Apartment hunting, cell phone shopping, and the pfannkuchenhaus.

The first weekend here after a busy week trying to get settled, we arranged to go look at a very promising apartment in Hagen (the landlord speaks english, yay!) and shop for cell phones while we were there. Paul had given me his U.S. cell to keep with me at the house while he went to work so we'd have some way to communicate with each other, besides email of course. :) We were eager to get German cell phones for obvious reasons. Seems simple enough, right?

We drove into Hagen first, which is about 15 minutes away from Paul's workplace, to find the apartment. We had a 1pm appointment and we were on time, thankfully. In Germany, if you make an appointment or you arrange a meeting at a particular time, you are expected to be there on the dot. If you aren't, sometimes the person you are meeting won't wait for you. Very prompt society. And if any of you know Paul or me, we tend to run late. ;) On a side note, we are learning in general that businesses, etc. close for about two hours for lunch and nothing is open past seven in the evening. It is a struggle for us because we are used to everything being open all day and until at least nine or ten in the evening.

Back to the apartment....we absolutely loved it except one minor thing: no closets, shelves, dressers, wardrobes, etc. to put our things and hang our clothes. We let the owner know our concern with not having this and that we would think about it and get back with her. The owner, Katrin, had to think about it as well. We got the feeling that she was a *very* particular individual and was hesitant to be renting her gorgeous, furnished flat out to strangers. I asked her why she was renting it and it turns out she had to take a job two hours away and the commute was too much. So, we exchanged contact info and headed into the main part of Hagen to shop for cell phones.

We have been told that Hagen is "one of the ugliest cities" in this area of Germany. Not very encouraging. We could see that the area around the apartment looked safe (there is a church right outside of the apartment door), but as we drove further into the center of town could see some nice-looking as well as shady-looking parts. So it goes for any larger city. We liked the city center shopping area, very typical of other city shopping areas we had seen before here in Europe. We stopped at two different cell stores and after waiting to speak with an english-speaking sales associate at T-mobile and barely understanding the rates at O2 (no one spoke english), we were left weighing our options and still couldn't decide what plan/phone was best. One really takes for granted how easy it is to make informed decisions when you understand the options in your own language. :)

We ate a late lunch at a lovely little bistro there in the square and discussed our options. Afterwards, we attempted to go back to one of the cell stores and it was already closed. I guess they close at 5pm on a Saturday!?! So, we headed back home. We ventured out that night to the town of Breckerfeld to try the Chinese restaurant I mentioned in the last post for dinner.

On Sunday, we decided to go into Hattingen to see if the pancake house restaurant was open. We had checked out Hattingen back in early September when we were over here. The old part, called the altstadt, is very quaint. We would have liked to live there but were not able to find a furnished apartment. To our delight, the Pfannkuchenhaus (pancake house) was open! Paul ordered an apfel (apple) pfannkuchen and I chose a savory one with bacon, onions, mushrooms, and a fried egg on top. We walked around the town and window-shopped. Everything closes on Sunday, hence why we were so happy the pfannkuchenhaus was open. I have posted some pictures below of our brisk afternoon in Hattingen. :)

"das pfannkuchen haus" 

after our brunch

window shopping



in one of the squares

timbered buildings
and leaning steeple!



the back side of the church
with the crooked steeple

the front of the church...

Ok, so I am having tremendous trouble with keeping our blog updated, mostly because our internet connection out here in the country is soooo slow! It takes FOREVER to upload pictures! Also, I cannot figure out how to get the pictues aligned properly, so excuse the haphazardness of them. :(