Searching for an Apartment

I apologize that the posts lately have been about stuff so long ago. The past couple of weeks have been consumed by the apartment search. Here are some important things to know about finding an apartment in Berlin:
1. 95% of the places will not respond if you email them, so you must call and speak to someone (in German).
2. The viewings tend to be between 2:30 and 6 pm Monday-Friday, which is not ideal if you work an hour out of the city. This is because a lot of the places don't have overhead lighting, so you have to view when there's sunlight.
3. You will not necessarily get an apartment if you are interested in it. There is an application process, wherein the leasing agent collects a bunch of applications and presents them to the landlord, who then chooses his/her favorite.
4. You can wait weeks to find out whether you will be offered apartment.
5. As a result of 3 and 4, you must apply to many places and see even more.
6. Pretty much all of this is in German.

In short, the past couple of weeks have been pretty stressful, but we will be moving into an awesome new apartment next weekend and my comfortableness with speaking German has improved considerably as a result of all of the cold calls and appointments. We've also now visited a lot more of the city.

The Bird

A couple of weeks ago we went out to eat with some people from work. A French guy was heading back to France and chose to have his last meal here: http://thebirdinberlin.com/. Yes, it's that good. To be fair, in America it would just be a solid burger joint with great service and a good beer selection, but here, it's heaven. The burgers come with delicious hand-cut fries and are served on effectively English Muffins. Anyway, the highlight of the night was when all the guys decided to try this hot sauce: http://www.insanechicken.com/da-bomb-hot-sauce/. I had never seen four grown men crying together before. They also had to spend 10 minutes outside cooling down. I guess that's what happens when you eat something with a Scoville rating of 120,000.

Germany Unity Day

October 3 is Germany Unity Day, which means I didn't have work. Instead, we met up with some people from work and had a barbecue in the Tiergarten. We brought Josie along and we all had a great time.

Just like with the 5th of July in the US, only about half of the people made it to work the next day.

Boat Tour

In Bruges, we wandered around, visited some museums and too a boat tour of the city. On the tour we saw this very comfortable and adorable dog:


From Bruges, we took the train back to Brussels, and then to the airport and got in late that night. Loki was very happy to see us. The next morning we picked up Josie from the kennel, and she was also quite happy to see us. Her lack of exhaustion after spending three days there made us feel that she didn't get to play enough and that we will not return there.

Hot Chocolate

After wandering around for a while, we stopped for some hot chocolate. It was delicious!

King Albert I Park

To get from the Bruges train station to the main part of town, we walked through a beautiful park. It was made even more beautiful by the morning mist and sunshine through the trees. Here are some pictures Keith took:

Heading to Bruges

By the end of our second day in Brussels, we had decided that a change of scenery would be nice. Not only had we seen most of what we wanted to in Brussels, but the marathon was the next day and we did not want to deal with that. So we went to Bruges. Since we're both 25 and under, tickets were only 6.50 each way. Pretty awesome.

On our way to Bruges, we saw bike parking at a train station. Wow.

Making Chocolate

We went to a presentation/tour/demonstration at one of the chocolateries. The guy giving the presentation was incredible - he said everything three times (French, Dutch, English) and with little jokes in each language. There was a demonstration part where volunteers were able to try making chocolates - and Keith was one of the volunteers!

Manneken Pis

Manneken Pis is an iconic Brussels fountain, which is odd because it's of a naked young boy urinating.


Some days they put him in costumes.


Every store in the area sells some sort of Manneken Pis paraphernalia.

Our second day in Brussels was not as idyllic as our first. We tried going on a bus tour, but it was terrible. Just awful. The bus driver tried to not accept our tickets bought online and pretended to not speak English to us (even though we had heard him speaking to the group of Brits in front of us with little difficulty), my headset didn't work so we had to share, the driver missed a bunch of stops and didn't follow the proscribed path, and the audio tour was minimal and incorrect. We got off at the second stop.

After that we made it to the Grand Place and all of the touristy stuff around there. It was so loud and packed with people that we didn't spend much time there. However, we had to stay in the area because of a chocolaterie tour and demonstration that we were going to attend nearby that afternoon.

Moules and Frites!

The first night for dinner, we thought we were going to a place with delicious food and excellent beer selection, but it turned out that the place no longer served food. Luckily we had passed a couple of good looking places on our way to the initial location, so we ate at one of them. I had delicious moules vin blanc with frites and Keith had smoked salmon and pasta.

One thing that I forgot to mention earlier was the difficulty that we had in getting Metro tickets. The ticket machines only take Belgian debit cards and none of the ticket windows were open excluding the one at the central train station. With all of the international travelers, I can't believe that the ticket machines don't at least take other European debit cards.