It Can Only Get Better

During May we took a hiatus from blogging.  The month was simply just too busy and we barely had time to catch our breath nonetheless blog. Please forgive us.  May was quite a month. 

Let’s see.  We started the month on a high note as my basketball season came to an end.  Our final game was in Dortmund and I stayed in Dortmund after our game that night in order to celebrate BVB Dortmund’s Second German Bundesliga Championship in a row (if you recall, I was also at the celebration last year). 

The following week, I completed an experiment consisting of 284 participants and 26 sessions.  Hopefully, I get some good results and before too long something shows up on Google Scholar when you type my name.  

We spent 6 days in Munich during the middle of May.  The timing of the trip couldn’t have been worse.   Right before we left we found out that we needed to be out of our current apartment a week earlier than expected, even though we still didn’t have a solid date on a moving van, plus our new apartment didn’t have a kitchen installed yet.  Our friends really came through for us and we were able to get a large moving van on Friday night and loaded it up with as much furniture as possible and drove to Münster on Saturday morning to unload.  We didn’t have time to unpack anything in our new apartment.  In fact, Dana and Dylan didn’t even go on this trip to the new apartment and instead stayed home to pack for our trip to Munich the next day. 

After seeing all of our large furniture moved out of our Borken apartment, Dylan wasn’t in the mood to travel.  Although he enjoyed the train rides, he heavily protested the first 3 days we were there.  He was intent on not having fun and kept saying that he wanted to “go back to the number 9 house” (referring to our address in Borken).  Thanks to Dylan and our pending move, we weren’t able to really relax during vacation.  After that trip, we won’t be making any plans for travelling in the near future.  Here are some pictures from our trip:

Dylan loved the pretzels, big and small

Tom Arnold is not as popular as David Hasselhof in Bavaria, but he was in the Englisher Garten taping a segment for Fox's Champions League coverage. 

Champions League Festival with the Cup.

Once we got home, it was time to really pack things up and get out of Borken.  It was strange living in our Borken apartment without any furniture for nearly a week.   We expected to have the van all day on Friday and intended on taking 2 to 3 trips, but at the 11^th hour we were told we could only have it until noon on Friday, drastically cutting short the amount of time we had to get everything out.  Needless to say, we were stressed.

We were able to make two trips to Münster on Thursday and Friday.  I dropped off van in Borken on Friday at noon, met Dana, Dylan, and a terrified Oscar, and we all took the SprinterBus together to Münster.  Hopefully, my last Sprinter Bus ride ever!  I couldn’t stop smiling at the prospect of not having to make that long journey/commute again. 

We arrived in our new house in Münster on Friday evening.  Unfortunately, some very important items weren’t quite ready, making for a very interesting (read: sucky) living situation.   These items include: a kitchen (hopefully coming in the next week or two…factory that was making our countertop was backed up evidently), hot water (yes, we have been taking cold showers.  Not pleasant.), and no phone or Internet connection (possibly the worst out of the three).  I signed up for phone and Internet service 3 weeks ago and it took the company 2 weeks to call us back and the first available appointment for an installation still wasn’t for another 2 weeks after that! 

Our first weekend in our new apartment was a long, three-day weekend.  It was great to be home for an extra day and get settled in but no kitchen, hot water, phone and Internet does make for a long weekend.*

*Dear American readers, when you have a holiday in Germany, EVERYTHING closes except for ice cream shops and bakeries.  Shopping and any other type of service are not an option. 

But we still have our health, right?  Not exactly.  Dana had what looked like a painful rash show up on her right underarm /back area on Friday afternoon.  It was so painful that it kept her awake all night Saturday and on Sunday it looked like it was getting infected so she walked in to the emergency room on Sunday morning.  By Sunday afternoon, after being examined by three doctors, they told her she had the Chicken Pox.  She had it as a child, but evidently in rare cases it is possible to get it again. The entire hospital didn’t have medicine to treat it (some things in Germany never cease to amaze us – how is it possible that a hospital has no medicine for something as common as Chicken Pox?)  Dana was instructed to make an appointment two days later on Tuesday with her normal Doctor who can give us medicine.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a local Dr. after only living in the city for 3 nights, so she needed to walk in without an appointment at on of the local practices. Like I said, things can only get better.

Dylan had a chicken pox vaccine, so he should be okay.  I had it when I was 9, so hopefully I stay in the majority of people who only get chicken pox once. 

