We left for Maastricht and Aachen at 6 in the morning, a time at which I’m usually sound asleep or still up. Needless to say, I had a hard time looking forward to anything about the day. Additionally, my allergies gave me a hard time and so I ended up closing my eyes and listening to my Creative Zen throughout the whole three-hour drive there.

We had an appointment at 11am with a local realtor who had specialized on assisting students. I had decided that this was going to be the least comfortable part of the day; strolling around with an important looking businessman, having my dad talk shop back at him. The main focus of our trip was to find me a place to stay that was both affordable and inhabitable. Unfortunately, neither was accounted for by said realtor.

I’m not sure if that is just the way it is in Maastricht or if we just happened to go with the wrong realtor and the wrong websites prior to our visit but of the three places that lay within my budget (below 500 euros/$780 a month, all expenses included), only one looked remotely nice. And I’m not talking luxury here, I’m not talking about special extras - simply a nice enough place that anybody would want to live in.

Don’t get me wrong, the realtor was essentially a great guy. He was young, friendly, good-looking and spoke almost flawless English. So did his colleague who was even younger and drove us around town to look at the different apartments. But the places itself - I WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED TO STAY THERE IF PAID FOR IT. Let alone spend such a ridiculous amount of money on it.

At the third place, the current student living there stumbled upon us in a robe out in the hallway. I’ll spare you the details BUT IT WAS NOT A PLEASANT VIEW.

So, apartment-wise Maastricht was a disappointment. But the city itself was as beautiful as ever. The calm, broad river, the old bridges, all the cafés and restaurants and clubs and bars, the expensive designer stores next to cheap tourist spots - it’s so perfect, it’s worrying. I posted more pictures here. They are, however, low quality because I took them with my cellphone.

I had made an afternoon appointment with a landlord in Aachen - also known in the English language as Aix-la-Chapelle, by the way, which is confusing because, really, that’s actually French. She was going to show me two apartments of different sizes but in the same building. Although I had been so worried about Aachen being an hour away from Maastricht by bus or train and had considered it my last option, all that went out the door when my parents and I entered the building. At first glance it was already in such better condition than anything we had seen in Maastricht and at a cheaper price, mind you!

The two apartments themselves, though, didn’t look all that great either. They also didn’t have connections for a washing machine which was an important point because I won’t be able to drive home that often and so I’m going to have to do my own laundry. There were at least ten other people there with me to look at the places and they seemed a little more enthused than I was. I also liked the bigger one of the apartments - especially compared to the dumpholes we had seen in Maastricht - but it still wasn’t good enough. If I was to rent a place in Aachen, it had to be close to perfect because just the distance to Maastricht University was downside enough.

So my parents and I went on to the last option for the day. I had contacted this girl named N by email when I found her ad that she had posted just a day before and we agreed that I should come by to take a look right away.

And what do you know? Sixth time’s a charme, right? Her apartment is perfect for me. It’s right next to the Aachen Cathedral, as in ALMOST PART OF IT. And it’s tiny tiny tiny but it’s already furnished since she is leaving all her stuff behind because she’s returning to the place in March 2009 after spending one semester in Chile. This is great for me because it gives me half a year to see whether it’s a good thing to live this far away from Maastricht without having to spend any money on furniture or other necessities. Maybe by next March I will have made friends in Maastricht and we will want to all move together into a bigger place - who knows, right? This way, I’m not bound to sign a two-year contract and right from the start I have everything I need. I’m just more flexible that way.

The above graphic is both proof of my fer0sh PSP skillz and the layout of the apartment. It’s of course not very detailed and probably not very accurate but it gives you an idea. It’s a very cute place in a great building which, I think, is actually part of the original cathedral compound but it’s been fixed up, of course. Most of her furniture is from Ikea and so, obviously, I liked it instantly. There are a few things I found out but don’t care about (there’s no television, for instance) and a few things I do care about but haven’t found out yet (like, where I can find the next bus stop and how far it is to a grocery store and the train station) - but I’ll go back to Aachen next week and sign the contract and talk to N about the rest.

It’s so exciting, MY FIRST OWN PLACE! I hadn’t expected to actually find something yesterday but I’m glad it did work out that way.

