Brummagemerin

Almost Two Months In

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:53:00 +0000

Looking back on the almost-two-month mark in Germany, way back in 2006, it looks like at this point I was bitching about crappy mail forwarding, being amused by German sayings, complaining about the shower water temperature, and trying to get a feel for life without a dryer or an outdoor clothesline.

Well, the mail forwarding this time hasn't been great. Some things come, some things go to the old German apartment and our old landlord finds them. Local sayings here are still amusing me. Yesterday I heard "ta" for "thanks" two or three times and it confused me for a split second every time. Our shower water temperature is extremely difficult to regulate but it heats up straight away and never goes to freezing cold, so I'm okay with it. As for drying clothes, I'm so thrilled to have an outdoor clothesline! Even though most days it's sort of hard to tell when you can actually use it without getting your clothes rained on. Current observations indicate that I'd have to get up with the sun in the morning and start wash right away and have it on the line by 7a or so - since we seem to have the lowest risk of rain in the mornings. If the weather is awful, never fear, because we have a washer/dryer combo. If I just dry the clothes for 30 minutes or so and then hang them indoors they will still be dry pretty quickly and they won't humidify the apartment as much.

I think my biggest complaint at the morning is about getting around Birmingham. It's not great. Let's look at our options:

* Train - the train is actually really great if you are going to any place on our train line, and would be pretty good for any place not on our train line that connects at New Street. This does include downtown, which is nice, but really it's a pretty limited selection of places that have good train access.

* Bus - requires exact change and the site to figure out bus routes is a little tricksy. I have managed to figure out a few routes. The exact change thing is a pain in the ass. Of course if you have a bus pass, good for you, but they only have the kind that cater to frequent users, which I am not. This town desperately needs an Oyster-style card for infrequent transit users to make hopping on the bus easier.

* Bike - if you want to die. I have already been in a bike accident in a town full of bikes and therefore full of drivers who know how to look out for them. I am not ready to get my ass killed, so I'm not ready to bike anywhere in Birmingham except bike trails. We have good access to biking along the river and the canal, but this again only gets you to a limited number of places.

* Walk - my preferred method. Still, unless you have all day this gives you a limited area that's accessible. And if you want to be carrying anything heavy it might be less fun.

* Car - EVERYONE IN BIRMINGHAM HAS A CAR. Because of all the above points. I think it's absurd to live in a city this size and have everyone tell me that really I'm going to need a car. But...it's kind of like being back in the US, which would be the same story. Even though I lived in Chicago and Boston without a car, it was always limiting and I always figured one day I was going to grow up and have to get a car. I always hope to keep putting that day off because I don't really enjoy driving, much less parking and paying for gas and insurance. But, I think that day is rapidly approaching. On the plus side, there might be a car sharing service opening up in our neighborhood soon which might help us put it off a little more. Fingers crossed.

I've been a bum about writing lately and I know this is a little annoying for everyone back home who keeps up best this way. First, I've got such a backup of Croatia photos and I wanted to put up the trip next, so I got behind there. Gave up the idea of having to do Croatia next. Second, I've honestly been feeling much more self-conscious about this blog since coming to Birmingham. When I lived in Germany I felt that only a limited number of locals with special English-speaking interests would bother putting in the effort to read my foreign-language blog. Now I'm writing in the same language the locals speak (for the most part) and they don't have to make any effort to read it at all! Which is fine, just different. I wonder if I'm actually delusionally thinking that I have more of a shot at fitting in here than I did in Germany and that I could mess that up with something I write. Really I don't have much more of a shot - I started doing some stuff outside the academic sphere and have thus far been seen as a bit of a curiosity more than anything else - "how did you end up in Stirchley?" - but the shared language makes it easy to be fooled into thinking you could belong! It's funny that I feel a bit less free socially when really it shouldn't have changed at all. In the months ahead I'm sure all these feelings will come and go as they please. Right now, my utter and true relief at being free of having to speak German, free to interact with people with ease, free to answer the door or the phone and know I'll probably understand, this relief is so great that it completely overshadows everything else.

Electric Mysteries

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:02:00 +0000

It wasn't until the movers arrived with all our stuff that I noticed: there was nowhere near the sink to plug in our electric toothbrush. In fact, there wasn't a single electrical outlet in the entire bathroom! The situation was strange and novel enough that I decided to comment about it on Facebook. Jul, a fellow American who just moved from Germany to the UK, replied:

"They're illegal. Apparently it's the only way to prevent Brits from making toast while in the bath."

I actually couldn't tell if she was kidding, so I looked it up...and it's actually true! No regular electrical outlet can be placed within a certain distance of the bathtub/shower, and the distance is long enough that pretty much the whole bathroom is usually covered. Special outlets for shavers, as pictured here (I took this at an inn, we don't have one), are allowed. A normal UK plug doesn't fit into these outlets.

This really is a safety measure to prevent electrocution, but wow. It's just completely new to me. In Germany we had the washer plugged in in the bathroom! I guess that's why the washers are usually in the kitchen here. Anyway, this is kind of a pain because we have to keep the electric toothbrush and shaver charging in the guest room instead of the bathroom, which is less than ideal. When guests come we'll have to move them to our bedroom (no problem, just further away).

Well, I feel very safe from electrocution. There must be a special fear about electrical hazards here, kind of like the US with fire hazards. All our outlets have on/off switches on them. Also you can buy these things that plug into outlets and I have no idea what they do, they just look like a plug adaptor but with no place to plug anything in. Also something safety related?

Fun with pence!

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:13:00 +0000

It would appear that something is still missing!

I was trying to figure this out at a restaurant (noticed a piece while digging through change to pay) and someone there who's been living in the UK since before these came out said he'd never noticed them before. You can always count on the new people to notice things....how many years before we take it all for granted and don't see anything anymore? I was still noticing different and unusual Euro pieces when we left Germany, so longer than 6.5 years...

This is play money.

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:30:00 +0000

We just spent a few days in Croatia with a brief side trip to Bosnia & Herzegovina - trip log and photos to come! Bosnia & Herzegovina have their own currency, the convertible mark, which isn't used anywhere else. We didn't think anything of having some marks left over when we left the country, as it happens a lot and we either keep it for future trips or exchange it. Turns out it's not easy to exchange! We had a layover in Frankfurt and took it, along with some leftover Croatian kuna, to a currency exchange there. They happily took the kuna (at a horrible rate) but immediately refused the convertible marks. Actually, he looked at us like we were offering him Monopoly money and said we were going to be stuck with it - no one was going to take it. Whaaat? It's a legit currency. I didn't heed his words and took it to our bank today. The teller there thought he was going to be able to take it, but after much clicking around on his computer, he also told me that he couldn't take it and said we could try the post office. There's no post office near home so I looked it up online and discovered the post won't deal with them either. So, we're stuck with these convertible marks....at least until we (hopefully) visit Sarajevo or some other yet-unexplored Bosnian/Herzegovinian locale someday. Thankfully it's really not worth that much - about 20 pounds.

If you go to Bosnia & Herzegovina and can get Euro beforehand, most places in tourist areas will gladly accept Euro. Sometimes they'll take Croatian kuna. Between those two and credit/debit you may be able to get away with never using the local currency. The local ATMs only dispense convertible marks, though. If you do get convertible marks, be sure to exchange any you have left over before you leave the country!

Did I miss anything?

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:03:00 +0000

We're back in Birmingham after a week away - D spent the first half at a conference in Dubrovnik while I spent it visiting friends in London. Then I joined him in Dubrovnik for four days there and in the area. It felt a bit wrong to be running off on vacation before our honeymoon period in Birmingham had even ended, but we wanted to take advantage of the conference to visit some places we've wanted to go for a long time. Maybe it will just mean our Birmingham honeymoon lasts longer. :)

I dropped by the apartment between the trips to London and Dubrovnik and found at least one slug trail in the kitchen. Ew. I hope that doesn't happen too often. Upon Googling I found it's not that rare a problem! On the floor it's neither here nor there but if I find a slug or trails on the counter I might find that a little unpleasant.

Our flight came in unfortunately late last night, landing at 11pm (after a 5-hour Frankfurt layover - boy was it weird to connect there instead of going home). At the time we booked we giddily thought about how we were going to be living in a city with an airport and that surely there'd be an easy train home even at that hour. Alas, that was not to be. We could have waited an hour to catch a train downtown, but then we'd be stuck downtown with no further trains out to our neighborhood. Boo! That's how we learned that the price of a cab for 2 home from the airport is about 32 pounds. Actually, still cheaper than 2 train tickets to Heidelberg from Frankfurt. Woo!

We got home really late so we didn't notice until this morning that while we were away, two sections of our back garden fence had fallen into the neighbor's yard. Apparently it was a bit windy! We are still waiting to find out if the fence belongs to this property or the neighbor's. It seems likely that it will be since it's on the left side as we look out from the house and that's typically the one that's yours, but it's not a hard and fast rule. I guess this will be the first real test of how good our estate agent is. Here's hoping he's good.

