living in berlin

well, everything so far is going fantastic. we have had a few Adventures in Berlin.

progress:
1. we went to the Auslanderbehörde at first to try and see about our visas, but were told that we needed an "anmeldung" from the B\ürgeramt, which is basically a piece of paper that says that you live at whatever address in germany in order to make an appointment (they have to put your information into the computer at the Bürgeramt so that the Auslanderbehörde people can access it). so we went to the Bürgeramt in Prenzlauer Berg, which is not that far from our apartment. i was really surprised at how easy it is to register yourself- you don't even need anything to prove that you live at the address! we just told them where we lived and the name of the girl who is on the lease, and they found it in the computer and added us. crazy! then we went to get health insurance, which is mandatory here. it seems to shock the germans when i try to explain to them that we don't have health insurance because it's prohibitively expensive for normal people in the united states. they are immediately confused, as if it is unimaginable that an entire nation of people are allowed to live undisturbed without proof of health insurance. i think it's a good sign, personally. so:
2. we went across town to the health insurance office of Hanse-Merkur- it was recommended by a guy in another blog, but it was a complete failure. the lady was mostly mean and she did not believe that we had recently arrived in the country. i showed her my passport and she was still skeptical. weird lady.
3. we went to an internet cafe and did some quick research, and ended up going to the offices of a super nice lady at DKV, which is the best (and, possibly, only) option for foreigners. we are hoping to hear back from them sometime next week.
4. i went to the Auslanderbehörde again yesterday to try to make an appointment again, now that i have my Anmeldung. i kind of like it there. all the other foreign people stand in a long line and talk in about a thousand different languages and they all have plastic folders (which confused me at first, but then i realised how much the germans really love paper and paperwork). i have an appointment in a few weeks to go back and (hopefully) get my visa processed. o hope hope hope.

phil started language school on mondae, which is cool. this way he can talk to people without me, which is important.
we are in the process of looking for a permanent apartment, as well, which is kind of interesting- we went and saw a bunch of apartments. most of the ones in cool neighborhoods are really small and expensive. we finally found this italian guy on craiglist who wants to move closer to his new job and needs someone to take over his lease. we went to check it out- it's a really nice place, two big rooms, and although it's kind of far from the middle of town, it's about ten feet from an U-bahn station, which is awesome. the italian guy is super nice, and got very excited about italian culture. he made us mocha? expresso? (his english and german were not that good) and gave us some olive oil to taste. he really likes jimi hendrix and once got to see roger waters, although he did not get to see rage against the machine in rome (the conversation was a little tricky due to language barriers). i sent a letter off yesterday about the apartment, so we'll see what happens.
sarah is coming through town tommorrow morning, which is le awesome.
it snowed all week here. it is cold and there is a lot of precipitation. falling rain, falling snow, etc. and it is sort of wet. phil swears that it is mostly "not that cold" but i am always frozen. i got some really buena-buena rainboots from allie before i left (to replace the ones she already gave me that are In Evidence) which are superuseful in all of this wetness.

i suppose that is all for now. adios, xoxoxo!

kite grocery shopping at plus!

it took us forever to buy groceries today! we made a list, and then wandered around for about forever looking at all the things. . . these weird security guys dressed all in black were walking around in circles staring at us like we were crazy as we tried to figure out what was in the salad dressing (weird stuff) or read all the soup lables to see if there was meat in ("this one has smoked salted pig," i said)

grocery stores here are different than in the us- they are overall much, much smaller, and have only one or two different brands to choose from (maybe a few more for some items, like cookies). not all grocery stores have everything you might be looking for. for example, we could only find one brand of canned vegetables, and they only had one kind of beans (kidney). also, they don't always put all of one kind of item together. the dairy case was separated by brand, not by food type, so all the yogurt was all scattered around the back of the store, and the flour was in three different places, which makes price comparison tricky. also, (sorry, space chicken) they did not have peanut butter at Plus. today, anyway. maybe tomorrow?