Aside from our kitchen, all of our stuff is unpacked and put away.  We really like our new place and our surrounding city even better.  We are really excited to live here.  After this experience, I think we will be staying here for the next 30 years…the same year as our next vacation.

House Hunters International: Foltice Edition Part 3 - We've Got Keys!

By far our biggest challenge since moving to Germany has been finding a new apartment in Münster.  Our work visas and health insurance forms seem like a walk in the park compared to our search for an apartment.  Fortunately, our fears of being homeless in a foreign country on June 1^st were eliminated when we signed the final paperwork and picked up the keys from our landlord on Friday.   Passing this hurdle leaves us with one less challenge, but it also creates a new batch of challenges.  Here’s what we face in the next 4-6 weeks as we transition to a new apartment in Münster. 

The Good News

We are living on the Main Street in a small section of Münster called Hiltrup.  It’s about 7-8 km from the University.  It’s very centrally located with restaurants and shopping literally downstairs.  We live above a grocery store and a bank (incidentally, the same bank we have accounts with).

Even better is the commute to work.   I can walk for 3-4 minutes to the train station in Hiltrup, where I am a 4-minute train ride to the main Münster train station.  There are 2-3 trains per hour heading each way, starting at 5am and running to 1am.  All and all, the time saved in commute will give me an extra 10 hours per week. 

The not-so good news

We need to buy and install a kitchen.  We have 4 weeks to figure this out and I am sure we will need all 4 of them.  I am certain there will be more blog posts on this, as we are only at the beginning of this ordeal. 

We also need to install lights in every room.  Yes, American readers, you not only have to bring your own kitchen, but you have to bring and install your own lights throughout the entire house.  We even looked at a place that didn’t come with a toilet seat or showerhead.

We also need to set up our Phone and Internet.  This shouldn’t be a big deal, but we were told that this could take 3-4 weeks to install.   Yes, economists still say Germany is a developed, non-third world country, even though you can get Internet in Somalia in 2-3 business days.   I can manage to live without lights and toilet seats, but I must have Internet.  

Getting a parking permit to legally park our moving van/truck on the main street during moving day and setting up our hot water could prove to be a challenge as well. 

We are so thankful to have found this apartment and can't wait to get settled in our new place.  We will keep you posted as the adventure continues.   

Holding up the keys to our new apartment!  Getting those keys was the number 1 priority of the day.  The number 2 priority was getting a döner at the nearest Döner-Kebab place 2 blocks up the street.  We are already loving this location.

Here is our new kitchen.  Yeah, we have some work to do.  

A cool Tapas y Vino restaurant and grocery store right downstairs.  

It was a long day!  Both boys were tuckered out on the bus ride home.

We'll post some more interior photos after we get moved in and settled. 

House Hunters International: Foltice Edition Part 2

Did you miss Part 1 of our House Hunters International: Foltice Edition posts?  Check it out here to get caught up.

We've taken our apartment search up a notch within the past few weeks for several reasons.

1. The majority of apartments listed right now are actually available when we need them to be (May/June) as opposed to earlier (March/April). We need to stay in Borken at least through the end of the basketball season, which ends on May 5.
2. Most of the students in Münster have moved in by now, so there is less competition from students over the few available apartments.
3. More importantly, we've been told that our current landlord already has someone lined up to move into our apartment June 1, so we now have high motivation to find something fast otherwise we'll be living out of a cheap hotel (or homeless) come June.

To help solve the problem Bryan, in his immanent nerdiness, created a spreadsheet. We flagged about a dozen apartments online and he collected all of the important details and put them together in one easy-to-update Excel worksheet. Last week was a wash because of Easter (hardly anyone works during Easter week here, and quite a few people take off the week after Easter as well) and no one was going to show us any apartments that week so we focused our efforts on getting organized. But this week, I have tackled this handy spreadsheet with gusto and have managed to schedule several appointments to view apartments for next week.

One really good thing that is coming from this exercise, other than legitimate appointments to see potential apartments, is that I'm getting much more comfortable speaking in German over the phone. I still ask everyone if they can speak English because, hey, you would too, and while some do, many can't (or don't want to so they say they can't) and we have to duke it out in German. I scheduled and appointment (in German) for Bryan for yesterday afternoon and the real estate agent told him that I shouldn't be afraid to call people and speak to them in German because my German is really good. It was the kindest compliment on my language skills that I've ever received. Other people have said that my German is getting good, but it's usually accompanied by fervent head nodding and said in a tone akin to when we would go to my grandma's house for dinner and she'd say "I hope you kids like meatloaf!" and Bryan and I would fervently nod our heads and say "Oh yes, Grandma, we do like meatloaf. That sounds great!" This new compliment was so sincere that my confidence was boosted enough to phone in my pizza order tonight to be delivered instead of going to pick it up. I never thought I'd be brave enough to do that, but the conversation was seemingly flawless (to be confirmed if and when the pizza ever arrives). [UPDATE: Pizza order was a success! Everything arrived and was exactly what I ordered - wooo-hoo!]

