T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.
After a 3-week wait (which by several accounts in quite short), Kabel Deutschland has finally deemed us worthy of giving them money in exchange for internet. Internet! In my home! Yayayayayay!!! I feel like doing a happy dance around the room, but then again that would require getting up from the computer. And I have … Read more
Still alive, still unpacking, still no internet at home. A trip to Ikea is long overdue (at least Ikea sells the same furniture all over the world, so our new German furniture will go perfectly with our Italian, Swiss, and American furniture). Another thing we need to take care of is choosing a German cell … Read more
One day our apartment hunt brought us to this building in the hip neighborhood of Schwabing, Munich. As I contemplated having to include the sentence “just look for the Statue of Liberty holding a hoagie” in directions to my apartment, Scott realized that we were at the wrong address for the apartment showing. Whew.
We spent most of last week searching high and low for our next address. After hearing horror stories about how tight the market is right now for renters in Munich, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were, in fact, a couple apartments (a) available, (b) in our price range, and (c) not located … Read more
As part of our search for the perfect apartment in the perfect neighborhood, we have spent a lot of time this week standing on street corners puzzling over maps. Trying to figure out which direction to explore next, which streets might have interesting stuff on them, which areas near the apartment we have yet to … Read more
Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don’t recall the German train workers ever going on strike when I lived in this country in the 90s. These days the German trains are going the way of the French and Italian, with multiple strikes in the same month. A 48-hour one started this morning, conveniently … Read more
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the cheesy pretzel. First, Zurich’s version:A dry, almost stale pretzel which has been sliced opened, buttered, and filled with a couple of cold slices of cheese (which, as you’ll notice, are nowhere near pretzel-shaped, leaving one with many bites that include only cheese or buttered cheese). And now the … Read more
So our two possible destination cities are Limerick, Ireland, and Munich, Germany. We have made our choice, but it wasn’t easy. I’m interested in hearing what you guys would have chosen before I tell you what we decided. Munich has a lot of obvious benefits, including… Large, dynamic city with plenty of cultural activities and … Read more
So after being home in Zurich for, oh, less than a week, it was high time to get out of here again. A weekend in Munich, Germany, was exactly what we needed. Munich is a fun, livable city, especially once you escape the hordes of tourists in the very center. Actually the touristy stuff is … Read more