Being reasonable

Mr. Heinrich immediately calmed down and started treating us with respect. Unfortunately, someone made a higher offer today, and their bid is higher than the market value. We will therefore be reasonable and move on. I know that we will find the right flat for us soon.

Dear Mr. H

I personally find frustrating how often you have to deal with imbeciles in life. These stupid and incompetent people are everywhere you go. And just our luck, the realtor we need to negotiate with is one of them. A little complexed man too.

After his last low blow, my only option was to send him this respectful yet sharp email. And I gotta to say that I am pretty happy with it. Let us see how he reacts now.

Dear Mr. H,

As I have family in the real estate business and it is not my first real estate purchase, I understand enough of the business to know that a first offer is a simple opening for negotiation. That was the purpose of our offer yesterday. We are interested in the appartement, if not we would not have sent you an offer. And if we are interested in this appartment, it also means that we can afford to buy it. Everything is negotiable, Mr H, and the fact that we negotiate does not mean that it is over our budget. It is not because we are young, or appear to be younger than we are, that you need to treat us with disrespect. I therefore ask you to please treat us like clients and not like young imbeciles.

We hereby send you a new offer, based on the estimate we have and the price market. We hope you will transmit our offer to the owner and hope to hear back from you soon.

Sincerely,

Les jeux sont ouverts

We had our second visit this morning. We now have the experts' opinion and have thus made an offer for the appartment. The negotiating game has started. Les jeux sont ouverts. Let's see where it will take us.

Next buy

Another project for our "new life", i.e. staying in Hannover for now, working again, getting married, is also buying our own appartment. Now that does not mean we are settling here forever. Absolutely not. But we both are firm believers that paying a mortgage every month is much more constructive as paying a rent, and the idea is to sell as soon as we have a concrete job opportunity who-knows-where.

We both have a very good idea of what we want. Hannover has many old beautiful buildings from the 19 hundreds, here called altbau, and that is one thing we want. Although that means having no elevator. We also know we want to stay in the List area, a happening yet quiet neighborhood full of shops and little cafés. We need a balcony, a guest bathroom, as well as a second bedroom, call it guest room for now, baby room in a possible near future.

We started visiting appartments a week ago and have since then seen quite a few, varying from horrible, cheap, needing to be completely redone, to ready to move in, expensive but within our limit, charming and beautiful. But we also saw THE one, i.e. the one we both fell in love with, the one we both feel is perfect for us, the one we want. It is more expensive than we had planned but also has many extras. We've been thinking it over, dreaming about it, and have now decided to have it professionnally valued and possibly make an offer. Saturday is the big day. And because a picture is sometimes worth more than a thousand words, here is one of the wonderful atouts of this appartment.

My life in bullet points

Did I mention that:

-the very simple self-designed invitations are printed and going out this week?

-I had a very good job interview last Friday and that I will most probably start working before the end of the year?

-I am leaving to Paris in 2 days to spend a girls' long weekend with Beanie and Nat?

-life is simply great? =)

Her latest idea

My mother has had many jobs in her life, always following her new dream. A few random examples would be: a hamburger fast-food cafeteria in the south of Spain in the early 70s, a chic nouvelle cuisine restaurant in the South of Spain in the mid 70s, a fashion boutique in a Swiss ski resort in the 80s, etc. Some of her projets lasted a few years, others a few months. I truly believe most of her ideas were good but ahead of their time, especially given the place where she developped them. These ideas would have most probably been extremely successful in other places where we later lived like Madrid or Lausanne. I therefore always stood behind her, helping and supporting her in whichever way I could.

And so when she shared with me her latest idea to buy a big house in the old city of Sion and do a B&B (an old dream of hers), I immediately cheered. This project seemed perfect for her soon-to-come retirement and I knew she'd be so good at it! And this time, it was the right place and the right time, as the city of Sion needs this kind of charming acomodation. So we went to see the house during my stay there, as she wanted my opinion. I fell in love with the house, just as she had. And so, before I was to return to Germany, the house was reserved and her project was taking shape.

Now that the way is clear, my mother has doubts. In the past, she's always followed her heart, acting immediately on it. This seems to have changed, as she's thinking it over and over and doubting more and more about the house. Thoughts like "I am too old for such a thing" and "what if I end up on a wheelchair" are preventing her to go through with this idea. I of course find it a pitty, because I know that she would have been happy with this and good at it. But I understand her fears, stand behind her and support her decision, whatever it might be. Sixty years might actually have brought her wisdom.

Bellbreakers

Can't say I was ever a big fan of metal/hard rock. But when M's childhood friends called and asked us to come to an AC/DC cover band concert they had organised in their village, we just had to go. To support them. But also out of curiosity of course.

They had rented an old farm, cleaned it up, decorated it (AC/DC style, mind you), set up a bar, hired the band, asked their biker friends to work the security, and let the word of mouth do the rest. They sold the tickets for 8 €, and beer and long-drinks for so cheap they actually made no profit at all. But that was actually the plan. They just wanted to have fun with their friends and have the event pay for itself. 350 people showed up.

The band was good. Not according to me, but to the many AC/DC fans present last night. I danced to the covers of "Money Talks", "Thunderstruck" and others. I enjoyed checking the people of all ages who were there for the music, the drinks, the partying. The band sure enjoyed itself too, as they kept playing long after their second encore, visibly not wanting to put an end to the night. They played 3 hours in total. We all had a good Saturday night out.