What does a furnished rental home in Germany look like?
We are in a village with easy access to the bi-weekly farmers market, grocery stores, parks, and public transportation to both work and all areas of Stuttgart. Most vehicle traffic routes around it, not much driving through town, and some of that is farm tractors! Lots of people walk in town, and there are many, many bicycles, with the riders ranging from 9 to 90 years old. Wonderful walking / biking trails as well as community gardens, corn fields, and forests surround the village.
St Michael’s is at the heart of town. The church bells ring all day, and more quietly all night. They ring to mark the hour, quarter-hour (one ring), half-hour (two rings), and three-quarter-hour (3 rings). The Wednesday and Saturday markets are held at the church square.
Our rental apartment is on the 4th floor of a hundred-year-old house. There is only one door to the house – around the back from the street, entrance is onto a small landing on the staircase. Each floor has a retrofitted apartment; these are very convenient, modernized, furnished, short- to medium-term rentals. We are 4 flights up, and there is one “attic apartment” above us. In the US, we would call these condos, but here everything is called an “apartment” if it is not a full house.
We have just under 800 square feet: 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and an open concept kitchen, dining, living room. Two French doors open onto a small balcony. The furniture is fair to good, we added a few console tables, and completely replaced the balcony furniture. Refrigerators in Germany are smaller than US fridges, but ours takes small to a new level: we have a dorm-room sized fridge, with a little shelf for a freezer.
Our monthly rent includes utilities + internet, which saved us major hassles from the German setup process. We also have a garage, which we use for storing bikes and camping gear.
We like the modern, open style of our apartment, and it has been very efficient with the heat for our first winter here. No air conditioning, but we stay relatively cool with fans and open windows (no screens, hello flies!). Our beds are comfortable, the couches are not. The laminate wood floors look lovely and are easy to clean.
Amenities
The house has shared laundry; 2 washing machines, medium sized, both work fairly well. And 2 dryers, one works much better than the other, meaning the other leaves your clothes damp after 2 hours of running. Being the home of Porsche, can we get some engineers on the dryers?
Our housemates come and go, since these are short-term rentals. Mostly they’re German, but also some Americans, Japanese, and Ukrainians. It’s a quiet house, no parties, and we hardly ever see anyone but when we do they say “hallo”.
After all the pressure of finding a rental apartment when we first arrived, and working through limited inventory, we are super pleased with our choice.
Prost!
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