Another reason to love Philadelphia airport

Free wifi!

You are located at:
Philadelphia International Airport
8500 Bartram Ave.Philadelphia, PA, 19153

They could use a few more outlets, however. Newark is much better about outlets, they're usually on the poles, with plenty available. With Philly you're usually camped out in random corners on the floor, or I see a few people tucked into them in the airport eateries.

So it's been a short visit back to the US for the 4th and a week of 90+ temps in Philly.

Guest #3 - Biddy the horsewoman

As I came back from New friend Ian's house after guest #2, I had a request the next day from Airbnb, another of the homestay websites. I had only put the most basic details on this one, such as photos, and this was my first guest with it.

The request was from Biddy who was coming to a horse class being held at one of the farms near to my corner of Essex. It was the weekend before Dubai, but the flat was still in super clean condition so I decided to take the reservation.

Biddy wasn't here so much, really only the overnight as the horse classes were all day Saturday and Sunday. However, I came home to some lovely flowers--such a great view from my entrance upon my return:

In addition, she managed to break one of my (ultra cheap) Turkish tea glasses from Germany that I keep as wine glasses. She very graciously left a 5 pound note to pay for a replacement, which was well beyond anything I would have expected, considering they sell in six packs for below 5 EUR. However, I left her with thanks, nice feedback, and a promise of a discount the next time around if she gets a chance to come back for further horse classes.

Overall I was pleased with Airbnb, payment through the site was quick and their take appears to be lower than Crashpadder's, so I plan to fill in more details on their site to hopefully have more guests to visit.

Update on the crashpadder guests #1 Luisa & Peter

I've been a little busy for studying for an exam two weeks back and I'm realizing that I missed to finish the story about how it turned out with the lent out flat, and now I'm on my third guest already, so I'd better get moving.


You may recall, I had an idea to make a little spare cash, by lending out the flat. With a bit of trepidation I handed over the keys to Peter (of Luisa and Peter), as Luisa had taken a potty break on the train and then missed to get off the train as it was so crowded. However, Peter seemed harmless enough and managed to get off at the right stop with assurances that he would find Luisa again, so keys out of hand, off I went on a Friday while my corner of Essex started to heat up with incoming festival crowds.

Upon my return my flat was in absolutely pristine condition. It looked the same as when I go away to the weekend to new friend Ian's and return on Sunday, except that
1. The sheets, pillowcases and duvet cover were waiting next to the washing machine and the used towels were hanging up to dry
2. Someone left food in the fridge for me: 1 egg, some oj, candy, chocolate, doritos, salsa
3. Luisa and Peter had left a lovely card for me on the desk:






In case you're wondering about the 'funny, lovely & helpful notes' (Luisa teaches English as a second language so well written there!)--I had left little helpful post-its as their train was late. So I penned some messages, for example:

I have a collection of hotel shampoos and soaps. To make it feel more like a holiday I had set them all out in a basket, but I didn't want them to think that they couldn't use the normal ones standing in the shower, so the post-it next to them said:

• 'Use us! Pick me! No me!' (said all of the little soap and shampoo bottles). Or use the normal size ones in the shower, whichever you prefer.

Or in the kitchen, I had left a note in relation to the garbage, because the garbage area has a special key and has had all sorts of drama with people leaving it unlocked and the department of health being called out to go through any rubbish not in the dumpster, as well the key is perhaps made of sterling silver, because copies of lost ones cost 50 GBP. So the note said:

• The rubbish bin is only reachable by a series of secret handshakes and passwords and only when the moon and its comets align. Therefore, leave any garbage here or tied up on the terrace and I'll take care of it upon my return, assuming that the comets are in a good mood about getting in line!

Yeah, I amuse myself.

The big surprise to me, however, was the giftcard that was with the card. I had just assumed it was one of those little 'thank you' cards that people sometimes get over here for various promotions--like donating a marks & spencers item to oxfam gets you a 5 GBP voucher, etc. Imagine my surprise when I went to use it and found that they had put 20 GBP on it. So I will definitely be blocking the flat for their reservation next year if they come again to the festival.

