The long story about housing...

MONDAY:

Chris wasn't scheduled to start his official in-processing until Wednesday but in normal Chris 'gung-ho' fashion, Chris was at the housing briefing at 8:00am on Monday morning.  The earlier we get going, the more time we'll have to look at houses, right?  Plus, we LOVE looking at houses.  LOVE it.  We're anxious and excited to check out places we could live for the next three years.  

At the Monday morning briefing, Chris is assigned a housing counselor... a large gruff German woman with fiery red hair.  She gets Chris' information and begins looking through the database of 'suitable off post housing' and flags anything that Chris might be interested in... which at this point means homes (rowhouses, duplexs and houses) that could possibly fit a family of 8.  As Chris views the few pictures over the counselor's shoulder she asks, "Do you like it? I don't want you to get in trouble with your wife?"  Chris thinks, "Why would I get in trouble with my wife?" but soon realizes that she is trying to make selections and appointments to view properties. He then said, "I think I need to come back with my wife." and they scheduled an another appointment for 3:00 that afternoon.  Chris left feeling quite discouraged with the short list of possibles (only 4) and frustrated that the system is not better set up.  

I left the kids at our hotel suite and headed on the shuttle over to the other base to meet up with Chris for our 3:00 appointment.  We met up with Frau Doerner and she began to explain the process to me with new details that Chris had not yet understood.  We were to pick three houses on the list which we would then make appointments for to go look out.  Out of those three we were to pick one to live in, and had 24 hours to decide.  That's it.  That's the process.  Chris was so hot he couldn't even speak.  We asked questions to clarify but she just responded with 'these are not my rules' and 'you already signed a statement saying you agreed to this' and then showed where Chris had initialed next to the statement: "I will lose my residence in Army Temporary Lodging if I decline suitable housing arrangements."  Chris just thought that WE would get to pick what was 'suitable' for our family.  We've been in the country for 4 days now, have no vehicle, know nothing about these cities or neighborhoods and are supposed to pick 3 possible houses (out of a large selection of 4!) based on a few crappy pictures over the shoulder of the lady who is now frustrated that we're even here.  

I thought the whole thing was just comical and couldn't help a wide smile.  Chris mumbled "I don't know why you're smiling... this is NOT funny."  ... which only made me smile more.  

We got our area map out on the desk and began looking at each option on the computer.  Almost all homes here are 3 floors with a basement.  A small kitchen, dining room and family room on the main floor.  Two or three bedrooms on the next floor with one shared bathroom, (no bedrooms have their own bathroom) and an attic with possible usable space on the top floor.  The basement typically has a storage area, a washer/dryer room and a 'hobbyroom' which is their term for a family room or bonus room.  Walls are painted cement.  Floors are usually tile, sometimes carpet in bedrooms.  German kitchens tend to be very small, sometimes referred to as a 'one butt kitchen' meaning only one person can fit in at a time.  Fridges and freezers are tiny.  A backyard, if there is one, is called a 'garden' and is very small.  A small garage is a luxury. Are you getting the 'small' theme?   The square footage... actually in meters of course, is listed but never includes the hobbyroom even if it is finished, and sometimes doesn't include any finished attic space.  Attic space may or may not be counted as a room... so trying to compare sizes of houses was a little guesswork.    The phrase "A picture's worth a 1000 words" came to mind as I leaned over her shoulder trying to glean a 1000 words worth of detail out of each photo as she quickly flashed through them.  I constantly had to tell her to 'go back to the last one' so I could note an archway, or ugly tile, or make sense of how rooms fit together.  We took a few quick notes on each home, asked her to tell us about the town, found the town on the map, tried to figure out how far away from work and school it would be, and talked pros and cons at super speed.  

Like I said, we LOVE this kind of stuff.  We love pro and con lists, and making a spreadsheet, figuring out which kids would sleep where, picking a city and a neighborhood and measuring which 'master' bedroom would actually fit the King Bed that we brought.   But this is not the process.  The process is quick and outright comical. AND the process states that once we have seen our choices we have 24 hours to pick one.  Twenty-four hours!    

So, we picked our three and Frau Doerner called to set up appointments for us for the next day.  We walked away now both feeling discouraged and overwhelmed.  On the shuttle home I kept thinking... 'I brought too much stuff.'  

We got home at 6:00 and happened to find an email from Mindy, super cute family in our new ward, who was wishing us luck with apartment finding and said she would be more than happy to drive us around to different areas or watch our kids for us.  It was exactly what we needed.  We ate dinner and then gave her a call.  We left the four big kids at home and had Mindy pick us up with the little boys to drive us all around.  We started by looking through her adorable rowhouse.  Then we plugged in our three possible addresses into her GPS and wandered from town to town with her highly appreciated commentary.  Not only that, but she took us to another family in the ward who are moving to give us another housing option, gave us freshly baked cookies, and let us borrow her husband's car so we could get to our appointments in the morning.   By the end of the night we were feeling a little less discouraged and so grateful for new friends.

