Little Differences

These are just some of the little things we've noticed or learned about living here that I thought were interesting and/or different from living in the US.

1)Before a stop light changes from RED to GREEN, you get a warning Yellow light so that you can prepare to go. When we first saw this, Alisa and I thought about why this must be. After driving a stick shift around for a couple weeks we came to the conclusion that, since most vehicles here were stick shift, that the yellow light was telling you to get into gear because you are about to be able to go and we don't want you holding up the line :)

2)During none peak driving times, mostly late at night, certain stop lights are just turned off. When a light is off, you just make sure that if there is an intersection and other cars are coming so that everyone gets a turn and you don't get into an accident, but you don't have to come to a stop if no one else is around. Sure beats ideling your car at a red light for 5 mintues in the US at night when no one is around and you are waiting for the light sensor to kick in!

3)You cannot name your children "weird" or different "made up" names that would cause a child to be made fun of (as our German friends put it). You have to name them classic names that I guess have been around Europe forever and considered a "common" name. Gwen Stephanie and Gwenyth Paltrow would have been out of luck with their kids names. Now, if you are a "foreigner" that has moved to Germany and your child is born here and you have a name that they don't consider to be a common place European name, you can show proof that the name you want to give your child would be a "common" name in the country you came from. They even told us that our son "Mason" would probably not have been allowed without petition because it is from a profession, the "stone masons".

4) You do have to bring your own bags to the grocery store or you will be charged about 15 cents per bag. I remember the riots that practically broke out when Seattle wanted to pass a law requiring a 5 cent per bag fee. Really people, its not that big of a deal! Just bring your own reusable back, all kinds of companies are giving them out for free now!

5) Speaking of grocery stores. You have to deposit money into a slot to unlock your shopping cart from the racks to use it for shopping. Most places its a 1 euro coin or 50 cent piece which you then get back once you click your grocery cart back into place. If you don't have a coin, or don't have a lot of shopping to do, you can use the little arm baskets, but beware, they have security tags on them so you can't take them out of the store. The carts also have all four wheels capable in going every direction that does make it easier to move your cart through some of the aisle or out of someones way, but if you are walking through the parking lot and happened to hit a slope in the concrete, its a ab work out just to get the cart to go straight to the direction you want to go!

These are just a few that I remembered for now as I write. More will surely come.

4th of July in Germany

I was excited to host an American Independence Day bbq at our house for our German friends for the 4th of July. To properly prepare for the event, a new friend of mine allowed me to come down to the Ramstein Air Force base and pick up some American decorations and food products from the commissary and BX that is not available to us in the German stores. For those who know me, you know I love to throw a party and decorations and the theme is always key!!! But, as our guest list was a little smaller for this bbq/celebration, I tried to be a little more low key.

For the bbq we did classic Cheeseburgers on the grill, American style potato salad, green salad with Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, and grilled vegetables on skewers. For dessert, I was able to get a chocolate gluten free cake mix from the commissary. As much gluten free breads, pastas and little prepackaged cookies you can find in the German stores, you cannot find any baking mixes that are gluten free for things like brownies, cakies or cookies. So this was a rare find and a special treat. Now you might be saying "why is Heather subjecting everyone to gluten free cake when she is the only one that has Celiac?" Well, because I'm not the only one! Our friend Janine also has Celiac so I was very happy to be able to share with her a traditional American cake that we could both eat! So I made a chocolate cake with (American) store bought white frosting and then did the classic American flag decoration using strawberries and blue berries. The burgers I think went over well and everyone had the salad and tried the dressing and they seemed to think it was ok. Hardly any of our German friends ate the potato salad, so I guess that one was just a little too "off" for their taste. :)

But the cake was a big hit. Surprisingly, no one had heard of frosting and come to think of it, I hadn't seen something like that round here either. Pastry shops and desserts aren't so focused on cakes here and certainly not the frosted ones. So I was pleased that everyone liked it. I was especially pleased that the gluten free cake tasted just like "normal" cakes that I remembered. Its great to know the brand of mix now to use for my dessert fix. (BTW, I made the same brand's chocolate chip cookies from their mix last night and they were great too!)

