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.