HUGE NEWS!!!!

We found an apartment!!!!!! Woo hooo!!!! Before the accusations of excessive exclamation points roll in, I want to say a bit (that I've been meaning to write for a few days, but have been too freaking tired at the end of the day) about the hellish experience that is apartment-hunting in Germany.

First weird thing: apartments here typically come with nothing in them but the floors. No light fixtures, no medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink (though there do typically seem to be bathroom sinks, tubs, and toilets), and, worst of all, nothing in the kitchen, no stove or oven, no refrigerator, not even a sink or a counter, just input and output plumbing holes. It's super-depressing walking into such a bare apartment and imagining the money and the energy (a rare commodity for me, remember) that would be required to make such a place habitable. All that money for just one year... but hey, if that's how it works here.... And the one year part is a problem, too. Rentals here are longer term. We found out that the landlord for our top choice wouldn't even consider us, because he only wanted people who would commit to three years. Three years! Who on earth knows that they'll even be in the same job for three years?!

Another German delight is that it takes a lot longer to know whether an apartment is yours. So far as I'm aware, in the US, if you're the first person to officially say you want an available apartment, you get it (as long as your credit is good, etc.). Here, you answer an ad, have the current tenant show you the place, and decide you want it. Then you find that there are three people who came before you who want the place and there are seven appointments to show the apartment after you leave, but if you've decided you want it, you can fill out a form just like those who came before you. The resident then picks their top few choices to show the landlord, and the landlord then picks the lucky winner. This process takes time. We saw a lovely place on Saturday night and were told that we wouldn't know until Thursday or Friday whether it would be ours. To complicate matters, Germans take their word very seriously, so it's not cool to enter the process to get one place and simultaneously seek another; it would be very uncool to be offered a place and then say no. We, of course, broke this rule and sought places simultaneously, since we couldn't afford to wait for days in hopes that we'd beat the odds and get the apartment.

Apartment-hunting here is so competitive! You walk around and see an incredible number of beautiful old buildings with marvelous balconies overlooking cobblestoned streets with chattering Germans drinking beer and eating mustard and other such idylls - and none of it is available, and even if it is, what are the odds you'd get it? Most of what is available is crap, and even that gets snapped up in a few days.

And on top of it all are my own health complications: all the walking involved in visiting places has made a couple of days this week totally hellish and painful. The walking itself is tolerable - it's the payback, the muscle pain, the cognitive blunting, the exhaustion that follows hours and days after, that is so terrible.

Blucky. In a failed attempt at brevity, I'm sure I'm omitting key features of the sucky apartment hunt, but it's probably for the best, especially now that it's over!

Wonder of wonders, somehow a landlord decided that even though we're "only" going to be here for eleven more months, we're the ones! The place we got is incredibly phat (or should I say, KILLA) - it's the penthouse of a five-floor building pretty close to the Rhine. It's got two balconies that run the length of the apartment, one on the front face of the building and one on the back, so the apartment is sandwiched between them. It has an awesome, very stylish little kitchen with a fridge, a freezer(!), a stove and an oven(!), and even a dishwasher! (What Brian, the designated dishwasher, is going to do with himself, we don't yet know.) The tiles in the bathroom are all marble - a little too bachelor pad, but we can handle it. The apartment is gorgeous, and we're totally delighted with it. The location, a ten-minute walk from the Altstadt, may be a problem for me - we'll have to see. We have been celebrating heartily here with a bottle of wine! What a load off!