This week was an adventure in Berlin! I went there to look at apartments. I didn’t realize how competitive the market was. Everybody told me that it was really easy to find housing in Berlin, apartments are plentiful, etc. etc.
They’re not wrong, but the housing market moves incredibly fast here and you have to be very agressive and ON IT. It’s also incredibly selective - most places had more than 10 people seriously interested.*
In the beginning I was rather clueless about everything so I was basically running around the city to remote and/or sketchy places, enduring men peeing in their own gardens (though apparently this is not uncommon in berlin) , sketchy men following me around after visiting WGs asking me where I live and way more smokers than I care to remember.
Michelle, my MHC comrade with whom I was staying, was an incredible help. I also got a chance to visit her workplace, creative commons. They do work with intellectual property and are growing rapidly – very exciting for her!
We discussed a vexing cultural difference. when germans are showing their guests out, they wait for the guest to open the door, while in the USA the host is supposed to open the door. This means that I had many long and awkward discussions by the door before I left these apartments, thinking people were going to pop some major question.
*I had the oddest and most confusing rejection for an apartment. I had gone on Sunday night, and the guy said that they were going to have a set time where all the current flatmates met with all the interested people. He suggested I come by either on Tuesday or Thursday. I called him on Tuesday to set something up that evening. He said I couldn’t come Tuesday or Wednesday because those sessions were full. I could come Thursday, but since they were deciding Friday, they will likely consider candidates from Tuesday/Wednesday, and not so much Thursday. But the T/W meetings were full, so I couldn’t attend them. I think he was just trying to be nice, but he ended up sounding like a real moron.
back to classes. here's a picture of our building in marburg:
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