We Did It!

We signed a lease on Tuesday! Hooray! It's not quite finished, because we have to go meet with the management company to pay the deposit and then we meet with the housekeeper to get the keys and such, but fingers-crossed we did it! We're lucky enough to have had 2 choices of apartments with people that wanted us to sign. We picked the one that's a little bigger, has better storage, and is less expensive. The other choice was brand new, near a great park, and higher end. We'll let everyone know the address once we've moved in, hopefully the first week of December. This all depends on when our container is here and available for delivery. As of yesterday it's supposed to arrive on the 27th so hopefully we can get it delivered on the 4th!

Next hurdle is figuring out internet, cat sitter for Christmas, washing machine, living room furniture, etc. I walked around IKEA for a few hours yesterday being inspired but we'll need to wait to order things until we get a better sense of the space and what we're missing. This is especially true of the kitchen as it's small but there's a perfect space for some kind of island.

We've had some cooler weather the past few days with more rain and wind. It rains everyday but not all day. As I type there's rain lashing the windows and wind howling outside. Nothing we can't handle though! I start my German class on Tuesday! Yikes. In the meantime I'm off to Amsterdam for Campsterdam 2015!! Ruby is flying home from Africa with an overnight in Amsterdam so Kate and I are going today for some extra touring time and Dag and Ruby will join us on Saturday for one night! Can't wait to see the city and it will be so nice to spend time with some of my closest friends!

Construction of a Christmas Market outside the town hall.

The Christmas markets might be open by the time I get back to Hamburg and the weather is supposed to turn colder and stay that way soon so it'll be perfect timing for Glühwein! :)

The Thrill of the Chase

Town Hall in Bremen

It's apartment hunting season folks. I'm in the thick of it, but we might see the light at the end of the tunnel! But first I'll recap the past week starting with the weekend. We had the pleasure of Damien's company again last weekend, and the 3 of us went west to Bremen to visit another friend from uni, Louis. Louis has been living and working in Germany for like 9 years or something! He also works on green energy (so does Damien) and speaks at least 4 languages. He and his soon to be wife have 2 kids and the oldest speaks German and French interchangeably so it was quite funny/difficult to talk with her.

Bad candid photo of the 3 men.

We walked around the the green space near the river for most of the afternoon, stopping for beer and sausage to go along the way. We ended up in the old part of town as it was starting to get dark. The parts of Bremen that are just outside the center aren't very nice but all the green space and the historic center were quite incredible. Louis explained that there's so much green space because it's flood plains for the river and there are laws that it's illegal to build housing in those areas.

Sunset in Bremen.

Small alleys in the old part of town - I wish this existed in Hamburg!

"If you're not going to ride your bike, I will." 

 We took the late train home and finally got to sleep around 1am. Sunday was a lazy day. We cleaned the whole apartment in the morning then went exploring in the afternoon. We walked the Old Elbe Tunnel from north to south and hoped to take a boat back north but the boats don't run on the weekend. Oops! We did a lot more exploring of the shipyards and huge chemical/oil plants than we expected. We called it the "Behind the Scenes" tour of Hamburg. :)

We took the S-Bahn back into the city and had sushi for dinner in St. Pauli. The restaurant was ok, very modern/hip and the food was good but the sushi was very complicated. We happened to walk right past the DOM on our way home so we went in and walked around the loop.

The DOM is in Hamburg 3 times per year for a month at a time. We just so happen to be living about 3 blocks away right now and can see the ferris wheel from our apartment. It was really busy and full of people and food. There were tons of stands selling sausage, sweets (donuts, candy, gingerbread cookies, fruit dipped in chocolate), beer and Glühwein. Mixed in between all the food were lots of typical games and rides. For each ride though there was a person in charge of narrating the ride and selecting music. It was quite funny and I could not imagine being the person who had to pump everyone up for the same ride over and over again. It's quite the experience and I think it's great timing that we arrived just before the DOM did and that we're so close because we might not have gone otherwise.

Pickle stand! Only in Germany...

Some of the sights at the DOM.

Monday came too soon and also marked the beginning of our apartment viewings. We saw 2 places on Monday, one that we moved forward with and the other we did not. The place we moved forward with is brand new, very nice, but also small and at the top of our price range. We saw 3 more places on last night, all of which we really liked. We also heard in the morning that we got the new apartment we applied for so now we're trying to get a 2nd one before we lose the first. It's all such a game and a roller coaster. I think it's kind of fun to look at all the ads, then you get the rush when you find one you like, apply to see it in person and wait to see if you'll hear back. If you do hear back, it's exciting to think about what it'll be like in real life, but it's also important to not get one's hopes up too high! It's kind of like dating in a way, but this time I'm reliant on Google Translate and Chrome auto-translating web pages into English and asking everyone on the phone, "Sprechen Sie English bitte?" So I think we'll have an apartment by the end of today - hopefully!

