Moving to Maxvorstadt

Hello hello! We are back from the internet-less world, finally, and can get y'all updated on what we've been up to in October.

Here's the only picture we took at Oktoberfest. :-\

We have a doorbell!

The month started with MOVING. If you've ever talked to Sarah while they were about to move/moving/just finished moving, you will know that it's her least favorite. Joseph is ambivalent but generally is not amused by the process either. We actually don't know anyone who enjoys it, but it's even less fun to do when a) you don't have a car, b) the train line you have to take is extra crowded because of multiple major events happening that day, and c) you have to put your furniture together after you finishing moving all your junk!

Thankfully, we'd only brought our 2 carry on bags and 2 checked bags each, so we didn't have a whole lot to move. We'd purchased some smaller items and had to move those as well, but 3 trips from the far end of the U6 line to the middle of the city and back later, we were all moved! It's taken us a few weeks to finally be settled in and stop having those "crap, we don't have ___" moments, but it's definitely been an experience!

Finding an apartment in Munich can take forever. The average, we read somewhere, is 6-8 months to find an apartment that meets enough of your requirements for you to commit. We'd been looking since June, and once we arrived, we spent hours, daily, looking at places online and messaging our contact information. It was nuts! Thanks to Joseph's title of "Doctor" we heard back much more quickly than most people do, and we went to tour an apartment within 2 weeks of arriving! When we got there, the apartment manager showed us two, one that was yet to be listed, and that's actually the one we ended up renting! Because the city is huge and there are so many people, the apartments are SMALL. Ours is around 40 square meters, and has just the essentials- bathroom with a tiny shower, a miniature fridge (hidden in cabinets), a sink, a 3-burner cooktop panel, and heaters in the bathroom and the main room. There are plenty of shelves and windows too! We do like the place, and it's fairly unique. It's in a part of the building that used to be doctor's offices, and then they renovated them, so they turned out a little...funky. When you walk in to our apartment, there's a row of built in cabinets on one side, and the bathroom. In those cabinets is the fridge and a cabinet that could fit, say, a microwave, with an outlet and everything. Then, you have to go through another door to get to the rest of the apartment. Even the people here in Munich think it's strange, but we like the character and funny story that goes with it. The main room has the kitchen area and windows, and then there is a small bedroom just past the windows (with it's own window, too). When we say small, we mean like, 2 meters wide (6 feet, ish)!

We're still waiting to get a table and chairs so we have somewhere to sit besides the couch, but otherwise we think we're finally finished getting things to feel settled! We got a convection oven/uber-toaster oven type thing which will suffice for cooking (and baking) needs, and we can now make coffee, tea, smoothies, and store leftovers in actual containers instead of just bowls. We've got a place for our compost contributions and recycling to go when we don't take it out every day. We've got a great couch that folds out into a full bed, and even has storage space in it for the linens! We've got our closets organized and suitcases stored- we are good to go!

Here's a glance at the moving process: our place before/putting furniture together/the end result! Enjoy!

Where we stayed when we first arrived, our "Guest apartment" aka hotel room at the Max Planck Institute. 

Tidied up a little more while we finished packing stuff. 

Lovely view of...the labs. And construction around the corner.

The "kitchen" and TV we never used (hard to watch TV when you don't understand it!)

Sarah did like the cooktop here because it was touch screen,
but she's not sad to leave it because it only had two tiny burners.

Fancy shower! 

At the new place! Assembling the couch. Shark supervising. Piles of luggage everywhere. 

Almost done! With the couch. Still piles of luggage. 

Front door and closets. The lower half of the one on the far left is the fridge :-P

Tiny Fancy shower!

View of the main room from the second door

View of the main room from the other side. Fun fact, we only have a blanket for the couch because we bought the wrong
size blanket for our bed. Worked out well, we think. 

Kitchen area, view 1

Kitchen area, view 2. We are still getting used to having to go to another room to get to the fridge while making food. 

I really had to squeeze in the corner behind the closed door to get this picture of our room. So narrow!

Wireless update

Just a quick post to say we still haven't gotten our wireless set up. Joe does have access at work and Sarah spends lots of time in coffee shops, but in terms of uploading photos and trying not to post much while on public connections, we're largely offline at the moment! You can still text via WhatsApp as that does not use much data (we've got 3GB limits), but until the middle of next week we are in the stone ages! Not really, but in terms of blogging, we are :)

We pass the time by reading lots of books, going for walks, and continuing to work on furnishing (and building furnishings from Ikea) for our apartment. Oh, and laundry! Four weeks of living out of suitcases provided us with quite a lot of laundry, and we only have space in our apartment to air dry one (small; the washers at the laundromat are tiny!) load at a time, so we seem to be doing laundry all the time right now.

Fingers crossed that the counter-top oven we ordered is sufficient to support Sarah's baking habits...we'll let you know when we are fully online!

We are missing people terribly!

A lot of catching up to do!

