About the House Already

Thanks for Sharing

First off, thanks to those of you who have emailed me to say that you enjoy the blog. It seems crazy to me that the self-indulgent musings of a middle-aged mom are interesting to anyone else, but I’m flattered. My favorite comment was from a friend with no kids. She said she usually hates hearing all about her friends’ kids, their birthday parties and so on, but that mine wasn’t nearly so boring. Cool. I’ll take it.

The White House

So I’m getting a lot of heat from some of you for not writing about my house. We’ve been in it for nearly six weeks now, but I’m overwhelmed by getting settled. We decided just last week to stay put and not buy the other house since the banks are so skittish about giving loans to Americans (can you say 20% down?!?)

Here’s the scoop:

We live in a brand new four-story house in the Schonbuch forest, in the 1001-year-old town of Holzgerlingen. Our house is a brand new white cement block that might look like something out of the Soviet era except for the bright red door, A-frame top floor and Spanish tile roof. It is wonderfully bright and cozy inside. It has plenty of floor space, a big kitchen by German standards (Barbie sized instead of Polly Pocket sized) and an amazing big sunroom on the top floor. We have never had a family room before, and it feels good to have a common area where we can hang out and relax while still keeping the main level neat for unexpected visitors, which we get more often here than we did in the mountains.

Our road dead-ends into a bike trail that runs along farm fields and through a tunnel into our town. Over the hills you can see bright yellow mustard fields, apple orchards, and the quaint little town of Altdorf. The entrance to our street has a sign telling drivers to approach at walking speed due to children playing. And boy, do they! Our kids have discovered that they are, indeed, kids. They finally learned how to ride bikes (remember, we lived on a mountain slope in Colorado—not so good for learning to bike). And they have already made friends with several little German kids who love coming to our house for the ice pops (the kind that you freeze as you need them; we got a box of 200 of them for $7.00 at the commissary). They also like our “eis wurfel” (ice cubes). Germans don’t use ice too much, so playing with our ice is fun. I’ve had to wash neighbor kids' muddy handprints off my ice bucket twice already. The new rule is that everyone has to ask me and I'll get the ice out for them, thank you very much.

The Neighbors

The neighborhood is what we love best about our new home. Our first day in the house, a lovely older gentleman knocked on our door with a bouquet of roses to welcome us. He is a seminary professor who plays cello by his window and keeps a beautiful garden. His English is more eloquent than mine. There are at least four great playgrounds within two or three blocks of us. The neighborhood parents are conscientious and watchful of all of the kids. It feels a bit like a college dorm, where people leave their doors open and pop heads in and say, “Hey, want to come over for a glass of wine?” We have block parties often where everyone brings salads and meat to grill in the streets. Many of our neighbors speak very good English. Most of them work for Mercedes, Daimler or IBM. A good many of them have traveled to or lived in the States. Their children have embraced mine, and it is fun to watch them teach each other new words in each other’s language.

Then there are a few neighbors who don’t speak much English at all, or at least won’t admit that they do for fear of embarrassing themselves. Those neighbors wave and look away. We have one American neighbor, a Navy fellow who has two cute little yorkies. For a while he was the only one on the street who would hula hoop with me. Everyone else was too reserved. They looked at me like I was crazy. But I have finally won some of them over. The other day we had three moms and about eight kids hooping in the street. I’m actually making hoops as gifts for two of my new neighbor friends. That's good for me. It’s no fun to spin alone.

Unpacking the Junk

Ah, but the boxes. I wish I were exaggerating when I tell you we moved more than 500 of them. A sickening amount of stuff. And you would not believe the way our Colorado movers messed with our heads. I can’t believe we bought them lunch for four days in a row and tipped them all generously, and then got here and found Christmas ornaments labeled “towels” and novels labeled “toys.” Even though I had lined up shoes side by side for them to pack, we had to open box after box to find the mate to any particular shoe. And we figured out that the label “décor” just means “I don’t know what this #$%@ is and I’m too lazy to ask.” I mean, really, are my panty hose really décor? And how do items from three separate rooms on three different floors get into the same box?

All of that means, of course, that our movers on this side of the ocean put everything in the wrong place because they went by what the idiot movers in Colorado had written on the outsides. And remember, we have four levels. So now I’m not only earning buns of steel from going up and down stairs all day, but I’ve had sore arms from lugging boxes up and down.

But to get the full effect of how hard unpacking truly is for us, I want you to do a little experiment with me. Get up and walk into your closet. See all of the stuff. Now imagine that there is no closet and all of your things are on the floor in your room. Now do the same in your bathroom. Open your medicine cabinet and see all of the pills and moisturizers and Preparation H. Now imagine that there is no medicine cabinet and the items are now on the floor in a box. Are you getting it? Remember, most German homes don’t come with any closets or storage at all. We have spent a fortune on cheap laminate closets from Ikea that one needs days and an engineering degree to put together. And we are kicking ourselves for getting rid of shelves and storage pieces that we thought would be too big for a German house. Now we are re-buying those same items all over again.

So anyway, we are here and getting settled, and the Newberry House will soon be ready for visitors. Give us a month or so and we might even have pictures on the walls.