For my first six weeks in Magdeburg I have lived in a (temporary) gorgeous apartment with a huge bathtub, a fantastic view, and a whole bathroom just for Sophie. I managed to negotiate a great bargain on rent for this place, but it also came with free TV and utilities too. So, when looking for a new place, I assumed I would be taking a big step down. Even searching for new accomodations in the U.S. can be a grueling undertaking, as everyone knows, but add in the difficulty of a language barrier and you have the potential for disaster.
When surfing the internet for available apartments, I found only ads and sites in German, of course. Had my German been good enough to call and contact the landlords in the first place, I still would have had the obstacle of not owning a phone with which to call anyone. On top of that, apartments here are different than apartments in the U.S. I discovered this when I visited my first empty apartment and was less than impressed. On the way to the apartment the landlord kept telling me about the refrigerator, which struck me as odd. What was so great about a fridge? And was the apartment really so shabby that the fridge was the most exciting thing? Upon entering the apartment, I realized the fridge was a selling point because it was the only thing in the kitchen. There was no stove, no microwave, and only a couple of cupboards. I did not tell the landlord I thought this was really strange because I did not know how to broach the subject politely and my German is no where near good enough for tact.
The manager of the EU project I work for explained to me that apartments that are unfurnished (unlike my temporary one, which was furnished completely) usually apartments in Europe do not come with a kitchen. Sometimes they don't even come with light fixtures, and they never come with closets. This meant that when I moved, I needed to buy myself a whole kitchen. Those of you who know how domestic I am and how much I love cooking are probably laughing right now. And really it would be the perfect excuse for never cooking--to not even own a kitchen. But that is not very practical, even for me.
So I scoured the city for suitable places to live and mostly came up empty-handed, but my trusty project manager helped me out again and we found a few apartments worth looking at. There was even one where the previous owner was offering to sell me her furniture, which seemed great! We went to look at the place right away, but when we buzzed to be let into the building, no one said anything over the intercom. The door opened anyway. We were greeted on the other side of the door not by the girl who owned the apartment, but a cheery Jack Russel terrier. He ran up the stairs to the first landing and we followed. He repeated the same antic twice more and then ran inside one of the apartments. This was the place we had come to look at.
The current ownder's incredible interior decorating in addition to the hard wood flooring, a furnished kitchen, a balcony, and a central location convinced me. This would be a great place to live. During the course of our conversation though, it became clear we were visiting the wrong apartment. The very polite owner was indeed moving out, but was taking everything with her, kitchen and all. When we spoke to the owner of the correct apartment though, we discovered she wanted 2,400Euros for her furniture. Impossible.
After another four days of searching, I got an email from the owner of the Jack Russel terrier and the adorable apartment. She had decided to leave the whole kitchen, and the rent was LESS than previously advertised. A few days later, thanks to a curious little dog, I signed a contract to make the adorable apartment, kitchen and all, my own. (The Jack Russel wasn't part of the deal though--he left with his owner.) Today I got the key and the landlord even put my name on the mailbox outside the building. It reads erroneously, "Akermann." Every German who has tried to spell my last name is convinced that there should be another "n" at the end. To top it off, the terrier's owner and her pal who met with me to sign the papers offered to stop by and check up on me to help me with things like getting electricity, internet and more furniture. So I have acquired an apartment and possibly some new friends as well.
Not everything is going quite so smoothly as the apartment deal though. I have been sitting through a large number of meetings. I hate meetings. The meetings and all the running around town searching to keep a roof over my head have been cutting into the time I should be spending with children and animals. I feel I have not see quite enough of either for the past two weeks. Our last teammate has finally arrived from Malaysia though, and since she will be spending her whole work day with the children, that frees me up for a little more animal time each day (at least that is the plan).
Despite my occasional absences, the children are finally warming up to me and growing accustomed to hearing English. The children are really picky about who they like, and it took me a whole five weeks to win them over. The animals were much easier. My favorite animal this week is Remy the rat. He looks like a big brown sewer rat, but is amazing in action. He is trained to do things that I would never have thought to train a rat to do. To demonstrate his intelligence for audiences, he sits on a platform that has a tiny bucket on a string hanging down. The trainer puts a treat in the tiny bucket and he pulls the string up until he can reach the bucket and the treat. It is not exactly a natural behavior, but it is neat to watch. When he is finished with this, his trainer taps her chest and Remy takes a huge (for a rat) flying leap from his platform onto his trainer. Seriously, he launches about three feet. What amazes me the most about Remy though, is the precise stimulus control the trainers have over him (for non-animal trainers, this just means he always does a behavior when asked and never does it when he hasn't been asked). When he is places in front of the obstacle course that he is trained to run, he doesn't move until his trainer cues him. Since I spent more time that one would have thought necessary to train a couple of rats to run at all, under any circumstances, let alone on cue, I marvelled. I will try to figure out how Remy was trained, but since I am still learning how to say things like, "yesterday I gave the anteater an avacado," discussing the intricacies of training is a little beyond me.
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