While eating we talked about some of the stuff we usually did back "home" for the fourth of July and I showed them on You Tube what some of the community parades looked like. There was also some interest in what American money looked like, and since I had just returned from the base where you have to use US dollars, I had some cash fresh on hand. We discussed the things on the bills and then got on the topic of patriotic songs, the pledge of alligance and the Star Spangle Banner national anthem in which I couldn't get the words right without hearing the melody! So, of course, to you tube we went again. All in all we got to share some good patriotic themes with our friends and they liked the decorations and the Jenks family all in our little USA themed shirts :)

The final amusement was of the fact that on the beer bottles (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I picked up some Bud Light and Samual Adams from the base too) had warnings about drinkng while you were pregnant. They all got a kick out of this and the reputation of Americans beeing sue happy and warning labels needing to be on everything since we seemed to lack common sense. You would of course, never find this warning on any alcohol here in Germany.

We Learned a lot at Toys R Us Germany

So today we were prompted to get out of the house and go to Toys R Us/Babies R Us for several reasons today. 1. We are in search of Soy formula as we tried the US kind and it seemed to work best for him and we cant find it at the regular grocery store. 2. Air France still owes us a stroller that we need to hurry before our reimbursment runs out and 3. We wanted to find a store an a/c! Well, after two Babies R Us stores we struck out on finding AC in either place nor did we find any Soy formula. We did get to look at a lot of strollers though. A picture is attached at the wide range of options parents in Europe have to choose from. (If you will remember my post a couple months ago about stroller envy.)

So we also ended up learning a couple little cultural lessons in the process of fulfilling our 3 above mentioned objectives.

1) As we knew already before, Europeans, and Germans in particular seem to be far more open and not so uptight as Americans in regards to sex and sexuality. Our first evidence of this was the fact that you can watch porn on public television late at night with no privacy codes required. Clue number two we discovered at Toys R Us in the children's book section. Andrew and I were looking for some books that had lots of pictures and words that would help us continue with our German language learning process. He came across a book called "Woher die kleiner kinder kommen?" translated into English "Where do babies come from?" Ok, so you might be thinking, yes, we have some books like these in the US, maybe you wouldn't find them at Toys R Us, but still, they are out there. So we started to look through the book and found first that it was a book that you see the picture and then you lift a flap to see what is "inside" or "under" the picture. The first couple seens were to tell the difference between a boy and a girl. So there is a picture of a little girl with clothes on and then a picture with a little boy with clothes on. Then you lift up the flap of their shorts and skirt and you see the anatomically correct gender differences for each. The next page has a picture of a door with a little kid standing in front of it about to open the door. The text says something to the effect of "what are mommy and daddy doing?" Then you open the flap and it actually shows mommy and daddy on a bed "doing it". The opposite page shows mommy and daddy in full naked frontals and then you live of the flap of their private parts to see their internal reproductive organs. The rest of the book kinda goes on to continue how you might actually find an American book to contain things like the mommy's tummy showing the baby inside, etc and the developing stages of the fetus. Does show the mom giving birth with an up close shot. So needless to say, I was a little surprised. I'm still not sure if it was because I disagree with having that discriptive of a book available in a toy store to anyone or that I was just shocked because I grew up in the ever protective American environment where sex and babies was taboo and the dreaded discussion by every parent. Anyways, I took pictures of the book to because I didn't think some people would believe me, but didn't feel comfortable posting it on a public blog, (insert all the comments you'd like on me being a prude, lol) But if you are interested, you can email me and I'll send them and if I know who you are (aka won't be sending them to strangers) then I won't think you are a pervert :)

2) Germans are way into strollers, and I think Europe for all that because many of the strollers came with tags that are EU certified. We think we found a winner for us though and wish that we had waited till moving over here to begin with to buy a stroller, or in our case we were actually gifted one. But I love me the European strollers, though, they are expensive, but I guess when it comes to the comfort of your kids (and I'm sure there is also some European medical theories and what not that go along with the design of said strollers) its worth the money. We even saw a dolly stroller in the toy aisle that looked more high tech than the American umbrella strollers you are used to seeing for kid dolls. These are the pictures that will be posted :)

3) The way the Germans teach their kids to ride a bike is awesome. A friend mentioned to me that they have these bikes with no peddles but I had never seen them before until this trip. The object is to get the kids to push with their feet then coast and get used to balancing on the two wheels but then able to put their feet down when they didn't feel stable anymore. It helps them get the feel for balance without becoming dependent on training wheels and then they can move to a regular bike more easily. I think its genius! Here are some pictures.