A Very Short Excursion to Shropshire

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:33:00 +0000

D's birthday was earlier this month. We usually try to do something interesting for it like a little trip, and managed to squeeze one in despite all the moving chaos! After much deliberation, we decided to rent a car which we could use both for the trip - much faster to get somewhere remote by car than public tranist - and for a shopping run to pick up large things like an ironing board, a couple of storage contraptions, and a TV.

D picked out a town by some method I actually know very little about. I'm pretty sure it involved pub reviews! We picked up the car and headed out into Shropshire. Our final destination was Clun (rhymes with fun), a tiny town very close to the Welsh border with an old bridge, a bit of a castle ruin, and supposedly a great pub where we booked a room.

On our way there we took advantage of having a car and stopped all kinds of places. Our first stop was Church Stretton, where we had lunch at a schamncy cafe that was good, but a little more expensive than we might have hoped. We recently got Lonely Planet England and are testing it out - they really vary a lot by country. The cafe was one of their picks. We didn't linger long in Church Stretton but moved on to Bury Ditches near Clunton, the site of an Iron Age fort. Only the rings of the fort remain now, but the walk had beautiful views over the hills and everything was snowy! Afterward we warmed up in Bishop's Castle at another Lonely Planet pick. At this point we were starting to feel skeptical about Lonely Planet because the cafe didn't have a great selection of treats and the person working wasn't at all happy to be there. The attached bookstore really was nice, though, so I guess Lonely Planet still has one more strike to go before we just pitch it. ;)

After Bishop's Castle, we continued to Clun and explored the town. That took all of 45 minutes, then it was on to the pub, White Horse Inn. It really was a great pub with good food and a nice unpretentious atmosphere. They had ice cream from some local company based in Churchstoke which was amazing - I hope I can find it in Birmingham somewhere. I wish we had more time at the pub - my drinking abilities were limited due to lingering car sickness* but I would have been fine by the next day. We'll be back, Clun!

Church Stretton, Bishop's Castle, Bury Ditches, & Clun Apr 13

* I don't know if this is from being so rarely in cars or from age, but I am not thrilled with the development.

Prelude to a Tesco

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:33:00 +0000

This is a picture of Hazelwell Lane in Stirchley. I took this picture before I really knew what was going on with it. (Not sure I entirely know the whole story yet, either.) There's one house that still seems to be occupied. (A "Nail" as a friend of a friend referred to it.) The others are obviously done for, although you can still see lace curtains hanging in some of the windows if you walk up to them.

Apparently, Tesco - as I understand it sort of the British equivalent of Walmart (although maybe a little better than Walmart) - has been planning for years to put up a huge store here. Last Saturday after the handprint fun we stopped at a public exhibition put on by Tesco to show the neighborhood what they have planned. In the plans, Hazelwell Lane will turn into just a way into the parking lot. Where those houses stand there will be a small section of additional parking. It also looks like some other things which aren't yet boarded up are going to be demolished to make way for the Tesco. These exact plans aren't approved yet, but it sounds like they probably will be.

On our way out, a smiley Tesco employee handed us a comment card to fill in and drop in the mail. We, or at least I, honestly don't know what to think about the whole thing. I can't help that my gut reaction to a huge, boring chain store moving in is solidly negative. The store is ugly, it's something you can find anywhere so it's not interesting, it has an enormous parking lot which is also ugly and depressing, and it depresses me to think about streets that used to have real life on them being turned into dead parking-lot access routes. (Apparently I'm not the only one...just now I googled Hazelwell Lane and found memorials to its death!)

On the other hand, if there were already a Tesco it wouldn't have stopped me moving here, I don't think. With my only urban planning experience being a reading of Jane Jacobs more than a decade ago, I don't really know what the addition of a store like this would do to Stirchley. There are a lot of empty storefronts around. Would a Tesco kill what stores do exist here, or would it bring more shoppers to the area, thereby stimulating more shops to open? Walmart of course killed many small town shops in the US - I could see this happen right in front of my eyes growing up as they moved into our area. The dynamics of small towns and cities are pretty different, though. Maybe I'm just being a snob or behind the times or...I mean, it could be useful. The day we moved here we needed pillows and a blanket and wanted to just find them without leaving the neighborhood again after all that travel. We found only one pillow at Domestix, and a blanket but no pillows at the Co-op. So the neighborhood could probably use more shopping - I just don't know that Tesco is the answer I'd prefer.

I don't know.

Wednesday Tidbits

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:18:00 +0000

* There's a whole aisle at the drugstore for fake tanning products. A whole aisle. It's making me feel a bit alone in my acceptance of my natural skin color (or lack thereof).

* Room for toaster on the counter = toast for every meal!

* They sell Grape-Nuts here!!

* Since we're in a house now the mail comes right to our door. No mailbox or anything - they stick it right through a slot in your door and onto the floor of your front room it goes. This process is a lot louder than I would have expected. If I'm home and downstairs I jump a mile when it arrives!

* Surprisingly, British English is as easy for me to tune out as German is.

* D's first encounter with the social pressures of buying and drinking beer in rounds was a bit ugly. Obviously this is something which is going to take a while to figure out how to do without over-drinking or feeling cheap or weak.

* I got this vacuum cleaner.

* And I'm vacuuming the kitchen, because I cannot find a broom I like! I want the broom shape typical for US brooms. Every time I find one it's either 12 pounds (for a broom!?), or it's cheap but covered in rhinestones or pink swirls or something. WTF Britain? Rhinestone brooms?

Stirchley Baths

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:05:00 +0000

As soon as we knew we'd be living in Birmingham's Stirchley neighborhood (not to be confused with the Shropshire town by that name) I started following a bunch of Stirchley Twitter accounts to see what was going on around there - the accounts of the bakery and tiny local store we'd walked past, the pub, things they followed, etc. This was how I found out that the abandoned baths building we'd noticed on our visit is slated for restoration - hopefully. I couldn't help but think of how much I liked Heidelberg's new Altes Hallenbad development!

About a week ago we wandered past Stirchley's local library, next door to the baths, while it was actually open and we went in to check it out. We applied for library cards and when we came back to make use of them, a librarian there asked us to come back on April 6 to participate in a community art project supporting Stirchley's bid for Heritage Lottery money to renovate the baths building. I made a crack to D about putting handprints up on a wall since that's what immediately came to mind with the words "community art project".

Turns out...that's almost exactly what it really was! We came back for the event and traced our hands on paper, wrote on them our responses to a prompt about how we'd like to see the history of the baths preserved, and hung them on a clothesline on the front of the baths building. I hope they get the funding...it would take a lot of bake sales to raise enough since the building has been left to ruin for over 20 years. (And hey, it's hard to bake much at once in these tiny British ovens! ;) )

Despite my crack about handprints I do really like looking at messages people write and leave (like at shrines, in churches, in graffiti....) and the hands were really interesting, even from my current position as still pretty much a clueless outsider. I made an album of some of my favorites!

Stirchley Baths Apr 2013

Heidelbergerin / Brummagemerin

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:05:00 +0000

My new blog title may seem a little mysterious at first glance, especially for those who neither speak German nor are familiar with Birmingham. We don't need any mystery around here, so I will explain!

The old title, Heidelbergerin, was just a reference to where I was living. In German, a man from Heidelberg is called a Heidelberger; a woman from Heidelberg is called a Heidelbergerin. To use the name Heidelbergerin as a foreigner was stretching it a little bit - the term is generally used for natives of a city - but I didn't really understand that yet at the time I named the blog.

This blog's history is of course still very tied up in Germany, and all my future observations will still be influenced in some way by the years that I spent there, so I wanted to keep something German: the -erin ending was a simple thing to keep. So why not Birminghamerin?

If you've a bit of experience with Birmingham, you may already know that its nickname is Brum. A person from Birmingham is not called a Birminghamian or Birminghamite but a Brummie, and the local dialect goes by that name as well. Brum is short for Brummagem - an older/dialect form of Birmingham. Brummagem or brummagem ware also can be used to refer to imitation goods (more on the history of this through the Wikipedia link). I went with Brummagem instead of Birmingham for a few reasons. First, it goes better with -erin. Second, if I were to ever call myself a Brummie, I would still be an imitation. It's my home now and may even become my home permanently, but it's not my original home. Brummagem seems appropriate. Third, I like that this word is being reclaimed with positive connotations rather than the negative ones that in the past led to its second meaning.

I also considered permutations like Heidelbrumerin, but it seemed like Heidelberg should leave the title since I won't really be posting anything current about it anymore. I had goofy ideas combining my real name and Birmingham which thankfully didn't leave the drawing board. I also tried several ideas relating to popular local vocab that I found strange like "You alright?" for "How are you?" and "Hiya" being used amongst strangers...but they all came off a bit too hokey.

What would you have renamed this blog? Would you have renamed it at all? Have you ever needed to rename your blog or other online presence, and if so what factored into the decision?

"What will you do about your blog title if you move?"

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 22:42:00 +0000

I didn't know for a long time.

