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Apartment Viewing - Intermediate German with Herr Antrim #16
Trixi just showed me my apartment.
She calls this an “apartment viewing”.
That means that I take a look at the apartment
to see if this apartment really fits me or not.
Trixi is the landlord and I am the tenant.
We have already talked on the telephone about the rent and additional costs.
The rent amounts to 490 €
and the additional costs come to 129 €.
That means the rent including extras is 619 € per month.
I only need one key for this apartment.
The key is not just for the building front door, but also for the apartment door.
In front of the main entrance, there is a doorbell nameplate.
If someone comes to visit they have to ring the bell first.
Then the renter can let them in from above.
If you go through the main entrance, you are standing in the hallway.
The apartment is on the 3rd floor.
There is a staircase and an elevator.
You can either take the stairs or the elevator.
In the elevator it occurred to me
that there are only elevator buttons for every third floor.
So there are only four buttons in the elevator:
E for ground floor,
3 for the third floor,
6 for the sixth
and 9 for the ninth.
Trixi explained to me that you can reach the other floors with the elevator on the other side of the building.
She gave me a reason for that,
but I still don’t understand it.
We went through the apartment door and stood in the hall for a while.
The door is a bit different than what I have in the USA.
First, the door frame is a bit thinner than the door frames at home.
Instead of a door knob the doors here have door handles.
Next to the door is a telephone.
I found that a bit odd,
but Trixi explained to me that
this telephone is for the doorbell in front of the main entrance.
If someone rings below, you answer here.
You can talk to the person below before you let them in.
Next to the telephone there is a breaker box.
You can also call this a junction box.
Inside are of course the fuses or breaker switches.
Left of the apartment door are the bedrooms.
On the left side is the bedroom of my roommate.
To the right is my room.
The room doors are exactly like the apartment door.
They have door handles and are relatively thin.
Every bedroom has a window.
On the window frame there is a window shade (roller blind) and in front of the window a curtain.
Under the window there is a radiator
that you can control with a valve.
Every room of this apartment has a radiator like this.
In the bedroom there is of course a bed,
but also a table and a chair,
a large wardrobe and a smaller cabinet.
Next to my bedroom is the bathroom.
It is a quite normal bathroom.
It has a bathtub with shower,
a sink and a toilet.
The toilets in Germany are mostly not like they are in the USA.
Instead of a handle on the water tank, there are two knobs on the wall.
The smaller button uses less water
and the larger, of course, more water.
You probably understand why this is like this,
but I find it interesting that we don’t have something like this in the USA.
Next to the bathroom is the kitchen.
The apartment is mostly covered with carpeting, but in the kitchen there is laminate.
There is no real door for the kitchen, but next to the door frame is the stove and oven.
I find it helpful that the stove has a cover that can also serve as a countertop.
The oven is much smaller than what I have at home,
but for me it will suffice.
There is no dishwasher, which I find tragic
and the sink is a bit too small in order to wash a lot of dishes in there.
There is also a small coffee maker.
This coffee maker is a third of the size of the coffee maker I left at home.
The refrigerator is also very small.
In the USA this is more like a mini fridge.
Everything in this room looks as if it were in a doll house.
The window in the kitchen wall, the service hatch, can be opened.
Then the kitchen doesn’t look so small.
Then you can look into the living room.
The living room is a bit bigger, because it also counts as the dining room.
In the hallway there is a ceiling lamp,
but in the living room there are a few lamps standing that light up the room.
Between the two armchairs stands a two-seat sofa (love seat) and a coffee table.
On the other side of the room
there are cabinets and shelves and a television.
The television was built in 1990
and can only receive cable TV.
Satellite TV exists, too, but not in this apartment building.
I have to negotiate my own landline and internet connection.
On the right side you see a dining room table and a few chairs.
On the left side, you see curtains.
Behind these curtains is a French door.
When I wanted to open this door, I thought I broke it.
Instead of opening like a door, the top side tilted like an oven door.
Luckily it only tilted a few centimeters.
Trixi explained to me, that this door is not just a French door, but also a tilt window.
You can open tilt windows in two directions.
With vertical rotation, the top side tilts towards the inside.
With horizontal rotation, the door opens like a normal door.
If you go through this door, you will be standing on a balcony surrounded by a net.
The net keeps the birds out.
I asked Trixi if there was a laundry room,
but she said there was only a laundry basement.
In the basement, there are a few washing machines and dryers.
You have to pay for it with Euro coins.
There are a lot of buttons and knobs.
I don’t understand at all how it all functions.
I will talk about it next week.
Maybe by then I can understand this sign and explain to you all,
how one washes the laundry with a machine like this.
Now, however, I have to go to the resident registration office in order to register myself.
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