In the week after the festival I've already had an inquiry for next year, someone wanting to book early, good grief.

So overall, experience #1 was a winner. :-)

The blustery winds bring greetings

While it's still August in the UK, it's been crazy windy and cool. It feels like October and summer is officially over. It's been so windy that I've been keeping Slocombe the cat inside; even though she's easily over 10 pounds in her pudgy state, I could see her being picked up and wisked away in this crazy wind.

As you may recall, my mother sends greetings from heaven to my balcony on special days. With this wind I imagine she finds it easy to lauch things up. As it was her birthday today, she made sure to send somehing up, to acknowledge that I was thinking of her:
This was a catalog, and a heavy one a that, at least 100 pages, and it wasn't here yesterday. She positioned this one next to my lettuce, on the page as you see it. Apparently she sends her love through bic pens to me. Considering the paper floating around in my corner of Essex (chat line adverts, get out of debt fast, etc), this is quite impressive.

Step 1 in the massive declutter & clean-up: remove, release

As mentioned over here in The Big Declutter, things were all a flutter here this month. It seems a little amazing, I pared down everything before I left DE, and here we are all over again...with too much after only 18 months.

When I need to clean, I see extra stuff as a barrier that needs to be dusted, moved, hidden, cleaned, etc, and end the end is useless, extra work. It sorta stacks up until I have an impetus to move it, although, I think it would behoove me to do this once per year if I can't improve at it. So what moved this time?

1. ebay - I sold off the excess of items that were absolutely useless to me. What went?

• My law books from last year's course. May as well sell them while they're still fresh, and I need a whole different set for this year's course.
• Camper brand shoes that I bought secondhand. I love the idea of Camper shoes, the style, the look, they're of great quality, but somehow they just don't wear right on me.
• Clothes that I no longer need or want. In the UK we have stand-along wardrobes like in Germany, so no fixed closets. I don't like when they operate like overstuffed sausages, so there was a culling of the masses. I did an intial run through and then left the box there for two weeks as I ran into random items, in they went. The end result was a box lot.
• books - I send my already read pile to D's mom, but I know some of them won't be in her style. Most of them come from Oxfam or the like, so I'd drop them back off, if closer. For the more recent, lighter ones (less postage), I listed them for sale.
• a mirror and hardware - purchased early on, this was a DIY nightmare that required a phD in home improvement to get the hidden mirror clasps onto the wall. Sold in 'pick up only' mode to a local couple.

So how much did I get for things that were just getting in my way?
--> 37 GBP (45 EUR/57 USD) was my final profit after ebay fees etc.

2. the recycleables - the UK is not as good as Germany as far as recycling goes, at least in my corner of Essex. Paper recycling is a 20 minute walk away, plastics need to be carted along to Ian's house who has plastics recycling, and glass and cans are at least five minutes away. So I end up with full bags of these things as none of them are on my way to town, all are special trips. So mountains of items went out the door.

3. Excess packaging - I find myself squirrelling away bubble wrap and the like because it was so expensive in DE and isn't much better here. Fortunately the pile was thinned so much by the outgoing ebay packages.

4. The unsold ebay items - off to the charity shop. There's some kind of animal charity down the street that is staffed by volunteers. This one is two minutes from my house and seems to have customers who are down on their luck and can afford the 1 pound t shirts and 20 cent tea cups. It's a very nice place so any auction that didn't win found a resting place there.

Getting the things out the door put me in the right mood to get started.
Need some inspiration? There's a lot of great blogs right now who are chronicling their decluttering activities:

From close to home in the expat community G is hard at work.

Downsizing is a great read in the archive, even though his year of work is now complete.

However, his cousin has picked up the downsizing challenge in Downsizing Too.

And of course Katie in Making This Home is doing lots of clutter challenge activities as well.

How to declutter and create a beautiful space in 30 days

In case you were wondering where I've been, I've been a little, ahem, busy with the above.

Some backgound--there is perhaps an opportunity opening up that I could be in a slightly different location, for a temporary period. With that in mind, I would need to think about renting out the flat, or getting a house sitter maybe. So on that basis, I decided to give renting a test drive, to see how it would make me feel about my space and what direction to go for a longer term plan. Here comes the decluttering bit...

