Today Rob and I went to Kaiserslautern to look for a new home.  We had 3 appointments to look at houses.  We saw the first one and we liked it okay, but it didn’t have a fence around the little postage stamp sized yard and it was too close to the street.  Casey would have been a goner for sure!  So, we told the guy that we would let him know one way or the other this afternoon.  We saw the 2nd house and from the outside, it looked old and crappy.  The listing said that it was newly remodeled.  There’s a rather large drive way and three entrances into the house.  It looked REALLY dumpy because they had old rusted out cars and the grass lawn was unkempt.  The concrete patio had also seen better days.  We took Casey around the little town.  We are literally footsteps away from the Hauptstrasse (Main Street)!  There’s a biergarten and a pizzeria right there to the right and to the left is an old church.  We saw a sign for an ice cream shop, but we didn’t have enough time to actually FIND it!  There’s an awesome walking path and a little creek along it.  It’s not paved, but I seriously doubt it will matter.  The village is called Otterbach and I think it’s really cool.  So, we have lots of time on our hands so we walked back up to the house to wait, when Rob decides that we should walk up this REALLY steep hill to see the schlossstubegarten (the castle restaurant) and Stadion (a gym of some sort!)  It’s REALLY cool!  Apparently, the owner has his own Oktoberfest there and serves authentic Bavarian style cuisine (which is a HUGE plus because Rob and I L.O.V.E Bavarian style food )

We finally walked back down to the house and the landlord said pets are fine and he’s fine with us having 3!  The first thing we did was walk in the living room and there is a swedish oven–a free standing heating element (almost like the cast iron stoves that one would see in the Unsinkable Molly Brown film) and we walked around in there.  It’s a nice living room.  Then, we saw the kitchen…two entrances and an island which had 5 gas burners (one is for a wok) and a rather large oven.  On the other side there was a dishwasher.  LOTS of countertop space and the dining area was in the kitchen, not in the living room (a HUGE plus in my book.  You’d never see that anywhere else).  This house is single-family home and is almost 2,000 square feet!  The most complicated thing we’re going to have to decide is which room to setup our home entertainment room in and which one to put our bed in.  In April, we are definitely going to be making several trips to Ikea.  It’s a bit farther away than I would have liked, but I think it’s pretty much a straight shot on the bus to the base.  It’s about 5 miles away from base and a 35 minute bike ride.  Perhaps a little less when I figure out all the short cuts. 

So, I’ve already decided that this is the place I want to live and I don’t want to look at the other house.  Rob says, “Let’s go take a look at the outside and the neighborhood before.  If it doesn’t work for us, then we’ll call to cancel the appointment.”  We went and it was really nice from the outside, but everyone lived really close to each other.  We definitely don’t want to live on top of other people and the town wasn’t close to anything cool.  So, I called to cancel and she said that someone had already rented it and so I assumed that was the end of it.  She called me back later wondering where we were.  We had already signed our lease by then.

Well, anyway, I just wanted to share that.  Rob and I are super excited!  Now, we just need to get rid of all our junk and quick.  I hope they put bins outside the apt buildings soon so I can start pitching stuff.

I guess I better get going for now.  Thanks for reading and have a good day 🙂