Housing Update!

After three long weeks of waiting, it's official!  The apartment that we fell in love with on our second day of house hunting is ours! Hallelujah! The equally exciting news is that we  got an email letting us know that our household goods have arrived in Germany and are ready for delivery...a month and a half early!  All the praise hands because I am SO tired of this hotel room and so anxious to get our stuff in our apartment.

Three weeks ago, we began our house hunt and, after looking at an apartment that wasn't even finished, we saw this apartment and fell in love. We knew right away that this was the apartment for us and asked the real estate agent what paper work he needed.  We rushed home, sent over the pay stubs and passport photos that were required and waited.

We waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.

And finally, after almost a week of waiting, we called. Apparently, our realtor never got our passport photos.  Why he didn't call or email us is beyond me, but we emailed those over again and were promised a lease soon. So we waited.

We waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.

And finally, after almost a week of waiting, we called.  The realtor still hadn't heard anything from the landlord who was looking over the lease, but reassured us the apartment was ours.   We thought this was strange but went along with it.

All along, Mike has stayed pretty calm about the timeline, whereas I have been getting more and more anxious. Although the Navy allots us 60 days of hotel life, we are leaving for Mike's sister's wedding next Saturday and needed a place to dump our stuff.  There was no way I was flying to London with those beach chairs.  No thank you.

I think all of my anxious energy finally wore off on Mike and he agreed to email the realtor and say that we needed a lease within 48 hours or we would start looking elsewhere. I guess sometimes all you need to do is light a little fire under some people because less than two days later, we had a lease! We are so excited and thankful that this apartment worked out because we love it.  It's not quite as big as our Turkish apartment (which had more than enough room for us, visitors and an office!), but we will be the first residents since it's renovation.  It also has underground parking and storage space, both of which we will use.  It's in a cute little neighborhood with lots of restaurants and a huge market.  We fell in love with the neighborhood before we even stepped foot in the apartment.

Overall, we're really excited and anxious to get in.  We're going to try and arrange the movers for the day after we get back from our little adventure in London and Scotland, so that we will be able to minimize the amount of time we spend sitting in those beach chairs. dd

And now, for what you all have been waiting for...pictures.

No, that's not a tv.  It's an oven vent :)

A view from our sunrise balcony.  We also have a sunset balcony on the other side.  Rough life we live ;)

German houses don't come with light fixtures, so we'll have to go find a few of those, but other than that, the apartment has everything we could ask for...besides visitors :)