The middle of summer

Ok, I have let this blog go unentered for too long. I thought about sitting down and catching up on the last couple months before adding the most recent things but if I waited until that happened we'd be on a plane back to the US and nothing would be written. So, I'm just going to start with this week and from time to time I will have to fill in the past couple months. Apologies in advance for things being so out of order.

Yesterday, July 8th, we took our first bike rides through the forest that our neighborhood backs up to. Our German friends have some favorite spots to ride bikes to and our good friend Christian arranged for us to use his parents bikes and to go on a ride with him to have lunch at a charming Inn about 8 kilometers (about 5 miles?) away from our house. We don't have our bikes yet because, well, they are expensive. There are a few that you can get for cheap at the local Toom Markt (a mini version of a Wal-Mart so to say) but it is nothing like going to a Wal-Mart and being able to get a bike for average riding for about $100. The "cheap" bikes here are like $250-$300. So anyways, we started first with getting the kids taken care of and picked up one of those little kid bike chariots. Still $150 but those are actually much cheaper than the ones in the US.

So the whole process for going to get the chariot and then getting the two bikes from Christian's parents house and then attaching the chariot to the bike and then getting the kids loaded up and then over to Christian's parents house again to inflat the very flat chariot tires only took about 3 hours. (Starting at 10:30am). Poor Christian was hoping to enjoy some lunch at the Inn and it felt as if we weren't going to get there until dinner. By 1:30pm we were finally ready to go on the 5 mile bike ride to get lunch. Above is a picture of the boys in tow.

It was a beautiful ride through the forest and with the temps being in the mid 80s for the past couple weeks, riding through a shaded forest was quite nice, especially with the breeze riding along provided. Its pretty cool how many different trails there are to go riding through the forest and not just little trails for a single bike at a time being hit by tree branches, these were like dirt roads that a small car could easily travel on so while the entire path wasn't always even, it was at least wide enough for the cart to find a relatively steady path for the little chariot.

Once we got to the Inn we couldn't wait for some cold drinks and lunch. We found a nice shady table right next to the entrance to the playground so that we could sit and watch Mason play at his leisure in the park. Mind you, this Inn/train station/restaurant is 130 years old. Christian also told us that the last Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, had visited this Inn during his reign. So the playground was quite old as well, though not 130 years old :) For lunch Andy had some piece of meat covered in a sauce with mushrooms and some french fries, Christian had the ever so popular Curry Wurst with french fries and I had one of my favorite things, a Salad. Now, you say, "A salad! How German is that?" Well, salads in Germany are a lot different than salads in the US. I mean, I guess you can get a salad similar to these in the US, but they are specialty meal salads that you usually pay like $15 dollars for. At most restaurants, you can get a pretty good German salad for like $10 or less and this was the case here and my salad included: Lettuce of course, kidney beans, corn, yellow beans, green beans, tomatoes, ham, sliced eggs, and very yummy cheese in slices rolled and placed to decorate as well :) Then of course, the signature yogurt and herb dressing. For drinks I had a Coke and some bottled water that wasn't supposed to be sparkling so that meant it has just a very tad bit of carbination. Christian had a popular summer drink, a Coke and Koelsch (Coca cola poured into a Koelsch beer) and Andy just had a Koelsch. The popular children's drink is Apfel Schole which is apple juice mixed with sparkling water.

