First day of 2020 and the Fatherland
As the dawn of 2020 rose in the frosty January morning air we were preparing ourselves for the next chapter in our lives. We had been waiting for the day when we closed on our house and home of the last 17 years in Waterford and flew to whatever was waiting on the other side of the Atlantic. (Spoiler alert: GLOBAL PANDEMIC!) Well to put it in context if we had planned to sell our house and vehicle, pack all our belongings into a container, and move during a global pandemic we could not have planned it better. We'd been through a lot in the past few year plus. Mind you we started planning in 2017 - 2018 to move after I retired in 2018. Tatiana went over in 2017 for 3 months and 5 months in 2018. We planned to be in Germany sometime in May of 2019. So we set about getting ready. There's more here but those are the basic beats. As anyone who has read Greek mythology (tragic Greek mythology - Iliad anyone?) knows the gods can be quite fickle and they truly were having a good laugh at our expense. The real estate agent part was easy. We called the broker we had when we bought our house. We knew she was patient and honest, rare traits, but she stuck with us even though it took us 3 years to find and get into a house that we really wanted. She gave us an idea of what we should ask for as is and with some varying degrees of work. So we went to work. Then came looking for a contractor. The local one we had worked with before kept saying he would come by to take a look. "Come hell or high water" I remember him saying. I wonder which one he ran into cause he never came by. So that burned up some time. Then the search was on for someone else. Everyone was booked up into the next year it seemed. We had 3 come by to take a look and give estimates. From those only one gave an estimate and it was for the fall at the earliest. So the contractor search continued. We finally found one and then we got to work mid summer. During this time we also contacted several moving companies and had some estimates done. We setteled on one company after 2 visits and this was semi regulated. But of course due to the contractor search and late start our target moving date started to slip. Well (SPOILER ALERT) it got pushed and shoved till January. The moving company was pretty good. We kept in close contact and every time we called them and said ... next month... they were right there with us. As worked progressed on the house we set a date with the broker to start showings. The For Sale sign went up and we started having interest. It wasn't a circus but we had at least one idiot who had a scheme to borrow money from his boss and offer was way below asking. Ended up he wasn't getting any money from his boss and really didn't have any other means of getting a loan. What a waste of time. Now we're getting into December and we're trying to decide should we just go and leave the house or should we stay or what.
So in the end this all quasi worked out we got a full-price offer from a woman who was looking for a big house for her 5 children. She was going through a program, Rural Home Development (RFD) or some such and was going to get a loan at 1% and since she was qualified all she had to do was put in 150 hours of work. Something like the thing Jimmy Carter does where they actually build there homes - Hbitat For Humanity. So this moved along, slowly while we continued to tell the movers - "next month for sure". Now we have the holidays in the mix and we're starting to juggle the movers, the inspection, the appraisal, the closing date. Telling Tatiana's sister in Germany, who's been expecting Tatiana all summer long, well actually for a year now, that we'll be there .... soon.... So while the Food truck and catering business is hopping they're covering it with 2 people instead of 3.
So the appraisal through RFD ends up in D.C. for some strange reason and the broker nor the woman's representatives know what's going on. Our broker of course can't approach the Appraiser for fear of conflict of interest and no ones knows what's going on. After some polite nudges from our broker the appraiser calls D.C. to find out that, typical beauracracy, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and the appraisal is done, approved and sitting there gathering dust. So the logjam breaks and now we're dashing to closing. Looking to buy our flights and schedule the movers.