Turns out: I'd change it. Since my layout heavily featured a Heidelberg-centric photo, I threw out the layout, too. For a little while the blog is going to show some things that don't work or don't belong, but hopefully I'll have it all sorted relatively soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy the last picture I took before we left Heidelberg, and the first I took after we arrived in Birmingham.

Well, I got my bloody internet at home.

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:30:00 +0000

I think I hate Virgin already, though. They had to drill a new hole to bring in the cable and I almost threw up when I saw it...and this isn't even my property. We didn't think they were going to need to drill because there were already some cable holes around, but it turned out they did and our estate agent gave permission himself. Then, without warning, they also drilled a hole through the doorframe from the front to the back room. It looks awful and I didn't think that was part of the deal. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, I don't know. They must do this to a lot of houses. If I'd known maybe we'd have gone with some other company, maybe whoever laid the previous cables. :( On top of that they insisted on hooking it all up themselves and the Kabelsalat behind my computer is such a disaster.

Time to escape the scene for a local market. Maybe when I come back we'll have internet but the rest will just be a bad dream.

Just a few more days...

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:11:00 +0000

...until we have internet at home!

Can't wait...I feel I've really lost some momentum on the blog. At first I was constantly thinking of things I could write about and taking pictures of stuff that seemed interesting or different to put up, but definitely lost steam when I couldn't follow through on it. By now I'm starting to get used to some of the kinds of things I was taking pictures of earlier. I'm hoping to get it all back once I can get online normally again.

Since I last checked in the days have been blurring together. We signed up to pay council tax and someone came by with special garbage bags for us to throw regular and "green" (plant cuttings etc) trash away in. We got library cards. The movers came and dropped off all our stuff, we unpacked most of it. There's still a lot of stuff we aren't sure what to do with. Moving to a new set up changes your workflow a lot and going from 1.5 rooms to 4 really does. Also, everything is still new and this place is very cute and I'm loathe to mess it up by, say, having filing binders and craft bins visible somewhere the way they had to be in our German apartment. We're still working our way through figuring all that out, but otherwise things are all in place. We have a whole extra cupboard in the kitchen that's not full!! We checked out more local stores. We got library cards. Ordered change of address cards.

Hopefully, more details on all that later. I am also hoping to change the blog layout and maybe the name to reflect my new situation - but the address will remain the same.

Happy Easter!

It's getting frustrating...

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

...not having internet at home! Well, we do have it in the form of D's smartphone, but the connection is slow and since he's logged into Facebook and Twitter via apps I just don't even bother trying to get into my own. Email writing is frustratingly slow on that thing, too, so I only respond to emails if it's urgent, and my replies always feel a bit too curt. Right now I just want to be connected more than ever - to drop in a note online about strange British stuff I've noticed or upload a photo I think a friend would appreciate or just connect to a familiar human being other than D - but I only can when I'm sitting at wifi somewhere downtown. (Haven't managed to find any in my neighborhood yet.) Although I am sort of psyched to have discovered there's wifi at Krispy Kreme. But they don't heat the Krispy Kreme for some reason and my GOD it's been freaking cold here. Also it's in the Bull Ring, a mall which is an impressively annoying place to be. Conclusion number one from visiting the Bull Ring on a weekday - no one in Birmingham has a day job, but they all have plenty of spending money. It's so full and everyone's shopping away.

This morning we successfully found a neighborhood with both a train station and a well-populated high street - Cotteridge, only one stop from us! We looked through all the charity shops there this morning and didn't see anything we're searching for, but I DID see this awesome chest with tall ship carvings on it which I'd have totally gotten if I just had a place for it. (I definitely have a use. Just not a place.) I'd show you, but can't get my memory stick in D's computer. There are also two butchers and a hardware shop there, which could be useful. Our neighborhood has a couple of hardware shops but they're both massive chains and really expensive.

We've managed to sign up with the gas/electric company, leaving one major startup chore, which is signing up to pay council tax. We dropped in a city council office in our neighborhood to ask about it, and they told us that we had to go to a different office and make an appointment. There must be some better way because that seems like a lot of complication on our part when they're the ones who want money from us.

Yesterday for lunch we braved the latest leg of the blizzard to have lunch at our local pub, and it was not bad at all, and at a good price. Sadly, they only have food on the weekends so it wouldn't be an option for a lazy post-work Tuesday dinner. Speaking of the snow, we'd heard many tales of how poor the UK is at dealing with snow. It seemed throughout the three days of snow we had that it was business as usual in Birmingham, with some train delays. The only problem I've noticed is that none of the sidewalks are cleared, salted, or sanded at all, so you walk around at your own risk!

Two days until the movers arrive with our things. We asked the secretary at the estate agent's office if she had any ideas for how to clear our street for the truck with any certainty, but she only suggested the same thing the moving company did - just asking the neighbors not to park there on Wednesday. Of course this assumes that only our neighbors would ever be parking there, which isn't necessarily a great assumption. So, all the awkwardness and freezing-cold work of trudging up and down knocking on doors may be for naught. Now we know why this moving company was the cheapest. Maybe a more expensive one would arrange their own place to park and shuttle a van onto our little street instead. Anyway, I'm not sure how I feel about the impending arrival of our stuff. It will of course be nice to have everything, especially in the kitchen and wardrobe. But it's also going to start feeling really crowded in our place once it all comes. What little we have for extra space is all given over to a guest room. Make that worth it, you all. Make that worth it. :)

Well, it's REALLY cold in this Krispy Kreme so that's all for now. Everyone cross your fingers that my sanity stays intact in these limited-connectivity days. ;)

Still Setting Up!

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:51:00 +0000

Hello from free wi-fi again! It's snowing like crazy here. The movers have all our weather-appropriate gear, so we're picking through three-inch deep slush in sneakers. It's pretty, though!

We meant to set up a few more things yesterday by calling in, then had all kinds of problems with the pay-as-you-go cards. I ordered a package on mine that's supposed to save money, but it cost the whole amount of my balance on the card, and then I couldn't make a call to the gas company, which is an 0800 number. Those are apparently not covered by the minutes in the package. Then D's balance dropped from 10 pounds to 0 with a single 5-minute phone call to our German bank to transfer money to our new British account. Ouch! Normally you can add to your balance via text message, but we could not because we don't have British debit cards yet. So...so much for getting all that done. By the time we got to a place to top up the cards, it was the end of the day.

First we waited to go out until after lunch, because it had snowed and we had this sneaker situation. Then we wanted to first get some shopping done. The lady at the bank had recommended we go to a shop called Home Bargains. The easiest one to get to was two train stops and a 1-mile walk away. In the snow and slush, that wasn't as pleasant as it could have been! It did introduce us to Northfield's high street (generally a neighborhood's main shopping street), though, which was fun because it has like 7 charity shops (along the lines of Salvation Army/Goodwill) within 2 blocks, and those are so fun to pick through. Thing I've noticed: a neighborhood either has great train access OR a bustling high street, but not both. If you know a place with both please comment, because we got week train passes and are finding the only useful place with a train stop is downtown, and that gets old. Our neighborhood, Stirchley, falls on the train side - the high street is limited. The busier high streets I've seen/heard of - Harborne, King's Heath, and Northfield - are all not convenient to any trains.

Anyway, we found a couple of things we needed at Home Bargains but it was just as spotty as everyplace else we've tried - mattress pads in single/king but not queen, small and giant trash bins but no mediums, medium and large cleaning gloves but no smalls, etc. They did have 8 Cadbury Creme Eggs for a pound. ;) Just like moving to Germany, we have to learn all over again which stores you can expect to have what for what kind of prices.

After the shopping was done we headed to the closest place we know to top-up, a huge grocery store. Next to it is a store specializing in frozen food, Farmfoods. The name seems way off. This was one of the bleakest and most depressing stores I've ever been in. Still....they did really have frozen everything. In Germany it is hard to find frozen vegetables that don't have some kind of sauce chunk in there with them. Plus we had pretty much no freezer anyway. Now we have a freezer that's the size of our entire German fridge!! It's a whole new way of thinking to have a freezer again!! On the down side, our oven is smaller and that seems to be normal there. We needed to pick up a tray for it and the largest one they had was like half the size of the trays we had in Germany. I wanted to hold out for something bigger because it would take twice as long to make cookies with a tray that size. Then we got it anyway and took it home and....it's the biggest tray that will fit in our oven. Cookie-making may be a thing of the past.

I've taken lots of photos to share, but my memory card doesn't fit in D's laptop so I have to wait for my desktop to come with the movers. Speaking of the movers, they have asked us to clear 4 car lengths in front of our apartment for the day they arrive. We asked them how the heck one does this and they said we just need to ask the neighbors to not park there. Oh lawdy, I did not want to meet my neighbors under the situation of having to ask them for such a big favor. Our street generally doesn't seem to be tight parking-wise but there's not going to naturally be a 4-car-sized open spot.

Things I've noticed a lot of in our shopping adventures:
* polka dots
* memory foam
* rounded-edge sans-serif fonts
* color-coded cutting boards
* mug trees
* Union Jack designs (not just for tourists?)