We had a very enjoyable time and got to practice our restaurant German some more which was once again complimented by our waitress who was also happy to show off some of her English and also told us (in German first which we did actually understand) that her daughter was an au pair for an American family in Conneticut. We only switched over to English for the rest of the discussion to explain to Christian where in the US that was. What was a little surprising, and now maybe a little disappointing is that in this remote place, just out side of a not so populated area as it is, there was an American girl eating lunch with a German girl speaking English. It just reminded me that summer study abroad and summer vacation tours of Europe was upon us and we were going to be once again grouped into the class of American tourist and it would be a little harder to disguise ourselves as locals. Better keep learning that German!

I was kinda dreading the ride back because I was so relaxed and new that we still had a ways to go and it was also much warmer than the ride over. Other than our week of riding bikes in Hilton Head, South Carolina last month, neither of us have done much riding the past couple years so our bums were already a little sore.

None the less we returned home, at 6:30pm and it turned out to be a very satisfying way to spend the day. Pictures of the Inn and lunch are attached.

2nd and 3rd attempt at renting a house, Part II

Ok, if you haven't read Part I, read it first :)

February 26th. We had just spent our first night in our new hotel, it was actually pretty nice. After eating breakfast, I was running around trying to get the kids organized for Andy so that he could watch them while I went to my very first German language lesson at my instructor's house. Andy was on the phone with various people with Microsoft HR to figure out why we had not been paid. It was bad enought that they didn't get this stuff processed in time for him to get paid in January for the half of the month he worked in Europe, but now we just settled our housing dispute and were being expected to pay them that weekend or be without a house again. What he found out is that they didn't receive some paperwork on time from someone for some reason and so they had to do a special check request, which should have gone through the same day as payday but the person that was supposed to do it was sick and didn't process it!!!! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! We both said, if you are sick, you don't NOT get the work done and deny someone their paycheck! You get someone else to do it if you won't be in the office. So we were told that they were going to process it that day.

So, we got an answer, but I was still stressed. It would have to wait though because I was going to be late for my language lesson. I headed out and got no further than 4 blocks from the hotel when my cellphone rang. It was our agent and he said that we needed to meet with the Alfter landlords right away because he was starting to get a little wary after the previous day's incident and wanted to secure something and have proof of employment, etc. What I didn't mention in the last post is that the Alfter house landlords wanted a deposit equal to 2 months of the rent, plus then we would have to pay the March rent and then the commission on it! We were concerned about being able to do that much money upfront and our agent mentioned that they have "deposit insurance companies" that will "vouch" for you to the landlords and you just pay 250 euros a year and then when you move out and have damage, they pay the landlords and then you settle up with the insurance company. Well, the landlords were weary of that and then finally agreed on just 2 months now, and then the 3rd could be paid 5 or 6 months later.

Well, I guess after sleeping on it for a night, the landlord felt that maybe we couldn't really afford their house and wouldn't be good tenents since we even asked about using an insurance company in the first place so they wanted an in person meeting with copies of our paystubs, employment contract and all this other stuff because he did have another family interested in the house that he was considering going with. So I of course started freaking out and turned around, and drove back to the hotel. I told Andy what was going on and as I was looking for my language instructor's phone number she called me. I explained that situation and why I had to cancel and arranged to email for another time. I was in hystarics my this point. It was finally starting to get to be too much for me, I leaned over and put my head against the closet and began to cry and to pray to God for intervention that we would finally get things settled and that we would not lose this house too.

So we regrouped and I pulled myself together and we packed up the kids and found as much supporting evidence we could find about our financial worthiness and set off for Alfter. We got everything settled to their satisfaction, and Andy got to see the house in person for the very first time! We went back to the agency office again and signed all of the paperwork and set March 1st as the date to turn over the keys and to give them money. Money, I hope we have it by Monday I thought.

Well, as normal, Andy was going to have to be out of the country and in London for some meetings on Monday. I was left with the kids and left to monitor things with paycheck and house keys. Where is Alisa you may ask. Well, while we were in the US, she had gone to Italy to be with her boyfriend and other friends she had made there in December instead of sitting alone in Germany. She was supposed to come back on the 26th when we got back but we called her on the 25th and told her to not come back because we did not know where we were going to live and it would be too crowded to put 3 adults and two kids into a hotel room that was now smaller than the postage stamp apartment we had all been in before. So Alisa was set to arrive on March 2nd at night.

