Diana Elle Blog

Last November when we found out we would be moving I started looking for moving companies, but all the quotes I received were between 1750 - 2,000 eur, and we didn't think the stuff we had back then was worth that so we opted for donating most of it and selling some pieces at very low rates.  This time around it was different, since we had recently bought all our furniture  and not something we could easily return or donate; especially in a city were I had yet to meet anyone. I took advantage that while I was searching forn an apartment online I found  links that said things like "interested in  __% off on your move?" and I sadi sure why not, clicked the option, put in the details they requested and was contacted by many different moving companies. We checked their options and double checked all of their reviews and quotes and we finally opted for one of them,  it would cost us around 950 Euros, way better than the qu...

It has been a great week, Mother's day was Sunday and yesterday was Father's day in Germany. I really should write about this because it's very different to what we're used to.. We didn't do a gift exchange because of the big move coming up, but we're okay with it.  Here are my five favorite things from this past week: - 1 -  A photo posted by diana L. (@xxdinlo88) on May 11, 2015 at 2:26am PDT It was raining so much our first few days in Hamburg while apartment hunting, I'm glad that stopped and we've been able to enjoy a couple of sunny days (and waking up at 6 am thanks to the early sunrise). - 2 -   Avi and I visited a lot of potential apartments, then Pablo took a couple of his vacation days to come be with us and we went to go see more, On Tuesday I received a call from one of the Makler that we got one of the apartments we had seen the day before, that was probably the highlight of the week! - 3 - A lot...

Originally I was going to make this post about hospitals and how in the two and a half years I've lived here, I have visited 5 of them and stayed in two.  But  something happened and  It requires me to talk about  Hamburg ,  the first city we lived in by ourselves, as a family of three  and a city we fell in love with. It is the city we will be moving back to this summer !  Wait, WHAT ?  Yeah. It's been confirmed. Pablo starts work on July  June 1st.  We love Hamburg so much we weren't able to adapt well to Kaiserslautern, such a shame i know, but the good news is we will be returning to our favorite city.. wir ziehen nach hamburg am 1. Juli um! Posted by Life in German. on Thursday, April 9, 2015 It has to do mainly with the fact that we weren't able to get a spot for Avi in any of the kindergartens we 'applied' to. I mean, hello, she's five, its kind of a big deal ! I actually met another lady at t...

If you're moving to Germany you need to find a home, that's a given. but you might find it difficult to do it from abroad, i'm telling you by experience; it only gets a little easier if you do it from here. If you're moving to a big city chances are you are going to bump into a couple of scams, you will be able to tell them apart because they look like expensive suites and relatively cheap, or they mention sending you the keys by post.  To get started, the main websites we use for finding an apartment are: immobilienscout24.de , Immonet.de and a simple "Kleinanzeige immowelt wg gesucht" Google search. You go to your appointments (which you have scheduled for the same day) and where they will show you around and get to know you, it's like a mini interview. When done, you go on your way to the next one. After a couple of days, you will hear back with news (rejected or accepted) so be prepared by scheduling more apartment viewings. We've h...

We spent our last weekend in Hamburg at a friends house wrapping up our packing and organizing everything. After that we went downtown while we waited to meet up with other friends and their kids. We walked around the stadtpark while the kids played with the snow. It was fun and Avii got to say goodbye to some of her friends. As of Monday we are officially in our new city. It feels so surreal, we are staying in the university's guest house until we get the key to our apartment on Friday. We move in over the weekend and then start buying furniture and everything little by little. A photo posted by diana L. (@xxdinlo88) on Jan 29, 2015 at 2:18pm PST Yesterday we walked around the university and I can't wait to explore more, but for now, we are spending our time playing in the snow.