Some random things I'm missing a lot but I know are coming in our container: pepper mill, Kosher salt, frying pans, my bike.

Some things I won't miss about the temporary apartment: open tub with now shower curtain and no place to hang the shower head, creaky floors, limited kitchen stuff, mini fridge.

Some things I'm loving about Germany: double beds all have 2 twin comforters which at first I thought was weird but in practice is brilliant!, kids are almost always dressed in a one piece rain suit so they can play outside in all weather - also brilliant, everywhere we've been so far is so bike friendly, everyone I've encountered is very friendly.

Some things I don't understand/don't like about Germany: there's no salted butter (!-buying kilos in France when we go for Christmas), so much smoking, lots of people on the subway drinking beer, no one drinks tap water.

What a Week!

So here we are, one week in. It's been quite a busy, exciting, frustrating, and fun week. From where I left off last time, we did do a bus+boat tour on Friday. We really like and recommend bus tours when new to a city because it's the easiest way to get acquainted and see a lots of different areas and how they fit together. This tour was good and the guide did most of it in English and the parts he only said in German Benoit could interpret for me. After the bus we had lunch at an "imbiss" which are ubiquitous fast food snack bars located throughout the city (and country). We both had mini fish sandwiches and a beer, though I had cooked fish and Benoit had marinated herring filet that he's been talking about for weeks.

Fried Fischbrötchen and Matjes Brötchen (little bread/roll) from the imbiss.

 The boat tour was an add-on bundle and really interesting though by the afternoon it turned cold, cloudy, and very windy. The boat tour was also only in German and Benoit could not hear much so we mostly just looked at things. Afterwards we were quite cold from the 2 hour open air boat tour so we stopped by a coffee shop for some Kasekuchen and lemon cake with coffee. They also had incredible looking gelato!

Some random photos from the rest of the afternoon:

Frozen Turkey! 

Post woman's bike! So cool the Germans deliver mail by bike.

Saturday morning started with a trip to a small but incredible outdoor market close to where we're staying. We bought veggies, meat, cheese, fish, and fruit! I loved how the mushrooms were packaged for us:

Benoit bought these by the "handful." He asked the vendor how to say, "I'd like a handful of mushrooms" and she said, "das hand-full!"  

We bought some things to make a chicken soup and also for lunch because we had a special guest! Benoit's friend Damien from uni was in town for the weekend with work so we got to see him Saturday and Sunday! Here's the 3 of us close to our apartment.

Damien, me, Benoit

 After lunch we walked around the city and headed west to check out Altona and Ottensen which are neighborhoods we're thinking about living in.

The street in St. Pauli red light district where women are not allowed.

 Saturday night we went to a Halloween party put on by one of Benoit's colleagues. We saw lots of kids out and about trick -or- treating and we were both really surprised by how into Halloween folks are here. Sunday we were lucky enough to get to go on a road trip with Damien North East to the Baltic Sea and to Lübeck. Our first stop was a beautiful little beach town on the Baltic Sea, Timmendorfer Strand.

Lunch was more Matjets for 2 of 3 of us, I'll let you guess who didn't eat it. :) 

Fall exists in Germany! Not as vibrant as NE but still pretty good!

 After lunch we headed to Lübeck where Damien left us and he continued on to his next location. Benoit and I walked around the downtown for a few hours before taking the train back to Hamburg. Some photos of Lübeck, a beautiful city that we will be returning to, plus it's only 45 mins on the train!

"Texas has nothing on Germany." - Benoit

Monday was Benoit's first day back to work but we went to register with the government first thing. Benoit's HR woman met us at the "Welcome Center" to help us which was really nice because a new rule went into effect that morning so we were all a little unsure if we'd be able to register. Everything turned out in the end and I have an appointment to go back in January to register myself for permanent residency because I'm not a EU citizen. Benoit enjoyed his first few days back and I've been getting back in my "housewife" mode. There's still lots of paperwork to do and apartment searching as well. I've been leaving the apartment and talking to people in German everyday so it's getting less nerve racking to buy bread, but I still feel really lost sometimes. My language class starts in 2.5 weeks and it feels so far away. Hopefully time will fly by and while I'm at class I bet I wished that I wasn't. ha. It was much colder this week than last and really really foggy for 2 days - more so than SF which surprised us. We're both on the look-out for winter coats, hats, gloves, and Benoit might even go for a scarf. To end on a high note, I was running an errand at the main train station yesterday and look what I found!?

The pride of Eastern MA in Hamburg, Germany!