Once we arrived, our sponsor gave us a prepaid cellphone that we could use to make calls. That was really brilliant and allowed us to get in touch with him, friends, and call about potential houses. While Ryan was in-processing one morning, I went to this little food court on Kleber Kaserne that has a little T-mobile/Vodafone stand. Lots of people advise you to stay away from German contracts. They are super hard to break unlike the States. Lots of people even with iPhones will get a prepaid card that gives you minutes and data. Each month you would call or go in and put more money on the card to continue your service. These options are risk free because there is no contract and sometimes can be cheaper depending on how much data/minutes you use. We went over the family plan deal with T-mobile that pretty much gave us the same type of plan we had in the U.S. It costs us about $120 euros per month, but allows us to have 2G data and unlimited calls/texts to German networks. They also have T-mobile hot spots all over Europe, so if you have a plan you can connect to their WIFI at train stations and other locations while traveling. I also still have iMessage, so for those of you with iPhones I can still text you using that!! Basically, to get out of the contract, we must give 3 months notice to T-mobile before we leave to shut off service. If you do not notify them 3 months ahead of time, you will be paying for cell phones here even if you are in the states. The cellphone contracts automatically renew, if they do not get this notice, so if you follow this rule, you should have no trouble.
Skipping ahead a bit, we also had to get internet and a phone to call the states in our house. We decided to go with TKS, because with them you do not require a contract. We pay about $50 Euro a month and $5 Euro a month for the landline phone that can call the states for free (and vice versa). It's important here while looking at houses to call the company and see what kind of service they have in that town or village. Some places still have dial up, cable, DSL, etc. You could find a house, but have terrible internet. So if internet is important to you, call and see what connection is available for the addresses you are looking at. We lucked out and have DSL with a downside that there is a 100GB download/streaming cap. We will see how this works once we get our VPN(more on that later) and start streaming Netflix/HBO etc. It could be awful. I really like having this phone at home to call our families and friends!! If you want that phone number I will gladly give it to you!
I was determined to find a house!! Finding a house can be the hardest part when you move during peak PCS season. Everyone is on the hunt and you don't want to lose out of a good house! I had been searching Ahrn.com, bookoo, and Kaiserslautern American constantly. As I mentioned in the last post, you had to attend a Housing Briefing before you could start looking for a house! One of the things they mention is avoid using a realtor. We have friends who have and said it was super stress free, and others say its a nightmare. We actually did contact our friends realtor, but luckily found a house ourselves. The issue here is it's usually a $3,000.000 fee on top of a $3000.00 deposit for most houses. The utilities here also work differently so they want you to be aware of how it works. The Housing Office on post also has an email that you can send a message to and receive approved daily listings. They go over the Housing contract that you have to use when signing a contract with a LandLord. Some "landlords" are also "realtors" so they recommend when you call about a house you ask immediately if they are a realtor. If you love the house and want to rent it, but didn't ask if they were a realtor, they could slam you with a realtor fee. Additionally, if they try to slam you with a realtor fee and the house is listed through the housing office, then they CANNOT charge you a finder's fee and housing can help you divert that situation.
I found about 5 houses we were interested in on ahrn.com and Ryan called the numbers to set up some viewings. After work, our sponsor drove us to the first 2 house viewings. The first house was in Morlautern, a super cute village north of Kaiserslautern. Holy crap it was windy and hilly and would probably hurt to run those hills!! We arrived at the house and kinda looked around and in the windows, but the Landlord never showed up. It also advertised a "yard" but consisted really of a patio with at least a 50ft drop off all the way around the house into the woods. It was beautiful, but I could just see Molly getting loose and being gone forever. Not to mention, there was no where for her to use the restroom! So, we moved on to house number 2. We arrived, the landlords arrived, and it was a dream! They were a super awesome couple who met while he was stationed here. Her family lives in Hochspeyer, and they built a house down the street from them. We knew instantly and pretty much agreed to take it on the spot! The next day, they came and picked us up from our hotel and took us to the house to show us some things. We met her non-english speaking parents, who are super sweet, and filled out the housing contract. We had until 11 am to get to the housing office as a walk in and get our contract approved by the Housing office. We made it by 10:50, signed in, and literally waited until almost closing time to get seen by a human!! We sat there until about 2:30 pm, but once we were seen, it went very quickly.
I really love our house and can't wait to entertain here!! We have a balcony with a view and nice patio below in the yard! It is also a block away from the train station, which makes it really each to get into Kaiserslautern or head east as well. We went back to the Housing Office the next day to get reimbursed for our Lodging at Barbarossahof and sign up for FMO. FMO is our temporary furniture. We will receive on August 4th a washer and dryer, small American sized refrigerator, a microwave, 3 wardrobes, a couch, and a bed. The couch and bed will be removed once our household goods arrive, but we wanted to have them so we can get off the air mattress and get comfortable!! Since we don't have closets here, it is going to be interesting organizing our clothes!! I purchased 4 rolling clothing racks on bookoo for 15 euros. The fit in our laundry room and should hold most of my clothes!!
Our house for the next 3-4 years!
The little restaurant in the woods a short walk from our house!! Our Landlords took us here and it was divine!
Our morning view!
Another perk to having awesome landlords is that they left us a TV already hooked up to AFN, a cordless phone, and the FritzBox router for our internet. They also left me some shelves, a transformer, a nice wardrobe, and several converters. Overall, we have been pretty blessed on our move to Germany. We have had some hiccups, but we are really enjoying the process overall!!
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