all in all, i think we did pretty well, and i got to have chocolate ice cream, about which i was so so happy. . . still, it is difficult, after being used to all of those giant harris-teeters with six kinds of every imaginable thing. . .

flights, weddings, berlin, apartments.

hello everybody!

we're back in germany, after a very excellent excursion to the united states of america.

allie & joe's wedding was fantastic: allie was so pretty and the dancing was super. they are absolutely good together (!) & the whole thing went very well and i was le excited to be able to be part of the experience.

thanks to my lovely, young & beautiful parents, we hung out in raleigh for about two weeks. when we got home we had dinner with our awesome neighbors. a few days later we went to kaye's school to give a talk about living in germany to her german 2 class, which was tres bien (i felt kind of cool, as in, yes, i do live overseas). it was very nice to see my family. xoxo to mom & dad & nike & space chicken & liloface. while we were in raleigh, we hung out with stephanie, allie, and family, and went to see allie's kids' show with dana at wake forest high school, which rocked. we went to a girl scout reunion dinner the night before i left, which was neat: i hadn't seen most of everyone in practically forever.

there were some people i didn't get to see while we were in raleigh and that was kind of sad, but we really didn't have tons of time, alas, alas. it was really good to see my family, and i hope that everyone plans to come overseas and visit if this works out and we get to stay here for a long time. . .

on the day we ended up flying out, dana met us at the airport (so wonderful) and took us all speedily through security- it's really nice to have someone at the gate with you: i almost forgot about it in this post-9-11 airport state. we got to fly first class again(!) which rocked, although this time we declined all alcohol (it was hard! they keep pressuring you! "just one glass of champagne," they say sneakily. or: "what wine will you be drinking with dinner?")
it was definately harder leaving this time as it feels altogether more permanent.

we got back to duesseldorf at around seven thirty in the morning local time. we waited for our many, many suitcases and then caught the S-bahn (train) to solingen, where fred came to pick us up at the station. it was a lot easier (on the train, with all the luggage) than we suspected it would be, mostly because the S-bahn doesn't have steps up- it's more like a long-distance metro or aboveground subway or something. i cannot think of what this is called in english. alas.

once we were back in solingen, phil (very unsleepily) went to work on some renovations in an apartment for a friend of fred & regina, and i (very sleepily! ick, jetlag) started to look for a temporary apartment in berlin.

i didn't expect to move to berlin so quickly, but i didn't find that many apartments available that weren't tourist apartments, weekly rentals, super expensive, or only available from march to april of next year. when i finally found someone that wanted to rent for the next month, it was friday afternoon, and the girl who wanted to rent was leaving on saturday, and said that if we could be there before lunchtime, we could have the apartment for 450 euro. which isn't super cheap (but also isn't super expensive), and it has heat, internet, nice furniture, etc. and is clean, which is very, very nice. (some of the apartments i was looking at online were not at all clean. not even kind of clean).

we left saturday morning via train and got to berlin around 11 am. the apartment is near the prenzlauer allee S-bahn station, not really all that far from alexanderplatz, in is mostlikely east berlin. everything worked out excellently with the apartment- we went there, gave her the money, she gave us the keys, and then we left so she could finish packing for her trip. when we got back at five (after exploring the neighborhood), we almost couldn't figure out the key to the door ("o no," i thought)! we got in downstairs but the apartment door seemed completley stuck. we called katja, who was at the airport, and she laughed and said that we have to pull the knob as we turn the key, which worked (thankfully; i was imagining sleeping on the stairwell). . .

plans for the future/next steps: 1. apply for visas (i'm following this guy's advice, because it's the most complete info i've found so far, except that i have to apply without a residence permit- we don't have a real address- which shouldn't be a problem) and visiting the office tommorrow while phil applies for his student visa (a lot more straightforward than my weird english freelance visa) and as soon as i have that, i can start working part time for all these companies that have said they would hire me to teach some classes once i have the right paperwork. 2. get an actual apartment: we need a visa to do this, but i've already started looking online and in the papers

xoxo, more later!