Thursday, February 2, 2012

Our Zuffenhausen Apartment

Now that we're settled in a little bit, it's time to show off some pictures of our apartment.  Most of you have heard us mention Stuttgart as our city, but might be confused that the title of this post is about our Zuffenhausen apartment.  Zuffenhausen is one of the districts located within the city limits of Stuttgart.  I compare it to Pittsburgh having the districts of Oakland, Shadyside, the North Shore, Squirrel Hill, etc.  The map above shows the many districts of Stuttgart, and Zuffenhausen is located almost at the most northern point of the city.  The center that is called Mitte, is the downtown area.  It takes about 25 minutes to get there by car and 8 minutes by train. 

This map shows the entire country of Germany, so you can see where Stuttgart is located.  It's in the southwest corner, close to both France and Switzerland.  We have plans to visit both of those countries, among others. 

Now on to pictures of our apartment

This is our living room that also functions as a dining room.  It's very large and it's fine that it's our only living space outside of the bedroom since most people spend all their time in one main living space anyway. 

The small balcony leading off the living room

The dining room table. 

A cute little cubby hole structure.  It's great for holding all of Brady's toys and before nap and bedtime, he carefully puts all his toys into the holes of his choosing.  He's a great little helper.  You can see him above playing cars on the suitcase.  On a side note, we believe the whole house has been furnished by IKEA ;)

The hallway off the living room.  To the right is the main door to the apartment.  To the left is the kitchen.  At the end of the hall is Brady's room.  Around the corner is our bedroom and the bathrooms. 

The kitchen.  It may appear small to all of you, but it's certainly larger and wider than the kitchen in our apartment in Oakland. 

Our tiny European fridge.  Reminds me of college days. 

Our bedroom.  We were shocked to learn we had a queen bed.  Andy likes how there are separate blankets because he's always accusing me of stealing the blankets in the middle of the night. 

Brady's room.  He went straight from his crib at home and his pack n play at Nana's to the big boy bed with no problems.  He knows that's his bed and will climb into it at naptime and bedtime.  He's also good enough to stay in it when he wakes up.  There's a low dresser in there that we use as a makeshift changing table. 

This apartment is different in the fact that the toilet and the shower are located in separate rooms. 

The shower room. 

The washer located in the shower room.  Only the washer, though.  No dryer :(

We are utilizing every inch of storage space available.  We were allotted 330lbs in our air freight shipment and brought 6 checked bags totaling almost 300lbs.  600lbs doesn't seem like a lot, but believe it or not, we have brought more than we needed.  We had no idea that we'd be provided with linens and towels, that Brady would rather sit at the table like a big boy instead of his booster seat, or that our bed would be big enough to have Brady sleep with us when we had guests instead of needing the inflatable toddler bed, to name a few things.  We probably won't use the 26" TV we brought or the Xbox.  A good chunk of the air freight shipment was Brady's birthday presents from both us and Nana.  Another 150lb+ chunk is the four boxes of diapers, big box of wipes, and two huge milk crates filled with a full 6 months+ supply of toiletries.  All of that will get used up, so that allows us more room coming home and we plan to use that extra weight to not take as many checked bags home.  We knew we would each get one checked bag free, and expected a second bag to cost about $25 like domestic flights.  Each second checked bag cost us $70!  We are hoping to only come back using free checked bags on the way home. 

This was an outside location to the Bosch family apartments where the wait list went on for months (hence the initial month hotel booking).  From what I heard from Bethany, their place is bigger, but they're also not in a huge metropolitan area like Stuttgart.  You will probably get a larger place due to your family size, but you might have to wait for an opening in the family housing by the company. 

your apartment looks great!  huge for a european city!  i am jealous of your washing machine - mine is in the basement and communal for - only get 2 days every other week to access it!  i think your right about the ikea furniture - i have some of the same (like brady's toy shelves ;) ) looking forward to showing you zurich!  it'll be so great to see so many places!  make the most of it!!