Without internet (and therefore Skype) at home until April 2 at the earliest, and still with some confusion on the international-phone-call front (recommendations on contracts vs. pay-as-you-go are welcome), I'm definitely feeling a bit cut off. We know a couple of people here but they are all super-busy for different reasons and can't meet up with them until the end of next week at the earliest. By then D will be back to work and that should help socially. I'm feeling a bit of withdrawal after our hyper-social final days in Germany.

Anyway, off to hopefully find a rug for the front room that we actually LIKE. We are in this situation where we need certain supplies right now and don't really have time to find out where the cute independent shop that sells truly loveable rugs might be...nor the funds considering the move. So we buy some ugly rug just to do the job. In a few months we'll find the cute rug and won't buy it because we already have a rug. Argh.

Hello from Free Wifi Somewhere in Birmingham

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:42:00 +0000

Our last days in Germany were very rough. Our landlord and his Makler were such epic assholes to us on our last day that at the time I could not imagine ever feeling unangry again. The upshot was that although we spent enough time and money on cleaning and painting to make our last week pretty damn miserable - and as regards the painting I find this rage-inducingly unfair - we still will end up losing most of our deposit because the Makler, using a special flaw-finding lamp, found our paint job to be unsatisfactory. Although I can imagine living in Germany again in some ways, when it comes to renting, I know I can just not possibly ever go back based on their ridiculous tenancy requirements and what utter assholes they were to us about it in the end. Unbelievable. I can feel my blood pressure going up now...so more about the full story later when I'm a few more days removed from the trauma.

We finally found ourselves free of the apartment at the end of Tuesday and spent our last night at a friend's in Heidelberg, then flew to Birmingham on Wednesday morning. Our entry visas were stamped at immigration and we headed straight to the estate agent's office, where we signed our new lease. It's only for 6 months, although we were hoping for 12, but it included NO madness involving painting. It is similar to a US lease in that "fair wear and tear" is considered the responsibility of the property owner. Our apartment is very close to the office so we just walked around the corner with our new old-fashioned-looking keys and were home.

In the front garden there were freshly-planted narcissus, rosemary, and tiny tree-looking things. The apartment was shiny and smelled of paint. Sweet, sweet, landlord-applied paint. The kitchen, with 3.5x as much counter space as our old one and a grown-up fridge. On a little table in the living room (the apartment came furnished) was a welcome card from the landlords along with a bottle of wine and a flowering plant. About a week previous we'd asked if they could remove one of the supplied beds so we could move our own in, and they had done it without giving us any crap. Our things will arrive in one week, until then we're sleeping on the guest bed.

The rest of the day was filled with doing what was just necessary - getting blankets and pillows for the bed, food at the grocery store, a couple of bowls. We had already brought a few things - a couple of knives, spoons, forks, plates, and towels - in our luggage. We also checked out the local tiny co-op shop, which is connected to a bakery/baking school and has fresh baked goods. The hot-cross buns were delicious! (I will add links later, but I'm in a bit of a hurry at the moment.)

Then there was the adventure of trying to figure out the apartment. I needed to do a little laundry since we'd given our German machine away a few days before moving and packed up some of the dirty laundry in our luggage. The washer turned out to be a combined washer-dryer and I accidentally set it to dry. What a weird machine! We tried all the keys in all the apartment's zillion locks - there are two keys for each door to the outside and keys in all the windows. The boiler and heat were are the biggest problem right now - we have not been able to figure out the system for keeping the radiators running. It may have to do with leftover timer presets on the boiler. There are many other manuals left in the apartment for us, but not for the boiler, and we've never actually had to deal with one before. Meanwhile, our apartment is really cold. We haven't been able to get it over 15'C and that's when we're doing well. The shower knobs were also a little challenging but finally we got them going. The flusher is one of those British ones that seems to have to be let go at just the right time. Thankfully, the bathroom has a mixer tap!

Today we've been setting things up - a bank account, first of all. It was easy. We went in, showed them our passports and tenancy agreement, and they set up an account for us. Then we set up internet and TV (although we don't have a TV yet). We went with Virgin as it came recommended. This was also extremely easy. Alas, no one at our address has used Virgin before, so it will take 12 days because someone has to come wire it up. A new SIM card for my phone from O2 - haven't figured out where/if we'll get phone contracts yet. Still traumatized on that front, too, since in Germany we thought we'd gotten a rolling contract and instead got one with an end date. They are disastrous because even if you leave the country you have to pay fees up to the end of the contract that nearly meet the cost of continuing your account.

Now, a bit of stuff that needs to be done online at a free wifi spot. Next, some more shopping - trash cans, drain traps, etc. I need to contact the GEZ-equivalent here (TV licencing) because there were already multiple cranky letters in our mail slot when we arrived about our address' lack of registration. We also still need to set up the paying of council tax, water, gas, and electricity. Luckily all these things are already on, we just need to change the accounts. The estate agent took care of the meter-readings. (That was not taken care of by anybody when we moved in to Germany, which resulted in a lot of disaster a few months after the move.)

It's a bit stressful thinking about how we're bleeding money right now on this move. D's new job will pay up to a certain amount for moving expenses, but I think we already used it up just on movers, plane tickets, and the cost of our apartment-searching week. Which was totally worth it when we had a home to go to almost immediately off the plane. But, it will all calm down in a bit, I hope, and we can focus more on just enjoying life here instead of constantly paying to set it up! :)

This Month's Frequently Asked Questions

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:05:00 +0000

ow is the move going?

Ehhhh it's going. Our landlord is making us paint before we leave. This seems rather unfair as it was not painted before we moved in. In the US a professional cleaning and painting between tenants is generally considered standard and the responsibility of the landlord (this varies by state of course) but here tenants must provide this as slave labor for landlords while also paying them rent. I can't wrap my head around it. On top of that my landlord has been engaging in some other behavior I don't find appropriate so that makes me even less fond of spending most of my last days in Heidelberg painting around windowsills and scrubbing between the ridges of the radiators. For those about to suggest the Mietverein, we talked to them and the lease stands because it is worded vaguely enough.

The packers/movers arrive tomorrow sometime between 10 and 12...a little vague. I'm not sure what they'll think about our place. Nearly all of our furniture was sold or given away, meaning anything stored in said furniture is all over the floor in piles. Does that make it easier or harder? ;)

Closing things down has gone okay. O2 was the worst because at the time we signed our contract we understood it to be month-to-month with a three-month notice necessary to cancel, but it turned out it wasn't and we have to pay fees almost equivalent to our monthly bill each month until the contract ends. We also have to mail their modem back to them which is another really annoying task to be shoved into our last day here. Sparkasse was not too bad - someone sat with us and went over all our accounts and insurances individually with us to give us our options. Unregistering with the city was not bad. Many places need evidence of this unregistration - for example, the GEZ (TV tax people) - in order to actually cancel things.

Mail forwarding could be ugly. When we moved across town in 2006, they failed to forward about half our mail. Between that and the fact that they could not accept our UK address in the proper format, I'm hoping that nothing important will end up addressed to our German address! We may never see it.

No idea how setting things up in the UK will be yet!

What are you going to miss most/least about Heidelberg?

Most:
1. My friends. The people I know here are among the best I've known anywhere. I'm glad that it's easy nowadays to keep up online, but it's not the same.
2. Quiz at the Brass Monkey. A comforting weekly ritual. :)
3. Eis at Schmelzpunkt. In general, Eis here...Germans are pretty into it so there are a lot of options and it's done well.
4. Falafel (the restaurant near the Jesuitenkirche). So delicious, so appropriately priced, such a pretty room.
5. The views. I have definitely come to take it for granted. Let's face it, Birmingham is only marginally prettier than your average American city. Heidelberg is gorgeous.

Least:
1. My apartment. UGH, I can't believe how long we've stayed in this cave. It should be condemned.
2. My landlord and German tenancy in general. As I mentioned in the previous section of my post, I think the system here is nuts.
3. Conservativeness. Heidelberg is pretty bland. Not a lot of restaurant variety. Everything too expensive.
4. German. I love it in theory, I hate it at the doctor's office.
5. My apartment. GOD I HATE THIS APARTMENT.

Why England?

This is just where D got a job. There was no concerted effort to move to the UK. The job search was limited to German- and English-speaking countries in Europe or North America. If anything the US seemed most likely just due to sheer size, but...it's England. There you go! I think it's pretty exciting, but I'm aware that there could be a lot of sucky aspects and it's not going to be all some little Anglophile fantasy. Still...you can be near Europe and have everything be in English? That's cool! Also, the BBC. Sticky toffee pudding, people. Sticky toffee pudding.

American Cream

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:15:00 +0000

Spotted at Rewe:

Somehow, the name just doesn't work. I'll miss finding weird English things like this. (It's a whole new kind of weird English in the UK!)

The Music Post 2012

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:30:00 +0000

ot as careful as most years - I just didn't keep up well and don't have a lot of time to curate, but here are my favorites from 2012 (no order). If GEMA is blocking it, if you have ProxTube installed just click through to YouTube and it will unblock.

Orbital "New France"

fun. "One Foot" ("Some Nights" also but you probably already heard that on the radio.)

