Catch-22

Let's talk about apartment hunting, shall we?

I saw my first two apartments in Berlin in June, during my nine-day visit with Hannah. I registered with an English-speaking housing agency that specializes in furnished flats; they sent me out on the viewing appointments. One was a lovely, bright street-side apartment with a small balcony, but I found the surrounding area to be somewhat lifeless and bordered by grim allees, the long, wide boulevards that change from strip-mall to upscale shopping to dead zone to major commercial center. (It was also a fifth-floor walkup...). The second was in a great area but was only one room, dominated by an ugly bed, with the shower stall IN THE KITCHEN, and the WC in a peculiar little space with a deep window and crawl space behind the toilet. It was also dark, being on the inside of the building. Great people as landlords - two art historians and cute baby - living in the next flat; would have been fun to get well acquainted with them but the room would have made me feel like the poor orphan girl in "The Little Princess." So ixnay on emthay.

I spent the summer back home communicating with ExBerlinerFlats, but could not commit to anything online; was simply hoping for there to be something I could send Hannah to go see for me in person. Nothing. So I tried Craigslist, appealing because it's also in English, which should be rechristened Scam-o-Rama and forgotten by the world. 100% of the people who responded to my inquiries were scammers, and not particularly bright scammers, at that. In fact, maybe it's only one person whose hobby it is to list phantom apartments and see who will bite. There was a definite monotony to the stories being related: This flat is the most important thing in the world to me because I inherited it from my dead husband/wife and so your "absolute maintenance" of the place is of the utmost concern and oh by the way I am going to/already in West Africa on a mission and I have the keys with me but once you wire me a big deposit and several months' rent I have made arrangements to send the keys to you and really it looks just like it does in the pictures. I'm not kidding. There must have been at least a dozen of these with only minor variations.

Arriving in Berlin should have made things easier, as I could actually look at places. The first place was a great space - nicely furnished, near the river - and nothing nearby except block after block of apartment buildings. No shops, no cafes, no bakeries, no grocery stores. Nada, zilch, nothing. Not the European urban experience I'm looking for. I don't need Hipster Heaven, but a coffee shop at least is de rigueur.

The second place I went to sounded really promising, being more in the middle of old Berlin, also along the river, in an older restored building, on the first floor; also furnished. The building was truly stunning, a turn-of-the-twentieth-century striped masonry edifice with bay windows and a gracious entry. Again, the area wasn't quite as lively as I would have liked, but the building was so beautiful I would have made do. Except that the "first-floor" apartment turned out to be a dank basement room with Pergo floors and an old, dirty green couch to sleep on. Eeeew!

By spending a work-week's of hours deciphering German online newspaper ads and agency listings I finally understood enough to be able to send out some email inquiries. One guy responded promptly and we set up an appointment but then I remembered to tell him I have a dog and that was a deal-breaker. Understandable. One response was an auto-reply from an agency referring me to their website. I'm guessing they specialize in "fixer uppers" as most of the spaces were in pretty bad shape; one didn't even have a toilet installed, just the pipes where one had been. I did not bookmark their page.

It is very common here for people to take their kitchens with them when they move - sink, stove, fridge, even the cabinets and countertops. I find it a bizarre practice, but at least it helped me narrow my search results to places with cooking areas intact. The toilet thing still puzzles me.

Feeling frantic, I registered with another English-speaking agency, right in the courtyard of the Goethe Institute, specializing in helping people like me - new to Berlin, lacking language skills, needing furnished places. They sent me to two beautiful flats, one in the picturebook district of Schoeneberg, and one in the trendier Prenzlauerberg. Schoeneberg was a very nicely done place - ground floor, nice kitchen and bathroom, flat-screen TV, but was only one room with a round bed in the middle of it. Also a little dark, being on the airshaft side of the building, and the neighborhood gave me a social-class anxiety attack, the way my kids' prep school in Seattle did. Beautiful, but maybe not quite where I belong. And the place in Prenzl? Sheesh! Nice place, but the area is like a freeway for strollers - Hannah calls it "Breeder Central," there are so many young families living there. And did I mention the commission? The agency wanted 2 months' rent for two telephone calls and one email, the equivalent of about $2,000.00 U.S. Plus 19% service tax. Works out to about $100 per minute which means I'm REALLY in the wrong line of work.

OK, enough of that. I did finally find a place, by myself, through the newspaper. Unfurnished. Ground floor. Good light. Pleasant garden, good for the dog. One big room, one nice kitchen, one lovely bathroom, 3 french doors. No partridge.

When you move to Germany - or change your address once you're here - you have to register with the city within seven days of obtaining permanent accommodation. It's called anmeldung. (Visitors who stay in hotels also get anmelded, but the hotels do all the paperwork so the guests don't even know about it.) You need a copy of your lease to get your anmeldung. You need your anmeldung certificate in order to get a bank account. You need a bank account in order to produce enough cash to make a deposit to obtain your lease. Foreigners have to pay bigger deposits. You can see where I'm going with this. I'm now stuck in Catch-22. I can't withdraw a large enough sum of money from an ATM to pay my entire deposit and 3 months' rent in one fell swoop, which means I can't get the lease document to take to the Bürgeramt to become anmelded in order to open a bank account to pay my deposit...

By dribs and drabs I will accumulate the cash I need from ATMs and by using 3 cards. I paid a third of it today and it will take me until Monday to accumulate the rest. And then I get to go shopping at Ikea, which also only takes cash.

The icing on this particular cake is deliciously ironic. Hannah was describing a high-maintenance friend to me the day before I went to look at this apartment. She said, "She's so mühsam." I said I thought the apartment I was going to see was on Mühsamstrasse, and what did it mean exactly? She laughed almost to the point of tears and said, "It means 'pain in the ass'". Perfekt.