Comments should be fixed

Several of you have mentioned that your comments don't appear.  Luckily, I found the problem.  There was a default setting on that prevented unregistered users from commenting.

To make a long story short, you should be able to comment now.

Question Answered

Question:

So the landlord said Sox can live there too? He will love the cat

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To Mom:

Well, this is a different house. The Landlord's rules for this one is that up to two pets are allowed, so there will be no problems with Sox living with us in the place we have officially signed for today, the one with the virtual tour link in our earlier posts.

We saw many different places in the past two weeks, I'm sorry if I was unclear about which one we went with in the end.

Compared to the house with the nice cat and goats, the one we signed for is a bigger house (5 bedrooms and 2 baths) and in a different town. (Eschenbach.) Best of all, the Landlord is living in Texas right now so we have the entire property all to ourselves. It has a HUGE lawn Mom, I can't wait until you see it, if you are able to make it out here to visit us after all. I think Sox will be very happy there, I know Justin and I will be too.

Thanks for commenting Mom!

If anyone else wants to comment, just click the "comment" link below any entry. We will be glad to respond when we can!

Nothing New

Hello, there was not much going on this past weekend. Justin and I watched Iron Man in our Hotel room, went walking around on Saturday, and yesterday Justin's sponsor drove us to Pottenstein where we had an amazing dinner. She called it "steak on the stone" but it's real name was in German, began with an S and was quite long. Katie (Justin's sponsor) told us that she had once asked the owner of the restaurant how to pronounce the name but he just laughed and gave her the rough translation that I mentioned above. :)

The restaurant was very nice and so was everyone working that night. The scenery outside the windows of the restaurant was also very pretty. Katie told Justin and I that we were very close to a forest with caves and other neat places to walk, too bad it was raining so much.

Justin had the Kangaroo, Katie ordered Ostrich, and I tried the Wild Boar. After a short time, they brought the sizzling cuts of raw meat out to our table which were neatly arranged on platters containing a hot stone in the middle, accompanied with different dipping sauces and bread. It was a lot of fun to be there and eating something new! Justin and I agreed that when we finally had guests over to visit us, that we had to show off our newest find. I know one person in particular who would probably love the fact that there is Crocodile on the menu. (My little brother, Austin.)

Anyway, today is another slow day. We got the Lease Agreement approved by the Housing office, so we need to drive over to Grafenwoehr and get it printed, signed, and scanned to be sent back to the Landlord of the house we want in Eschenbach. It will be so nice to be one step closer to having a home of our own, this Hotel room is making us feel a little cramped, and I miss being able to cook real meals with real ingredients on a stove as opposed to different variations of ramen noodle dishes a la microwave...Très Bien! (Yes, that was sarcasm, sorry.)

I love my new phone, I have my email set up on it to let me know the second anyone writes. Justin and I also downloaded the Star Wars Lightsaber app and have random battles with our phones. I love our geekiness, not going to lie.

That's it for now! I will write again if there's anything else going on!

Our Search is Complete

I just got off the phone with the landlord.  Thankfully, she agreed to lower the rent from 1400 euros to 1250 euros, which the army will cover.  In short, we have an amazing home to look forward to!  Within a couple days, we'll be official with the lease agreement and we'll have the keys on June 1st.

Needless to say we're ecstatic!  Time to celebrate our first small victory!

If you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to the virtual tour of the house (just bear in mind, our Feng Shui will be superior):

http://manuspaur.point2agent.com/Listing/VirtualTour.ashx?ListingID=34783956

Quick Update

We just saw the house with the virtual tour link.

WE LOVED IT! Justin is sending an email to the owner now to express our interest.

Wish us luck! ^_^

The Search Continues!