Tame Impala "Elephant"

Grimes "Circumambient"

King Charles "Bam Bam"

Woodkid "Run Boy Run"

Andy Stott "Luxury Problems"

Santigold "Big Mouth"

Dan Deacon "USA I-IV"

Turkey Travelogue: Selçuk, Ephesus, and Sirince!

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:30:00 +0000

race yourselves - I'm dumping the entire rest of the Turkey trip here!

After three full days in Istanbul, we had breakfast at our apartment, then hailed a cab on the nearby main street to get to the airport. The backseat of the cab had no seatbelts, which made it a less than fun ride for me. Turks seem to have a dislike of them, with tons of people on planes unbuckling right as landing is over, whereas people usually unbuckle at the gate on most flights I've been on.

The airport had double security - there's a check before you even check in for your flight. We checked in on our flight, and while we did the guy helping us said something about Damon to another girl and they both had a laugh. No idea what that was about. If only we spoke Turkish. The flight was only 45 minutes long but we got a drink and our choice of sandwiches or cake! On all the flights on this trip the games like Sudoku were in a separate insert so the whole magazine doesn't have to get switched out. Cool idea! There were beautiful views from the plane of misty hills and fields.

We flew on AtlasJet to İzmir, and they offer a free shuttle to our destination of Selçuk, which we successfully caught. An American family we'd seen on our flight from Frankfurt to Istanbul was also there, but wasn't friendly when we tried to say hi to them. Maybe we fellow Amis were ruining their authentic Turkish experience.

We checked in at Homeros Pension and were welcomed with tea and little sesame crackers. They told us there was a big market going on in town so we checked that out. My friend M got 3 oranges for 0.25 Turkish lira (10 Euro cents) and they were delicious! We also stopped for pide since the airplane sandwich didn't really do anything for anyone. They were making them in full view which was cool. Walking around town, it seemed people were really scrounging for tourist money, maybe because it was off-season. Or maybe it's just normal.

We visited the ruins of St. John's Basilica, where St. John the Evangelist is thought to be buried, and were approached by a dude trying to sell fake old coins. He sulked when we told him that no, we did not even want to just hold them. Also there were some seemingly drunk dudes hanging around. The ruins were beautiful though and set on a hill with a great view of the sunset, hills, and Isa Bey Mosque.

The basilica ruins close at 5pm and as we left we noticed a tiny mosque across the street from the exit. I commented on it to D & M, calling it a mini-mosque, and a guy there brought us into the mosque to show us his skills for the 5:15 prayers! He said he sings them there every day. No one else was there to pray. It was pretty cool but of course he really wanted some money and to sell us a book about Islam. He found the right people since we actually had been wondering about a lot of the procedures so we asked for the book before he even made his pitch to buy it!

We had dinner at the pension, which was not bad, tons of food. The family showed up to eat as we were finishing up but they didn't seem that friendly. We headed out to buy some water and shopkeepers kept trying to reel us in. We did get sucked in by one guy who wanted to go on and on about how traditional it is there with marriage and children. Then he really wanted us to go in his shop. Mary did need to buy another scarf for someone she remembered so she actually did get something. We followed it up with drinks at a bar, but a lot of things on the menu weren't available. I ordered a mojito and it took about 20 minutes while they found some ice. They did give us free popcorn and a fruit plate. There was an American family there but no one else. The family was really into REM. Back to the Pension to sleep before Ephesus!

The next morning, breakfast at the Pension was great: a plate full of fruit and vegetables, an egg, bread, and some spreads for the bread. The owner gave us a ride to near Ephesus. Apparently he couldn't go the whole way because hotels are not allowed to offer free rides to tourists - it hurts the cab business. Another expensive ticket and we were off! Ephesus was the reason we came down to this area - it's a Roman city in ruins, much like Ostia Antica. In all we spent a little over 3 hours in the ruins, including a look through the terraced houses, which cost extra. In that area, which is covered, there are work sites where archaeologists are trying to piece together the marble walls of an ancient reception room. There were some pretty amazing buildings and carvings, but also some tourist bottlenecks, even on a rainy January day. It reminded us very much of Ostia Antica, except that it has some more impressive bits like an entire library facade (reconstructed from pieces). Only 18% of it has been uncovered!

Ephesus Jan 13

After finishing we stopped at the museum bookstore so we could get a look at some of the touristy goods while not constantly talked to about what we should buy, then got a cab back to Selçuk. No one had mentioned the shuttle to us. I wished I had done some research prior to the visit but things were crazy during December and I just didn't have time. Based on later shuttles we experienced I'm sure it would have been cheaper than a cab.

We had lunch at Mehmet & Alibaba's near our pension, and it was really nice. We met a fellow American there who is in history grad school at Notre Dame, and a French woman who'd moved to the area. Since we had a huge late lunch we decided against having dinner at the Pension again (since it's so early) and went back to let them know. Then we visited the Isa Bey Mosque, sadly locked, and the ruins of the Temple of Artemis, which was one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. On the way to the Temple, we ran into a group of carpet sellers who had just closed their shop and wanted to make BFFs with us so we'd stop by their shop the next morning. There's not much left of the Temple, and the one standing column (topped with a crane's nest) looks like it was slapped together from all the column pieces they could find and not originally all one column.

By the end of that, nightfall had come and we couldn't really do more sightseeing, and weren't hungry for dinner yet, so we stopped at a bar for a drink. We wanted to find some kunefe in town but weren't sure where and it was so cold we didn't want to aimlessly look for it ourselves, so we asked one of the guys working at the bar where we could find some. He walked us to one himself, probably so he could be sure to claim commission from the owner of the shop. Once we got there we asked if they'd be open later so we could stop after having dinner. Then the guy decided to show us where he thought we should eat. This was starting to seem like possibly an expensive idea but he took us to a place recommended in Lonely Planet so it seemed okay...but the place was full and we'd have needed to wait. So he took us to some other place which was fine, but the guy there suggested we get the sharing platter instead of ordering off the menu. Normally I think we would have gone with the menu but all the food sounded too big for our not-so-big appetites so we went with the sharing platter, which wasn't on the menu, but ended up costing more. Still cheap by German/US standards, but we suspected we were paying commission for the guy who took us there. Still, the food was quite good. They had a really cool grill. Afterward we went back to the kunefe place and had some, and while we were there the guy who'd originally showed us the place came to check in. I think we paid commission there, too, but we liked the place anyway so....whatever. The evening was fun even though it left us imagining a huge scheme of kickbacks all over the city! After kunefe we headed back to the Pension to warm up and review our group accounting.

Selçuk Jan 13

The next morning we had the awesome breakfast again, then checked out and took a minibus to the nearby town of Sirince for 3 TL per person. All the tourist shops - and there were a lot - were just opening up and getting their sell on, and there weren't many tourists there yet either. A guy told us where the church ruin was (thanks to my lack of research, I hadn't even known there was one) and then told us to come back to his shop afterward for "tea" while telling us he made the jewelry for a lot of big movies like Gladiator. We went up to the church and got another half-hearted "where are you from" sell (they always start with this) from a guy who was just setting up. The church was small and most of the paintings remaining were pretty badly damaged, but the setting was great. After looking around there we made our way out to the edge of town and up a hill, hoping for some nice country views. A lady yelled at us to come into her house and drink something that she had in a big jug! We declined!

M decided she was done with Sirince so she headed back to Selçuk with the goal of spending another afternoon at Ephesus. This wasn't an option for us since we had to fly out in the late afternoon, so we bid her farewell and stayed on in Sirince. The town is mostly just nice scenery and souvenir shops. We stopped in a pide joint for tea and fresh-squeeze pomegranate juice and ended up getting kunefe too. It was the biggest and best kunefe ever, and the wood stove was also a plus. No one else came in the entire time. Then we looked around the shops because I was hoping to find a certain kind of wall hanging that I'd seen at the Pension. I didn't find it, but a pair of socks caught my eye somehow. There were handknit socks all over Sirince but none as awesome as these ones! I couldn't get her to give me a freaking discount and she either didn't speak any English (including numbers) or pretended not to, so I just paid because they were awesome and the original price was tolerable. I ended up getting two pairs, one as a gift, but then I couldn't decide which pair to give away! We also walked past a guy who was eager to show us that he cracks almonds open with a hammer and we should buy them. I guess he thinks dumb city people have never seen that almonds come in shells.

