The Wilds of Wonder: Wilkommen in W--

After a month in country, we finally moved into our new home this week! While I'll be moving to Munich for the next year (and who knows where after that), and Charlie is still in college, this is our family's home base for the next three years. And what a place. Welcome to W--. (See that dash? That's is me both emulating Jane Austen - because who doesn't want to do that - and preserving our privacy.) We'll start with the town.

The Town

For what appears to be a small town, there's a lot going on in W--. There are several restaurants, an Eiscafe (aka ice cream less than 5 minutes from the front doorstep), lots of little shops, and two churches (Catholic and Protestant). Our house is on one of the main streets, so we are only moments from all of these places.

The churches are right down the street from each other: these two photos were taken in the same spot.

This marsh is just around the corner from the churches. There also used to be a synagogue, but it was destroyed in 1938. There's now a memorial museum commemorating W--'s Jewish community.

None other than the illustrious Napoleon Bonaparte was greeted with great fanfare in this square. Twice, no less - once in 1807 and once in 1808.

Bookstore! Over a hundred years old, and just around the corner from our house.

This is the eiscafe, which not only serves yummy ice cream, but also hosts the German-American Stammtisch that is held once a month to connect Americans and Germans in this community.

Everywhere you look in this town is something photo-worthy. These are only the highlights.

The House

This is the front and back of our house. It's orange! It's a very happy house, not only because it's orange, but also because the landlord (who is also an architect and designed it himself) loves light. The windows are glorious, and the house is situated to capture as much light as possible at all times of day. For example, my room faces west, but there is a skylight in the loft above it that faces east, so I get amazing light both in the morning and in the evening.

This is the view from my parents' room.

And this is the view from the laundry room. If the rest of the house wasn't so amazing, this would make the laundry room my favorite room.

The house feels kind of weird right now - the only furniture is what Dad had in Korea. While that covers the basics - living room, dining room, bedrooms - a lot of our knickknacks and furniture are still missing. This means the house is in flux.

Not pictured: the many empty cardboard boxes at the bottom of the stairs, Charlie's room, which is currently the holding place for anything random that doesn't yet have a place, and other sundry corners of the house that are not yet in a photo-safe state. Like I said, we are very much in flux.

Proof of this: the vignette on the right has since disappeared because Mom wanted these things elsewhere (the globe is now on display above one of the cabinets in the kitchen). But I like the picture so I'm including it anyway.

See the pottery dish between the lamp and the sink? That's where bio goes - organic waste that savvy gardeners would compost, but which also has its own separate trash can in Germany. We're happy to separate it out, but fruit flies are also happy to munch on it. We are currently experimenting with traps composed of apple cider vinegar, water, and dish soap, with modest success.

This is my room. LIGHT, people. I love it.

The next thing on my to-do list after finishing this post is to start putting up all the clippings that make a space my own.

The stairs lead up to a cool loft space. But we don't know quite what to do with it because 1) the stairs are so steep that it would be hazardous to try to take any furniture up them, and 2) you bump your head on the sloped eves at the top of the stairs. But I'm sure we'll come up with something ingenious.