After being awake for over 30 hours between Thursday and Friday, we finally got to go to sleep around 8 pm Wiesbaden time Friday. We put the rolleden (metal shades that are very common in Germany) down and closed the curtains to help keep the light out, and then all four of us crashed hard for 15 hours. We probably should have set an alarm to help with the jet lag, but even if we had set an alarm, I’m not sure we would have been able to wake up any earlier considering how tired we were.
It was almost 12 by the time we got done with showers and started moving, so we fed the dogs and took them outside for morning potty and then got them settled in the room so we could walk downtown. We reached the Marktkirche square just in time to stroll through the Saturday farmer’s market as it was starting to close down. We grabbed some fresh juice and sipped on that while we started looking for a place to eat. By that point we were still so tired that we had decision paralysis, since there were so many restaurants available. Ultimately, we ended up at a burger place a block from the square —- across the street from what was once the world’s biggest cuckoo clock. After taking our time with lunch we were able to catch the cuckoo clock do its thing (the experience was underwhelming) before wandering over to Kurpark for just a few minutes.
We felt bad about keeping the dogs in the room, so after a quick stop by the Exchange to pick up some provisions, we hiked back up the hill so we could take the dogs for a longer walk. We initially thought we might try taking them off base, but after 2 days of good behavior the dogs were being really obnoxious, so we settled for walking multiple laps around the path that ran between the schools. After 45 minutes or so they started to calm down a little bit, so we returned to the room to settle in for the night.
Sunday was mostly a repeat of Saturday, except we woke up considerably earlier and took the dogs for a longer walk before we headed for town. The dogs were slightly better behaved for the morning walk than they were on Saturday, so there may be hope for them yet, especially as they get used to a new space.
Once in town we took a few more pictures of the Marktkirche, had lunch at the Ratskeller, then wandered around Kurpark for a while. Once we started walking back to the lodge we could hear the roar of the Fußball stadium, where the Wiesbaden team apparently lost 0-1. Later, we took the dogs for their afternoon walk, which was slightly better than the morning outing. Altogether, my iPhone says that I took over 17,000 steps yesterday and another 19,000 today.
Tomorrow our sponsor will pick us up first thing in the morning so we can check in at work, before helping us with a few errands, which includes moving from the Army Lodge to a temporary apartment in Biebrich. We will also need to open a bank account so we can get a German IBAN (international banking account number), which we need before we can get German cell phones. As soon as we get German numbers we will port our current cell phone numbers to Google Voice, which will allow us to use them with Signal, WhatsApp, and 2-factor authentication.