Sirince Jan 13

We took the bus back to Selçuk and were recruited to a lunch joint near the bus stop, where D had some crazy liver dish and it was all really cheap. We made another stop at the place where we had kunefe the previous night to grab some baklava for the road. The guy remembered us and joked about how we tried to pay for kunefe the previous night with a 50 - which was true because we'd just been to an ATM, not because we were rich. Anyway while another worker was weighing our kunefe he slid a tiny piece of baklava into an adorable little box and gave it to us. This is not an unusual gesture when you buy a lot at a baklava shop - we always get bread with our baklava in Mannheim - but the little box was so adorable that I will love that shop forever. Even if they charged us commission for that guy who led us there. Then I wanted to make one more effort to find the wall hanging I wanted. We had limited time and I had to ask for exactly what I wanted, which meant I was in no position to haggle, but I had a price in mind which turned out to be more than what they were charging when I finally found one. This was an interesting process. I stopped at a shop and since I didn't know what it was called, I drew it for the guy there. He said he had none but knew someone who did. Of course he did not just give us directions to the other guy but walked us over there himself. He then hung around the entire time while the other guy tried to sell me one of the two he had. I didn't like either of them so he moved on to trying to sell me other things. To be fair, he had some really nice stuff that I would have loved to have if I had the money and space, but I needed this wall hanging and nothing else! I asked him if he knew who else might have one and he drew me a map to a place in Istanbul since I said we were going back there. I don't know why he didn't bother to tell me that the place right down the street in Selçuk had them. (Hmm.) We stopped there as a last-ditch effort and the guy had several, one of which I happily took home.

After our shopping, we stopped back at the Pension to warm up in the common room before catching our shuttle back to the airport in İzmir. As we neared the pension the call to prayer started and at an intersection near our Pension the sound of them layering was amazing - like when church bells in Heidelberg get so echoed and layered it almost sounds like just one sound. When we got in, one of the owners gave us tea and we sat with her for a bit. Then we went to the airport shuttle stop and waited for 45 minutes in the freezing cold and no shuttle came. We started to worry about missing our flight and D called the pension, ostensibly to get the number for the airline so we could ask what the heck was going on. The Pension offered us a ride to İzmir for 110 TL. That was about what I'd estimated a cab would cost and we really had no bus options at that point as it was only 1.5 hours until our flight...so we took the ride. We took a really scenic route back to İzmir, different from the one the bus took. The sun was setting over the sea as we drove along cliffs. Unfortunately we didn't enjoy it as much as we could have because we were feeling the sting of going from thinking we'd get a free shuttle ride to paying the equivalent of 45 Euro for a ride from the Pension owner.

When we got to the airport, we found out right away why the shuttle hadn't come. Our flight wasn't listed on the departures board. We went up to the AtlasJet agent, who looked at our receipt and told us our flight had been cancelled 3 months prior! That would have been only ~5 days after I booked it and I never was notified that it was cancelled. Thankfully, the guy didn't give us any crap about it but immediately walked over to another agent and booked us on the next flight on a different airline (Pegasus) lickety-split. We checked in and checked our bags and went to the gate, only to have the flight cancelled about five minutes later due to snow-related delays in Istanbul! So much for getting back to Istanbul in time for another dinner at Hamdi (we'd been talking about those pistachio and yogurtlu kebaps all day)! We had the option of rebooking to an 8pm flight to the Sabiha Gokcen Airport, about an hour outside Istanbul, or waiting for a 10pm flight to Istanbul Ataturk. After considerable hemming and hawing about which was more likely to be cancelled and the risks to our checked luggage, we ended up taking the 10pm flight. Pegasus served us all drinks and crappy sandwiches while we waited. The flight left on time and we landed in snowy Istanbul at 11pm. The airport was clearly having some problems and it took a while to get a gate. While we were waiting for the gate we saw the airport have a brief blackout!

While it was great to see Ephesus and we really enjoyed seeing some smaller towns, if I were to book this trip again I would not have nested flights into such a short trip. The flying took up half a day each time and I felt that was too much of the trip to lose to such an irritating experience. I think I'd either have a longer trip and keep the flights, or a much longer trip and use some other transit that would involve seeing things in between (road trip?), or visit a small town closer to Istanbul. I'd love to go to both places again - I was bummed that we missed seeing Mary's house near Ephesus, as it sounds like it would be right up my shrine-loving alley. And Istanbul...you probably can't spend too much time there.

TL;DR: Click on the photo albums.

Apartment Hunt Update

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:09:00 +0000

fter making our decision to go for the two-bedroom on Tuesday evening, we set up an appointment for Wednesday afternoon to meet with the estate agent and fill out a rental application. On Wednesday morning as soon as offices opened we called in to all the places we had made appointments with for that day to cancel them....all except one. There was one apartment we were still curious enough about to want to see, and we kept our 1pm appointment to check it out.

The apartment was in Harborne, but so close to the university and hospital that it should really be in its own category. We arrived a little early and were impressed with the front garden, which was raised up from the road and full of healthy bushes and flowers. The agent arrived and let us in to a huge room with fireplace, laminate flooring, and a spiral staircase up to the second floor. The kitchen was large with all appliances included. The back garden was large and as well-kept as the front. The second floor had two enormous bedrooms, and there was a third floor with another enormous bedroom with a very large (by British standards) closet. The bathroom was, alas, on the ground floor and beyond the kitchen, and the spiral staircase did seem like it could be a little daunting in the middle of the night, though not as much as those steep carpeted stairs at the earlier place we vetoed. Seriously - this apartment was awesome, definitely top three. Since it was only about an hour until our appointment to apply for the 2-bedroom apartment from Monday, we didn't have much time to really comtemplate it, so we made it easy on ourselves and fell back on bad information we already knew. The grocery store was not close and the EPC rating for the place was F. EPC ratings tell you how much you can expect to pay for heat, hot water, and lighting in a house and range from A (best, and nearly impossible) to G (worst), with the England/Wales average being E. Most houses we saw were D and most flats we saw were C. To quantify this - the estimated cost of heating the awesome spiral-staircase apartment was 2.5 times the estimated cost of heating our 2-bedroom front-runner. This is a difference of around 1,000 pounds per year. We don't know why the rating was so bad - it had all double-glazed windows, which is supposed to be a huge help in the heating department. Maybe it was the sheer size of the place, which was over 100 square meters. Or insulation problems, especially in the roof which has a room right in it that you'd want to heat. In any case - bummer. Hopefully someone with a few extra pounds to spend on heat will find and enjoy that place!

We went down to Stirchley to go to the estate agent's office. There are tons of estate agents down there. We wanted to stop somewhere for lunch, but all the curry houses and pizza joints were closed! We finally found a spot called Maggie's Munchies open for lunch and had sandwiches. D made the mistake of trying to order a pot of tea for both of us (thinking it might be cheaper/easier than ordering 2 teas). She told him this wasn't that kind of place...whatever that means. Is putting tea in a pot posh or something? We are clueless about that stuff for sure. Anyway, the sandwiches were good and I am sure we'll be there again since it's not far from our new place.

Well, hopefully our new place. We haven't been approved yet. We went to the office, filled out the forms, and gave them 200 pounds as an application fee and half a months' rent as a fee to take the property off the market. (I think this applies to the first months' rent if we get the place. We get it back if the landlord rejects us. We lose it if we bail.) Then we later sent them a reference letter from our current landlord and our bank statements in lieu of a credit check which would be hard for them to do given our foreign status. I don't know how long it takes to get the landlord's approval, but no word yet. Fingers crossed, because our second choice - the complete refurb on the pretty street - has been taken off the rental market. It's still for sale - I guess the owner decided s/he just wanted to sell it after all. The EPC F house (as we've come to call it) is still available...

From the Apartment-Hunting Trenches: Harborne, Birmingham. 19.2.13.

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:19:00 +0000

ay two. Slightly fewer wake-ups in the middle of the night, but we're still totally gross. But hey - it's the third sunny English day in a row, and that may be a record!

Our first stop was a flat in a block of ugly buildings that used to be council housing. The previous day we'd seen only houses but in this day's neighborhood, Harborne, our budget range mostly includes places without yards. It was off-putting while I was making appointments, but the neighborhood came so absurdly highly recommended, and has such a nice high street (main shopping street), that we decided to have a look anyway. The estate agent who met us was dressed in a really awesome suit - first time that happened. Does that appeal more to Harborne clientele? The apartment building immediately reminded me of a school when we went inside. All the walls were exposed brick, low white ceilings, and the doors and stairwells were painted bright blue. The apartment itself was fine - better than our current one, but had no outdoor space of any kind and the kitchen was better than our current one, but not bigger. So, that was sort of over before it began, considering we had already seen multiple places the previous day with bigger kitchens and with yards. He wanted to show us another apartment nearby that was being completely refurbished - we'd be the first to see it, and the renovations weren't done yet. He made it sound pretty close so we agreed to just check it out. It turned out to be pretty far away, no longer offering the major Harborne benefit of being near lots of shopping. Also, it was only marginally bigger than our current apartment - although much, much better. The kitchen renovations underway were shaping up very nicely!

Due to this unexpected long detour, we rushed through lunch at the Fallen Angel Bakery and were a couple of minutes late for our next appointment. Again, a guy dressed in a very smart suit, looking like the roguish baddie from a rom-com. Into the apartment - the first room had some cool scalloped embossed wallpaper. That was the end of the aesthetic appeal. It was peeling slightly at the tops of the walls. The carpet was nasty. The apartment was unoccupied, but no one had bothered to clean up a coffee spill off the counter, or black drops below the boiler. The washing machine looked like it was from the 80s. The only really great thing was that it had a third floor - so 2 bedrooms on the second floor and a bedroom with awesome slanty ceilings on the top floor. We left and D said he thought it was a contender! It was fascinating how we came out with me having ruled it out almost immediately upon walking in, and him thinking it was going to complicate matters with our contenders from the previous day. It was that third floor talking...that WAS cool. But he got to veto the place with the stained glass and I got to veto this one. A shame - with work it would be incredible. (And out of our price range.) I can't understand why they didn't even bother to have it cleaned before showing it. It just reeked of a landlord and agent who don't care.