We've had to make some concessions when searching for an apartment. A year ago, when we didn't have to think seriously about the challenges of finding a place, we were bent on finding an apartment that a) was provision free (aka: we don't have to pay a real estate company 2.5 months rent just for managing the listing - a fee I still think is ridiculous and unfair and that the landlord should pay this fee and not the future tenants, but it's part of the whole system here and can't be worked around) and b) that it has a kitchen already installed. But now that we've been looking, the reality of finding an apartment that meets these two requirements in addition to all the others (2 bedrooms, bathroom with a tub, allows pets, not in the subsidized public housing projects in the Kinderhaus or Coerde subdivisions) is impossible. There is literally 1 apartment in the entire city that fits the bill and that gem isn't around long enough for us to make a run at it. So, we have been saving our money for provision and for the potential cost of buying a (hopefully used) kitchen and getting it installed in our new apartment - two things that will run us probably an extra €3,000 to €4,000 in moving expenses. But wherever we end up, we plan to stay there until Bryan is "Dr. Foltice" and we move back to America, so for the right place it's probably a decent investment.

So far next week we have 4 apartments to view and hopefully more to come. We'll be taking photos and hopefully some good blogging content will come from these escapades. Wish us luck!

Latin Dancing ... in Borken?

Here's something that I forgot to blog about ... a few weeks ago when it was still cold, rainy and gross, our friend Martin called and told us about a National Latin Dance competition at Borken's SportHalle.  Bryan had a basketball game that night somewhere far away, so Dylan and I had nothing to do and decided to go and check it out.

It was kind of hard to take pictures in the gym, but overall the performances were excellent and very entertaining.  I never would have thought that I would see a Latin Dance Competition (a national, really good one, no less) in tiny little Borken.  Basically there were about 8 teams consisting of 10-15 partners per team.  Each team had well-choreographed, long routines that sometimes seemed to last as long as 8 minutes or more.  The costumes, hair, spray-tans, everything were all really cool.

We didn't stay until the end - 2 hours was long enough for Dylan to watch dancing.  He kept asking me "When is the basketball game going to start?" and "Where are the balls?"

 

Here is Dylan with our friend, Martin.

In order to get Dylan to sit still so we could watch the performance, I allowed him to play with my camera.  Normally my camera is strictly forbidden, so this bought us quite a bit of time ... and about 20 pictures that look more or less exactly like this. 

Borken Easter Market / Farmer's Market

Yes, yes, I know - it's been a long time since I last posted anything here and I'm not doing my duty of keeping all 2 of our readers informed on what's going on. Relax. Until about 10 days ago, it was still cold and rainy and we avoided doing anything at all because it was just too terrible to go outside. Then finally, the sun made its first appearance since last fall and started to thaw us out and we can finally go outside again. I think me, Dylan and Oscar all have had major cabin fever. Lucky for us, the past 10 days have been pretty consistently sunny and about 60-65 degrees (15-17 Celcius).

This past weekend was Borken's annual Easter Market / Farmer's Market. It's one of the 3 Sunday's a year where the retail shops are allowed to be open, so the open market plus the nice weather made for a pretty packed town square. Here are some pics:

Dylan's really into wearing his sunglasses these days.  He probably didn't understand the point of them until recently when the sun finally came out from hibernating behind thick clouds all winter.

There were more flowers for sale at the Easter market than anything else. 

One whole street was full of play houses, slides and cool things for kid to do.  

You could watch a blacksmith demonstration, although the only thing he would make were little "Good Luck Horseshoes."  It seems like he goes through a lot of work to sell little €3 trinkets.

Other things for sale were monstrous handmade benches, wooden shoes and handmade wicker baskets of all sizes.

An of course, where else could you buy your sheepskin-lined children's booties,  animal pelts and rugs?

No German market is complete without a massive bratwurst grill.

The highlight of Dylan's day was getting to drive the Santa Fe Express choo-choo-train.  When he got off he said "Wow, Mommy - that was fuuuuuuun!"