My space is currently very--'lived in'. Since I work from home most of the time I have a tendency to have work and career related ideas everywhere. It's been one merry-go-round after another of tests and certificates and presentations. First it was the driver's licence in Feb after a few months practice and studying, then I had another two in April that didn't happen due to the ash cloud. One of them happened three weeks ago (a pass), the other make-up is in two weeks...so 'housekeeping skills' has been low on the agenda, and this new location option gave it a boost up. So then what? I fell upon the idea that my motivation for getting the place up to snuff would come from renting it out to complete strangers.

I know some declutter sites have various ideas to motivate you like:

• Imagine that you're going to move overseas, what is really important to you? (been there, done that)
• Imagine that you suddenly die and your relatives are left to sift through your belongings. (so what would it matter than, if I'm already dead, besides, my relatives already know that I can border on slobdom.)

My motiviation-->rent the place out to total strangers for a short period, and make that period soon enough in the future that I would need to crack down and clean it up quickly, rather than a long, drawn out process.

No really.

Some background--I've had plenty of couchsurfers over, hospitality club people, etc. Granted, they're staying a night for free so expectations are lower. However, it gave me the impression that I'm comfortable to have people in my space. Shocking behavior for an only child, I realize. I believe living in Germany socialized me somewhat to more of a community lifestyle.

So there are a few sites out there, that are basically extensions of the couchsurfing idea, but that you pay to stay at someone's place, rather than staying at a hotel. I had picked up on this idea from a New York Times article on the topic.

So I chose a future date where there was an event happening in my corner of Essex and I put up an ad about 6 weeks before it. At 4 weeks before it, a young couple were in contact, and they booked up and paid via the site. So I had 30 days to get the place into tip top shape. Sidenote: I have ads on a few of the sites the Times' article mentions. In this specific instance, I used Crashpadder. If you would like further nitty gritty details of the transaction or to friend me there or view my flat description, if you have my email send me a note, or send a note to this one: phillygirl06 @ the opposite of coldmail.com.

So I broke apart the 30 days and went after the largest items first. Specifically, that was the impetus behind my recent painting mission. :-)

So many tasks I had been sitting on now had a reason to get done, and a self-imposed deadline.

So that will probably be the focus of the next few blog posts, the flurry and activity of getting things done and how they turned out in the end. No before photos were taken to protect the innocent. ;-)

and the painting continues

The cumbersome part, to clear the bookshelves and then move the away from the walls to get behind them is now in process. Here Slocombe surveys the room from on top of a moved bookshelf, because a cat must do such things, of course. Fortunately I had just dusted the top off or someone may have done that for me instead. ;-)

So this is low tack (read: expensive) medium blue masking tap lining the edges and they've now been down in the blue/grey colour. So the next step will be to colour inside of the lines and then to peel off the tape.

The end is in sight, for the walls, at least. The ceiling is still to come...

The painting progress continues

This wall was previously the 'delivered' new build off-white color. As the 'new build' was 2.5 years when I bought it, at over 3.5 years the walls were beginning to show their age.

The blueish grey color serves to bring more of the outside in as it matches and contrasts with the various temperaments of the sky outside.

And now, off to a hot bubble bath and an early bedtime.

In progress - painting the living room

This is what I've been up to, day two:

I'm doing the living room in a light blue/grey color. So the outlining is done on this wall, now just to fill in tomorrow night.

The frugal side of this:

The paint come from the discontinued markdown shelf at homebase. Apparently environmentally friendly paints were not a big seller. When I googled them online people seemed pleased enough with them. At half the orginal sale price, I was extremely pleased with them.

But what if you later decide that you need more of the same paint, you won't be able to get it?

To test this theory, I went to look at the bathroom and kitchen paints I purchased and used last year. Sure enough--they revamped the color offerings and my colors are not being sold there. Deeper and darker colors appear to be the new trend.

So I bought enough to make sure that I would get the room done with some left over. :-) As I'm only picking this up after work each evening until it gets dark out, it will be a project of a few days.