March 1st, Monday morning, I could not wait for 8 :00 a.m. it hit so that I could start checking the bank account. To my disappointment, no money. They thought for sure that it would be there by Monday. I waited 2 more hours, got me and the kids breakfast in the mean time, and got on the phone with our HR contact to start getting on the situation and figuring out when our money would arrive. So progress after multiple phone calls, didn't know why it wasn't there yet, didn't know when it would arrive, would look into some more things and call back later.

Again, I was loosing it. All I could think about was that I was in a foreign country, with two small children, and at this moment, all alone and that if I couldn't transfer money into the landlord's bank account today they would give the house to someone else and we would be homeless. I admit, once again, I put my head in my hands and began to cry. Then I remembered something, God had actually answered all of my prayers so far from what the next step in our lifes we would take (then Europe presented itself), to the sale of our house (sold in a short sell no less in a record 4 months from the time of listing!) and then now with us getting a better house. So why would get answer all of those prayers and bring us this far to just let us loose the house and us be homeless. It was clear to me that this was some kind of test, diversion from the devil himself to get me to lose my faith in God. I actually got mad at him (the devil), and then the next thing I did even surprised me, I said outloud "Satan, you can throw what ever you want at me but I will not turn my back on my faith in God." Then I said a little prayer to keep me sane in this next trial and thanked him again for getting us this far.

Later that afternoon Andy had a break inbetween meetings and though he was still in London, he called about that paycheck since I was still not getting any answers. You will not believe the next part. It turns out, the put our paycheck into someone else's bank account!!! Someone entered the numbers wrong because when they checked what we submitted, they had our account correct but for some reason, when this deposit was set up, they entered a wrong number. While we were completely floored and upset that this was the cause, I couldn't help but laugh to think at who ever's account that must be and their face when they looked at their bank ledger. I'm sure they would have been overjoyed, but then confused and ultimately disappointed because not only was this a paycheck for a month and a half of Andy's salary, but it also included some of the relocation "walking around" money that was part of our new contract.

So now that we knew the problem Andy wanted to know what they would do to fix it. The lady said something about how something would need to be process and some other words that included several more days, paperwork, etc. This of course was not acceptable and Andy asked that they do whatever needed to be done for them to file a transfer on the spot. The response was that only the Director of Finance for Microsoft Germany could do that and of course he responded with, "Well, get him on the phone!" much to the HR woman's surprised at such a request. But, given what we have gone through and the unacceptable reasons for us not getting our money, there were several reasons and names that he could drop that made her decide it was definately in everyone's best interest to get the Director of Finance involved and get the situation resolved. So things were set in motion and again we had to wait and hoped too that the landlord I was about to face in the next couple hours would understand.

I met her at the house at 6:30 p.m. Our landlords, to clarify, are a father and daughter combo. The father bought the house for his daughter and her husband initially. Then her husband's work switch to Berlin and with her expecting a baby she will join him after a while or something. So half the time we deal with the father and half the time the daughter. The daughter was meeting me this time as her parents had gone to Bavaria for a holiday. As I told her what had happened and assured her that we would set up the transfer as soon as it hit our bank account I was relieved when she didn't seem to care at all and cheerfully told me "not a problem"!

So we got the keys, I loaded in a couple of the suitcases I brought over from the hotel and then took a couple pictures of our new house. We finally made it. Later that night Andy returned from London and we spent the rest of the night backing things up to take over to the house first thing in the morning as the movers would arrive promptly at 9:00 a.m. to finally deliver our stuff from the United States, and then, then we would finally feel "at home."

There are 3 pictures of our current Alfter house at the top of the post taken the night of March 1st.

2nd and 3rd attempt at moving into a house. Part I

The story below was started on February 25th and because of the chaos you will read about you will see why I had to stop in the middle and am just now finishing it. The first couple paragraphs were writen back in February, and today, I am now finishing the story and finally posting it!

