Looking at apartments

Yesterday, we looked at 3 apartments and one house for rent. The first place, in Grunwald, was beautiful, elegant, and icy cold with white marble everywhere. I believe it was currently occupied although you couldn't tell. There was only 1 small closet in the entire place, so who ever lives there must own only 4 pieces of clothing. This 'no to little' storage theme played out at all the places we saw.

The second place was a house in Ottobrun, an end-unit of a building. Very nice, open floor plan; split level with several floors; fireplace; basement room; beautiful sun room and big kitchen. The only drawback it the very suburban, un special neighborhood that is far from the S-bahn, and with no shopping close by.

The third place was in Bogenhausen, a neighborhood of Munich city. Also a 'house', a duplex. Funky, for example you couldn't stand up straight in the bedroom due to the sloped ceilings. Shared backyard with the neighbor who is the landlord. I noticed a huge ashtray filled to the brim with butts, on the table on his side. Eeech. It was on a busy street, no shopping nearby, miles from the train and had no garage. So no to that one.

The final place was an apartment in Sendling, also a neighborhood of Munich. We both loved the neighborhood. But the place was the funkiest we'd seen, on the 6th floor, with miniscule kitchen (4 cupboards in total, and the counter extended only a foot beyond the sink.) There was a great rooftop terrace, with a tub and a shower (and the current tenant's bath products! He obviously bathes out there!) But also no garage, and very far on the other side of the city from where Logan works. Big traffic jams, daily, on the route.

The agent was a cute 24 year-old who failed to meet us at the first appointment, her GPS had her snarled up in detours and one-way streets. Our map got us there fine. So we met her at the second place. We asked about another apartment that we had wanted to see, and her reply was that the tenant had just moved in & didn't want to show it. (Yet, it's up for rent again soon.) We went in her car to the 3rd and 4th place. And she dumped us at the last place. In the rain. So we schlepped to the nearest U-Bahn and made our way back to Ottobrun and the car. I think we need a pit bull type for an agent instead of the kitten we got.

So that was a bit discouraging. Logan to me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near where he works, it was wonderful. I said 'grazi' to the waiter, who asked me in Italian if I spoke it. 'Poco', we both said at the same time. Later he asked if we were American. Yes, and from where? Logan said California, and the waiter pointed to me & said 'New York'. I said yes, and he said he knew it, that's how I know some Italian! That was fun. Great meal & they even had a no-smoking section.

Oh - I have heard that the restaurants in Italy have now gone non-smoking! And I read that in Sweden, that just happened on June 1. Ireland went a year ago. So the non-smoking fad is spreading, albeit slowly.

Here's some from the past few days. When I can't get on line, I write offline so I can maximize my time connected. I did try to put pics up, using Picasa (sorry, Karen) and Hello, but it seems that you must be signed in to Hello to see the pics. So I think I will load the pics on my data stick, get to an internet cafe and upload them either to Flickr or put them somewhere on caroleamos.com so that people can see them.