Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Our House. In the Middle of our Street.
We have bought a rowhouse! I don't know if it was weeks ago, last week, or a couple of days ago. That's how crazy it's been for Christian and me lately.I can tell you we've been looking for over a year. We've seen lots of great towns in our search -- like Schriesheim [official site]: a picturesque place two towns north of Heidelberg. It's popular for its wine vineyards and castle. We seriously considered buying this great house there that had a window view of the castle -- the house, formerly a Pfarrhaus [I can't for the life of me remember what that translates to in English at this hour] was built in something like 1610. The owner remarked that the stairs were older than the United States. But it is a historical landmark, and that meant scary Euro signs to us (in the form of renovations and such). So, we didn't buy it.
And we were quite serious about a 200 year-old farmhouse in another town about 35-minutes away from where we live now, but it sold while we were in South Africa.
Even though we had our hearts set on a really interesting old place, we started looking at new houses. What is important to the both of us is location. We kept on getting drawn back to the same place over the last year: Schwetzingen. It has a very cool downtown area and not as many (by far) tourists as neighboring Heidelberg. It has a very nice palace with wonderful grounds and we're only 10 minutes away to it and the downtown area by foot.
We're totally freaked out and excited at the same time.
The house is brand new -- we have to pick the flooring, rearrange walls, and all that fun stuff. The thing I've discovered is that sometimes there are just too many freaking choices. A huge thanks goes out to our architect friend, Erin, who patiently helped us choose tiles and wood, gave advice on removing walls, and tirelessly helped me through my noob questions, especially the irritating ones where I could not articulate words beyond "that thingy that holds the stuff". Thanks also to our pals who spent a lot of time looking at house furniture mags and sending them on to us.
The most fun (and aggravating) part of the process for me so far was to select my dream kitchen. More in detail on that, the rowhouse, and street names in future posts...
In the meantime, here's to two of the world's newest debtors!
