Adventures in Deutschland

I know, I know, a blog update is overdue. So, here goes...

Yes, we found a house, but it's not official yet. Surprise, surprise. Like everything else here, there are quite a few bureaucratic steps that need to be followed for it to be so. Even though there were Americans living in the house before, the housing office needs to reinspect it because the landlord bought the house from his brother, so there's a different name on the contract than the one they have on file. That is supposed to take place Monday. I'm supposed to move into the house a week from Monday, but I have yet to arrange for temporary furniture to be delivered. Tomorrow Wayne's HR manager is taking me to a bazaar in Heidelberg, so I'll find out everything I need to do for that from her. Plus, even though I got power of attorney from Wayne, we'll see if I can actually arrange all of the financial stuff on the house such as getting approval for the utility payments and rent payments.

Right now Wayne is in Amaan, Jordan, for a week. Then he'll be back here for 1 1/2 days and off to London for a week for terrorism school. I tried to get something important accomplished today in his absence, but of course, it didn't happen. Here you're supposed to have snow tires on the car from October til' Easter. There are 4 snow tires in the car we bought from a soldier in Wiesbaden in the car (2 in the trunk, and 2 in the backseat--you can imagine how eager I am to get those OUT of the car!). They're supposedly new, but the mechanic today said that 2 of them have dry rot, so we need to buy 2 more because Germans do not allow mix and match tires (i.e. not 2 snow tires and 2 regular tires or 2 radial and 2 bias. I don't know what those are, but it was on my USAREUR license test, so I know it). All 4 have to be identical. Also, he noticed something else that needed to be ordered and fixed on the wheels, so I got an estimate, but Wayne will have to do the rest. See why it's annoying for him to be out of town for 2 weeks in a row?

Ok, so the house. It's big. But, Germans use space differently, so whereas in an American house that extra square footage (or meterage in Europe) would be put into say a living room on the first floor, here it's in the basement. So, there's a huge (guest?) room in the basement--along with a full bath, and a huge laundry room and storage room, but that's not how I'd dole out the space if I were designing the house. But, for those of you that were in our house in Lombard, it will be a BIG change. About 3 times the size (but again, over 3 floors). There are roosters just outside. That will be interesting. You can see a church built in the middle ages from windows in the kitchen and some bedrooms. The kitchen is not typical at all of a German kitchen. As Wayne says, the house was build for Americans, although without our penchant for closets and bathroom cabinets. Wayne will have to paint the family room/dining room because the blue has got to go. It is a very large room, but as you can imagine, with his design background and our furniture, the blue does not work at all. There is a urinal in the first floor bathroom, but also a nice fish tile mural.