My Home in Germany

My Home in Germany! Our home is the 2nd and 3rd floor of a German home. Our landlords are the sweetest couple! WE have 3 bedrooms, 2 bath rooms. The landing is multi purpose, it is the hall way (runs north and south) between the bath (south end of hall), kitchen, bedroom, office and living room as well as the dining room. The dining room table sits in front of large window/door that opens out on to a balcony facing the forest (to the west). The balcony has an awning that is electric and extends out to cover the entire balcony (it is pretty neat). Our master bedroom is fairly large and has doors that open out onto the covered balcony (which runs along the entire east side of the house). But there is not a closet in this room so we are using one of the bedrooms upstairs as our closet.

WE have a COLD ROOM This room has been between 38 and 47 degrees since we moved in (unless we are doing laundry and then it gets up to around 57). I suppose this is why they call it the cold room. I was told it can be used to store things that must be cool but not necessarily cold. There is a pantry with shelves in this small room also which is good for storing extra things that would not fit else where.

Our kitchen is not as big as the one on Greenview but it is very efficient and most everything I brought from Oklahoma fits nicely. There are windows along the south wall of the kitchen that can be opened wide or tilted in for venting. There is a dishwasher, over and fridge for appliances. No garbage disposal (adjusting to this).

The first floor bathroom (which in only a sink and a shower) has a heated towel rack! The toilet room is another room with just a toilet and a sink (know over here as a WC). These are side b side but I still find my self going into the shower room only to have to come back out and go to the WC.

The living room and a non-working decorative tiled fireplace (not a big deal for us as we hardly ever used the Greenview one). But it is a good place to put decorative things. I have a mirror, pictures, candles and my AT&T clock up here. The raised hearth is a good height also and I put a couple of baskets on this for games and magazines and such. The door/windows at the east end of the room (the room runs east and west and is on the north end of the house) are in the enclosed part of the covered patio (heated and carpeted as part of the living room) and there are window/doors on all 3 sides of this room. This enclosed room called the garden room on the floor plan of the house and looks down into our landlords back yard and gardens.

At our entry; the stairs that head up our part of the home is a window which is the only ground floor part of our home. There are 13 steps a small landing where you turn and go up 3 more steps up to the mulit-functioned hallway/landing/dining room part of the house.

There is a garden gate that you come through to come up to the front door. The bushes (some very tall) are all maintained by the landlord, and I am told there are flowers in the spring and summer but right now everything is covered with snow.

The upstairs has 2 bedrooms one of which we are using as our closet/ironing room. We did not bring any extra bedroom furniture so we will be shopping for bedding for at least one of the rooms so when company comes they don't have to sleep on the floor or with us! And the bath room upstairs has a shower (kind of odd shaped), sink and toilet all in the same room, which is unique in Germany! There is also attic type storage, and a conditioned room storage plus the length of the landing on this floor are cabinets with shelving for storage. Upstairs, in each room as well as the landing there is a window in the ceiling that opens up and out for venting and I expect would be a great view for star gazing on a clear night!

The heating is via radiators (in each room except the cold room) and there is no air conditioning, YIKES! But they say it doesn't get very hot here in the summer so maybe we won't have to go out and buy a portable air conditioner but I am sure we will be adding fans to our shopping list in the spring if nothing else for circulation.

So now you know all about our new home!