On to our next stop just around the corner. This one was a 2-story apartment above a hairdresser. It was one of those fascinating apartments that we got to see while it was still occupied. This is not favorable in the opinion of the estate agents, because as one of them told us "no apartment looks good while people are living in it". (Do they really believe this??) I enjoy seeing them occupied...after all, occupying it is what I plan to do. The agent arrived, this time a lady in thick red lipstick and another suit. We could rule it out as soon as we saw the kitchen, which other than a larger fridge was no improvement over our current one. No one was home but thawed chicken breasts were sitting on the counter. Not relevant to us, but ...weird. In the bathroom shower and around the bedroom windows, there was mold aplenty. No thank you. This place was also home to one of the infamous carpeted bathrooms. Too bad, because the slanty walls on the top floor were cool.

The agent seemed to take a shine to us and showed us a place down the street which was being renovated, but the landlord wasn't allowing to be shown until they were complete. From the outside it did look nice, with a very pleasant and well-kept south-facing patio and black and white shed. But, we wouldn't have been able to see the inside by Friday and considering we already had two excellent contenders, we didn't really want to drag it all out that far. So, we let that go.

Our next apartment was further from the high street and closer to the university in a grassy, more modern section of Harborne. We found the place way too early and spent some time sitting by a nearby pond. I already thought this place might be out because the neighborhood seemed too quiet and not dense enough. I'm a big believer in more people = better community and lots of people on the street being what keeps you safe. The apartment, however, was very nice despite being ugly on the outside. The estate agent was late so it was shown to us by the current tenant and her young kids (the kids wanted to show us their room and playroom, too cute). The kitchen was American-style with more of an L shape and an eat-in area. The living room was enormous, and the toilet was separate from the shower/bath, which I actually think is a great idea. The yard was nice and bright. Afterward we walked back to the university and the walk was not pleasant, through a lot of high-car-traffic areas. That sealed, along with the ugly aesthetics and creepy quietness, that this wasn't a big contender. I think it's going to be perfect for someone else soon, though.

Finally the end to the day? No...one more place to see. This one was a wild card - an apartment directly on the canals downtown! We just had to see it and it was worth it. The apartment was two stories above a ground-floor estate agent office, and the building is listed, meaning it has historical significance and is being preserved. That ended up being the death knell for it, too. While painters shined the place up, we saw a nice sage-green kitchen and large first-floor room, then went up to the second floor where we discovered that the bathroom - very cool with a wood-trimmed tub - had no standing shower, and could not have a standing shower on account of being a listed building! I don't even like to book hotels without a standing shower, so living in a place without one was out. The other problem is that the single-paned windows cannot be replaced with double-paned ones, meaning more noise and less temperature control. Bummer! We really enjoyed seeing it, though.

Finally...the end to the day. By this point we were sick of looking at places. While walking back to our hotel we made the decision to go with one of the apartments from the previous day. The one with the downstairs bathroom had been vetoed by D, so we were down to the shiny new refurbished one or the one with only two bedrooms. We went with the two-bedroom one. This was not easy. Relief, regret, relief, regret, back and forth after we made the decision! But here's the deal - 2-bedroom is 100 pounds a month cheaper, which is money that can go toward the car and house we're thinking about buying. It is also partially furnished (read: fridge and washing machine and wardrobes!), making our transition much easier since we do not currently own any of those things. It was less bland than the refurb, and more comfortable because we wouldn't have that feeling of walking on eggshells in a place someone else just completely fixed up. And, we know the landlord is down with being a landlord. In the refurb, the place is for sale or to let. Pick one, man. I don't want to rent it and get booted when you sell it. So, it was very sad to let go because the location was better, the street more charming, and the kitchen oh my god the kitchen.....I love you, That Kitchen. But, we let it go and emailed the estate agent for the two-bedroom. Which also has a pretty decent kitchen.

Then we had some amazing Polish food to celebrate having been spoiled for choice.

From the Apartment-Hunting Trenches: Stirchley and Selly Park, Birmingham. 18.2.13.

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:00:00 +0000

ur start to the first day of apartment-hunting in Birmingham was inauspicious, as we spent a second night in our downtown Travelodge room waking up coughing over and over. Heidelberg has this year apparently been a hellacious den of germs as we've each been sick three times in the past month - more than we usually get sick in a year! But good rentals wait for no man so off we went anyway with painkillers and tissues in tow.

Our first viewing was in Selly Park on Warwards Lane. Although it was outside the borders of a major student ghetto we'd been warned against, after checking street view we were a little worried this road, although mixed student/non-student, might still be too studenty for us. I can take tram noise, car noise, bus noise...but party noise? NO. As we got closer to the address, the studentiness seemed to drop off a bit.

Until we stepped into the house.

Well, it was spacious for sure. Five rooms - a great number that would allow us to have a bedroom, guest room, living room, and office all separate at least, plus an option of dining or TV room for the last one. A dream for me. I hate having a TV or computer in a room meant for relaxing (like living or bed room). But what. a. dump. It was clearly a student apartment - I can't believe the agent even bothered to waste time showing it to an adult couple. There was obvious mold in places, parts where ceilings or walls were flaking away, crap burned onto the stove, piles and piles of dog poop in the backyard, all of the fence collapsed (revealing the neighbor's yard full of trash). To add to the fun, the estate agent tried to tell us the mangy carpet was new when it was obviously from the 80s at best. Really, it was depressing because the property actually has great potential - a feeling I got all through this area and the student ghetto when we passed through it on the way - and to see it left to landlords and tenants who just don't give a shit was depressing.

Anyway...that place was obviously out. Our next hit was on the same street, but further away from the university so the studentiness continued to lessen as we got closer. I didn't have high hopes after the first place. Therefore, it was a pleasant surprise just to walk in and be able to tell it was an apartment for grown-ups. Some rooms had laminate flooring instead of carpet. Others had really interesting embossed wallpapers. The yard was clean and bright and birds were chirping nearby. The kitchen included a fridge and washing machine, but the fridge was a tiny one and looked pretty old. I'm sure it'd be an improvement over our current one, though. It also had a bathtub and a separate shower stall which I think is really cool. We thought this was not bad, but the estate agent, who was also showing us the next place, thought we'd like the next one better.

Off we went in his car toward the Stirchley/Bournville border area - a place I was really keeping an eye on because it's extremely convenient to both the train (2 stops to the university, 4 stops to downtown) and a big grocery store. The road the place was on was well-kept enough, but across the street were big warehousey stores that were kind of a downer. We did like the apartment. Two rooms had wood floors. A few pieces of furniture, including a full-size (by English standards) fridge, were included. I don't consider "neutral decoration" to be a feature so I was pretty happy with the bright red and blue kitchen and bathroom. The bathroom was upstairs, not a given in British houses and a big plus if you have to pee at night. The yard was really well-kept and included a shed, a covered area, a picnic table built around a tree, and lots of plants. Definitely the front-runner of the morning. On the down side - it only had four rooms, all rather small. We have two rooms right now so that's still a massive improvement, but given the layout I don't have a clear answer yet on where the dining table and where the office are going to end up.

Break for lunch! We stopped by the university to pick up an official letter stating D's position there and his salary - hopefully enough for most agents/landlords to accept our application. (But it's not always. Later that day when calling around we were told by one agent that it was not enough and 6 months' rent up front would be required since we're coming from abroad. The agent was told that we were no longer interested.) Then we had surprisingly good pasties at some crappy-looking chain shop, called some agents to try to get appointments for later in the week (sometimes it's like twisting arms to get any response, while others are super-easy to deal with), and then walked to our next place - again in the border area between Bournville and Stirchley.

This street was the best we'd seen yet - nearly every house looked very well-kept. People who looked well-settled were milling about. We did wonder a little bit about proximity to a canal and creek (flooding?) and huge power lines overhead (driven slowly crazy by not-consciously-noticeable buzzing?) but otherwise it was a pretty charming street. We got there early but soon the agent showed up and let us in. He hadn't seen the place yet himself - in fact we were scheduled to see three apartments with him and he hadn't seen any of them yet!! He was pretty quiet during this viewing. He had to ask me what the rent was and then he was quiet so I wondered if he thought it was too high...it does seem a little high for the area but here's the reason: it's been completely refurbished. Everything in the place - laminate flooring, bathroom, kitchen, windows - is completely new and has never been used. Sketchy side - the owner did all this in less than 7 months (I saw the last sell date online) so it could have been shoddily accomplished. Maybe not something we'd be in the place long enough to have trouble with, but still something to note. There were five rooms - good! One extremely small one, but the office doesn't need to be big. But no furnishings at all included - big startup costs to get a fridge, washer, wardrobes, etc. And the bathroom has no window. It's usually easier to avoid mold if you can go all the way and open a window. There is, though, one of those weird silent vents that I don't understand. Yard, a bit small but hey, a yard. Overall - well, a really nice place. Lacking in character due to the boring refurbishing, but hey - all new everything is pretty nice regardless. One hundred pounds more per month than our morning contender.

