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.
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