More photos tomorrow, with tomorrow's progress.

The painted bathroom

Do you remember, last year I mentioned about painting the kitchen with my Germany couch surfer? I had done the bathroom also around that time, but still the ceiling remained. And then, the mirror finally went up and the new one was smaller than the fitting holes left on the wall, so those were finally filled in and painted. So then I may as well do a general touch up of the walls again, so I did. ;-)

And now it is finally finished:

Heated towel rack on the right. I have a 'modern' UK bathroom (=tile rather than carpeted bathroom floor!)

In the mirror you can see the reflection of the world map shower curtain. The male visitors usually comment positively upon the sink upon seeing it, no idea why:

The sink is tiny like the rest of the bathroom...and the rest of the flat. Although I do have a bath/shower, as opposed to the 'shower only' that many new flats in this area offer. The bathroom is on a sharp triangle angle; it doesn't actually feel small because of that.

Here's a close of of 'surf's up duck', behind him is the painted wall. The little tiles were pre-existing.

The newly painted ceiling is 'milky white', so not much to see there. :-)
One thing done, a few hundred more to go...

Behold, the breakfast bar

After much research and hemming and hawing on the room layout and then losing auctions on ebay, we are finally here:

My flat has one living room, one kichen and one bedroom. The kitchen is too tiny for eating, so that left only the living room.

The clever idea was to get the seats above the window, so as to enjoy the downtown Essex view and the morning coffee with the sunshine. The difficult part was finding a table and seats which were tall enough.

The height of the window to the floor is 115 cm, which is pretty tall. Many breakfast bars are around 90 cm, too short. This one is 105 cm which works out pretty well.

This is a standard Ikea set. I couldn't bring myself to schlep over to Ikea (45 min away), and trundle through the big store. So I bought this one on ebay for a fraction of the cost, and closer.

Ikea sells the table for 99 GBP and the stools are on sale for 10.99 each. Instead, I got all three pieces for 35 GBP, the only bidder in the auction.

So far, so good. We'll see what the cat thinks when she comes home from visiting The House of Treats as this has been 'her' window.

pardon me, Germany

After years of griping while living there about having to go down to the cellar to do a load of laundry (I always lived 2 or more floors upwards), i can now see a bit of a benefit.

Last week the washing machine connection had a slow leak and the girl downstairs is away a lot and came home to a leaked upon ceiling (in three places spread over two rooms). Thankfully, building insurance will cover anything over the 250 GBP deductible.

Oh how I know miss the subterranean dungeon of washing machines/dryers with concrete floors slanted toward a central drainage point where leaks happened with some frequency but the only issue was a soapy wet floor...

Praktisch!
Logisch!

The painted kitchen

You'll probably recall, I had a German visitor a few months back. In the meantime I had a nice guy visit from Slovenia too. (My location is very convenient to the train and bus station in my town.) I gave the German an open invite to pop round whenever she needed a place for the night, so she stopped in once or twice as she was traveling through. In addition--she was doing some major walking (20 miles one day!) and ill-equipped for the task by having only a regular backpack and plastic sacks. So I lent her my camping rucksack with the agreement that she would come back around before leaving to drop it back.

Someone asked me, 'how do you know that she'll actually give it back?'

A. Because she's German and she said so. I put a lot of faith into German honesty.

B. Because she asked to leave some items here which she didn't need for the rest of her trip-mainly library books which she'll need to return to Germany.

And even if she didn't come back, it was my older rucksack which I keep for secondary purposes, the one which has been through a lot, so if it went on to never return that might not be so bad.

So she ended up coming round on Wednesday night, at the end of all of her adventures. She was out of cash and had seen enough of England at this point and was mentally preparing to jump back into school and a new flat on Saturday, after seven weeks of being on the move in the UK.

Since she last visited me I had window blinds installed and had bought my ebay bookshelves. In addition, I painted the bathroom. After painting the bathroom, upon removing all of the tape, I just put it directly up in the kitchen, my next painting project. I have been busy with work, etc. though, so I didn't get further than that on this project, although I had everything bought and ready to go.

