Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

My last entry sparked a couple of emails, why people don't leave comments I'll never understand, but anyway these kind souls wanted to know about cheap houses to buy in Germany and why we weren't looking at them. It's a good question, and I suppose it deserves an answer, and since I know my readers are actually interested in my opinions, there are several hundred of you after all, so at least a few of you will want to know the answer.

Property in Germany is available in a variety of price brackets, and in fact it can even be bought quite cheaply if you look around. I think most people would realise that cheap property is usually available in the Eastern part of the country, with excellent opportunities in the Saxony region, specifically in small villages around Dresden. Just today I emailed an agent about a house for only €15,000 about half an hour drive away from Dresden.

The trick to finding these properties is to avoid the English language websites setup by people who make their money selling advertising. The best way to find cheap German property is to look directly at the German websites, for example Sparkasse, one of the biggest German banks provides a property search portal for their real estate agents, and here you will definitely find some bargains.

A word to the wise, many German houses are actually apartment buildings, so do yourself a favour and restrict your search to einfamillienhaus (one family house, which in British is a detached house), or villa. Of course you can always look for apartments etc. If you need help with translations, use babelfish, it isn't perfect but it does give you a basic idea o what you're looking for.

Having completed the renovation of the bedroom, all we really need to do now is wait for the carpet to settle for a couple of days before cutting off the edges, then we can move the furniture in and put up curtains.

The other half is getting a bit excited about this, she hates sleeping in the living room. I'm sure she'll also quickly fill the window sill with small green plant-like things, I just hope they don't set off my hay fever every morning.

I've decided we won't be doing any more renovations on this apartment, we need to get another house again, and with the market in Germany as expensive as it is the only real option for massive capital growth would be apartments in Berlin, which doesn't appeal to us. The apartment (wohnung) we're in now is the first time in my life I've ever lived in an apartment building, and I'm not enjoying it. So I have no desire to invest in an apartment.

For one thing, it isn't easy to get out into the garden, three flights of steps, and then you have no privacy, and apartments are so noisy. You can also hear every sound from the neighbours.

Tomorrow we head off on our travels again, this time to France. The plan is to see if we can find a farmhouse to renovate, preferably with its own garden so we can just step out the back door onto the verandah.

Some of you might wonder why we came to Germany when we might buy in France, well honestly we're not settled anywhere yet, we've even looked further afield like Bulgaria, but right now France seems like a good option for capital growth, whereas Bulgaria and other parts of Eastern Europe seem too much like speculative markets.

Of course in a perfect world I'd love to go back to Africa, I still feel the connection that all Africans have with their homeland, black and white, but reality is that this isn't an option at the moment. Oh well. France it might be. Or maybe even Tuscany if we can find something that doesn't cost a couple of million Euros.

So the last few days have been a bit frustrating. The walls in the bedroom aren't completely flat, so the paper doesn't quite join together like it should, and for some reason the corners aren't a perfect 90 degrees either. We bought some wallpaper from Bauhaus, she wants a complete white room with colorful highlights so the cheapest paper with a pattern has done the trick. Actually looks quite nice up. And the room looks so much fresher and more modern.

The ceiling tiles still have to go up, they're unusual, well by Ozzie standards. Our ceilings are usually painted white, an they don't have any pattern on them. But in this apartment I can't do that, the ceiling is in a terrible state from previous attempts to remove paper, it actually looks like the owners might have used a metal scraper to remove paper in the past and they've gouged the plaster so I'm left with no option but to put tiles up on the ceiling.

The tiles are polystyrene about 50 x 50, and come in packs of 8. All up about €25 for the tiles and an extra €10 for the glue. I may have to go and get more tiles later considering the corners aren't 90 degrees, but we'll see.

Next step is the carpet, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. It arrived yesterday, and the only place to put it was in the hallway. Makes a nice foot rest while if you're in the hallway but who sits in their hallway?

When we sold our last house we vowed not to renovate again for a couple of years. Oh boy, we had no idea that in Germany when you rent an apartment it is the tenants responsibility to tidy up wallpaper, redo carpeting etc.

So, the upshot is that over the last week we've ripped down the wallpaper on the walls in one room, removed carpet in he bathroom, replaced curtains, and just as we about to start the process of hanging new wallpaper in the bed room, our friendly neighbour popped over to give us a hand. This wouldn't be so bad except we had no idea the ceiling in the bedroom was covered with wallpaper that was getting old. We had thought we'd just repaint over the stains, but this kindly old soul took it upon himself to climb our stepladder, and start picking at the ceiling with his fingernails, then before we could yell stop, he promptly ripped a huge chunk of the ceiling paper down and proudly announced that we need to remove all this old paper and replace it with new paper.

My god, I could have almost killed him. Today we were going to hang the new paper in the bedroom, we even have a family member coming over to help us, so my evening last night meant several hours of stripping the ceiling, then cleaning up the floor with millions of paint scrapings that seperated from the paper as it fell.

After all that we settled back with a coffee and agreed the gods of the universe obviously have no intention of letting us stop renovating. So we think we might buy an old farmhouse in France and renovate it!

