New apartment

I moved into a new apartment over the Easter holidays, and yes, those holidays are plural: Green Thursday, Good Friday, Nothing Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday all count. Well, maybe not Nothing Saturday.

The point is that I have a great new apartment with fabulous roommates in an interesting part of the city. And to think I almost passed up this opportunity because the immediate area is rather gray and there's construction all around. (Note for next winter apartment search: sunshine helps!) I'm hoping the construction will conclude this summer, but even so, it doesn't directly affect me. What does directly affect me are the paper-thin walls and ceilings that allow sound to travel freely through the entire apartment building. Currently, the upstairs neighbor seems to have a fascination with rolling a chair across the floor, non-stop, and there are two babies that scream and scream and scream. Maybe I'll learn to tune out these noises in the same way I have tuned out the train station down the street back home in the States. I'm not holding my breath.

But onto more positive aspects of the apartment! For starters, I have great roommates. They both work in the social sector, are interested in all sorts of things, particularly cooking together, and are happy to teach me about the city. There's a significant amount of cultural exchange since they are both from Germany, one from former East Germany, and want to learn more about the United States. As you may imagine, stereotypes abound, and it's funny to learn what we think we know about each other's cultures. (What do you mean Pennsylvania is 1/3 the size of Germany?!) Things get particularly interesting when talking about East Germany since it was in many ways a closed society. I know a lot about the history of East Germany and about the major cultural topics, such as the Stasi (the secret police) and the stories of people who escaped through tunnels under the Berlin Wall. It's a different perspective completely to hear the stories of the people who grew up completely in the East and then moved to the West. Stuttgart seems to be a magnet for these people, maybe because of its central geographic location. More and more people are moving to Stuttgart in general, too.

Here are a few pictures from my new neighborhood:

My street.

The intersection outside my apartment. I am conveniently located right next to a subway stop.

Plattsalat, the neighborhood food co-op that I mentioned in my entry about the Vokü. More about Plattsalat to follow.