As you know airline tickets get more expensive the closer to the time you want to fly it is. Additionaly the movers are telling us that they need at least a week to schedule the container and once it's ordered we have to pay even if we aren't ready and it has to sit. Finally finally finally we get a closing date, we buy our tickets and we schedule the movers. Looks good on paper doesn't it. Well it wasn't all a bed of roses. The closing date slipped 2 weeks and we had the tickets and the movers coming. We ended up getting the house packed and removed 2 weeks before we flew. So there we were camping in our on house. I mean it was stripped to the bare walls. Luckily we had offered the buyer the guest bed and she wanted it. At least we had a place to sleep. We borrowed some sleeping bags from some friends. Otherwise we sat on the floor, ate on the floor, and lived out of our suitcases packed for the flight. The 3 cats were definitely not pleased with this arrangement. No more sofa for them to sleep on. No more fires in the woodstove. And worst of all no place to hide. I ended up cutting some holes out of some larger boxes so they had somewhere to hide when the movers or anybody else came to the house. So finally the closing day came and we showed up to sign the papers. We thought we would finally meet the buyer but no our broker was the only one there. It was all very bittersweet. She thought we would be happy having that big check and all but honestly we were just tired and sad. It was all very anti-climatic. We left the closing went back to the house, in the dark, to get some things we had left on the porch after cleaning everything as best we could for the last inspection. Very sad. I said goodbye to Saba and we then drove to a friends house to stay the night. Now mind you the 2 cats are in these tiny little airline approved soft bags pretty much from late afternoon, through the closing, the driving around back and forth and only get let out after we get to Parsonsfield and friends. Now they have 5 cats and our cats have never travelled anywhere but to the Vets. We're pushing them. Of course we've found out the Luca has an enlarged heart and a clot in one of his chambers and we should try our best not to stress him. Stress him....!!? He barely had enough room to turn around in his cage. We had some meds to give both of them that would not knock them out but make them sleepy and quiet for the flight. We had tried them out and Luca would definitely sleep, Nyx not so much. She would just get woozy but still active.
So a restless night and off we go to the airport the next day. We really worried about the 2 cats we flew with in their tiny cages. All the space the airlines would allow, for a 7 hour flight. They spent most of the day before, all the next day locked up and drugged to make them sleep. The night before we spent at friend's home arriving late, tired, and sad to be leaving everything and everyone behind. We said goodbye to Saba in the cold ground wishing we didn't have to leave her behind this way. We arrived in Germany on the 30th after takeoff on the evening of the 29th. A larger, dog size cage, was waiting for us at the Munich airport as we were picked up and driven to Karina and Zoran's place east of "downtown" Munich. I bet they were glad to get out of those cramped cages and be able to stretch their legs. No bathroom breaks for them in 2 days - Yikes. As they were still dopey from their last dose on the plane they seemed to take being in a new environment pretty well at first. Luca, who has a heart condition, was our biggest concern but he seemed okay. He's adjusted to the new reality okay but he's not exactly sanguine with the indoors only thing. He's always "where's the grass at...?" And I'm "Whut? Dave's not here man" So now we're here and ...PANDEMIC and nothing so far has worked out. First it was months of lockdown. The real estate market collapsed. No one was renting or if there was anything remotely interesting no one was showing cause... PANDEMIC.
I'm writing the last bit of this here the day before Summer, June 19th. We've been living out of our bags we packed back in January for almost 6 months now. Our container was unloaded and transferred to a warehouse here in München where it remains, safe and sound and ... untouched. We have looked at a couple of places so far as things have slowly relaxed but nothing yet.
THe landlady here doesn't allow pets so unfortunately the cats have to stay on the down low and can't go out. We try to keep them away from the windows. Of course there's only 2 rooms here and cats are active at night and they have no where to go and nothing to do. We try to keep them from getting too loud in the hallway since the landlady is directly across the hall from us so she might hear them. We sleep on a low fold out platform couch and Luca crawls all over us at night looking for company. He'll sleep some, crawl some, sleep some. He will keep poking you till you wake up and pay attention to him. I feel so sorry for him since he was so used to going out and he doesn't have his sister any more to keep him company. Or keep him in his place with a hiss and a slap every once in awhile. I don't thing either one of us has had a complete night's sleep since we got here. So we keep hoping we'll find a place of our own... soon and ... PANDEMIC will go away so we can take these stupid masks off our faces and can go ride the bus to go shopping like we did back in Febuary and not just food shopping like we've been doing for months. Wish us luck.
Dawn January 1, 2020 Waterford Maine
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