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Well, after all the chaos and then a brief trip back to the United States, we returned to "Saga of renting a house in Germany Part Two." Without sounding too vain, I'm pretty sure that my experience and blog could be turned into a better movie than Julie and Julia. I will have to update more on our ongoing experiences later, but first, let me fill everyone in on the continuation of "How we didn't get to rent our house today."

As you know, we found a house in Bonn that we thought was the best "bang for the buck" and had a good layout for our family needs and was in walking distance to the train and many grocery stores. So we arrived back on February 1st to get the keys and start the move in process and there was a dispute between the divorcing couple that were the out going tenants and there were repairs to be done and stuff to still be moved out of the house. So, we signed the lease saying that they needed to have things done by the 15th of February.

On February 12th they arranged for us to come to the house to get the keys since Monday the 15th was a holiday. Our agent was told by the landlord that the repairs were almost done and that we could move stuff in. (Picking up where I left off now) I arrived on February 12th with the children in tow as Andrew was working. It was supposed to be an easy meeting, I pick up the keys, I see how the house has been repaired, we have our stuff delieverd on the 16th and we live happily ever after in more than a postage stamp of an apartment that we had been living in up to this point, right? Wrong :( So I show up, and the agents are already there. Mine greets me at the door with a glum face. Most of the stuff was moved out, but there were still a few small things remaining from the old tenants, but not much and they promised by time we moved our stuff in on the 16th (the scheduled date for the moving company to arrive). But the worse part was that NONE of the repairs that the landlord said were "almost complete" had even been STARTED! On top of that, there was a new problem. The outgoing husband tenant turned off the heat the wrong way and cause some kind of water to leak beneath the living room floor and they were going to have to rip it up to dry it out and see if there was any other damage!!!! So, the landlord wanted to have another extension and have us move in on March 1st!

Well, to be honest, I didn't really know what I should do and was just stunned. I knew our trip to the US was from the 16th to the 25th of February and that our temporary housing was going to be up on 17th. I asked our agent what we should do when we return because the only option we had if the house wasn't ready was for us to stay in a hotel on our own. He said, that is what we would have to do but maybe they would have the work done earlier and we will just check on the 25th and maybe we could move in. So he just told me to sign a piece of paper saying that we received the keys and that the new move in date was March 1st but of course no rent would be owed for February. In hinde sight of course I know that this was the wrong thing to do and you are probably reading this thinking "no, don't sign that!" But I did, because silly me for thinking that if I had another option that OUR agent that was supposed to be reprsenting our interest would have told me I had another choice.

So I got the keys and they both left and I was going to take a look around and call Andy with the news. I was of course annoyed and knew he would be too. However when I called, he was very angry and immediately the ridiculouness of the situation and my anger arose more too. He said that if he had been present then he would not have signed anything and would have said the house isn't ready after a two week extension so we are not going to take it. Which, makes sense and is what I thought too, but didn't think we had a choice. So Andrew asked me to call our agent back and ask if we were actually bound to the lease or if we could get out of it, especially now after I made the mistake of signing something. Never in my whole life had I hoped that me being a woman could be an excuse for incompetents! LOL i.e. what I signed would be considered invalid because I, the wife, signed it without checking with her husband and he was the official "client" and money maker. At this point I didn't care if I had to timewarp back to the 1950s :)

To make a long story short, and I am aware at how long this post is getting, our agent checked with his company, checked with a lawyer, and talked to the listing agent and all agreed that the situation was messed up and that we had the right to walk away and should. The relocation company even authorized us another day of looking at different houses and got Microsoft to extend our housing another week (though it would only cover us for one day after we got back from the states, but at least we had a place to keep our stuff!). We didn't want to bother with looking at more houses, there was one in the town over that I had already seen that came with a kitchen and closets and the rent was only 150 euros higher, worth it since we wouldn't need to have to buy a kitchen. It was still available.

