tech savvy - get ready for pictures!

Wow, I had no idea I'd be able to post pictures any time soon, however because we finally decided on a cell phone plan we may be snapping sooner than you think! We've actually got a fabulous deal on our phones, which is a good thing because historically calls in Germany are notoriously expensive, especially cell phone ones - however, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that competition between more cell companies is working totally in our favor!

We each get "free" phones with our 25€ plan and the phones we picked (identical, sigh, yes, we are married and have matching cell phones...i know) have a large capacity digital camera, even w/flash, so as long as there's a section of the instruction booklet in English, I will be clicking away over the weekend! hooray!

Another fun bonus is that it has a large capacity MP3 player on it, something I've always wanted but personally wasn't going to ever spend money on. So now I get music to go too! (and it has one of the longest talk-hours available, 8hrs, so that's great too.)

Something funky you should know: This Rautenberg household will now have a grand total of 5, count 'em FIVE phone numbers. Yes this is ridiculous, but here's why: We have the Vonage internet phone with a USA phone number so all you cheapies and no-international-calling-on-the-cell-phone can call a US number and have it ring in Germany (this means we expect calls!). That is phone number 1.

Two other numbers are my cell phone number and Stefan's cell number. So, that brings us to 3 numbers....but what about the other 2? Well, in Germany cell phones have a different prefix - so people know when they call a cell phone, b/c unlike the States, the person who makes the call is the one paying for it. (ie-people don't call cell #s because it's usually something like 19 or 29 cents/min, i kid you not) So cell companies are now handing out "home numbers", which have the landline prefix to them. Except these numbers will be forwarded to our cell phones - so the caller doesn't pay extra, and we entice people to actually call us. This is especially important for Stefan - who has to hand out his home number to students so parents can reach him. This is nice for me b/c I'll never have to deal with those parents.

We thought about getting a house phone that would just stay in the house, attached to the wall. But 6 phone numbers for 2 people is just silly, don't you think?!! Besides, we have the land line numbers and this is much cheaper!