As of yesterday the flat-hunt began in earnest! One of the quite possibly most bizarre things we’ve discovered in our search… you must byok (bring your own kitchen). Seriously. In the 40 or so listing we’ve parused, only 2 have included a built-in ‘keuche’… the rest look like this:

Yep, turns out it’s up to the renter to provide everything from the kitchen sink on up… to the tune of roughly 1K for something that looks only slightly better than the crappy right-off-campus 600 sq. ft. apartment kitchen I had my fist year of college… on up to (rumor has it anyway) about 10K.

And as that skinny bitch, Karen Carpenter, would say… we’ve only just begun my friends. Not only must you proved the kitchen, but also every single light fixture as well. You walk in and there are literally three wires hanging out of the ceiling where each and every light needs to go. And while they generously provide toilet, tub, shower and sink in the bathroom… there aren’t cabinets, mirrors or medicine cabinets. You’re on your own there too. Oh, closets are something else you need to buy… yes, they’re not built-in like they are in the U.S. They’re called ’schranks’ and let me tell you… they’re not cheap. You need one in every bedroom, not to mention common areas and anywhere else you’d like to store things.

To me, after the initial sticker shock, this didn’t seem so bad. I went all girly and thought “well, I can pick out everything I like… put my own personal stamp on things!” But once old skinflint-jim got wind of all this, his human calculator of a brain reached terminal velocity. Smoke started coming out of his ears and he kept mumbling ‘does not compute’ around the time we hit the ‘keuche’ section of Ikea. Poor guy.

Then there are the deposits associated with renting a flat. Security deposits are roughly 2 months cold rent (landlords include utilities, and that’s your ‘warm rent’, or the total you pay…. but utility hogs beware, your electric/gas/water usage is calculated once a year & if you’ve gone over what it was last year, you’re responsible for paying the difference right then & there AND your ‘warm rent’ goes up for the next year). Then there’s another month to three months cold rent you owe to the agent who shows & places you in the flat. Long story short I’m guessing by the time we settle into our shiny new flat we’ll have coughed up roughly 10-12K EUR. Poor Jim. lol

I’ll end this with a few random photos we’ve taken… I manged to lose a bunch in the great flash card debacle of ‘06. I’m convinced the flash card (chockablock with photos of our fist week in-county) has gone to the land of mismatched socks & lost keys… never to be seen again. Sniff.

**Photos**

Any Tarantino fans in the haus?

These are called ‘Smart Cars’ and they really are… with gas @ over $5.00 per gallon, they not only save the environment, but also go easy on the pocketbook. Plus, they’re just cool.

I really don’t think this next one requires set-up. Insert your own joke here:

This is the house across from us. I stare out the kitchen window at it every day. And since it’s prettier than ours, I took a picture of it instead.

This is the kitchen window I stare out of.

Have a good one!

The girl’s future school:

Jim starts March 1st:

Lest we forget… jar-dogs!!

Ok, enough for now… I’ll post additional photos next time.

On this day..

• 2,361.52 reasons to be pissed. - 2008
• And the Oscar goes to... - 2007
• Back, happy, tired. - 2007