Thanks to all of you for your comments on the apartment hunting post. It really was helpful to hear – or rather: read – your thoughts and experiences.

We’ll see what happens now. I’m pretty optimistic, but that’s just my usual self. This is a big step for us and hopefully everything will turn out fine. I might not tell you every detail about what’s happening rightaway because I’m a bit superstitious when it comes to big things like this.

However, I will of course keep you updated. I’m so excited. Are you, too?

Is it possible to find the apartment on the third day of apartment hunting? I mean, we’re not looking for something to rent. We’re looking for a place to buy. Which is a huge decision and I can’t help but thinking that you should spend months looking at places before you find the right thing. But then again, how can you tell that this is not the right place and that there is something better waiting for you, when it feels right and affordable at that? Because maybe it’s exactly the right thing, only you were lucky enough to find it right away.

The thing is, I really don’t know. I don’t know if I just want it to be the right place because I really don’t want to spend months looking and deciding and then looking and deciding again. While it is fun to look at apartments, it’s also nerve-wrecking and stressful.

I can only hope that we’re not jumping in too soon. We’ve been to five apartments now (actually a few more, but that was because there were several apartments for sale in the same house). One was amazingly pretty and big and right next to a bridge and therefore very noisy. The next was nice and big as well, but needed a lot of work. Then yesterday we looked at what might probably be the most beautiful apartment we’ll ever see, but it was a bit more than we wanted to pay and the neighborhood seemed suspicious enough to me. Then today we looked at the Apartment, and here’s the thing: It’s really nothing special. Which might be exactly what I like so much about it. It doesn’t have that one special something that makes it stand out from the rest. But still, it has everything we want, it’s big enough, we wouldn’t have to change a lot, it’s affordable, in a nice enough neighborhood and pretty close to where I work.

Because let’s face it: We’re looking for an apartment to buy in Düsseldorf, which is one of the most expensive cities in Germany. We’ll probably never find the apartment of our dreams in a price range that is acceptable for us. It’s just the question what we can do without.

I’ll keep you posted. We haven’t made a decision yet, and since we’re not in a rush, I’m not sure how long it will actually take.

Remember more than three years ago when I actually tried to get a bit of workout by running. You don’t? Well, that’s not your fault, it didn’t actually last long.

But now it started again. Only now I actually have a reason to run. My company’s trying to get us all to sign up for a 10k in September and I thought that I should give it a try. So yesterday, I did about 1km running laps and this evening I went out and did about a mile running from our house just to and along the Wupper (a small river close to here) and back here.

I mean, it’s not that bad and I don’t mind it really. I just have such a hard time getting my lazy ass up from whatever I’m sitting on and put on my running shoes. Right now I think I should just get up early in the morning and run, but then again I know myself to well to really believe that’s going to happen. In the evenings, yeah, I can see that, as long as it’s nice enough and not raining. So let’s hope I can stick to it this time and actually do a 10k in about three two and a half month.

Booked a much-too-big-for-the-two-of-us apartment: Check.
Booked the flight: Check.
Bought a traveler’s guide: Check.
Got all giddy about going on vacation to a town where there are still dairy bars, for heaven’s sake: Check.

A friend at work is teaching me how to correctly talk in lol-speak. I think I am a very good student, although using bad grammar and wrong spelling on purpose kind of confuses my mind to the point where I’m not sure what I am actually doing and why, dear god, why?

I think my best work today was the following, a mail I wrote after we discussed the impossibility of having cookies because I didn’t bring any:

I
CAN
HAS
PEECHS
HEAR
TODAY.

Don’t worry if you have no idea what I’m talking about. I don’t either, I’m just playing along, being awesomely good at whatever it is I’m doing there.

Me: Oh. I think we can’t go on the 21st of the July.
The husband (rather sleepy): … Huh? … Why not?
Me: Because that’s when the new Harry Potter is released.

I mean, seriously. We really can’t go then, right?

Did I say we were planning to fly over to America this year for our vacation? Well, there’s been a change of plan having mostly to do with my new job and me refusing to do anything that involved extensive planning.

So the husband and I started arguing this evening over dinner about where to go. It kind of went like this: I said Paris, he said Cracow, I said Paris, he said Cracow, I said Paris, he said what about Lisbon, I said why not.

A funny thing happened though when we were checking out flights, hotels and apartments. I checked apartments for Cracow and stumbled upon one that didn’t look half bad. Actually, it looked really really nice. Had nice floors, too, something I always notice, because a big part of Germany still believes in carpets and it makes me sad. So I checked out other apartments in Cracow and suddenly we were calculating the cost of flights and a one-week-stay and without really thinking about it we settled for Cracow for July or August, depending on which apartment we want and when it is available.

So, if all goes right we’ll probably book our vacation this weekend. And if we’re not too busy around October, with… let’s say… buying an apartment¹ or doing other crazy stuff, I might also get my trip to Paris². Because that is where I puked in front of my husband for the very first time. Oh, sweet memories.

—
¹ No, there are no plans at all yet. We want to buy an apartment, but we haven’t even looked at a single one yet. I’m just saying, sometimes things happen really fast in your life and you never know.
² Because we are stupid Europeans and can fly to every beautiful European city in no time at all, partly to make you jealous, but mostly because we just can.

My other computer, the one that is not cute, portable, white and shiny decided it was time to have a couple of nervous breakdowns again. Now I can’t predict when it’s going to freeze or just plain die on me out of nothing. What I can predict is that it will happen, sometimes three seconds after it rebooted, sometimes after a few hours. I don’t know what triggers it, some virus, bad software or just seriously screwed-up hardware, but it happens again and again and again and again.

This had happened before last winter until I decided to just make a clean cut and reinstall Windows. It helped. Until about three days ago. That’s a little more than six months of careless computer fun without unexplainable crashes. And now I wonder: Should I be angry about that or just happy that at least it lasted that long?

Besides, I have this cute, portable, white and shiny wonderful thing here that lets me do everything as long as I want without failing. So, it’s not that bad after all.

How wrong is it that when Cristina gets freaked out about how Burke has arranged his books using the Dewey Decimal System on Grey’s Anatomy I actually think: „Hey, what a great idea.“

I shouldn’t get my own library room. I’d probably go insane.