TUESDAY:

At 11:00am Chris, Megan, Matthew and I were standing in front of option #1.  City: Nussloch

Distance from work: 11 mins    From school and commisary:  14 mins      From church: 21 mins
Cost: $65-75 more a month than our housing allotment.         The inside was nice... a good sized kitchen, small dining/family room area, small garage, small yard not fenced in, 4 bedrooms: 3 of them small... (couldn't tell which one was the master) and 1 large attic bedroom that could fit multiple kids.  2 and 1/2 decent bathrooms.  The outside wasn't great.  Located right between a Ford dealership and a doctor's office... kind of busy road, German kindergarden right across the street.  Old neighborhood.  Not well kept up.  Local park not great... broken glass everywhere.       ***So, basically the inside was ok,  the neighborhood wasn't great, but it was the closest to work, school and church.

In the afternoon another great gal from the ward brought over her Honda pilot for us to borrow until our van got here.  The whole family piled in and we headed down to look at option #2.   City: Rauenberg

Distance from work: 17 mins           From school and commisary:  17 mins       From church:  21 mins
Cost: exactly our housing allotment.         Chris and I left the kids in the van while we went in for the first look around.  Within about ten seconds I was anxious to leave.  Nope, this was not the house for us.  The kitchen was newly renovated but everything else about the house was old and dated.  Weird tiles in the bathroom, orange thick glass in the windows, orange carpet in a bedroom, unfinished hobby room with no plugs, weird layout.  (Now I'm wishing I had snapped a few pictures just to show how 'neat' it was.) They had definitely chosen their website pictures carefully so as not to highlight any of this.  When we walked out Chris let the kids in  to run through it.  I waited outside with sleeping Matthew while the kids yelled 'hi mom' from the upstairs windows. When they got down I asked what they thought and they all yelled, "AWESOME!"  It made me laugh.  Back in the van I asked, "What about that ugly stained glass and moldy green tile?"  They told me they weren't looking at things like that.  They just loved that it had four floors and a cool slanted roof on top.   The outside was again on two semi-busy roads.  The yard was big enough for a trampoline but had NO fence. I wouldn't have been able to let the little boys outside and the trampoline would have been completely out of place.  Really tight roads.  Not a good front door area.  Just not a good location at all.  Again, how do you even know these things from a few pictures on a non-accessible website?

We had just left messages with the landlord of option #3 and by this time still hadn't heard from them.  We decided to drive down to the town again to check out the area with the whole family.  The town is called St. Leon.  It's really a cute quaint German town and just driving through it makes me very happy.  It's about 25 minutes away from work, schools and church.   The neighborhood is the nicest one we've seen so far.  There is a cute park a block away.  The duplex is located on a dead end brick street... which means that the pedestrians (children on bikes etc.) have the right of way.  At the end of the road you can see green fields and distance green hills.  There are bike trails starting from the end of the street.  It's pituresque and I just adore it.    We are so anxious to see inside.  Please, please, please let it be do-able!!

WEDNESDAY:

After chatting with the owner's daughter on the phone, we set up an appointment for 5:30pm to view the home.  Option #3   City: St. Leon    Distance from work: 26 mins     From schools and commisary: 22 minutes    From church: 26 mins     Cost: $125 more per month than our housing allotment


It took about 10 seconds for us to decide that this is our house.  Chris and I grinned at each other a lot as we walked from room to room. 

The owners live in Ireland now but built this duplex to live in.  They raised their daughter in the united states so the home has a lot more american styles to it than you usually find here.  The kitchen is American sized... lots of room, lots of counter tops and cabinets.  The fridge is still small but not the smallest we've seen.  We'll be given another fridge from the military to stay downstairs.  Connected to the kitchen is  dining room and then a large living room... room for our piano so that's good.  Upstairs is a large master bedroom, a big bathroom, and two other small rooms. The top floor is one large open room with a bathroom.  It's like the attic so the roof is slanted and the ceilings are all dark wood.  It looks so cool.  All the kids want to sleep up there and there is definitely room for them.  They could fit all their beds up there easily.  We'll have to try and figure out who will be where... maybe the two little boys get their own rooms on our floor and the four big kids up there?  We'll see.  The basement has the laundry room (with hot and cold water hook ups so we get an American washer and dryer... that is big because usually you get just cold water.  The European washers are much smaller and take twice as long to do each load.  Can you imagine how much I would be doing laundry?   Then there are two storage rooms and one good sized hobbyroom.  The backyard is closed off and private which is rare and nice.  I'll totally be able to send the boys out to play and set up our trampoline and maybe have a small table and chairs.  It has one garage which we will use for our bikes and two spaces to park our vehicles out front.  After looking through the whole thing with the owner's daughter, we left to go on a walk with the kids.  When Chris and I just looked at each other, I started to cry.    It's our home and we feel very blessed.  And that's the whole story.

 our home

Our home is on the very left.  This shows the pedestrian street for kids to 

ride bikes and the bike trails and view from the dead end.

This is the view from our bike path at the end of our road... taken right after we went through the house.

**We'll sign the lease next Thursday morning and might move in soon after that.  Our first 1200 pounds is here but no word on our big shipment.  The army will deliver temporary beds and tables and couches until it arrives.