All good things must come to an end, and so it was with my stay in 519 Subbelrather St. here in Cologne. The six people I have worked with during the past eleven months, Lars, Katja, Levin, Tille, Janik and Stephan, have finished their terms in the office, and as they began to move out, their six replacements began to move in. Besides the loss of my six closest friends here, this put me into a bit of tight spot because I was living in a company apartment, but now needed to give up my place. I was the odd one out, having started my job here much later than the others while I finished my degree up in Kingston, and now staying a month later than the others. Michelle on the other hand, still had a job until the end of July and wasn�t about to live in temporary accommodation for three months. So, we really needed to find an apartment, and for three months. This turned out to be particularly difficult given that Cologne is home to the largest university in Germany (70,000 students) all of whom look for accommodation when the new semester starts, end of April. Super. The other trouble points included our extremely small budget, Cologne�s extremely high rental prices, and the fact that we were only looking for three months. Still, our good fortune prevailed, and Michelle found a guy working at Sony who was moving temporarily to Berlin for just those three months, and was looking for a sub-letter. He was even leaving behind all his furniture. Bonus. The immediate surroundings of our new fifth floor home aren�t much to brag about, but once you get over the neighbouring buildings rather dirty bland facades, we live right in the heart of downtown. We can see the Dom (cathedral) looming up in our window, and can walk practically anywhere which is extremely practical and easy on the wallet. The one problem we would soon discover was that living so close to the Dom is nice, but also loud, especially on Sunday. Our earlier trip up the Dom had given us a good view of the 24,000 Kg bells it�s towers house, and now we here them for a good ten minute stream of sound every Sunday morning.
As for the actual details of moving, I won�t bore you with that story. I helped some of my new colleagues, Tjark and Jana, to move their things, and they helped to carry mine up all five floors (we have no elevator). It took a morning, but luckily I don�t currently own any furniture outside of a reading lamp.
What was a little more interesting was the moving party thrown by my former co-worker Tille. He had a theme breakfast, a traditional Bavarian Breakfast. As it happens, a Bavarian breakfast is on the hearty side, and not the worst thing to eat when you have day full of manual labour ahead of you. The meal typically consists of boiled white sausages, pretzels and a white beer. The sausages are quite good, and served with a sweet mustard. The pretzels aren�t anything like the typical Canadian snack food pretzel, i.e. the size of a baby�s fist, thin, and crunchy. Here they�re the size of a paperback and they�re a soft bread with a liberal coating of rock salt. A white beer, is one that has been brewed from wheat, and is slightly creamy and full. All together, it makes for a very filling breakfast. Michelle and I joined Tille and five of his other friends on a Sunday morning to have our southern meal huddled in a circle in the attic, and then swarmed downstairs to pack all of his stuff into the panel van he had rented. The morning was a lot of fun, but sending Tille off in the truck really felt like the first step downhill towards the end of my time here. My other five colleagues had left one by one slightly earlier, but Tille was the last person in the office connecting me to the largest block of my time here, and now when I went back to work the next day it would be just me and the new team. Even at the end of Monday, I�d come home after work to my new apartment for the first time. Times were changing.
