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

Giving "Get off your fanny" a whole new meaning

What I lack in speed, I hope to make up in additional useless trivia. Here is the long awaited answer to the fanny conundrum (drumroll please).

From the Wikipedia entry on "fanny"

Fanny as slang may refer to the:

• buttocks (in the US)
• vagina (in the UK, Australia and other places)

Abbreviations:

• FANY, (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) pronounced "Fanny" were female army nurses in Britain from 1907 onwards, and may be the link between the word and the slang usage.

This newer potential source might explain why there was no problem with the nickname for Frances historically. Aparently there is even rhyming slang for "the f word" now.

Here's a page from IrelandLogue

Fanny - A very rude word for a woman’s private parts.

Seriously.

Never use this word in polite company as it does NOT mean your gluteus maximus out here. In Ireland, “fanny” is so rudely specific, it’s pretty much treated like a curse word.

Poor, oblivious US tourists come to Ireland every day and refer to the “fanny pack” they’re wearing unknowingly causing the Irish people around them to blush and/or giggle every time they hear it said. The anglicization of “fanny pack” is “bum bag,” by the way.

When an Irish friend came to visit me in the bay area he could not get enough photos of the exterior of a restaurant featuring an enormous statue of a woman holding a plate of hamburgers. The California hamburger chain was called, of course, Fat Fanny’s. Hee hee hee.

We were lucky enough to attend a wedding in Rüdesheim a few weeks back. Here the lovely bride and groom in their

cable car. The guests got to follow them up the hill with this view. Yes, the Rhein was in flood.

I don't care what the guide books say, the town itself is a tourist trap but the region is lovely, and the wall paintings in the kloster are really impressive. We have relatives who stayed with young boys at the Jugendherberge in Bacharach. The boys loved it, telling me excitedly about their time in a Ritterburg.

It was a wee bit weird because we know that one member of the pair went through the whole thing reluctantly, at least initially. Not the relationship or the committment, but the wedding. This is hardly a secret, it was mentioned in the wedding invitation and again during the ceremony. I just couldn't get as into it as I might otherwise would. How worked up can you get about someone improving their tax situation? But the guests were lovely and I got to talk way too much with an incredibly kind British couple.

Hint - don't ever say "fanny pack" in the UK

Genitalities

We were talking about this post from Mausi, and My German, surprised that I might have any objection to naked (somewhat older) children running around, said

You don't want to know the genitalities of your son?!

(I was trying to explain that there was a difference between boxers and buck naked.)

Strangely enough, genitalities were mentioned over at Claire's today too.

Not dead yet

Still among the land of the living, but here are my excuses for not having blogged recently:

• illness (but that only lasted 3 or 4 days) and for most that's an opportunity to blog
• the apartment search has taken a number of distressing turns recently. It's my life, but it's to depressing to write about, let alone read
• travel
  
• trying to behave myself at work

Trying with mixed success to keep my life on an even keel has taken up most of my energy, but that doesn't mean I don't have some photos.

Yey.

No apartment stuff, but this.

More Dads making use of the opportunity to take parental leave with the new Elterngeld.

8,5% up from 3,5% in one year. How cool is that?!

I won't go into all of the reasons that this is fabulous, but I do want to add that it has strengthened the resolve of some fathers we know to take time off, and one father I know is splitting the time 50/50. He loves it.

On a much, much sadder note, I am waiting for an email from Lima to find out if a friend and his family are all ok.

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.

All quiet on the Wohnung front

We are still waiting to receive word on the apartment. I didn't leave the interview with a particularly positive view of our chances, but I felt a great deal better once the interview was behind us. The landlady was quite pleasant, but I didn't get the sense that she was in any way convinced by us.

keep holding those thumbs, and thank you!

You, press me your thumbs. . .

and I will try to keep my ears stiff.

We are going to chat with a land-lady tonight who has an apartment we'd really like to rent. We're the last ones, so we have no right to the place and although I think we would be a fabulous addition to their building (what with my objectivity and all), she may not agree.

I feel better just have written that. Nervous panic abated, I will return to the task at hand. Stay dry all you folks in the West - it is a wet one out there.

No worries folks. We're off to Paris for a few days in two weeks and in 1 week, I get to see a friend from the States whom I haven't seen in 4 years, so it's gonna be alright.

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.

Fußless Moose

I wrote this post some weeks back. Notebook lets me get some thoughts onto paper that I can bring to you later through the glories of cut and paste. It does, however, mean that posts don't necessarily reflect how I am feeling this instant, which is shockingly enough, ok. Subject to change with about 4,5 seconds notice.

Well some people gave me a great deal to chew on over the past few days. One, because it sounds like she's got some things sorted out and is happier for it - and that is fabulous, and I wish her much continued success. Another, because she pointed out that despite a great partner and tremendous talents, this expat cosa nostra is a hard, hard row to hoe even after many, many years.

