&%$§ Telekom

Now I feel German. We've had the first of our moving glitches. Telekom has turned off our phone 1 week earlier than agreed on. No phone, no internet . . . not a single luxury, like Robinso - ok you get the point.

Might be a bit scarce til this gets sorted.

We have the key and the landlord has a small list of things that need to get repaired. There is a door latch that's broken.

Day 1 of the move involved MG refilling all of the holes in the walls. I stayed with him last night while he removed all of the lightswitch and electrical socket plates.
Someone had to be there to call 911 (or whatever it is) if he stuck that screwdriver somewhere it didn't belong. He insisted the screwdriver was designed for that, but I don't believe him.

Today he is taping, taping, taping and riding over to Telekom to give them a piece of our collective minds.

The mooselet is off to gay Paree for a couple of days. The trains are running again over there which means it's back to rioting season. C'est la vie parisienne, or something.

Tiles, Yey or Yech ***

The Kitchen tiles - I know, I know - they're not soooo bad, but what to do with random fruit? Ehhhhh brown tiles with ehhhh Birch-finish. I am considering the darkest wood countertop that ikea has. (We are not talking about forever in this apartment, so it's ok if they eventually stain and treating with oil a few times a year is also acceptable.)

*** (German) Igit (eee-git)

Moose Round Up

Lots has been going on in the past few weeks. Many good things and a challenge or two. It was a good week, and there is a holiday coming up next week - all of it leaving me more optimistic. There were some ugly moments last week, but with the coming week split in two and busy, I am back to trying.

We have signed a lease for an apartment and move in December. The apartment isn't my altbau traum, but it falls into the 70-80% range in all categories instead of being 100% in some and 40% in others, AND the landlady wanted us, or at least allowed herself to be convinced by relatives to take us over the other applicants. The location is good. It's on a major street, but the street is especially wide (read: cars much further from our window than they now are) and the streetcar doesn't turn (a huge factor in the noise) and there are little balconies out the front and back. There are 4 Rooms, giving us flexibility for the future should we need it. Everything in the bathroom is in acceptable condition. The basement is huge (We are so happy about this). Parking isn't quite as tight as in other locations in the city. It's on the 1 OG - only 1 flight of steps (Yey!) which reduces our anxiety about moving and for the future.


So now we are giving thought to decoration. The kitchen is an issue. The one that is there is pretty oogly and we can't change the tiles.

Blogger won't let me load photos - so the rest of the post will have to wait

Do you read home design blogs ? Anything you want to recommend? thanks

Scattered but good.

Lawdy. I do not want this blog to turn into some kind of emotional Twitter.

Things are not any better than they were, and my German and I find ourselves older, wiser and back at square one, but I am strangely relieved to face it all (the housing search) with a clean slate. I am headed to Paris for the first time in two days - how sad can a girl allow herself to be?

MG left his wallet at a wedding on Saturday and it was safely recovered by S., the most organized bride ever. Even the weather bent itself to her overwhelming planning powers. (There will be pictures when we get the camera back!!) We spent Sunday afternoon with more amazing folks in little America-in-Germany. We had our rental car searched with mirrors and I touched all of the couple's American major appliances. They fed us and spoke English and once in a while, I noticed a big word coming out of my mouth. I didn't know words like that were still in there somewhere. Tonight I am headed off to yoga class with a young lady of superior courage and wit. And the weather is gorgeous.

Clearing my aborted blog posts, here is my jotting from yesterday:

Reading this my be nearly as depressing as having it happen to you. My apologies. We didn't get the apartment, but thank you for being so kind and wishing us well.

More from last week

This isn't a rant. It's a whine. Even finding a place to rent is complicated. We missed a good chance a few weeks back, and missed another one I got really excited about over the weekend. My dear German is going to one open-house tonight - the "last" one, but I don't have the impression that we are so appealing that a land-lord would be looking to take us over the "competition".

I want guests, or at least just to be able to extend an invitation instead living in my house of moldy shame. I should just be excited an glad that there are dream apartments out there, and not so disappointed because there is always a little something wrong with each of them (5th floor walk-up, no balcony, too loud) we don't look at places with yucky bathrooms anymore. I really -really- want to move on to the next big step in my life and we don't do that until we do this. So we will continue doing this.

