Moving On...

The new garden

another corner of the new garden

the stairwell with stained glass and wooden steps

an intersection about 10 seconds from my new front door

the street view from the front door

a front view of the house - the windows on the fourth floor (third for Europeans) are mine.

The house from the back

In one week my moving day arrives. The current apartment has two main shortcomings: very noisy outside, and mold on the east wall. And the management company is like a typical east German socialist "business" - do nothing fast and try to blame the tenant for everything.

The new apartment fits my personality much better - in an art nouveau house built 1902. Leipzig and Prague are the two cities with the most art nouveau architecture. If you remember much of the design of the Lord of the Rings movies, art nouveau elements played a central rôle there.

I could chose the colors of this newly renovated apartment: kitchen - apricot with terra cotta tile, my bedroom - sky blue, the hall - vanilla yellow, and the living room - a wine red bleached almost to white. Sebastian's room he just wanted white. The bath has anthracite tiles and old style white tiles. Being older, the ceilings are higher, and the living room has the old double windows and a rustic wood floor. I am on the top floor again, so more light and less noise comes in the windows.

And we have our own nice garden, as you see, with climbing roses, tulips, daffodils, grape vines, and several other local flowers I don't know yet. There is plenty of room for nice garden parties - afternoon tea on the lawn, or evening cooking out with wine or good German beer, and in the Waldstraßenviertel, where this is, there is a high concentration of top-notch restaurants and beer gardens, with the largest park, the Rosenthal, next door, and the zoo around the corner.

And when you move, you sort out and throw away many many things, so this is a purging experience also. Very ambivalent for me. And so a move is often like a transition to a new time in your life. I will see if this is true for me right now.