We just celebrated our first legal anniversary. Beating the German state into acknowledging you on any level is an achievement - so it's worth celebrating. My guy is great. I got such a deal, but work has continued to be unspeakable. It probably isn't as bad as I am making it out to be, but my job went from the monster that at my evenings and weekends to a place where there is nothing to do. I envision the axe over my head and the replacements lined up for hire, although this may not be a reflection of reality.

I left the best job ever - a job with its problems, like any other job, but I job I was really proud of, and I came to Germany for some other guy, who though still my friend, decided that I wasn't all that and a bag of chips. I still won't hear anyone talk smack about him, but I have come to believe he was right and been glad that he was brave enough to make an unpleasant decision. He also hung around long enough for me to get my life in order, for which I am also eternally greatful.

But here I am with a job I can't be proud of and can't enjoy. At least if I worked in a cafe, I could enjoy it. And people who love me advising me to leave the career I worked so hard for so long and tutor or something and I feel completely at sea and I wonder when I will get my footing again (Fuß fassen).

The thing to do is to get up off my proverbial you-know-what and face the pain of potential rejection by finding some more companies to apply to. Why can't I wake up as Pollyanna?

Haustier Peeves

* I have things I love, too, but we'll get to that later.

What is it with Germans and bathroom doors? They never, I mean -never- knock first. Of course, I always lock the bathroom door now, but have often had the experience in public restrooms where even the locked door is viewed more or less strictly as a suggestion, and repeated, ever more forcible attempts are made to open the door. I am usually too shocked to respond in a timely manner - "WTF??!!" being the only thought running through my mind as I cower on the other side of the door.

By the by

(This note is not a criticim of someone with furniture in the basement. You've got to store it somewhere. I have less patience with organizations spending millions of tax-payer euros putting some of their most sensitive systems in the one location most likely to get wet.)



A little advice for the world (as if they drop by to read it). If you build/redesign your facility in a flood zone, would you please, please stop putting all kinds of crap you care about in the basement. Ya know, like the expensive stuff. Like your hvac unit, or your computer server, or your security system, or your state of the art kitchen, or your laboratory. Or, for instance, priceless art treasures that have to be painfully and expensively dragged hither, thither and yon every time it looks like it might rain too much.

'Cause, there was like no one who knew that there was a potential for this, or this, or this when all ya'll decided to install all of that below the floodwater line. The stone marker on the front of your building with the historical highwater might just be helpful in determining just where that is.

Thank you for your attention.

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.

There were bells on the hills. . .

but I never heard them ringing, no I never heard them at all, til ...

Nach Hamburg wollen in den nächsten Wochen Niedersachsen und Baden-Württemberg ihre Gesetze verabschieden. Dort soll die Gastronomie sogar schon am 1. August rauchfrei werden. Das Hamburger Gesetz tritt erst in der kommenden Silvesternacht in Kraft - wie in den meisten anderen Ländern. Dort wurden die Gesetze ebenfalls schon von den Regierungen abgesegnet. Jetzt müssen nur noch die Landtage darüber abstimmen.

Following Hamburg, authorities in Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg want to pass their [anti-smoking] laws in the coming weeks. It is expected that restaurants and bars there will be smoke-free as early as August 1rst.

All that and the Motu Proprio in one week. Pretty cool. The article has a lot of the usual blah blah "The reactionaries are coming; the reactionaries are coming!" to it. For purposes of disclosure, I am not a huge fan of the Traditional Mass in practise, but I have lived plenty of places where there was demand for it and the bishop thought that once a month on Thursday night was "generous" permission. I also have friends I'd like to see more clearly at home in Rome and this might help. And isn't there something ironic about the bishops being circumvented because there was a problem complaining. If he thought you were correct in your assessment of the situation Your Eminance, there wouldn't be a motu proprio to issue in the first place, so put a sock in it.

This I didn't know and will have to look into:

An indult was granted in 1971 by Pope Paul VI after a group of English luminaries - including Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, William Rees-Mogg, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ralph Richardson, C Day Lewis and Iris Murdoch - complained to him about the loss to civilisation and culture that the suppression represented.

** The Agatha Christie Indult - Huh,who knew? The kids at The Shrine, no doubt, but really, wow. Your religon may have cool meditation techniques (not that Catholicism doesn't), or encourage a healthier diet, or do Liturgy better (high church Anglicans), but until you've got an Agatha Christie Indult, you are missin' out.

It is pouring AGAIN. Not that it's better in the States. My sisters chat status = "humidity". She cracks me up.

 

One more thing I learned while in Italy last weekend (and in honor of languages week). We didn't sing the last line - for us it was just filled with la la's so I can't tell you what they are singing.

Constant Craving

ok - maybe only yesterday.

Bacon, egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel, with a hazelnut coffee.
Mmmmmmm.