The Apartment Hunt

Hello, Faithful Readers!

While Jeremy is in Chile stuffing himself with avocados, rafting (kayaking? canoeing?), and occasionally teaching some people about his special little bugs, I have been racing around Cologne trying to find an apartment for us to share with the little monkey/munchkin/Puppe. You know, maybe an extra bedroom, not so many stairs to climb (currently we are living in a 5th floor walk-up), not such a tiny kitchen, etc. I always remember the giant pain that the actual moving entails-- I hate the packing and the unpacking, the endless cleaning, and here you have to paint as well (well, I don't have to paint. HAHAHAHAHA), but I forgot how terrible looking for the apartment is. All the possiblities, each with their own charm and problems, swimming in front of me. And I can't neccessarily just choose the one I like best. Nooooo, you have to jump through the hoops and be CHOSEN.

Sidenote: just in case you are thinking that I am doing this in English, think again! It's German all the way, baby. I think my hearty American accent even works in our favor to make us stand out as applicants, and I've even learned some new boring words. Well, I can recognize them on the forms. I'm not going to bother to really learn the word for "secured income".

I am now waiting to hear back today or tomorrow from our favorite place. It's in our favorite neighborhood where I also always perform and rehearse. There is a backyard with a terrace! We're not allowed to put in our chicken coop and beehive or turn the whole thing into a tomato patch, but grass is nice, too, I guess. The kitchen is also kind of small, but everything is there already (NOT a given in German apartments!). The rooms are also a little small, and the heating is a weird expensive system, but even with that, it is still very affordable.

My second choice apartment is in the same neighborhood. It only has one bedroom, but the living room is so big that it can be easily split into two rooms, eventually. It is freshly renovated (new wires, new tile, all new bathroom stuff), BUT we would need to put in the floor in most of the rooms and install the kitchen. There is no garden or balcony, but it is right by the big park.

I've also started to get the ol' unsolicited pregnancy advice. First, this crazy guy that I hardly know (I met him through the baroque stuff), was telling me that German should be the baby's Muttersprache (mother tongue-- first language) because if not, it will have such a hard time on the playground and in the kindergarten. Like, no one will play with the poor 2 year-old that doesn't speak German. He thinks that kids can't learn 2 languages at once. And he knows so many immigrants whose kids have so many problems in school. Barf. It's called Muttersprache for a reason, and that reason is that it is the language that I speak. The Mutter.

I know families that are teaching their kids FOUR languages simultaneously! Of course, the baby will have a great opportunity to get a head-start on being bilingual here. It might be hard to keep it up when we move back to America (how many German/English schools are there???), but it's worth a try, anyway. Young children being able to learn languages is such a fact that I was just mostly annoyed that I had to listen to this blabbermouth out of politeness.