MB and Ron in Deutschland - The Preface

Before we get into any stories and pictures and videos about our life in Mannheim, I figure its just as well I gave some general info about how we got here and how things started off over here. It all started off with an email offering a scholarship opportunity to study and travel in Germany. It was actually specifically for Mannheim, Germany, but since I had no idea where Mannheim was I just figured Germany was cool enough and went for it. As you've probably guessed, I received the scholarship and one thing led to another, and here I am in Mannheim Germany.

Of course things really didn't start off so smoothly for us. Getting to Mannheim was no problem. We made our way through Frankfurt airport, hopped on a Frankfurt - Mannheim shuttle bus, and actually ended up here a couple hours early. It was once we got to Mannheim that we started hitting the bumps in the road. One thing that became apparent quite quickly was that all Germans don't necessarily speak English. Sure, many do, but the people who mattered most to us initially (cab drivers and the people running our residence) didn't. So, to make a long story short, it took us 45 minutes to find a cab to our residence and it took us another couple of hours to actually get in the residence. Lets just say we were cold and MB was convinced we were going to end up on the streets by the time we got inside.

Luckily, things started smoothing out again from there. We made some friends, got acquainted with German beer and wine, and bought some sheets for our bed. We'll get into all that at another point however, but for now, I'll leave you with a little Google map of our city in Germany. I've got some things labeled, so you can kind of see where some useful places are in Mannheim. I'm sure we'll be adding more to it as time passes. (You might need to zoom out or move it around a little to see everything, or even click to see the larger map.)


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