As a thank you for letting her stay here and for something to do, she asks if I would like her help to paint the kitchen. I have relatives who are 22 in the US--if they asked to help paint something I'd probably hesitate a moment as it could be more trouble that it's worth. However--I knew that as a 22 year old German, she would have had YEARS of painting experience. (Which, of course, she did.) So I hesitated perhaps half a second before accepting her kind offer.

As expected--this got done the German way, immediately after dinner we began. Jump right in and start taping and preparing, no hestitation, just get 'er done. Within two hours we were cleaning up. She was an expert at wrapping the radiator and lightswitches in plastic and I couldn't be more pleased. I would never have even hinted at a Hospitality Club or Couchsurfing guest to have to assist me with anything, so this was such a pleasant surprise to have the offer.

Here is the before photo. The chosen color is the 2nd from the left, a slightly mossy green.

The after shot is a little washed out to be able to see the color. However, to get an idea--it's matching the lightest tiles here:

Frugal clothes drying - the roof terrace clothesline

One of the things which caused me to fall in love with this flat is the outside roof terrace space, although primarily I was thinking of the gardening and bbq prospects...

Here in Europe I've lived in various temporary accomodation over the past six plus years, or visited the places of colleagues. As most have been flats and not houses and most have been older places, seeing a clothes dryer has been a rare sight. My first UK company provided place had a combination washer/dryer, but it didn't dry so well...

I had one place in Germany with a dryer-it was in the shared cellar and I was on the top floor so washing clothes and then trekking down to put them into the dryer and then remembering to get them before they sat too long and wrinkled was a hassle. Although I couldn't complain--my two colleagues in company provided housing had shared dryers; one had allocated days/times in which it could be used, the other shared with four other washing machines so one had to move their clothes quickly from this one dryer lest someone either complain or take it upon themselves to fold your clothes.

My new place came with the existing washing machine included (in the kitchen). I like having the washing machine here in the flat as opposed to the German option of in the shared cellar. It is a perfectly fine machine which should last a few more years, but it is a washing machine only, not a combination washer/dryer. (I don't have a dishwasher either, but that is a separate post!) I must say, I do like the UK standard of white goods staying in the flat, as opposed to the German norm where they tend to move with you.

As I moved into the new place and was looking at the space, I pondered whether or not a clothesline would possibly work, mainly because I was spacing out my outlay of cash (the trashpicked German drying rack didn't make the move), as well as that I figured that line drying outside would allow the clothes to dry faster.

I gave it a spin on the corner of the back terrace, the one which gets afternoon and evening sun:

Here is the view from that corner. The neighbors below have a great outside area which they rarely use:

This direction is actually stores: two hair salons, a dentist, a pizza place, a pet store, etc, so I don't feel that I'm influencing the view as this back space is never used.

While standing in the corner, here is the view of the rest of the terrace (before the garden was established):

The verdict after 1,5 months:

-so far so good, but it's summertime. I like the freshness of clothes drying outside, and I do get a good breeze up here, so I think in general they dry faster than they would inside.

-I'm definitely saving any electricity costs associated with a dryer, which is a good thing, as well as any envirnomental costs, nevermind the cost of the machine itself.

The negatives?

-It is the UK, so it tends to rain a lot, and often unexpectedly. So my clothes could dry while I'm in the office during the day but by the time I get home and there's a sudden rainfall I'm stuck to give them time to dry again. Doing the one set of bedding involves excessive planning and weather watching. ;-)

Would I change to a washer/dryer if I could once this washer wears out?

Eh, maybe. I wasn't so impressed with the only UK washer/dryer I used, and air drying seems to be more gentle on my clothes and more a habit now, (similar to how having a dryer is a standard habit in the US).

Friday evening

Will be having a glass of Spanish wine on the roof terrace, because it still feels like Spain here...

Still continuing to get things in order and watching them slowly fall into place.

