Rolling, rolling, rolling...

We're still keeping our spirits high and rolling, rolling, rolling along! From one "open house" to the next, the fun never ends and the home that we seek is still hiding from us but I have great faith that when the timing is right, everything will gracefully fall into place. I recently viewed this apartment, I loved the old wooden floors, the kitchen was old-fashioned in a very good way, the ceilings were high, it had a balcony, the location was okay (though directly in front of the subway) and there was a darling white Swedish ceramic tile stove in the one of the rooms with double pocket doors leading to another lovely room.

The windows were paned and gorgeous, and the floor plan was great. I loved that it was rather big and had all new electrical and heating, and also that there were 5 rooms of nearly equal size. The price was also very good, only 680 Euros per month. But my husband wasn't keen on the location, he wants to be closer to Lister Platz (as do I), and we both did not like the amount of noise you could hear from the subway below the house - we opened the windows and it was quite loud. The bedroom was in the back, but still... we're concerned about listening to a train from the early morning until after midnight each day, especially in the Summer when you have to leave your windows open day and night since there is no air conditioning here in apartments to block out the noise and plus windows do not have screens so if you live on a busy street you will no doubt have to deal with a lot of dirt coming in through the window. Another concern was how run down the main hallway was - the building felt very unloved and unkept inside which concerns me and some of the people entering and exiting the building made me think that there were a lot of students sharing apartments in there. All things to consider, no matter how nice an apartment is (or how inexpensive). If we were not home so much I wouldn't care, but I work from home and I do need some peace and quiet during the day so that I can focus on my work and also go on conference calls, record podcasts for my classes, etc. But that corner stove and those pocket doors were definitely lovely. Sigh. Patience. Right? Currently we have no other apartments to view... so I'll keep checking online and in the local newspapers and hopefully I'll have more to share in the weeks to come. Fingers crossed!