Hausfrau's New Hobby: Apartment Hunting

Yesterday evening we received an email from our landlord: he had put our apartment on sale.

This didn't come as a total surprise - he had told us about his plans a couple of months ago. And he has not yet terminated our lease and when he does, we will still have three months to move out.

But anyway, we need to start looking for a new place to live.

I have been following Immobilienscout24.de for a while now, as I have been dreaming of an apartment with garden for the kids to play in and/or with one extra bedroom for our guests. But as the US Army is centralizing it's European operations here, there are a lot of families moving to Wiesbaden. And thus it is almost impossible to find a decent apartment with decent price around here.

But now I really had to swing into action. This morning I have already sent contact requests to six different housing agencies and made the arrangements to see one apartment.

So, I'm sorry if I'm going to be a bit preoccupied in the near future. I'll try to keep you updated.

And if you are looking for an apartment to invest in, I know one in Wiesbaden with extremely nice tenants! ;)

View from Neroberg. You can see our current home in this photo ;)

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Saimme eilisiltana sähköpostia vuokranantajaltamme: hän on laittanut asuntomme myyntiin.
Nykyistä sopimustamme ei vielä ole irtisanottu, mutta koska Wiesbadenin asuntomarkkinat ovat tällä hetkellä todella hankalat, täytyy meidän nyt ryhtyä todenteolla uuden asunnon metsästykseen. 

September 16, 2010

4:30 am. Herr Welle and I wake up at his parent's house in Finland.

The previous day, we had said goodbye to our Finnish home and left the movers to pack up all our belongings. We only have one luggage each with us, so that we can survive one week in a hotel.

Our 'garden' in Finland

6:00 am. We are ready to get up into Opa Welle's car, as he will drive us to the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. While we are standing outside in the crisp autumn air, my cellphone beeps. The husband of my very good friend has sent me a text message: my friend is in the delivery room of their local hospital and is not really enjoying herself.

All the drive to the airport and before boarding the plane, I squeeze my phone waiting for it to beep again. I can almost forget that we are moving to a foreign country, I'm just so excited for my friend.

The flight is over fast and we land on Frankfurt airport. I open my phone and it beeps: my friend has had a little baby girl!

We take a taxi to Wiesbaden and settle into a hotel. The rest of the day is a bit of blur for me, but at least we got ourselves registered as residents in Wiesbaden.

But today is a day of celebration. We have been living in Wiesbaden for two years now! And what is even more important: the little girl, our goddaughter, is now two years old! Happy birthday little princess!

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Syyskuun 16. kaksi vuotta sitten oli erityisen tärkeä päivä meille: silloin muutimme Herr Wellen kanssa Wiesbadeniin. Ja erityisen tärkeäksi päivän tekee se, että ihana kummityttömme syntyi silloin. Paljon onnea prinsessalle!

Keeping Warm

Most of my readers might say that the subject of this post should be "The Odd Finnish Way". But for Finns, there is nothing odd about this.

98% of Finnish babies take their nap outside (I have read this somewhere, but cannot remember the source). I know that some might think it is not healthy for the baby or that it is dangerous, as someone could steal the baby, but that how it is done in Finland. The main purpose is that baby sleeps better and longer in fresh air. In Finland, the recommended temperature limit for sleeping outside is -10°C. If the baby is born in winter, it is recommended to wait for a couple of weeks before putting her outside to sleep, and then starting with shorter periods.

When we were looking for an apartment in Wiesbaden, one of our main criteria - in addition to the 'Einbauküche' - was to have a peaceful balcony for the baby to sleep in. With the exception of about one month last spring, when my daughter wanted to fall asleep beside me, she has taken her naps outside, first in her pram and now in her push-chair. Luckily, our neighbors haven't called the child protection authorities...

Now it is getting colder again, so I need to make sure she is dressed warmly for her naps. Here are some of the warm clothes I have found nice:

Swedish Shepherd bootees made of real sheepskin

Finnish Kivat woolen hood
(a gift from our daughter's godparents)

Finnish Kaino woolen overall

Woolen mittens and socks,
knitted by my daughter's great-grandmother with Austermann Step yarn

All the warm clothes on...

... and then to the balcony with Bugaboo footmuff and mosquito net (no mosquitos here, but bees, birds and squirrels...).

Odd German Way No. 2 - Pack Up Your Kitchen!

When we were looking for an apartment in Wiesbaden, we browsed the Immobilienscout web page. In the search criteria, one of the options is 'Einbauküche'. I had heard rumors about it, but now I really understood: Germans take the kitchens with them when they move house!

In most of the apartments, also those to be rented, there is nothing in the kitchen. Well, 'nothing' might be an overstatement, as there are electric wires and pipes coming out of the walls and floor and there might even be a row of tiles on the walls. But there are no cabinets, no sink and certainly no household appliances.

As we didn't have the time or the possibility to start building a kitchen, we had to check the 'Einbauküche' option in Immobilienscout. This really narrows down the possibilities of apartments, as only about 40% has the 'Einbauküche'. We were going to rent a place and fortunately found one, in which the previous tenant was willing to sell us her kitchen. So, we bought the Ikea kitchen cabinets and dishwasher from her with reasonable price and had to go shopping only for fridge and stove.

Just like the kitchen cabinets, the Germans take all other cabinets with them as well. So, in an empty apartment there are usually no cabinets in the hall or in the bedrooms either. Some even take the parquet from the floors with them...

I can see the point, that this way you can get exactly the type of kitchen and storage space you need. But I cannot understand, how this can work in practice. If you are moving, you most probably are changing to different kind of apartment. How can the old kitchen fit into the new one? I cannot believe, that the kitchens are so similar, than you can just easily fit the old cabinets with a bit of fine-tuning. And if your new kitchen is bigger than the old one, do you just go shopping for extra cabinets? Doesn't it look weird, if most of the cabinets are ten years old and on the corner there is one new and shiny?

The odd German ways...

A Bit of History

Welcome to my new blog!

I've been thinking about sharing my thoughts in a blog for a while now. After my good friend started to publish a blog of her own, I have also begun to think in a 'blog format'. So, lets try how this works out!

In order to get started, I guess I should share some background information about how a Finnish mum ended up in Germany. In the beginning of autumn 2010, I was still working in Finland with my big baby-belly. My husband, Herr Welle, was about to start working as an expat in Wiesbaden, Germany in a couple of weeks. We had booked a transportation company to move our home to the new country, even though we still didn't have a new address... A week before the transport company came and packed our belongings, we had finally rented an apartment and I had started my maternity leave with one thing less bothering my mind.

So, in the last possible week, when I was to be accepted into an aircraft, we flew to Frankfurt airport, took a taxi to Wiesbaden and settled in a hotel to wait for the moving truck. Within 6 weeks from our arrival, we had (almost) settled into our new home and our family had grown with a new member - the sweetest little baby girl.

In my blog, I plan to share what has happened after these great changes in our lives, my thoughts about moving abroad, starting family life with new baby, and any everyday thing we will face while living in this beautiful city. I hope I could be of help to anyone facing the same situation, or at least entertain my family, if they are the only ones reading this blog ;). Please, leave a comment and let me know what you would like to read about!

Freundlichen Grüßen,
Frau Welle
(PS. I apologize for my poor English, but I'll use this language so that I could reach other foreigners living in Germany. And my German is even worse than my English!)