A glorious, sunny day

In England. One would expect that to be a bit of an oxymoron perhaps. I'm enjoying immesely the roof terrace and mentally contemplating future garden enhancements. I'm chalking this year up to a learning year. So far the real winners have been the strawberries so I'm considering more of those next year. The potatos have been brilliant in leaf action, but some of them went to close to the top and reached sunlight so they turned green. I think I need some larger containers next year if they are going to be so impressive again.

I'm adjusting to life in the city, having spent the past few months in the suburb about 35 minute from here on foot. I don't have parking so this takes a bit of getting used to, as there is plenty of free parking withing 15-20 minutes by foot. And really, the 30 min walk each way to and from the office is probably much better than driving in any event.

The bathroom closet shelf and hallway mirror and a mattress were finally purchased last night. Putting the shelving together (an industrial grey metal unit) took the remainder of last night's free time as a team effort, so tonight will be devoted to putting the things on the shelves. I probably won't stockpile as much of my 'US medical goods' here as I did in Germany, mainly because there are a few more items more readily available here, that I don't need to cart them in from America. Although, with the prices of things, it may behoove me to do so.

Overall, things are shaping up into a good summer...

The new flat

When I first arrived in Essex in February I was fortunate that I could stay with a work colleague so I was able to check out the area and take my time in finding a place to live. A six month lease is standard, so I decided to try to find a furnished flat in the area from the office for six months and then to give further thought to the topic after that, once I had a better idea of where I wanted to live.

When I lived in Germany, renting a flat was easy. In the tiny town of B one looks in the newspaper or on the bulletin board at the office; to accept a flat one signs a contract and puts down a deposit of first and last month's rent. Perhaps because it was a small town, it was rather uncomplicated. I had no credit, reference or employment check. I signed on the dotted line and moved in.

Upon arriving in the UK I found out that it was a little harder to rent a flat.
1. I needed a landlord reference. My very nice landlady spoke absolutely no English, at all.
2. Because I had no credit history in the UK, I would be forced to pay the entire six month lease up front.

The other option would have been to try to find a sublet or a room in a private house that would perhaps be less stringent about the above standards. I found an interesting place in the center of town, furnished and with parking and all utilities excluding television and internet, which would have come to the princely sum of 5000 GBP. I had decided to move forward with it, but we ran into a bit of a snafu in that they needed to independently collect the reference of my German landlady but no one on staff spoke German. (sigh.)

Around this the amazing thought of 'something is easier in Germany than in the UK' crossed my head. While I was waiting for them to find a German speaker, I became curious and looked at how much it would cost to buy a place in the building where I would be renting. (too much!) I looked up how much the flat I would be renting had been purchased for (over 200k, ouch!). On a whim, I started to look through the real estate ads online to see what I would be able to afford when the time came.

My requirements are not necessarily many, but they are very specific and non-negotiable. I've had the same ones for about five years or so:
1. Must not be on the ground floor.
2. Must get a lot of light-->even more important with the UK rainy days :-(
3. Must have a balcony or somewhere for me to grow things.

I don't think it's so much to ask for. ;-) One particular flat caught my eye, so I decided to pop over and see it while I was waiting on the rental option. It was 2,5 years old, in a 're-developing' part of downtown, about 10 minutes walk from the main train and bus stations.

What really caught my eye was that it was:
1. Top floor (4th floor of a four story building, three flats per floor)

2. Complete floor to ceiling glass wall in the bedroom and living room, facing West, glass door on the other side of the living room facing East. In essence, my living room will be bathed in sunlight (as sunny as my corner of Essex gets!) the entire day.

3. The absolute selling point: the glass toward the West is actually a roof terrace which is larger than the bedroom. There is a door from the bedroom and the living room leading onto the back terrace. The glass door toward the East is to the front roof terrace. I will have two roof terraces which will be perfect environments for growing all my outdoor veg. Lord knows there's so little sunny and short summers in the UK so I need every bit of help I can get. The architecture here isn't really given to large balconies or roof terraces for that matter. Perhaps it's the weather or maybe just the style. Where would you like your coffee when you visit—on the morning terrace or the evening terrace? ;-)

The place had been on the market for nine months and dropped twice in price. I could see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Specifically:

1. There is no parking included with the place. That's the biggest negative I can come up with, but there is free parking hidden around town, or parking is free in front from 6 PM – 8 AM, or I can leave the car at the office during the week. It's 2.03 miles to the office, a perfect 'Heather length' walk twice a day.
Sidenote: I'm not sure why the town approves flats to be built without parking as the parking situation in downtown is tight, or why they don't get their act together and put in more lots to make more revenue for the town.