In happy news 3 days of splendid weather and a totally decadent brunch followed by several hours in the Landesmuseum with concepts of Egyptian beauty followed by lots of Egyptian-influenced work by the Beuron School, which totally rocks, btw.


A link to the St. Hildegard Abbey near Rüdesheim - photos of the chapel.

Even if we had a place, I cannot move on, i.e. even think of reproducing until I am out of my frieky name phase. At the moment I am all about "Traudl" and "Lorelei" and "Tristan"*. We cannot give our children these names without everyone thinking we are great big na$i's**, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

* The "Tristan" obsession is not a new one. I had a secret crush as a child on Tristan Farnon from the "All Creatures Great and Small" series. The actor went on to play another BBC fave of mine - Campion.


The best part is that Tristan has become strangely popular in the past few years, breaking the top 150 names, and making me slightly less of a dork (ok, I can dream).

Want to see how popular your name was in the past 15 years (in the States)? Thank you Social Security Administration.

** Google searches amuse me, but I don't want anyone looking for neo-you-know-what material coming here.

Just Say "No" to Crack

This post could have had so many alternative titles.

Eating Mohnstreusseslschnecken to Dull the Pain
RIP Traumhaus
What Happens to a Moose Lodge Delayed?
Back to Square 1
etc., etc.

In our last stages of deciding about the apartments we wanted to buy, My German contacted neighbors from the surrounding buildings to obtain their approval for the modest deck/dachterrasse we wanted to put in off our kitchen. Monday morning he sent a fax out to one of them with some drawings. Last evening at 18:30 he got a call back from the owner of a neighboring property who lives in Offenburg saying that there had been a 6cm-crack in the shared bearing wall at some point in the past. The crack had been repaired only with difficulty and, furthermore, at that time their construction engineer (statiker) told them that no further weight should be applied to the wall. Why he couldn't have told us this on Saturday, when we spoke to him by phone is unclear to us, but there it is.

So ixnay on the achterrasseday.



From day 1, the dachterrasse was non-negotiable for us. The garden is extremely small and quite shady and I would never have appropriately managed my jealousy of the downstairs neighbors with theirs if we couldn't have one. On the day I finally decided we should go ahead and do it, we found out we won't be getting the apartment after all.

We know that we are lucky for finding this out now, and all that was due to the hard work of my dear, dear German. 75% of my little heart-break at the moment is for him. He is so disappointed. We had our (Ikea) kithcen planned! We know what we are mourning is the dream and not the reality of the house. We know we are fortunate in eachother, and that we still have what matters, but we are going to have to work through our disappointment for a few days.

Re: work
I have sent out two apps for positions at the university, but generally we have decided to stick it out where I am for the moment because maternity leave will play a role in our future IF (when, when - it just feels like if) we can ever find a place to live. Give us a few days to get emotionally back on track, and we'll get back to looking, maybe this time for an apartment to rent. I worry there about not being able to rent anything in 7 or 8 years because a lot of landlords refuse to rent to people with children, but today's struggles are enough to busy me for today.

. . .doesn't kill you .. .stronger
darkest. . .dawn
humor best medicine
At least we have our health. . .

They may all be true, but I am going to eat some more Mohnstreusselschnecke.

Today* we are 33

* Date written, not date posted.

While I would like to offer some profound reflection on aging and becoming an age which I once considered impossibly old, my thoughts today are altbau thoughts and architect thoughts and thoughts of getting together tonight with a new friend and an old friend and a bottle of wine, but we'll see if we get the details ironed out over the course of the day.

We went, laser measuring devices in hand, to remeasure the apartments last night. Most of our pencil calculations were correct, but there was a big difference in one room which made up for most of the missing quadratmeter (square meters). The rooms are the right size (3 m difference is within the acceptable range). The apartment on the first floor is low tech to be sure, but better than I had thought it to be. The tiny WC actually has a proper wall and door, it's not just an open cabinet in the kitchen.

