This morning at 830 sharp we were able to talk to USAA Frankfurt. They lined up a rental car for us through Enterprise on base. If we use Enterprise, we won’t even see a bill –which is great! We got there and found that they had only one car left for the day….an Audi A3….hatchback…UGH. Not exactly the spacious moving vehicle we had envisioned. But let me tell you something people, that car is awesome! 6 gears (manual), amazing turning radius, and the little guy is PERFECT for our tiny little one way street and our narrow street parking opportunities.
I spent the day boxing and organizing our things in the hotel room, and getting organized for the moving day itself. Our movers are scheduled to arrive at 8:00am sharp tomorrow. Since we don’t get keys until 8:00pm tonight, getting our multiple loads from the hotel room to the apartment is going to be tough, since we also need to be AT the apartment with the movers. I talked Hubbz into keeping the hotel room for one extra night (which we’ll pay for instead of the Navy footing the bill). As much as we are both Jones-ing for our own mattress, the likelihood of my finding the respective boxes containing the sheets, pillows, towels and bathroom tissue necessary for us to spend a night in our place is pretty slim. Between that and needing some extra time for transit of our goods from the hotel itself, the cost of a hotel room for one more night seemed worthy. Convincing Hubbalicious was a bit more challenging – until I pointed out that he’d have a full breakfast buffet at the hotel – and we’d have to hunt for coffee at the new place…Done deal :)
We crammed our first load of stuff into the little rocket car and sped off to our new neighborhood. We walked in the door and chuckled a bit, as we realized that indeed, the previous tenant was taking all of the light fixtures with her. (this is common in Germany.) We weren’t sure which ones would come with the house. So the walkthrough was happening by the light of the two (ugly) lights in the foyer that actually came with the apartment. There were also lights remaining in the kitchen and bathroom.
Having the walkthrough at this time of night was GENIUS on her part. In the dim light the scratches to the floor and crack in the entry door’s window were barely visible. However, my husband also has flashes of brilliance. As we were about to walk out the door, Hubbz decided to find himself a flashlight. So while the realtor was doing the move our walkthrough with the old tenant, we were snapping iPhone pictures of the damage we saw, using the flashlight as a flash :) We wanted to be sure that we had documented anything we would consider damage in case we have to defend ourselves in three years (we are all the wiser from our German rental car experience)! The old tenants also took the toilet paper roll holder from the bathroom – but were kind enough to leave seven buckets of paint, in various shades of orange, left over from their tenure there. How does one dispose of paint in Germany, you may ask? I’d have to answer : “I don’t know!”. But I guess we’re going to find out!
Once we had keys and had noted the damage we found with the realtor, signed the paperwork, and agreed to the numbers on the gas meter (more on how that works later) the realtor left and we were free to unload the contents of the little rocket car as our first official act of moving! Hello new apartment!!
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