We have lived in Germany for 2 weeks now. We began house hunting last week. Many of the homes are different from those in Texas. There are no closets, most homes are 3-4 stories, and have small kitchens. We have looked at around 9 places so far. I have attached a link with 4 of the places we kind of liked. Since our household goods will not arrive for another 6 weeks we are going to continue to look until we find the perfect place for us. But we thought we would go ahead and share some pictures of a few German homes.
Link to pictures of some of the homes we looked at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/collin.marisa/HouseHuntInGermany
Houses we liked:
House #1:
Is new and has four bedrooms, but is an apartment and therefore we would share a laundry room in the basement with our neighbor (I'm not a big fan of that) but it is close to Collin's job. We liked that it was new, I did not like the thought of going down two flights of stairs to a shared laundry room to wash clothes.
House #2:
Small downtown apartment off the Hauptstr (main street with all the restaurants and shops). It had a castle view and was updated and really nice. The only problem was the size, we would have a difficult time getting our Texas furniture in it. It also had only 1 bedroom and a loft, but the 2.5 bathrooms were nice. It was tempting, but we decided we would like something bigger. Many of the stairways in the apartments downtown are original from the early 1700s. That's older than our country!
House #3:
A duplex that is about a 20 minute drive from Collin's job that is older but in a nice community. It's 4 bedrooms - 2 of the bedrooms have private balconies, one bedroom has a private deck that leads to the backyard, and the kitchen is a good size. It's a little older and is a further drive from downtown Heidelberg. It also only has 1.5 bathrooms. However, the full bathroom has two sinks (this is rare in the homes we've seen).
House #4:
This was a large 3-story single family home with 5 bedrooms, 2 kitchens, a private yard with a pond, 3 bathrooms, and 2 living rooms. It's close to Collin's job, but it's a little too big we think and we would have to buy the kitchen(s) which can be pretty expensive. If we chose it however, our guests who come to visit could have their own floor.
Since we have been here, we have toured the castle in Schwetzingen, took a paddle boat down the Neckar River, made some friends - went to a birthday party, and took a field trip with a class I took, and tried the public transportation. We signed up to take a river cruise September 6th to see the Illumination of the Heidelberg castle. We are planning to take a trip over Labor Day weekend but have not decided where to go yet. Collin was able to take the driver's test last week - and passed. I was not able to take the test last week and could not get in until August 27th. Once our vehicle arrives Collin can drive it, I will not be able to until I take the driving test. I can however, drive our rental car. Thankfully we bought a GPS so I'm able to navigate pretty well. We rented a wimpy smart car and it is a little weak on the scary autobahn so we're looking forward to getting our Subaru. I do think the driver's here are more polite and thankfully there is not a lot of traffic.
Link to pictures of the Schwetzingen castle and gardens:
http://picasaweb.google.com/collin.marisa/SchwetzingenCastle
Have a great week!
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