So now, we have to clear out conerns in areas where we are not in a position to judge ourselves. Can we put in the rooftop terrace? Is it technically feasable to put in balconies? (Both important for me, because the garden is so small).

The big questions -

• The beams - are the spongy or ok?
• Can we put in a staircase to connect the two apartments. (Raumspartreppe)
• Does inspection of the basement point to any problems?
• Are the walls ok?

And then, there are the questions no one can answer for you:

• Is this what we want for the rest of our lives?
• Is this bad neighborhood what we want for the kids we might have? Are the chances too high that they would fall in with the wrong crowd in the grundschule and ruin their lives? (School post still pending.)
• Will the drunk people and grafiti get me down?
• Are we actually exposing ourselves to higher levels of crime? - We don't know.
• Are we crazy becoming landlords?

I am at a point where I can't think logically about it any more. I thought about putting in a woodstove and it was over for me. I imagine myself and my bookcase, my coffee, and the fire in the woodstove on a winter Saturday afternoon with kids playing (They're not fighting; this is where you know it bears no relation to reality, right?)

Mr. Moose is excited that there is a zoo nearby (500 m). He has fond memories of going there as a child and is thrilled by the prospect of annual membership and taking his kids there every weekend.

World. fast. spinning. {wretching noises}

Positive - Mr. Moose and I do oodles of talking every night about what we want out of our lives, and I have a feeling we are going to look back on this time very fondly. M.G. is fab.

This following points all re: 1880's house 4apts in not the greatest part of town.

Negative - So the apartments aren't 90qm. They're 78 qm. AND the owner hasn't been paying his house dues for the past 6 months. We're furious with the realtor. We knew he was slimey, but really. This is huge because it meant that the already ridiculously low rent has to be lowered 12%! Argh.

Postive - Downstairs neighbors have made heaven on earth out of their apartment and seem to be lovely people.

Negative - Our potential balcony would darken their kitchen - no go. Putting in a terrace for us might be complicated. Umm, and they seemed to be under the impression we would be overtaking all of Mr. X's unpaid house dues. Not happening. We'd be taking on our undesirably high percentage of it and that's that.

Positive - some of the estimates the "neighbors" had gotten from contracters were lower than we had planned with.

Negative - very cool couple are going to hate us for raising the rent of "our" tenants and kicking the one lady out. It's unsozial - and to be honest, I have thought a bit about the moral implications of it all.

Positive - "neighbors" have good relationships with other tenants of building

Negative - story about garden becoming property of studio apartment - bogus, but we can't go back an make an offer for just the two apartments in which we were originally interested because then Mr. X is still in the game and not making payments towards the facade and roof repairs which we all want to see done soon (2 or 3 years).


Sooooo - What does it say next to "You are here" dot in my life?

Wait for a counter offer from evil-bank/realtor/owner, Wait for response on offer from couple re: cute little apartment. Do not pass go. Do not spend X00,000 Euros.

How much progress can one Moose take?

When we last left the adventures of Yours Truly in Southern Germany, I was lamenting our lack of house/apartment/rental property aquisition. And so it remained, until some time the week before last.

The world has started spinning very fast.

First, we stumbled back across a smaller apartment that we had decided not to look at earlier because it would be a less than 10 year deal. It would be very tight with two small children and should there be a third, you would have to be out before you were out of the small children phase.

The apartment is darling and what we would be looking to take off the asking price is not unreasonable (edited, ok maybe it is). Negatives: streetcar noise, garage rental a must, front facade needs work, 4th story walkup, bathoroom in need of a makeover and a new water heater, bathoroom vents only through terrace access (lots of cold air in the winter). Positives, (mostly) bright airy rooms, several with wooden flooring (yey), a floorplan that works, cute building garden, access and view over huge complex garden, good transportation connection for us both, generous basement. Mixed blessings: discussion of re-doing back facade expanding balcony, no installed kitchen.

But we would definitely _have_ to move out in the plannable future and we worry about being able to find space for a family. Would we be able to sell? We're not sure. We could rent, but having your capital locked up is not so nice. Plus real estate just doesn't seem to appreciate much around here, and Mr. Moose has already started in on the - "Do we really want to renovate X, if we're going to have to move out in Y years?" We wouldn't make our new home perfect because by the time we were throught, it would be time to go and we couldn't recoup what we had invested.

