House Hunt

As I arrived here, I knew I will not be settled till the time I had a house to move into. The first night’s scare of the serviced apartment subdued just a tad and I got used to the very 70’s looking, very cold décor of this place in Frauenaurach (Frau – as in how, enau – as in a-now, rach – as in raakh). The village/town/settlement itself is a small speck on the map ensconced between Herzogenaurach and Erlangen.

The Punjabi broker, who had appeared like a messiah on the phone when I was in India, “helped” me with his set of apartments. These were nothing but BIG rooms with a tiny little kitchen on the right and a tiny little bathroom wedged to the left of the entrance. The “furnishings” included a very cold looking bed a tad too small to fit my six foot frame, a table-chair combo and the basics in the kitchen (or kuche as they say it in German). All of this and an internet connection for 500 bucks a month. It sounded like a deal save for the depressing feel of the “house”.

Next day onwards I was out there at the office telling everyone that I needed a house. I was on the Bulletin Board and I was on the website. Some very nice, pretty, cozy places were “available” but I think I had arrived at a bad time. The place was flooded with interns about to begin their stints and all were looking for houses/flats/apartments (haus/ wohnung). Clearly the search was never ending. I did a couple of go-sees and found a bevy of pretty young things queued up with their dainty smiles. And the house owners always seemed to fall for these though they were going to be renting the place for a shorter duration than me. I was told that shorter duration was anathema for the landlords here, but lo and behold, it no longer was.

One of the places was to die for – a neat living room leading to a very cozy kitchen on the side, an attic bedroom and a walk-in wardrobe plus the very clean “private” bathroom. Yes, private. For some very strange reason these folks rent out places where the bathroom (or WC/badzimmer as it is mentioned in the ads) and/or the kitchen has to be shared with other tenants. Weird! It seems like this comes from the earlier times. The modern houses (and there are very few of these) seem to place premium on privacy and people seem to have woken up to the idea. But as luck would have it, the house went to a petite blonde who was not even there yet but was represented by another German speaking petite blonde! What chance I had – an English speaking alien from far away India!

I tried and tried and tried. Got colleagues to talk to estate agents in German, cajoled others to let me know if they even heard a phrase that had a word like “rent” in it, and then this colleague, God bless his soul and give him twenty kids, introduced me to Mr. Tash.

Mr Tash is a native German and is a housemaster (read apartment in-charge) of a set of buildings on a street called Am Europakanal. He showed me two apartments one on the first floor and the other on the 19th floor. The latter had a fantastic view - the canal down below, the city beyond and the hills further away. I was sold. But, the pretty-young-thing catch persisted. Only after a week of several phone calls, heart burn, anxiety and wait, the owner gave the go ahead. At 450 a month and with only the kitchen furnished, I now have a place to move-in, in the next two weeks. I need to get a list of things to buy and get them moved in before I can move in because even buying furniture is not very straight forward here – you go place an order and the shop people will deliver at-home at their own sweet pace. Gosh!

But I finally have a house.

Missed Neha. She would have liked being here. And she would have liked setting up the place.

:(