Settling In and Taking Off

"Are you sure this is the place?", I ask the navigation system. 

The navi assures me it is, and gets out of the car. I follow her over to the gate and then the door, where she rings the bell. 

The two-storey house, in a non-remarkable middle class suburb of Munich is surrounded by lawn and has a double garage. The architecture is different from New Zealand houses of course, but almost typical New Zealand suburbia. Nothing extraordinary there. Only it turns out the house actually contains three flats accessed through a common internal stairway. The first difference from suburban houses I am used to. A more remarkable difference, at least to me, I discover a little later. Hano's parents have lived here for 23 years. As tenants. I don't understand it. In that time house prices in Munich have tripled. Why didn't they buy a place as is common in the land of the brave bush birds? I find out later that not just renting but renting for the long term is common in Germany. Purchasing a house or flat is a considered a very big thing. Something to be done only once in a lifetime. Leaving less than 45% of the German population to own the house or flat they live in. Perhaps this is the reason that in spite of the nice cars, Opel Deltas aside, the Germans, according to a study by the European Central Bank, are some of the poorest people in Europe with the average German household having net assets 33% less than the Spanish and 29% less than the Italians.

The Frau and I are to stay in a room in the top storey of the house. We have a small living room, a kitchen with one hot plate and share the bathroom with Hano. We unload the Delta, relieving its poor aching suspension, and cart everything upstairs to the top storey. I set up the computer and printer in the living room to allow me to search and apply for jobs, while the Frau hunts through the previous day's paper for somewhere to live. With every advertisement she responds to the answer is the same - the flat is gone. So much for spending this first weekend looking at flats.

The same procedure repeats itself over the next two weeks, even when we ring first thing in the morning. Every flat is taken by the time we call. The secret we find out is to buy today's paper the evening before. While we both think it would be a good idea, we worry that by reading tomorrow's news today, we will change the future. This could be a disaster for the lives of the children to be whose names we didn't enter in the family book. 

As a consequence of this enjoyable flat hunting procedure, my newspaper ad German improves. With the Frau translating the various abbreviations and terms, I learn, amongst other things, that:
  • A Bad is a bathroom, not a term used because the landlord is searching for naughty tenants.
  • Parkett is not a small car park, but a wooden floor.
  • Zi is short for Zimmer or room and is not a fuel injected BMW sports car.
  • A Mietmarkt, pronounced "meat markt" is not a market for purchasing steaks, but one for renting accommodation.
  • EBK means Einbauküche, or built in kitchen. The vast majority of flats are rented without a kitchen. When people shift houses, they normally take everything including the kitchen sink with them.
  • A Lift is a lift.
  • A two room flat is not always three rooms. It can have a kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms and a lounge where only the bedrooms and lounge count. Or it could have a kitchen large enough to fit a table, bathroom, toilet, one bedroom, lounge, study where only the last three count, or it could have.

One odd ad does disturb me when I first read it. In fact in the beginning I don't actually believe I have correctly understood. But no the Frau confirms it. The ad states very clearly no Ausländer or foreigners. And, the Frau somewhat shamefully informs me, this is not illegal. Discrimination, while in general frowned upon, is not against the law. At least it wasn’t back in the dark old days of 2001. By sometime in the middle of the following decade Germany passes laws against such discrimination.
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