Moved and hiding

Moving stinks. Even when you know you're moving someplace better, that the new place will have all kinds of things the old one didn't, it still stinks. Even when you're moving on Midsummer and you have no idea it's 9pm because it seems light enough to be only 6 and you see a double rainbow after dropping off the heaviest load it still stinks. But all of our belongings are now in our new apartment, including a new bed frame, used furniture and adopted plants. Actually, not everything is in the new place - after dropping off the last load at 11 pm last night (they sky was still light), we returned the rental van and then retreated back to our old apartment to sleep and pretend that the chaos of the new place doesn't exist. We have enough clothing for a few days, and the old apartment has a bed with a mattress (something missing from our new apartment) so for the moment we're hiding. We'll deal with the piles of boxes and disassembled Ikea furniture in a few days.

Household appliance #1

I can now say that I have bought a refrigerator. A tiny, adorable, A++ energy efficient European refrigerator. See that empty space down there under the counter? This baby will go there, along with a washing machine. A clothes washing machine. A clothes washing machine that means no more trips to the sketchy laundromat. Woohoo!

How does it feel? It feels like we're moving in five days and we don't have any furniture.* Not to worry, we are going to Ikea tomorrow (and you know how I feel about Ikea), both for some buying and for some pre-buying scouting. Our first piece of furniture is already in the apartment (more on that another time); on Sunday we're picking up furniture we bought from acquaintances who are moving to the US for a few years to do postdocs. (I wish they were moving to Seattle, it would be so nicely symmetric.) Our new apartment will be full soon enough, so at the moment I am enjoying its gorgeously empty state.


I imagine blog posts will be a bit scarce in the coming weeks (I know, as if they haven't been scarce before this - hey, this is two posts in one month!). We will be without phone (whatever) and internet (uh-oh) for a little while, but it will just give us time to find some furniture.

* For the record, this is not a complaint. Moving is a whole hell of a lot easier with no furniture. It's just confusing, and then after the move there's nowhere to sit but the random desk chair you bought and the exercise ball that you refused to deflate for the move because it took so damn long to pump it up after the last move. But still, not complaining.

Birthdays come and gone

Though I've been quiet over here, we've been busy. Between birthday celebrations, apartment hunts and a visit to Paris, May was quite the bustling month. But let's start with the birthdays. This is the year of turning 30, and lucky Zoli got to do it first of the two of us. It seems like quite the milestone, until you think about the birthday of the Hamburg harbor. This year Zoli shared his birthday with the Hafengeburtstag, and when you consider that the harbor celebrated its 820th birthday 30 doesn't seem so bad. It seems downright young, in fact. Which, really, I guess it is.

We celebrated with asparagus (Spargel in German - oh baby is it Spargel season), a nice bottle of wine - and for the first time in ages, I made Zoli a birthday cake. The cake was Zoli's request and, as I like to call it, "Butter Masquerading as Cake." Don't get me wrong, it was quite good, but it was a Lot. Of. Butter. Thankfully we were able to pawn off - ahem - I mean bring the leftovers to our German class.


We also visited the Hafengeburtstag, which not only provided me ample entertainment at work with all the ships coming into the port, but also had the Swiss air force as a special guest this year. Apparently the fighter jets flying so low caused some consternation amongst the citizens of Hamburg, but the day we saw them they were quite fun.


Aside from celebrating, we spent the first two weeks of May going to look at apartments, trying to find a place to live when our lease ends in July. I know I'm out of practice, but this was intense - one open house Zoli went to had over 100 people. We were going to at least one Besichtigung per day (literally an inspection or perambulation), so that was essentially all we were doing. We saw some fabulous apartments, but for most landlords two Americans who won't be here for more than a few years are not the ideal candidates. However, we were ultimately successful and were offered an apartment in a cool old building with an ideal location. Bonus - we were offered it the day before we left for Paris to continue the birthday celebrations, making the trip that much nicer.


So, Paris. Paris was...Paris. Beautiful, grey, sunny...and holy crap there were lots of Americans. It was amazing, really, how much American English we heard in four days. I never really thought about how little English we hear here, American or otherwise, but it was the exact opposite in Paris. In practically every restaurant we visited there was at least one other group of Americans, including two American scientists in the café at the Maison Européenne de la photographie - and yes, I was eavesdropping on their conversation. Basically our trip consisted of lots of walking, visiting with our friend Joseph, some museum-going and of course a good amount of eating (including amazing handmade noodles).

It was relaxing and lovely and I think a pretty good way to celebrate turning 30. Though really, you'd have to ask Zoli.