Then came Mr. Moose's dream. An old building (nothing wrong in principle with an alt-bau - preferable, actually) with 4 apartments for sale. We wanted the two apartments directly on top of eachother. One to live in, one to rent out until we need it. Here, the list of negatives. Get a cup of coffee; it's looooong.

I will do a separate post on the school district. There are private school alternatives.

• Across the street from Sozial Wohnungen. Group of drunk people/drinkers hang out across the street in front of the Plus store. (The are good natured enough- we don't percieve them as a threat.)
• Major, major facade work.
• Can't move in for 9 months.
• Needs at least

1. new windows
2. new floors - although these you can live with for the time being
3. new heating system to replace the single gas ovens - opportunity to do Fußboden-heizung.
4. roof terrace - would require a building permit
5. balcony

• Garden is tiny and in shadow
• No parking

Good points-

• price
• lots of space
• option to move into studio apartment for parents or for us when steps get to be too much
• train connection is good for me
• we could do a lot to raise the value of the apartment. some hope of getting some money back out.
• could put in dream things (fancy bath or wood oven) becasue one is staying
• street in front is quiet
• bathroom WC together, but big

We made and offer for 3 or 4 apartments, and the bank counter-offered 5k more than we had offered for all 4 apartments. The fourth aparment is worth practically nothing. The third we would need to guarantee access to the little garden, although we would rent out the studio apartment right next to the garden.

Facade will be pretty when completed.

A lot to think about.

Backblog Part I - House Hunting Links

A great deal going on here, without a whole lot of forward movement. How can that be?

We are looking to

1. buy a "Bleibe" (house or apartment, not yet decided)
2. replace my Dell which is just a few final boot-ups from paperweight city
3. buy a car
4. perhaps move somewhere else while continuing to rent

I have been really inspired by Christina G.'s recent post on American food, and will try to add links to useful sites we are using in to resolve problems 1-4.

It's a lot to do and Mr. Moose, a.k.a. My German, spends a lot of time with his nose tucked into ImmobilienScout and the newspaper, the BNN.

The local classifieds listings can be read in a weekly paper called Sperrmüll, but all the hip kids know that the listings can be accessed from your (for a fee) by computer at Quoka.de.

I have also run across Kijiji, but can't offer an evaluation. There wasn't much there that was helpful for us, but this is true of Craigslist as well.

Here is a web site on which houses are sold without a makler - but the geography is wrong for us.

Here is a nifty apartment we found, but the distribution of the rooms wouldn't work for us and the street is not terribly desirable. . . but it's so cute!!

The Search for Moose Lodge

First off, it got mentioned at Girly Weekend, (Jen's new page) that the "joke" in the blog name wasn't clear to everyone. I am writing this all "semi-anonymously", hence Ann on a Moose. It's a stretch, but I once worked for a federal agency with a connection to the great outdoors, so there's that link as well. I do not, did not, will not ride on or advocate the riding oon of meece.

We have started the great hunt for our new "zu hause". On the one hand, exciting, on the other terrifying. What to look for, what to avoid. This will probably be a recurring topic (hope this won't bore you all out of your trees, particularly those of you who already have roofes over your heads.) Some observations to date:

• Germans do not appear to sell their houses privately with any frequency. (Is the realtor fielding a few phone calls really worth 10k to you? (And then another 10k to me btw.)) And if they have more than one realtor, you could get stuck paying it twice. Haven't quite figured out how that works yet.
• I think I could get a lawyer in the states to review the sales contract for a hell of a lot less than 1,5 % of the sales price. My normally mild-mannered German said, "Anwalte - die kriegen so-wie-wo für jeden Scheiss ein Arschvoll Geld." Shocked the britches off me.
• People advertising apartments are sneaky with the living area. Always make sure you get a good look at the size of the place according to the DIN. It's much smaller.
• We hear that prefab houses from the 50's are/can be crap (hell-hörig, schlecht gedämmt).
• We want to avoid buying near a Hauptschule - although it's not a dealbreaker because the days of the Hauptschule may be numbered anyway.