A place to call home.

Disclaimer: Sorry about the quality of the photos below. My camera takes images that are just too huge with too many pixels, and so to put the full pixelated image would take so long with my slow connection that I have now. So I hope you don't mind these smaller, more blurry images for now...sorry!

We found an apartment in Waiblingen!

To tell how we found it, I'll pick up where we left off.

Last Monday, we had an appointment to look at an apartment in a place called Sommerrain, a lovely little "suburb" (I guess you could call it that) of Stuttgart. It looks like this:

The field that I took a picture of was a strawberry field. Neat, huh?

We loved the area and it was close to Mark's work, so we were really hoping it was going to work out. We walked to the apartment and met with the guy, who took us down into a basement apartment (Noo!! Our old spider dungeon was a basement apartment, so we were a little leery). But it was really nice--a studio apartment with a separate bathroom and kitchen. We were pretty excited about it, but then the landlord asked Mark if I was going to be living with him, too. Mark said that I would be, and then the landlord said that he would have to increase the price of the apartment from 450 euros to 510 euros to cover the extra cost of me using electricity, etc. Mark told him that was out of our price range, but we would still think about it.

So we left feeling rather bummed. Here's my "I've-had-it-with-apartment-searching" face taken shortly after we looked at the apartment:

(haha, yikes!)

We did, however, have another appointment for the next day for an apartment that was 350 euros, so we were looking forward to it.

The next day we got up and took the S-bahn (the train) to another town just north of Stuttgart, called Kornwestheim. We looked at the apartment, and it was WEIRD. Not to mention the landlord at that place told us he would have to increase the price of our rent to 450 instead of 350 because I was going to be living there, too. But we looked at the place, and I knew it was going to be another shared living space. We had one big room to ourselves, but then the sinks were in one room down the hall, the toilets were in another room, the kitchen units in another, and the showers in the basement of the building (4-5 story building). I had the feeling it was going to be another circumstance of living with a "Jasper" (our name that we dubbed the tall German in the apartment we first moved into here--because he really did look like Jasper from 101 Dalmatians!)

(Jasper is the one on the left)

Anyway, we told him that we would have to think about it and left. At this point, we were feeling really in the dumps about our situation and decided that we should probably just take the apartment in Sommerrain because it was the best apartment we'd seen and we didn't know how soon it would be until we got to see another one that wasn't shared.

We called the people in the ward who had been helping us search for a place and told them that we were going to take the apartment in Sommerrain that was not only expensive, but had a huge deposit, too. Some Germans want huge deposits for their place, usually up to two or three months' rent. The ward member who has really helped us, Micha, called around to see if someone from the ward could go help negotiate the terms of the contract with our landlord so we didn't get too ripped off. As he called around, he got in touch with a lady from the ward, Ruth. She offered to come with us, but also said that her brother-in-law was moving out of his apartment above where they were living and the rent was going to be super cheap and we didn't need to pay a deposit. She also used to live in the apartment before she got married, so she knew the landlords very well.

So long story short (I keep having to say that, don't I? But these are long stories!) she called and convinced the landlord to let us live there for six months. I guess it took some negotiating because they usually like people to live there longer, but Ruth told them that we would be good tenants and the landlords agreed to let us live here.

Now, here's the even better part--our apartment is so cute! I like it so much better than our old apartment in Logan. It's in the attic of an apartment building and the windows are really big, so it's really light and airy. The kitchen and bathroom are rather nice, too. We just love it. And here's the best part--it's only 220 euros a month! That's without utilities, but the utilities usually aren't very much, I guess. I could go on and on about all the things that we like about it, but I won't. I also can't take pictures of it right now, because Ruth's brother-in-law is still in the process of moving out and we're still in the process of moving in, so things don't look very orderly. But I promise I'll post pictures of it soon!

It has been rather rainy and cold here in southern Germany, so I didn't take too many pictures of Waiblingen when we first got here. But today is really nice and sunny! We got outside, went for a walk to the market and the inner part of the city so I snapped some good pictures. I hope you like them! :)

A few things we love about Waiblingen:

1. There are tons of trees and birds. I can hear birds all day long, and I love it. I guess we just missed actually being able to see and hear things from outside because of our old apartment!

2. There's a bell tower that chimes every hour, quarter after, half past, and quarter to. It's a nice little reminder of what time it is.

3. The old part of town is amazing! One of the prettiest places I've been in Europe, I think. It's so small and quaint.

4. It's a smaller city, so it seems more safe.

5. There are so many good stores! Especially markets to buy food. And the food prices here are what have surprised me the most because it actually is affordable to eat good food. In the grocery store I've found many items that are under one euro--I don't remember seeing that much while I was in the U.S.

6. Did I mention the bread? Holy moly, it's amazing.

7. Waiblingen is where Mark will be working at Bosch, so he'll be able to walk to work from here! (Or take the bus.) :)

First, here are some pictures of Winnenden, where we spent several days while apartment searching.

There's me in the middle!

Old Mark and Winnenden

Winnenden

Look at this old building! Mark said that there is usually a plaque on the building saying how old it is, but we couldn't see one.

An old tower in Winnenden

Now time for some pictures of Waiblingen!

Our apartment building

Here's the windows to our apartment!

The street that we live on. This street leads directly to the middle of the city, it's so nice!

The following pictures are of the old, inner city and the market.

This is the old city wall.

Nice mullet!

Sorry, but I don't have time to put captions on most of those. I hope you liked them!

Can I just say how proud I am of Mark? It's so fun to be over here with him. I love to hear him speak German and converse with people. He's so good at speaking German and he remembers mostly everything he learned on his mission. He always says his German is not good, but he can speak it so well!

This coming week, my parents are coming over and we are going to go on a trip to see Switzerland and Austria! I can't wait!