February 16th, since Monday the 15th was a holiday, I called this morning so that I could arrange to view the house in Alfter to decide on some furniture to be kept in the house. Our agent couldn't come with us because he was scheduled to leave on holiday for Egypt that morning. But he just told me to call the listing agent, which happened to be the same woman (another reason we also thought it best to go with this house because then we could argue that the same woman and company would still be getting a comission, just on a different house.) So I called the agent and got an entirely different story than what we were told on Friday. She was insistant that we had to take the house in Bonn and could not get out of it unless we paid the commission to the listing agent on it, paid 3 months rent and gave the minimum notice of "moving out" (though we never moved in), and then if we picked a different house it would mean another listing commission on that house plus the rent and deposits. We are talking a total of 14,000 euros here (and a much higher amount in US dollars!)

So I was so upset! To top it off Andy was in some other country, I don't even remember now but I had to go to the Alfter house alone. I told the agent I still wanted to see the house and I would let other people sort the legalities out. The end of the whole mess was that we really wanted the house, we left for the US the next day, our agent was working on his vacation and found out the day we arrived in the US that some other person whom we had never spoken to told the listing company that it was a valid contract and that she would urge us to honor it. Talk about major sleam blowing out of both mine and Andrew's ears. He promptly wrote and email to the headquarters demanding an explaination which was followed by a phone call the next morning and their explaination that we were misinformed about what she said.

The whole week we were in the US we tried to have a good time, and did, and not think about the situation back in Germany as since we were not there, and our agent was on vacation until the day before we returned, we all agreed that we would just sort things out in person. In the meantime the relo company headquarters was going to monitor the repairs on the Bonn house because with the mess of everything and German law it might end up being the easiest thing to just take the house if the repairs were done by time we got back.

February 25th, we arrived back in Germany the evening of the 24th and had an appointment to meet at the Bonn house on this day. The relo headquarters said the handy man told them the repairs were being made on Monday of that week and since we were returning on Thursday it should be that we should find the house in good condition on the 25th. For the 3rd time now, we arrive at the house, ready to just accept that we will have to take this house or deal with filing lawsuits, etc. but also expecting the house to be complete. Its a bad not only is our agent there with the listing agent, but the outgoing husband tenant, and 3 different workers that have construction material spread out all over the living room!!!! You could see the frustration on our agents face and Andy and I just looked at each other trying to keep one another from just unleashing on everyone there. We toured the house so that we could at least say we saw what had been done and took mental notes so that we could give all of the reasons why we were definately NOT going to take this house no matter how many court rooms anyone threatened to take us to. We went out side for a little pow pow with our agent and we didn't even have to tell him anything, he immediately said that he would call to make reservations for us at a hotel and start negotiating with the agency on how to settle us getting out of this house. He also lit up a cigarette (which in a month and a half of working with him I had NEVER seen him smoke or ever smelled a hint of smoke on his clothing or car). He proceeded to smoke about 4 cigarettes over the course of the next 10 minutes, a clear indication that he was just as upset and frustrated as we were.

So it was decided that we would all go back to the Listing agency office and hammer out what to do about this situation. They were still arguing that we needed to pay them a commission on this house because under Germany laws for this type of work, the agents work is done the day the lease is signed (Feb 1st for us) and that the commission is owed at that time and anything else that comes up after is between the tenants and the landlord. We were there arguing for 4 hours! I'll spare you the details but the end result was we would pay 200 euros of the 3,000 euro commission on the Bonn house, and then we would rent the Alfter house and pay the full commission on that. So we walked away with a total of 4,000 in commission, which was about what we expected in the beginning of our house hunting. To solve the problem of canceling the rental agreement with the landlord, our agent just sent a legal letter, that we signed, stating the reasons we were cancelling that agreement because of his failure to get the work done and make it liveable and the agency agreed to convince him to just accept it otherwise he would be required to pay Microsoft back for all of the extra hotels we had to stay in, and would have to stay in until his house was complete. So he agreed to allow us out of the lease.

So it was decided that we would set up a meeting with the Alfter people to get that house rented. I will end here on this part of the story. It sounds like a happy ending now doesn't it. Well, not quite, you will have to read the other post to see what happened next.