On to the next one - only two streets down so right in the same charming corner. Even more well-kept than the previous street - the house next door looked like something from a magazine. Already you could see some awesome features - stained glass in the front bay windows, and a peacock carved over the front door!! We walked in and you could smell that it was freshly painted. Five rooms again - the second downstairs room had a fireplace with painted tiles on both sides. A lot of furniture was also included, which would really help us in keeping startup costs down. On the down side - it had a downstairs bathroom, made worse by the fact that it was (as they often are in these parts) beyond the narrow kitchen. Kind of a pain. Complicating the downstairs bathroom even further were the extremely steep and narrow carpeted stairs - although completely charming I wouldn't fancy stumbling down them at night to pee. Bummer, because upstairs things were good again - real wood floors in all the bedrooms!! Auuuughh...I think we are going to have to say no to that place because of its flaws, but it's going to be very hard for me. I really like the interesting original features. D has already ruled it out but I am having a hard time letting go of that stained glass. Why couldn't one of the last two places have had something like that? (And these are seriously dumb whines considering the cave we live in now.)

Our final apartment of the day was next with the same agent - we rode back into Selly Park to a smaller road near where we'd been that morning. The first two rooms seemed fine - decent laminate floors. Then you noticed the ceiling was a little shabby. Then the kitchen...there was a ventilation which was essentially a huge hole straight to the outside. Above the ancient boiler, ceiling was chipping away. The fence and yard were completely trashed. A better student apartment than the one we'd seen earlier that day, but still clearly student, or at best, owned by a landlord who does not care at all. Easy to write off.

So....back on the streets tomorrow to see four more tomorrow. Will any beat those nice middle three we saw? Are we dumb to keep going on and not just take one of them? You (and we) will find out soon....

Meanwhile, words of wisdom on what we've seen?

Birmingham and Alvechurch in December

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:15:00 +0000

ecember feels like ages ago, but I'm determined to catch up! In December we made our second visit to our future home city of Birmingham. D had to go to a conference at his new academic home, and I trailed along so we could also look at some apartments.

It turned out we were a bit early to be looking for apartments for a March move, but we did manage to make a few appointments. None led to anything but it was nice to start getting an idea of how things work, plus meet some more of the people who will soon be part of our daily lives.

We arrived on a Thursday evening and had the unfortunate experience of staying at a hotel on Hagley Road, which wasn't as convenient to transit and the university as we might have hoped. (Already a useful piece of information for the future apartment search!) We ate at a chain pub/restaurant across the road which was incredibly busy with people engaging in after-work drinking shenanigans. Having seen salaries on job postings I have no idea how anyone there can afford to drink or eat out, but I guess we'll learn more about how it all balances once we settle in there!

The next day we had three apartment viewings scheduled. It was pouring rain and we not only underestimated the time it would take to walk to our first destination, but we got slightly lost because our map had a marker on it that covered up the fact that there was no joining street where we thought there would be one! Alas, we also forgot to bring the phone number of the estate agent, so when we showed up 15 minutes late, they were already gone. Oops. On to the next one - the first apartment we really viewed was on a beautiful street in a perfect location, but was a tiny dump. The kitchen was as small as our current one, everything was covered in gray carpet, all rooms were tiny, and the bathroom had weird metal flooring. So, it could only go up from there!

The estate agent was extremely nice and gave us a ride from the apartment to a place where we could easily catch a bus to our next viewing in a totally different neighborhood. We had extra time so we hoped to find a cafe near the bus stop to warm up and stop getting poured on - this amount of rain was seriously surprising - but no luck. It was a particularly depressing intersection and the only thing nearby was an Aldi. We checked it out just for something to do, then went to the bus stop. When we tried to board the bus, we discovered that exact change is required to get on the bus (unless you have a card)!! We didn't have it so we had to go back to the Aldi to buy something small to get change and then come back. At this point we were soaked and grumpy, but our mood was improved when a passenger on the bus was happy to help us find our stop and tell us directions from there to the street we wanted. We didn't even ask him - we tried to ask the driver - and he came up from his seat to help out. And didn't even seem like he was crazy or anything. If this is normal in Birmingham I'm really excited about that.

The next apartment we saw was with a super-salesy estate agent. Actually, the place was more spacious than I thought I could ever dream and had a pretty big yard too. As a bonus the bathroom had both a stall shower AND a bathtub which I think is really cool, and on the useless but fun side, it had two little shriney-looking built-in shelves in the bathroom which would have been perfect for some kitschy Mary statues or something. But, D vetoed this place because the kitchen was very narrow and hall-like (a common problem in many Birmingham neighborhoods apparently), and it turned out later the current tenant decided to stay until May so it's not going to be available to us anyway.

The estate agent was again really nice and gave us a ride to his office to see if they had anything similar available, but they didn't, so they gave us directions to the train and we headed back to Hagley Road for some curry lunch and to dry off our clothes on the radiators in our hotel room. Then D had to go to a meeting at the university and I watched TV programs IN ENGLISH - then we met back up with his future "mentor" (not really a boss but something similar?) for dinner at an Italian restaurant in a building called the Mailbox downtown. There, we saw for the first time something we seriously had not seen before: Christmas crackers!! There were lots of work Christmas parties happening at the restaurant and when the attendees arrived all their plates had crackers on them, which they opened after a little while, then all wore tissue-paper crowns. Adorable! Apparently there's a German equivalent of these which is used at New Year's but I've somehow never noticed them.

On Saturday, we had an appointment to view a place in a very wild-card location: Alvechurch, a village well outside Birmingham which is only feasible for us because it sits right on a train line which goes straight to the university in 20 minutes or the city center in less than 30. I expected it to be kind of lame and suburban what with that train line right there, but was very pleasantly surprised - it was really a village and it really felt like one. On the way there, the train passed through sheep pastures and woods. We viewed the apartment and liked it except for the particularly small size, carpeted bathroom, and lack of included washer/fridge. (There seems to be an all-or-nothing problem - NO furnishings including appliances, or ALL furnishings including appliances, beds, couches, wardrobes, etc.) Afterward we went to the center of the village and had lunch at a pub with a fireplace, then walked up a hill to visit the Anglican church because it looked cute from below. It was beautiful inside. There were several parishoners and the vicar there decorating for Christmas and they were all really chatty and welcoming. Smitten! Then we went to check out the canal that goes through town and found that there's a very cute little pub sitting right next to it, and a marina with dozens of gaily-painted narrowboats. I had a lot of reservations about village life - Heidelberg often feels small to me - especially with no car at our disposal (yet), but all this was sort of starting to convince me. Later, after much hemming and hawing, we decided we could just try it out for the length of one lease and we called to tell them we wanted the place. It turned out that another couple had seen it right after us and taken it. Regardless - that was not our last visit to Alvechurch, I'm sure!

We spent the rest of the day with another couple who recently moved to Birmingham from Australia and work at the university. That's when we stopped through the Birmingham Christmas Market. At a tapas restaurant, we were given Christmas crackers of our own! So we got to have our first time pulling them open. Luckily they explained to us the procedure of all opening them together before we excitedly pulled one open ourselves. Each cracker contains a bad pun joke, a tissue paper crown, and a small gift of varying quality depending on how much you paid for the crackers. We ended up with a teeny tiny notepad and a teeny tiny paper deck of cards. We checked out a few bars in the area (Moseley - nice place, would like to live there, but apartments seem to go fast) then turned in.

On Sunday we wandered around downtown - I'd done this on the first trip while D was interviewing, but it was his first time. We walked along the canals, checked out the Jewellery Quarter (the part we stumbled into was sorely lacking in cafes), and had some delicious spicy food in Chinatown. Birmingham has a Chinatown! I am really excited about this! We also stopped at a Tesco to buy Christmas crackers, because we wanted to share this cool new find with our Heidelberg friends at our Christmas party later.

The next couple of days were spent at the conference, which I actually ended up attending part of the time too just to meet people and, actually, some of the topics were pretty interesting. We headed out Tuesday evening, and at the Lufthansa desk saw a sign saying anything containing gunpowder, including Christmas crackers, was not allowed on the plane! So distressing because I was really looking forward to having them in Germany! I couldn't bear to throw them away myself so I decided I'd let the people at security do it. They let the crackers through. We had them at our party. So are they actually dangerous or what?

Photos!:

Birmingham & Alvechurch Dez 12

Goodbye Friends

noreply@blogger.com (C N Heidelberg) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:46:00 +0000

Despite the bitter cold, we made it a point to go to the Heidelberg Faschingsumzug one last time today. They had a special message just for us*:

*Okay, it's really for the US military people who are leaving due to the base closing...but still. I'll miss you too, Heidelberg!