Finally time to announce that in January, we're moving to
Hildesheim, Germany!

As you may already know, Tom's job rotates him every six months for the first two years to give him an overview of the company. For his last rotation, they like you to work internationally since Bosch is such a worldwide company. For months, we thought we would be going to England but suddenly a better opportunity arose for Tom in Hildesheim, so we changed our minds. We are really excited. Tom found out he starts mid January and so we are beginning to make preparations for our move. We are excited and nervous. We hope to travel a lot while we are there-both in Germany and around Europe. We've already started a list of all the places we would love to go. Hopefully we will be able to! We've started to learn a few German phrases...Ainsley has even learned to count to 10. We will attend a German Branch in Hildesheim. Bosch helps find us housing and provide transportation which makes it a lot easier for us. But we've still got a lot of paperwork ahead of us. When we are done, we're not sure where we'll end up permanently yet. Probably either back in Michigan or here in Chicago, but only time will tell. Anyway, it will be an adventure! Wish us luck!

Neither of us had heard of Hildesheim before, and I'm sure you haven't either so here is some pictures and a few facts we've learned about Hildeshiem so far. It is a smaller town in central Germany. It has about 100,000 residents. The closest big town and capital of the state, called Lower Saxony, is Hanover. Its about two hours to Berlin as well as Hamburg. It is about four hours to Stuttgart, Bosch's headquarters and where our good friends the Trapuzzanos will be for their final rotation. We hoped we'd be closer to them so Nikki and I could hang out, but it didn't work out that way. Hopefully we'll still get to see them a few times though.

As with many towns in Germany, it was destroyed during World War II, but has been rebuilt to look in its original state. Some of the famous sites in the town include the picturesque Market Square with half-timbered buildings.
The large triangular shape building is the famous Butchers Guild Hall, originally built in 1529 where all the meat had to be sold at market. Nowadays it is a museum. The small brown one next to it is the Bakers Guild Hall, originally built in 1825. Now it is a bakery and cafe.
Hildesheim has two UNESCO World Heritage sites (aka really, really old). The first is St. Michel's church which is over a 1,000 years old.
St. Mary's Cathedral is the second World Heritage site and it is is known for its thousand-year-old rose bush in the cathedral courtyard. It is believed to be the oldest rose in the world dating from 815 A.D. Its roots even survived the World War II bombing that destroyed much of the city.

Wedekind House, now a bank

Temple House, the tourist visitor center
So those are just a few of the pictures we've found so far of our future home. We'll post more once we live there. We can't wait! If anyone wants to come visit...you're more than welcome!