Adventures in Temporary Furniture

 Our address, not that anyone really would use it is: Fliederweg 5/1, 71116 Gaertringen Germany (well, really it's Ga(umlaut)rtringen)... but I'm not sure how to put that on this keyboard.  So... that little VW is the rental - this was just as we were moving in...  He's actually parked on the "yard" in the front (yeah, it's pretty non-existent).  Anyway THIS is the front of our house... yep, all ours... just for two of us.  Seems a little silly but hey, if we have folks come at the same time, we're set!! 

 Here is the lovely (yes, that is sarcasm) loaner furniture that we have for the next few weeks while waiting for ours.  This will not be our true living room but rather than have the movers heft this stuff down stairs until then seemed... well, a little cruel!  So, it's upstairs for now.  We do plan on getting a larger dining set while we are here as we re-sold our dining table from Georgia for the move.  To our defense it was a table I got for $45 and fixed the wooden slides to work (they were stuck prior), then Butch sanded the corner... and.... well, we never did anything else with it after that.  So this room will become one BIG dining room with the doors that will open onto the deck.  yes, BOTH of those doors open all the way on BOTH sides... so it really is a nice airy set up for a dining table in the summer.

This monstrosity... uh, I mean bit of loveliness is our bed.  Yeah.  It's a double.... yeah we are WAY too close to each other right now!  ha!  And the thickness of it?  Yep, that is it.  There is foam... there is hardness... there is misery... there are some old backs that are ready to cry now.  This was delivered to us on the 15th... we got sheets and such and we moved in on the 16th.  It's now the 18th and let me tell you what... that thing makes my hips hurt to look at it from here....  sigh... it's temporary... it's temporary.  We should have our household goods before the 3rd of March or something like that.  I would honestly have to look it up but I think that they had a "must deliver date" no later than the 5th.

SOOOOO pray for me that we live that long... two weeks isn't that long, right?  RIGHT????  Yeah, my back would disagree with you there... my lower back is hurtin!!

oh, well, it was MY decision to move here and my stupidity that allowed us to move into this place without really looking at paperwork to know when the furniture would be here.... so it's all my fault.  I said something (or just thought it possibly) about "next time I'll know better"... lordie, there's not going to be a "next time" ... next time we will hopefully be moving home.... and have someone nice enough to let us crash at their house before we have to move into an empty house!!

So... that is my update for last week...
I am now away from the hotel and will try and load pictures as I can but I'm working on the equivalent of dial up at this point, so things are slow going.  I loaded these pictures while I was at the BX when Butch was signing us up for phones.... 

SO... in about 2 weeks we should have phones that will work in Germany for cell phones AND have a home phone that we can call home to the states for free!!!  FREEEE... OK, so it costs us about $19 Euro a month, but shoot, that's a drop in the bucket compared to what it would cost without that.

Wonderful Wednesday...

OK So Tuesday (or was that Monday?) wasn't so wonderful as I made it all the way into work and to the first room of my office... and then when I stood up to go to another office... flop, flop, flop!!!

 I had a BAD flat tire in my shoe!!!  Yes, this is what it looked like when I got back to the hotel later in the morning.  It was sooo funny!  So no one had any super glue at all at work and *I* had a meeting to go to with the big boss in my area... yeah, fun.  So I asked the Marines across the hall if someone had anything to include duct tape....

 Yep, they had duct tape!!!  Talk about classy, eh?  ha!!!  I fixed up my shoe, kept my foot on the floor and tried to not draw any attention to it!  I then went over to the BX during my lunch break and picked up shoes from there... I did find a nice pair that were very close to what I had but they actually have heels on them and are better for me in the winter weather here!  Score.


Annnndddd today we signed the final paperwork for the apartment.
SO here are the picture from the house today... starting from the top floor - this is the north side room with the tilted ceilings.  I think this will be an office or possibly a guest room.  it's on the 3rd floor - which here is called the 2nd as they start with 0 for ground , then 1 then 2.

 Nice bright hall way with the stairway to the downstairs... and the bath to the right.

 The bath - it's small but functional and the lovely skylight is GREAT - as you can open it and there is a pole to get the window back down again to lock it.  It's GREAT to have the airflow from the bottom floor to the top!

 This is the south room - it's quite large and look at that cute terrace!  I can imagine sitting out there having a tea watching the world!

 OK, down the stairs to the master floor leel....

 The north side room - will be an office or a guest room ... probably an office as it's next to our room and if we put the guest upstairs everyone coming to stay would have their own bath.

 This is the master bedroom and I just noticed that window to the left is full length to the floor... interesting... you can see the shed in the back yard (aka garden)  The others who lived here prior to us had some wardrobes on that side... note that there are NO closets... welcome to Europe... wardrobes are the thing here!

 "master bath" aka main floor bath... two sinks... bath.... and shower behind the door....  I thought I had a picture of that shower... but maybe not...

Here... I'll never understand why they don't shove the toilet over and make a MUCH bigger shower.. but OK... we'll deal with it as it is what it is... it'll do.  The shower is the same size upstairs as here.. and it will do for now... it's a temporary thing... temporary... keep repeating after me.

 This is the hall and that wardrobe will move to a bedroom to be used there... but for now it's in the hall as we purchased it from the prior tenants.

 Yep, MORE stairs!!!!  ha!

 main floor as seen from the kitchen.  those doors ALL open - as in it can be very, very open to the outside... and I LOVE that idea.  We plan on using this as a very large dining room and the living room will go downstairs... yep, there is MORE... four floors...

 Butch putting our lovely $20 microwave into the microwave hole....

 This is the entry area...

 Tiny 1/2 bath right off the front door.

 Potty... why is that toilet paper blowing out?  Not a clue.. probably because the windows are open and I just shut that door, but it's funny that I JUST noticed this as I'm publishing the blog!  ha!

No pictures of the stairs going down this time... they were right beside the 1/2 bath and the door... as you walk in and face a stairwell and a few doors... if you go downstairs you get to this room:

 They consider this a craft room or hobby room... we will call this our living room for the duration and put our living room down here to watch TV and hang out.

 good size storage room in the basement...

 absolutely HUGE landry room with a sink and a FOLDING area... I could even get to like doing laundry down here!!

 The other end... they have heated floors throughout... this is going to be GREAT... the water pipes and heating elements are all in this corner.

 OK, the back yard is in rough shape right now as they had a BIG down out there... a Rottwieler... so a baby horse.  There is straw out there to keep the seed down and we'll rake it up and/or add seed as the spring hits to see if we can get the lawn looking good.  I did tell her I love flowers, so we were given permission to plant as we want.  Should be fun to plant here.

 This is the back of the garage...

This is the other side of the house... so tiny, tiny, tiny!  BUT it's all we need.... really.

I forgot to get a good shot of the front of the house and see how it all looks from the outside.

Friday we get temp furniture... and who knows when we get the rest of the goods... sometime in March I'm sure.  So about three weeks to go until we can really settle in, but it's a start!