Point of No Return

Let's see, Melissa and I are in Munich, poised to commit to a house, we've listed our Seattle house as a rental, notified the Seattle kindergarten that Olivia won't be attending, pulled the rug on Oona's preschool, sent the au pair packing back to South Africa and my employer is about to hire my successor. All of which caused me to wake up at 3 a.m., jet lagged, wondering what the hell are we doing. We're now committed. The Rubicon is crossed. We're moving to Munich.

But in a time of doubt, its good to review the positive signs.

Positive sign number 1: As we left the States the news was that Wal-Mart had given up on its 7 year attempt to woo the Germans, establish a presence here and thereby extend its dominance. They have admitted failure, closed its stores and are pulling out. The complete lack of trailer parks here in Germany should have been a sign to Wal-Mart that it had its work cut out for it. Among the cited reasons for the failure were: Germans didn't like it when Wal-Mart clerks insisted on bagging their groceries (Germans apparently don't like others touching their food); Germans didn't like that the cost of every transaction included a "Have a Nice Day"; third, lacking relationships with suppliers in europe similar to those in the U.S. prevented Wal-Mart from employing its notorious strong-arm tactics to gain leverage on price. Instead, a local chain (Aldi) consistently equaled or undercut Wal Mart prices. So, good for Germany.

Positive sign number 2: Our hotel room wasn't yet ready when we arrived yesterday at 10 a.m. So to kill time we walked across the street to Munich's version of Central Park and within 10 minutes found, on a Sunday morning, a beer garden already filled with people eating breakfast and drinking litre steins of beer. Any doubts this is a civilized country disappeared.

So here we are, without children for the moment. We move for keeps within the next 4 weeks.

A quick note about the title of this blog: No offense intended and its not my fault that Adolf Hitler thought of it first. Mein Kampf means "my struggle" and that is precisely what I intend to document over the ensuing months: My struggle, observations and thoughts on becoming an ex-employed, ex-patriot, full time dad watching my children grow up German while try to keep up.