Moving time!

Carola and I recently moved to a new apartment on the north side of Frankfurt. Carola now has her own study room, and I have my view. We are both really happy that we found such a place that meets our needs so well. I think we are going to be really happy here. Many thanks to my parents, Carola's Mum, Björn and Diego for all the help!

Because of the way the timing worked out, it was best to move on a Tuesday. So I took a day of vacation and we decided to try and do all the physical moving in one day. I went early in the morning to Europcar and got our rental moving van. It turns out that left turns are hard to find in Frankfurt (where otherwise I don't drive so often). I wouldn't use the word "lost", but I got dead-ended quite a few times before I was able to make it to the new apartment to meet up with the others to get the key to the new apartment. It was all work from then on. Diego and I had the first load loaded by 1:00 or so and then Carola and I went back to Affentorplatz for a second and final load. I think we finished somewhere right before 10:00. It has been quite a few months since I have been so tired. But with the help of friends and family, we did it.




This big boy caused a good deal of pain getting up and down narrow staircases.



Diego was not looking forward to this guy.


I think this is me fairly early on in the process, I am not sweating too much yet. I was anxious that we would not get it all done in one day. Carola was thankfully more relaxed than me, and took some time to smile and take photos.




Thanks to Mutter, we not only had a Europcar van, but also a VW Minibus. This was very helpful for all those things that do not pack well in a big moving van such as plants, cowboy hats and other awkward items.


As we moved out, Affentorplatz started to slowly empty out. Many thanks to Dad, who removed all the window coverings, and patched all the holes. Without all this help, moving would have been much harder. This apartment served us very well for the close to two years we lived there, and so I will not say anything too bad about it. Nevertheless, it was time to move on.


This is the study. We are completely out of boxes now, but we still have a bit of work to do hanging pictures. Since Carola is away in Estonia, I have been holding off on this project for awhile.


Despite being on the north side of the house, the Study/Guest Bedroom gets a good amount of light.


Finally Carola can have all her Phd-related texts all in consolidated in one bookshelf. Another good point about moving.



Because the kitchen does not have so much cabinet space, we are using my old wardrobe (straight ahead) to keep dishes, vases etc. It is so tall, it would not have fit anywhere else very well. In fact, it almost did not make it there as the breaker box is almost covered by the wardrobe.


Thanks to Diego's hammer drill, I was able to hang the coat-rack. This is our own personal staircase. Our front entrance door is at the bottom of the stairs. Many thanks to Carola, who wired up the globe light you see hanging. It took some acrobatic skills.


It seemed like a natural choice for us to put our living space next to the good view and all the southern sunlight (valued like gold in the winter). I have been using my old iBook (that I got from Aunt Ardell) as US-DVD player and also this way I can listen to my music and Colorado radio this way.


This is our skyline view. The Magnolia trees have just started to bloom and they are very impressive. Many of the other trees are just starting to bud out.


Same view, different angle.


It is difficult to see without a before picture, but a part of the balcony used to be quite green with algae that had grown on over the years. I took a bleach-water solution and scrubbed alot of it off. I need to do a bit more work before summer gets here, but I like the idea of having a balcony that you don't have to think twice about going barefoot on, and don't track green algae back into the apartment.


This is looking back in toward the apartment. While the balcony is the cool thing in the summer, the stove/fireplace is the nice thing for the winter. Next fall I need to do some research about what kind of wood/sawdust bricks we use in the thing, without spending a fortune.