Die erste Wohnung (the first apartment)

We will have two apartments here in Munich this year... Why?

(Skip this story if you already know it.) 
There is, near central Munich in a highly-sought-after neighborhood, an apartment building for visiting international scholars: http://www.ibz-muenchen.de  It is lovely, remarkably cheap, and has social hours and international clubs etc associated with it -- but you may only reserve it through the academic or research institution with which you will be working.  Thomas knew about this place ages ago, and one and a half years before we were to come, he called the institute where he knew he would do his sabbatical work to ask them to reserve an apartment for us.  They laughed and told him it was much too early.  So he called again one year before our arrival.  This time the answer was, oh sorry, they're all booked, you know they often are reserved a year and a half in advance... (!)  However, it turned out that one large enough apartment was available after Nov. 1st, so we will have that eventually.  In the meantime, after I spent some time last year looking at sabbaticalhomes.com, we found the place we are now.  And we have been very pleasantly surprised!

This first apartment, Orleansstrasse 53, is very close to the Ostbahnhof (east train station) and on a busy road, but we are in a lovely building two courtyards back from the road so it is remarkably quiet.  The first thing I noticed was the somewhat elegant "driveway" entrance (check out the ceiling decoration) after coming in through the locked wooden door to the 1st courtyard.

(The large door is the car "elevator" so tenants with cars can park below ground.)  We walk through the smaller door beside that to the second courtyard,

complete with bike parking, small patio, and potted lemon tree, then through another small corridor into our building.  I think these buildings must have been built at the turn of the last century -- the ceilings are high and there is a lot of attention to detail, including hand-painted decorations on the walls.

When I think of our apartment, I mostly think of the stairs:  they are lovely, but the glass roof above them, which makes it so warm and bright also makes it remarkably hot when the sun is out (good for drying laundry on the landing however).  We are on the 3rd floor (or 2nd, by German counting, where you start with "ground floor" and then the floor number corresponds to the number of stairways you climb) and since there is no elevator I know these stairs very well now.

Here are a few pictures in the apartment, which is relatively small, but is completely furnished (including linens and dishes etc.) and suits our needs just fine.  The kitchen is sunny and well quipped (except I miss a microwave!)...

 Yes, that little white box behind Thomas is the fridge!  It's a good thing we live very close to 3 grocery stores, since I end up shopping pretty much every day, as is more-or-less the norm here.  Without a microwave, and only a tiny freezer, I try to keep left-overs minimal, and so far so good.  Actually, we eat a lot of bread and cheese (and liverwurst) all of which are fabulous, and of course an easy meal, with the occasional salad and fruit thrown in...  The above picture was our first hot meal in the apartment:  a stir fry (after I figured out where to find ginger and soy sauce).

The kitchen is the best part of the apartment, but the rest is pretty good too...

The (single) bathroom is nice enough, but as Julia likes to point out, the shower curtain is "awkward" for sharing a bathroom since it doesn't close around the end (it's on a wire strung across the room) -- so whoever is at the sink gets a fine view of whomever is in the shower ;-)   Ah well.

There are only two bedrooms, but the kids are being remarkably cooperative in sharing the one room.  Of course it helps that Benjamin is an early bird, and Julia a night owl, so the overlap time is there is not so much...

One of the best things about this apartment is its location, at the edge of a very desirable neighborhood called Haidhausen, with lots of great shops, plazas, restaurants etc.  We have found wonderful bakeries, grocers, an authentic little butcher shop, clothing, shoes, a department store, at least two great Italian restaurants, plus many a place for an evening night-cap, all within a 5 minute walk.  Here's the fountain and flower gardens in a plaza a few minutes walk away, in the middle of this shopping area.  (We call it the "pretty platz" although it's officially Weissenburgerplatz... Don't get me started on the length of names and words here! :-) )

Not bad so far, eh?