Yesterday's house hunt went much better! We were able to see the outside of one home in Eschenbach, and we were fortunate to be seen for a walk-through in two others:

The first was in Apfelbach, very close to where Justin will be working. It was a fair sized lot and a two story building with a detached garage and plenty of storage space. The landlord told us that he would be living upstairs and that we were free to lay claim to the lower level which had 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, a full kitchen, cozy living room with a gas furnace and a small terrace overlooking a portion of the backyard. The houses' "common areas" included a basement with one room for storage and hanging clothes to dry, the other room contained a washer and dryer. I am happy to tell you that not only was everything clean and well maintained, but I found no trace of any spiders or mold! We thanked the Landlord, (Who can't have been any older than we were, and had the tattoos and piercings to prove it) for his time. It was a very nice place and we will keep it in mind, but we were unsure if we would be able to live there without cramping his style a little bit.

The second house we were able to see was just outside of Vilseck, also fairly close to where Justin will be working. This one we liked very much: it was a house on a piece of property in much the same situation as the one before, except the Landlord lived in a separate house roughly 100 yards away from the home he was looking to rent. It reminded us of The Shire from The Lord of the Rings! There were goats and a very friendly cat, nice shady trees, flowers and so much grass! The elderly Landlord seemed gregarious upon our first meeting, and enthusiastically gave us a tour of the house. It had a covered and tiled walkway up to the front door which opened to a hallway which lead in many directions at once. The Landlord showed us the kitchen first which, much like the previous house we had seen, had a full (albeit small) kitchen. He assured us that he would leave all cabinets and appliances for our use should we need them, which is not usually done. I was struck once again by this man's kindness. He then showed us a room directly behind the kitchen which he suggested could be used as an office. Justin and I happily nodded in agreement. We returned to the hallway and were led in a different direction, to the living room, and then back into the hall and into a very large bathroom which doubled as a laundry room. I am happy to say, that once again all facilities were clean and new. Justin and I could not believe our amazing luck! We returned to the hallway once more and were lead upstairs this time, where we found two more bedrooms, one of which Justin and I agreed would become the Guest room should we choose to live here after all. We expressed our gratitude to the Landlord, thanking him for his considerate decoration of this home and also for his time, that was when Justin asked him if Sox living there with us would be a deal breaker in any way? Sadly, it seemed to be. Justin's sponsor will send him pictures via email of Sox for consideration, she is certain he can be persuaded as long as we pay a pet deposit and a monthly "pet rent" fee. We will see how that turns out.

Today at 6 PM we will be looking at yet another home as a back up plan, we had been speaking with the owner and were able to negotiate a lowered monthly price from the initial steep amount of 1400 euro. Here is a virtual tour of it online. Check it out and tell us what you think in the comment boxes below, if you want! (Just mute the lame music, we did! Haha)

http://manuspaur.point2agent.com/Listing/VirtualTour.ashx?ListingID=34783956

House Hunting!

Today we had the opportunity to check out a house in a village named Brand about 25 miles away from the base on Grafenwoehr. It was, as promised in the ad HUGE. It was 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and it had a backyard terrace with an immaculately maintained garden, a large lawn, and a very nice sun-room that overlooked both. It was also located on a main thoroughfare and had a basement and attic, so in other words...there were 4 stories to this place. Needless to say, it was too huge.  Now that I mentioned all of its' good points, I will not hesitate to list the reasons why Justin and I walked away from this particular opportunity.

The current tenant, to his credit, told us no lies. He explained that the Landlord has been "renovating" for the past 4 years he had lived in the house, but next to nothing has been accomplished. He warned us that although the Landlord is very kind, he can be absent-minded and slow to fix things in need of maintenance and there were many things in need of attention.

The house was built in the 1800's. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that each and every year showed: The walls with their cracks and missing paint, the rickety staircases, the damp smell of mildew in the air, the pervasive dark throughout all levels of the house. Then, the deal breaker! Apparently the place is also infested with spiderssss! Eek! I walked out with the creepy crawlies and Justin did not look convinced either.

On the way back to our hotel room, Justin's sponsor Katherine told us we would be looking at another apartment tomorrow evening, this one is a 2 bedroom 1 bath. We saw the outside today during our drive, it looks cozy and well-maintained and it has a large fenced yard for Sox to run around in. We admired the sunset as we returned to the car and Katherine was kind enough to take our picture to include in today's blog.

The search continues!