We've not posted in a while, due to quite a few happenings. I'll just list them out by day:

~ The internet at our temporary apartment got worse the longer we stayed, so it became difficult to get online and especially upload pictures.

~ Last Tuesday Sarah went out to meet a few people in an international group called the "Munich Cocktail Ladies." It's basically a gathering where the are only a few rules and they include there must be a happy hour special,  English only, no German, and no gentlemen allowed. Joe was happy to find a nice place nearby to read and then watch the Tottenham game, and Sarah met a few people that were friendly and had a lot of advice about moving to Munich.

~ Last Wednesday, we ventured to the halls of the Schottenhamel tent at Oktoberfest with many members of Joe's lab group. We learned a few German songs and sayings and enjoyed a few bieren and brezelen while we were there. It was quite an entertaining time, and we had a lot of fun! No, we did not dress up. That will have to wait for next year, we promise we will then.

~Last Thursday we met the groundskeeper for our new apartment to get our keys and, in theory, move a few things in. However, they hadn't finished cleaning the apartment yet, so we only picked up the key. They also only had one key, they needed the second key for the house keeper, so we had to plan to return Friday for the second key. The groundskeeper speaks absolutely no English and seems kind of aloof, not altogether, really, so picture a scene with him trying to tell us about the cleaning that needs to take place while generally not knowing how to convey that information in anything other than German. It was frustrating and probably very comical. We also went to get our internet contract set up for our apartment and get a few more things ready to go for the move.

~Friday, again, we anticipated moving a few things and getting the key, and it turned out we weren't sure that was going to happen then, either. Sarah did go pick up the key, and again the groundskeeper had no idea how to convey his conversation. Eventually through Google Translate (which he was reluctant to use) and a few helpful passersby, he conveyed the message that there was a plumbing issue that needed to get fixed that day, but would be done by 5pm. After a frustrating attempt to order furniture for delivery from Ikea online (they didn't want to recognize the new zip code, which was correct), and facing the prospect of "6-10" days for delivery of a mattress, we ended up just going to the store in the afternoon, which turned out to be a better deal. Everything we had planned to purchase online was in stock and they could deliver it that evening to the apartment! Delivery charge was less than half of the online delivery charge, and some items were even on sale. It may have been an extra 90 minutes for the round trip bus ride, but it was worth it! We managed to shop around for a few more things and get to the apartment (with a  load of suitcases as well) in time for the delivery, and then we found our new favorite Friday dinner, döner (pronounced "dyoo-ner"), on our way back home. Döner is spit-roasted meat, shaved off layer by layer, typically pork but occasionally turkey, and they serve it many ways- in a box with rice, in a box with fries, with cabbage and slaw in a pita-type bread, Asian style, spicy, with cheese- and it's all delicious. It always comes with a type of tzatziki sauce too, to add to the deliciousness, and it's typically pretty cheap for the portion size. We've made it our Friday tradition to find some döner for dinner and it's a wonderful thing.

~ Saturday was moving day, and all the typically "joys" of moving were compounded by the following overlapping factors: We had to move all our stuff via train. Our route took us 45 minutes and we had to switch trains once. The train line we were on was a main route for both Oktoberfest attendees and Bayern Munich (local soccer team) fans going to the game. It was the last weekend of Oktoberfest which meant larger than usual amounts of people going, as well as a large crowd for the home soccer game. Needless to say the trains were crowded and there we were, packed in the train with our giant suitcases and bags, trying to stay as out of the way as possible. We managed to take only 2 round trips, so we minimized our train-presence, but it was still an ordeal!

~Once we moved everything, we had to get to work putting together our bed, and we even got the couch put together. Don't ask us how because we only had two multi-tool screwdrivers and they didn't always do the trick. But somehow our furniture is put together and still standing, 4 days later, so we must have done something right.

~ Our apartment has a TON of cabinet space and seems roomier than we thought it would be once we got the couch put together, so that's really nice. We have a view of the rest of the apartment buildings in the block, but it's not a terrible view because they are rather pretty. We do not, unfortunately, have either an oven or a hookup for a washing machine in the apartment. We've been looking into some options for oven-replacement ideas (there's not even a plugin for one) but in general this is a sad situation. We'll work something out... As for the washing machine, we are thankfully directly across the street from a laundromat. It's quite expensive to do laundry (3.90€ per load!!) so we'll have to dry all of our laundry in our apartment. They do make large drying racks, but we do not own one...yet. For now there's just large piles of laundry on the floor because since we've been here we've only washed and dried two small loads at our previous apartment. Yikes!

~Our new internet won't be set up until tomorrow, so I'm writing this from a coffee shop on one of the University campuses (campi?). We'll be sure to include pictures of the new place with the next post when we have wifi, since I will be able to get them from my phone to the computer more easily then.

~The rest of today's adventure's include some job hunting for Sarah, attempts to find a drying rack that holds a whole load of laundry, and Joe obviously doing science. Look forward to pictures next time, sorry we don't have any today!!