2. It's four flights up, without an elevator.

3. The ground floor is under the application process to be a restaurant serving alcohol. I can see if you were in the second floor flats, this would be an annoyance, especially when the bars and restaurants have gone smoke-free and everyone must go outside, i.e. below your balcony, to smoke. At the 4th floor level, I'm not expecting a problem, especially as I expect to be more toward the back terrace in the evenings as that will be the sunny side. In addition, the front terrace is slightly recessed from the 3 beneath it, not straight in line with them (I think this is for the overall building look.) It means that there is another noise buffer in that the noise must go up and then inward to reach here, not just straight up. Plus I see the convenience factor of having a restaurant below. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point on that one...

4. It is a flat in a building with maintenance etc charges as opposed to a house which has less charges.

5. The space is small and a little quirky. I instantly fell in love with it, but I could see how it would not resonate well with a lot of people. Specifically, the roof terraces are a large part of the area, and therefore mainly 'unusable' space during the colder months. I'm guessing that my living space is decreased by about one-third during the cold and wet months. Personally I prefer small living space as it's easier to keep in order and less expensive to heat.

A few things played in my favor here which told me this was the right thing to do.

I asked to be allowed to visit again, but at an evening instead of during the day when nearby offices were open. I wanted to see how the place felt then. For perspective, I brought along a work colleague who tends to have very different opinions than me, to hear what he would see in it--nothing negative.

I was coming to the table as a cash buyer. In a backhanded way, I was blessed in that I came of working age in an IT job during the late 90's, although it didn't seem so at the time. I did consulting for a while living in hotel rooms and visiting friends on company paid tickets home on the weekends. The job market was on its way up as I came into the system but I arrived with a poor student mentality and student loans. When I took a permanent job I took a room in a shared house and saved my pennies for a few years. After a few years, into the 2000's when I could have qualified for a mortgage based on having a solid income and some work history and a little savings, I was living in the San Francisco Bay area where I was completely priced out of the market as the bubble had yet to burst.

I didn't want to be tied down anyway to California and jumped when I had the chance to come to Europe. For three years I lived the expat life in company paid (although taxable to me) housing. Later, when I finally got dumped off the expat gravy train I took the smallest solo place I could find in the tiny town of B and furnished it with trash-picked furniture. Was the goal to save money and live as cheaply as possible? No, the goal was to avoid having to 1. go to Ikea in DE, the place was a madhouse, and 2. I never liked having to put together the flat pack stuff in any event and 3. I knew DE was a launchpad to another area, so I saw no reason to really invest in anything which probably couldn't come along (financially or emotionally).

As a US citizen with no UK credit history, I wouldn't have qualified for a mortgage, so I could only buy something which fell within my cash payable means. Heck, the bank won't even give me a checkbook under my piddling 'passport' account. I must prove my financial worthiness for one year before I am allowed a checkbook or an interest bearing account. I'm rather not impressed with those rules, but it's all part of the expat game.

The other benefit of this flat is that my corner of Essex is considered an affordable commuter city into London. If I ever need to get a new job and want to stay with my current profession, I'll need to do it in the city—there just aren't similar jobs here in Essex. So if I had to, I could live without a car, being within walking distance to the main station which goes into London. In addition, that serves to make the flat rentable should I ever want to leave it.

So I put in a bid on the flat. I realized they had dropped the price twice, but I went under the asking price anyway. We hemmed and hawed back and forth as I could see online their original purchase price 2,5 years ago, so I knew they were losing money. They had a price floor they didn't want to go below, their psychological breaking point. Having recently left Germany and gone through the hassle of selling off all of my furniture and remembering what it was like to have to buy all of that stuff, I agreed to their number, if they would leave all major pieces of furniture such as the bed, sofas, wardrobe, patio furniture etc. There was no way I want to live through another Ikea shopping trip, schlepping up the four flights of stairs and then assembly session. They accepted.

