The very first house we visited was a 12 square meter (that’s about 1200 square feet) duplex in Birkenfeld a quick 20 minutes from post. The house was still occupied and so the housing office had to call to set up a time that we could visit the house while the tenants would be there. Fortunately for us, an extremely friendly CID (Criminal Investigations Divisions, one of the cooler jobs in the Army where the individuals in the units don’t wear ACUs but, wear civilian clothes) Staff Sergeant came and picked us from the housing office and drove us to see the house. He also took us on a tour of the town. Birkenfeld is an adorable village with a fairly large downtown area that has several restaurants and pubs, a large grocery store, a pet store, a shoe store, a hospital and quite a few hotels. The duplex was within walking distance of the town square and all the local conveniences. The duplex itself was fairly nice and the kitchen included a dishwasher, which is not all that common! The backyard area was large and had several fruit trees but was not fenced.
The second house we toured was a 260 year old farm house in Neiderbrombach, a tiny village about 10 minutes from Birkenfeld and a 25 minute drive to post. The house was completely updated yet still maintained the homes original integrity. I immediately fell in love with this old house, everything about it was adorable! Everything about the house was fresh and homey. And the kitchen was entirely new, I loved everything about it from the windowsill above the sink to the pot rack above the stove! Off the kitchen was a ‘garden patio’ as the Germans refer to it and an original outdoor fire stove. In the basement (or dungeon as the guy showing us the house referred to it) was a barrel to make sauerkraut….at this point I am thinking I am in cooking heaven, an outdoor stove, a special place for me to learn to make sauerkraut, a pot rack, and a windowsill to grow herbs….yep, pretty much heaven! The downstairs had a really nice laundry area and a dining room. Before we head upstairs I am pretty sure that this house is the one. But then we walked up the 260 year old staircase and my perception of the house started to diminish. These were steepest stairs I have seriously ever seen, picture more a ladder than a stairwell. The owner told us that we probably shouldn’t have a few beers and then try to climb those stairs….ahhaahah. The upstairs however continued with the houses adorableness, the bedrooms upstairs each had a chandelier above where the bed would go and both of the rooms upstairs were extremely large! Then we go in the upstairs bathroom which was HUGE and had hook-ups for a washer/dryer upstairs which of course I would prefer because then I wouldn’t have to carry laundry up and down those stairs….I mean ladder. But something weird was in the upstairs bathroom: a urinal! I immediately begin thinking how I can possibly hide that urinal???? Meanwhile, Andrew is thinking how great this is and how he wouldn’t have to put down the toilet seat anymore! The house also had a balcony upstairs but did not have a bathtub and really didn’t have a backyard for Autumn. I still remember that house fondly but might not if I had to climb those stairs a couple of times a day.
This past week we were able to resume house hunting again and the housing office mentioned a few houses in a subdivision in Birkenfeld that had come available. There were 2 different houses in the same housing area that were owned by the same landlord, so setting up an appointment to see both was easy enough. The first we saw was a 3 bedroom townhouse, 1/5 bath with a fenced backyard! It was a tri-level house so essentially every floor had a new room. The ground floor had a garage, utility room and storage area. The first floor (which is really the 2nd floor) had the kitchen (with a walk in pantry…the first I had seen in Germany), half bath, living and dining area and the entry to the backyard. The top floor had 3 bedrooms and a bath. This house instantly gets points for having a fenced yard and a pantry, neither of which we had seen before.
I should probably talk about the bedrooms in Germany. German houses are really not set-up for American bedroom furniture. Nearly, all the houses are multi-level and the top floor is generally the area where the bedrooms reside. The bedrooms are nestled snuggly amongst the area that Americans would commonly have an attic, the area where the roof line is highly slanted and the dormers would be. So in every house we have seen (minus the farm house with the steep stairs and urinal) fitting our furniture will prove to be a fun task!
The other house we visited in the same housing complex was a larger 4 bedroom townhome but set up much the same way as the 3 bedroom, only it had 2 full baths and the 4th bedroom is on the ground floor. The living area is about double the size of the other house, but it didn’t have a pantry :(, it did however have a fairly nice sized fenced yard, which instantly makes us incredibly happy. I think we have pretty much come to the decision that this will be the house we choose, mostly enticed by the fenced yard, normal stairs and bathtub!
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