On our way back home, and we drove back right after leaving N’s place to be back in time for last night’s Euro half-final Germany versus Turkey, we got stuck into a major traffic jam 10 kilometers (6.5 miles) long. There was no going back or forth. Four huge trucks had collided and lay across all four lanes, two drivers had to be air-lifted to the hospital and they announced on the radio that it was going to take until 9pm to clear the way for traffic. 9pm - at the time that was four hours away. 9pm - the game would have been on for 15 minutes. And after 9pm; after they had cleared the autobahn, we still would have had three hours to go! It was almost sickeningly devastating to just sit there, unable to do anything.

After about an hour, someone had the idea to get off the autobahn through a rest stop and although nobody knew if that would work, everyone - except all the big trucks - followed. Thing was, that now everybody was driving, or rather crawling, down those backroads and straight into another traffic jam who had emerged because police had closed of the end of the original jam and bypassed traffic this way as well.

So basically, THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF CARS WITH ANGRY PEOPLE IN THEM WHO WANTED TO GET HOME TO SEE THE GAME BUT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO MOVE EITHER WAY.

We ended up having to listen to the first half of the game on the radio which was torture. Whoever thought that listening to a soccer game would be a satisfying experience must not be a person I’d want to spend time with.

But as we all know, all in all the game was great and I found an apartment so I’m not complaining, in case it seemed like I was. Oh, official moving in date is August 1, by the way.

So there’s tons of time left to be irresponsible and waste time. Goody.

I went on a trip to Bremerhaven on the German north coast with my uncle P to take my grandma to the cruise terminals as she is spending some time cruising the Baltic Sea with stops in Kiel, Riga, Tallin, Helsinki, Oulu, and Stockholm. I am so jealous, she always takes amazing cruises like this.

We left here at 10 in the morning and, as is expected when traveling with uncle P, didn’t use the autobahn until we got to Bremen. Although it takes longer to get places, it is also a more relaxed way of driving. We were listening to the country music I brought which included Keith Urban (DUH.) and Jake Owen (which my uncle does now want a burned copy of - again, DUH.) as well as If you are going to San Francisco and It never rains in Southern California. On top of that, my uncle drives a very, very old dark green Mercedes and we had a German flag pinned to the back window on each side for the Euro 2008. So, to sum up: WE FELT VERY RETRO AND WOODSTOCK ‘69 AND NOT COOL AT ALL.

But that was okay because instead of being cool it was just fun.

The Bremerhaven seaport is one of the most important ports of transshipment which basically means that there’s containers from all over the world and humongous containerships several stories high. Also, there were huge parking lots with hundreds of brand spankin’ new John Deere’s and BMW X5’s on them which I found particularly thrilling. After eating lunch and dropping off my grandma, we didn’t have any time to stay so I only took pictures while driving past things but I posted them here anyway.

Since we had such a great time, I’ll go with uncle P again when we pick up grandma and we’re also going to take my brother and my cousin Lisa. Only this time I’m gonna make sure that we won’t miss that night’s important soccer game (which is what happened last Thursday), what with it being the Euro 2008 final and all.

I currently have a thing for accents from Down Under which is a surprise because I always thought they basically spoke like the British until I heard Keith Urban actually talk as opposed to singing with a southern drawl. Also, there is a character on Gilmore Girls named Finn who talks with that same accent and he has me on the edge of my seat, waiting for Australian accent snippets.

So, news flash: I do now love people from Australia and New Zealand.

I just love the English language with such a passion and I love it even more to discover beautiful accents. Of course I learned all my English vocabulary and grammar from Friends which I would consider pretty clear, standard American book English. My pronounciation, however, is not only influenced but essentially shaped and formed by the lovely people of Kentucky and their southern drawl. Meaning, that everything went down hell the minute a flight attendant of Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport asked me, AN’ WUHD KEHN UH GITU, HUN?

As much as I love the lazy, southern pronounciation, accents from Down Under have my heart for now. Also, this whole thing makes me feel extremely wanderlust-y and long to see the world. I can’t stop checking out airport websites worlwide.