Roads to Safe Places

We're moving house tomorrow. Right now I am sitting on our futon mattress, on the floor, and my laptop is sitting on our coffee table. We've already taken the bed and every piece of furniture we could take apart apart and piled everything up in the room next door.

There are few things that I hate even more than moving house, although it is really great for weeding out your old uni notes, because few heavy things remain as interesting and worthy of being kept as you thought they were if you're facing having to carry that stuff all the way to the fifth floor apartment we rented in a fit of shortsighted stupidity.

Thanks to my father, we'll have plenty of help - he hired three men and a small truck, and I could not possibly be happier about that, especially seeing as one of them is supposedly able to carry our washing machine to the fifth floor all by himself. I'm glad he's there only so I can watch one man carry around the washing machine that I can barely lift, let alone carry it more than a meter. My father and my brother niaseath  are also going to help us, and seeing the pile of boxes next door I can't help but be reduced to a puddle of gratefulness.

Then, I'll probably be lost to the world of the internet until I return to Hamburg next week and until we've got internet at our flat in Hanover.

We'll hand in the keys to the flat in Uelzen on Monday. I can't believe that we moved  in here over a year ago, and I am really glad we're moving out, especially seeing as the nights are already getting significantly chillier and our walls have started getting more mouldy again. The crazy design of the flat and redecorating it the week after moving in was fun, but there were a lot more disadvantages than there were advantages to this place, on the whole. Hannover will be much better, I suppose, even though commuting down to Hamburg for the few lessons I am taking (preparation for my writing thesis is more important) will suck epicly.

When Crocky and I sent our notice to our landlord on Saturday we saw that there was a market in Uelzen. They had basically turned the entire town centre into one market place, even though there is a perfectly good square in front of the town hall which would have served the same purpose. When I was little my grandparents and my mother used to go to a market in Hamburg every Saturday, so I still have a soft spot for markets, even though they tend to be too full for my taste. I loved walking across the market and shopping for some fresh groceries with Crocky, looking at all the colourful stalls full of delicious fresh food. Since there was a shower right before we left all the groceries were covered in little drops and looked as though they were straight out of an ad. I wish I'd have thought to take my camera, I'd been able to spam my friends list with some pictures, on the other hand, maybe it's better that I didn't. With several kilos of rhubarb, apples, and, most importantly, strawberries we headed home and made some fruit salad and rhubarb pudding. I think I need a better recipe for that one. The one I pulled from the internet was too sweet and altogether not tasty at all.

It's a funny feeling, having handed in our notice before actually having a new flat, but we're resolved not to spend another winter in this damp place. Also, most of the flats advertised in the local papers and on the internet around here tended to be vacant as soon as they appeared online, so it should be possible to find something during our three months notice. Hopefully. We're already looking, but so far, most of the flats were either too expensive, taken, or the landlords didn't come back to us. Looks like a lot of calls will have to be made next week...