Four months in Germany doesn't seem like much, but it does give you a really good idea of how much you like the country. So far my favourite place is Bernkastel-Kues down in the Mosel Valley, which is one of the most delightful places to visit. If I had the chance to buy a holiday home there I would.

At this point you might be asking where have I been in Germany that I already have a favorite place. I think favorite places come and go as you travel, and having seen Düsseldorf and the surrounding districts, Berlin, and the Rhein/Mosel valleys, I can confidently say I do like Germany, and yes, I would buy a holiday home here.

Would I stay here permanently? It's too early to say, and I still haven't seen much of the rest of the EU. However, let's stick to discussing Germany for now.

Generally speaking most German people are very welcoming, we've been invited into people's homes, family gatherings, and made friendships we know will last for life. German people are often wrongly stereotyped, as boring, efficient, incapable of having a laugh sorts. I say wrongly because I genuinely don't believe this to be the case. And of course, in the English speaking world we only ever joke about the war, John Cleese really should be held accountable for this, so we often don't take the time to get to know the Germans. German people also tend to be very knowledgeable about things the average Australian, Brit or American would never bother to think about. Makes for interesting discussions, albeit in Germanglish.

We've found that total immersion in Germany is actually surprisingly easy to cope with. We were practically monolingual when we arrived here but are now able to have really good conversations with people. Our understanding is better than our speech, but German people seem generally too willing to help when they think we don't understand, and of course they are always absolutely thrilled that we are making the effort to learn German. If I could give any advice to other newcomers in Germany it would be this, don't stress about speaking German perfectly before you arrive. Instead, just get here then soak up the atmosphere and let your experiences guide you with the language.

Bureaucracy in Germany is apparently pretty bad, and yes it can be frustrating, and is an example of where the stereotype breaks down. German people just aren't any more efficient than the rest of us. They do things differently, and they pride themselves on their punctuality, but they aren't more efficient. Getting a telephone/Internet connected took 2 weeks, I'm used to having it connected the same day I request it. Getting a driver's license involves trips to many different offices and I'm sure the process could be improved on.

But the great thing about Germany is experiencing something different from what we have in the English speaking world. The foods in Germany were a shock to the palate. Pork is very common here, as is wurst (hundreds of different varieties of sausage). We tend to eat a lot of chicken, fish, beef mince, and the occasional steak. Mince meat here is more commonly a mixture of pork and beef, and is a lot fattier than the lean beef mince we usually use in our pasta. Also, Indian dishes aren't as popular, so we can't get Butter chicken sauces in a glass jar (Chicken Tonight) like we could in Australia. Now we have to make our sauces the old fashioned way - erm, but how?

Oooh, one thing we have discovered about Germany that we are totally addicted to is Latte Macchiato. This might sound like a strange addiction, but don't knock it until you try it. German coffee is very strong, not to our liking, so we asked a waitress at Woytons cafe for something less strong, wow!

If you want to see some of my photos from Düsseldorf, wander on over to my Flickr page, at the moment I've only got a couple of the Schlosses, but I'll be adding my pictures of the Altstadt and street scenes over the next week or two.

Funny things happen when you travel. First of all, Germany for all its similarities with other western countries is still very different. Take for example signing the lease on an apartment.

In Australia an apartment is any home inside a larger building, it can be one room or 10 rooms. Here in Germany we discovered to our amusement, and the displeasure of people who were helping us to find an apartment that in fact an apartment is not in fact an apartment. Sounds weird, so let me explain, an apartment in Germany is a single room dwelling, possibly with separate kitchen or bathroom, but in some cases not, whereas a wohnung is anything that has two rooms or more and also separate kitchen and bathroom. The people helping us weren't happy when we asked them why all the apartments they were showing us only had one room. It's a lesson for the unwary.

So to recap, if you're coming to Germany to live, make sure you ask people to help you find a wohnung, unless you really want a small one room apartment.

The next thing to be aware of, when you go looking for apartments and see a great looking kitchen with flashy oven, dishwasher, gleaming metal everywhere and you start getting excited about living in this swanky apartment, it ain't gonna be like that when you move in. You see here in Germany the kitchen is almost always empty, with nothing but power points and water fittings. The cupboards are our responsibility, as are the tiles on the wall, wallpaper, curtains everything.

My German readers are probably thinking what's wrong with that, isn't that normal? Erm, no, not in Australia, or the UK. There an apartment comes with complete kitchen, all you need to supply is the fridge. Luckily it is possible to find apartments in Germany that have a complete kitchen, just make sure you ask.

Hope that helps those of you who decide to follow Ceejay and I to a new life in Germany.

Many thanks to loyal readers of this blog who have put up with months of empty rss feeds. I'm back, I have Internet again, but it will be several days until I can start adding content again.

In the meantime, for those of ou who live in Germany, let me tell you I love this place, German people are so friendly and welcoming. The weather is almost as hot as Australia at the moment, our balcony thermometer regularly hits low 30's before lunch time.

I'll be trying to update my flickr page again soon, and I've also downloaded the latest s9y to have a play with it. Broken links on this site might get fixed soon, but also might take me a couple of weeks.

Tanks again