Nuremberg Book Swap This Weekend

This one's for my German readers in the Nuremberg 'hood.

By all accounts, she's doing a bang-up job herself, but my ol' buddy Katherine With a K (and if you're not reading her blog, what's stopping you?) has picked up the mantle and is currently hosting the Nuremberg Book and Media Swap this coming weekend (November 20, 2011) at O'Neill's Pub in Nuremberg. Projected turnout looks VERY promising, which means the pickings should be really nice. Bring your pre-loved books, magazines and DVDs for exchange, have a beer and hang with the Nuremberg expat community. You can read more about it here.

Renters!!!

OK, so we're living in a condo here in Portland. The place is pretty small, but really really nice-- the construction materials are absolute top notch, our patio looks out onto the Willamette River (the body of water which bisects Portland), and from here we have views of Mount Hood and the impressive Fremont Bridge (pics to come). It's a tony kind of place, and we really lucked out on getting it-- our landlord sees the condo as something of a lucrative nuisance he doesn't want to deal with all that much, so he vets his tenants well and sets the rent at FAR below market value so he doesn't have to deal with a lot of turnover. And our neighbors? Well, we are amongst the youngest folks in the building, and (judging by all the Audis, Land Rovers and BMWs in the parking garage) probably don't make quite as much salary as these high fliers, but whatever.

Like I said, we rent. The Portland housing market is rather fluid right now and shows no signs of settling down, so we have made the conscious decision to wait-and-see before we commit to home ownership. I also said we rent in a very upscale condo on the waterfront. And because of this, some of our neighbors treat us like dirt. Interestingly, our previous place in Portland (6 or so years ago, and pre-Germany) was a similar situation-- the smallest house on the block of a fairly upscale neighborhood, and we rented that as well. In both situations, when the neighbors first heard we were bottom-feeding renters, you'd have thought I told them that that we were running a puppy mill with the proceeds from our meth lab. Hey folks, sorry we don't have crazy amounts of cash lying around to actually purchase these places, yet still have the gall to want to live in these nice neighborhoods. In the end, we proved to be excellent neighbors when we lived at the house, and it had better curb appeal than some of the other places on the block-- I made sure of that personally. I expect that our current neighbors will find that out as well. Eventually, anyways.

Dear Germany: How Can I Miss You If You Won't Let Me Leave?

What, you thought I'd given up on blogging dear reader? Nope, just trying to get our sea legs as we adjust to the whipsaw that is life back in the United States after a prolonged time away. Just think... free WiFi wherever you go, bottomless cups of (delicious) coffee, stores open past 8:00PM and all day on Sundays, re-acquainting ourselves to that wondrous thing known as "Happy Hour," and English... glorious, loud, inappropriately yammering on your cell, ignorant, wonderfully understandable English everywhere. Like I said, it's been an adjustment.

Part of that adjustment was living in a sort of enforced limbo as our belongings made their way back from Europe and living in a glorified hotel room for 2 months waiting for our stuff, all the while scrambling like hell during every second of downtime to find a permanent place to live, car to purchase, employment for yours truly, and reconnect with all our friends- some of whom we hadn't seen in 3+ years. It was, in a word, exhausting. But with the benefit of being mostly settled here in Portland, I think there's enough emotional distance to discuss just how botched this move really was-- it was comically awful in some bits, and as the title suggests, it's not actually complete. In some ways, we still aren't moved out of Germany quite yet. Here follows a less-than-comprehensive listing of our travails over the last 2.5 months:

- Our German bank lost several thousand Euros of our money-- we asked for a portion of our German savings to be transferred to our USA account, and it just disappeared into the ether. It was mistakenly sent to some account in New York state far as I can follow it. To the bank's eternal discredit, they were a lot more interested in covering their tracks, ignoring our requests to see the paper trail and shifting the blame than in, you know, actually locating the cash. It took almost 2 weeks for it to reappear.

- Part of B's Euro contract was that the German branch of a VERY WELL KNOWN accounting firm was supposed to file our US taxes for us. Whoops, they kinda didn't really do that, and when their local US offices heard from us upon returning two things happened immediately: (1.) they lawyered up, and (2.) we got treated like radioactive lepers. Understandably, they wanted to be well and truly clear of the blast zone from the fallout of their German cohorts who they all but admitted were incompetent. Taxes all paid up and a couple hundred dollars in late penalties later, we're all good but this could have been easily avoided if somebody had just done their damn contractually obligated job. We're still hashing out who ultimately should pay the late fees.

- B's German health insurance company continued to bill our account months after we left, stating that we hadn't proved that we moved out of the country to their level of satisfaction. Excuse me?

- T-Mobile Germany did not want to let us out of our cell phone contracts which expire in January, and insisted that they continue to bill our bank account monthly-- except that we want to close out our bank account. After a seemingly endless round-and-round, they made an exception to bill the account in a lump sum. They weren't terribly happy with it-- this was considered an "extraordinary request." Trust me, I wasn't happy with it either.

- Despite moving out of our German apartment on August 9, that hasn't been closed out yet and we still have not received our hefty deposit back. The jackhole who was responsible for the shoddy construction of the apartment from 3 years ago was now the rental agent, handling the move-out protocol for our landlords who live several hours away. This struck me as quite odd seeing as our landlords are still trying to sue this guy to repair his construction errors but whatever. Long story short, replacement renters weren't found, so by law we were on the hook for 2 more months of rent and HOA fees-- then the tool rental agent thought that since we weren't in the country anymore and couldn't defend ourselves, he could get us to pay for his building errors (remember, our apartment walls were never properly sealed from moisture and steadily leached saltpeter), insisting that we had to pay to repaint large portions of the apartment with a special-- and quite expensive ($1000!!)-- sealant paint. When this brazen cash grab was shot down cold by the landlords themselves, he then re-entered the (empty) apartment and cranked up the heat to approximately 90 degrees (in August!) in an attempt to tamp down the moisture in the walls. Despite photographic evidence that we turned off all thermostats upon leaving, we are now expected to pay the utility bill for these 2 months ($200 or so) and the landlords have chosen to sit this argument out. Cowards. We have exhausted all other avenues of mediation, and the idea of getting a lawyer to haggle over $200 in order to get back the rest of our deposit seems pointless, so if we want our deposit back this decade we'll have to suck this one up. The HOA-type fees are another matter with a different person (the building Super), and because we actually have been owed a refund since July, he has shown little interest in settling the bill.

If we're really lucky, we may be able to close out all of our remaining German accounts and contracts by Thanksgiving (late November to the non-American readers). I'm not sure that's a realistic date, but that's the goal.

Time, distance and the glacially slow resolution of most of these issues have removed most of the bile in my system. I tried to blog several times before, but the posts were rather venomous-- I was absolutely stunned that we just could not resolve anything without the aid of no less than 2 different relocation agents, multiple phone calls and a flurry of correspondence. I mean, surely people have attempted to leave Germany before, right? But anyway, that's all behind us for the most part and I can devote some time to talking about Portland's food scene (I've easily gained 10 pounds since returning), posting some more pics and trying to figure out where exactly to take this blog.

The photo up top is none other than comedian Mike Meyers in his recurring role of Dieter, host of a fictitious German chat show named Sprockets as seen on Saturday Night Live. As I recall, this character was based on a real person, a hockey-obsessed German waiter in Meyer's hometown of Toronto. For a taste of this classic skit, check out here, or for a rather abbreviated version of the same, try here.

Glad to be back, and more posts on the way!