? 40 mhz?
what classes are most popular? any tunnels run in Germany? Is there any English websites that I can view to get info on European racing? tons of questions....
~James
P.S. I read somewhere that Kaiserslautern has more Bars per capita than any other place in Germany :blink: :blink: and they sell beer by the Liter! My kind of country!
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