Good thing as getting the German reference was still not progressing after two weeks, so I dropped out of that one and long term onto my colleague's sofa for the duration of this adventure. As we were heading into summer I knew I could pitch the tent as needed, as well as that some business travel would be squeezed in. (Memo to self: I'm almost too old to be slumming it for 100 days on someone's sofa. Almost. ;-))

So through the stages of house surveying, reviewing, etc. we went. I got annoyed as the process was taking too long and ended up pulling out of the process late in the game. An intentional bluff? No, just annoyance. They invited me to make a lower bid as it was the 11th hour and they didn't want to start over. Unintentionally I picked up a small discount there and was back in the game.
I transferred the first 40% of the purchase price on Tuesday. The last 60% was winging over (or does it go under?) the Atlantic Thursday night, where it arrived on Friday. It will be sent over to the sellers tomorrow for the keys to come over to me on Friday.

After 30 some years of life, I finally became a flat owner for the first time, yet not in the US. Go figure. Curious for a quick view? These are the photos I took when I was seeing it for the first time, so it's their decor. Better ones will come once I am there and unpacked...

only the sofa in this photo stays. will take better photos of the view from the terrace once there. this side faces the downtown rooftops.


not my tv either ;-)

where the vegetarian magic will happen:

not sure i like the white bedding look they had, although it does add to the brightness factor. My Dark blue German bedding did come along fortunately. :-)

The Germany shopping list

Last week, while I was 'vacationing' at my work colleague's flat, she had asked if I wanted anything from Germany. She goes back on a regular basis, normally the car is almost empty on the UK to DE leg, but full on the return, mainly to take advantage of cheaper prices in DE.

(On the Easter weekend trip they took English mustard and 7 of those gigantic UK chocolate eggs from the UK to Germany, and enough food to survive the drive/ferry over.)

I thought long and hard of what I would be missing from DE which I could not find here. OK, so there's no Koelsch in my immediate vicinity, but plenty of other German beers if I feel the urge. I'm an hour plus north of my colleague and I was coming home before her return, so it needed to be something which would keep for some weeks until I see her again.

What could I possibly need from Germany which is not available in the UK??
-->German pillows!

I am so psyched. My DE pillows were at the end of their natural life when I was leaving, so I tossed them. Currently I'm on borrowed bedding for a few more weeks, so I haven't had to purchase UK ones...and nothing against the UK pillows, they're ok, but....

They are not the big marshmellow squares of fluffy goodness that is Germany pillows.

For example, here is an Ikea Germany version, 80x80: http://www.ikea.com/de/de/catalog/products/30125273

Its Ikea UK counterpart, 50x80:
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/70129113

And notice the weight difference--Germany's 1230 g vs. the UK's 1065 g.

I am very lucky to have good friends...I received a call on Thursday while at the office...we're in the store in the pillow aisle, here are your options...so two 15 Euro pillows, plus dark pillowcases were purchased and got to take the ferry ride over from Dover and are currently relaxing in Guildford until such time that the drop-off can be exchanged. :-)

from America

memo to self: it's the blue container that holds the real coffee with caffeine, NOT the red one which is 50% caffeinated.

Half caffeinated=half awake=half pleasant.

Greetings from America.

Packing it up

It's the last weekend before I leave for the US, so plenty to do. At least the weather finally feels like winter, the car tells me it was 2.5 C when I was driving to work today. Fortunately D leaves on a work trip Sunday and then goes directly to the US where we meet up again on Thursday. Therefore I can be uninterrupted in my packing frenzy that late this weekend through early next week will certainly be. Also, it's time for the semi-annual bottle return clean-up.

The packing should be easy this year, since I plan to do a lot of shopping with my euros. It's not so easy though, on the return trip packing, since earlier this year the US Postal service simplified their international shipping offerings, and removed the slow, but cheap boat shipping in favor of the more expensive air option. So everything will be fitting in the suitcase this year and purchasing will need to be limited.