moving in: the adventures of renting in Germany...

Sorry for the long hiatus! We've officially moved into our new apartment and wow....it has really taken up a lot of our time! Saturday we cleaned the room we had been staying in and got ready for our 5pm appointment with the landlord and former tennent. 2.5 hours later......(yes, really!) we had the apartment to ourselves. Why so long? We had to watch the former tennent go through the apartment with the landlord and we were encouraged to point out blemishes as well. There was a lot of paperwork to go through (typical German...) and then the tennent left and we had to re-go-over everything with the landlord. His wife was also there, so I was talking to her most of the time (yes, in German!..kind of...)

We were determined to move in that night, so we were armed with a twin size air mattress and a foam mat-bed thing for Stefan. Around 10pm we made a run down to Gießen to pick up a few boxes of tools and cleaning supplies Stefan had stored at his mother's house. She also gave us a few lightbulbs--yes, there was nothing but wires hanging from every room's ceiling...good thing Stefan had stored some things just to hang bare bulbs on.... After jury-rigging a curtain to block the early-am sunrise we crashed. Sunday and Monday we cleaned all day, really deep-cleaned. Stefan was able to drive a few hours to pick up about 10 boxes he had left with a friend. Monday night we had plates and utensils to eat with!

Yesterday we painted the living room and front entry hall blue....everything here is stark white, blindingly white! Color therapy is good..... though not without a price of course! Colored paint in Germany is not cheap, especially if you want latex paint....only one large Home Depot-like chain carries latex paint, and only one kind: glossy. Enough paint to do the 2 rooms was 65€. Yes, like you, I practically fainted when I heard that! Happy to say the institutional feeling of the bright white apartment is gradually fading.

I am determined to get pictures off my phone and onto this blog! - ha, Stefan just called me to say he's going to meet me at another online place where we can catch a signal on our laptop, and he's bringing the software to get our pictures from our phones onto the computer....so....stay tuned dear readers....we may have pictures soon!