Greetings Australia! From cloudy Loughton!
Well what a week it has been… Our super-cheap flight from Stuttgart Germany into “London” landed us out at Stansted airport, the furthest airport from London that somehow still claims to be a London airport! Luckily for us this was the best airport for us to picked up from by Jo’s family friends, who we have been staying with here in London (Phil, Carole and their two boys Rob and Chris). Upon arriving we spent one day getting acquainted with this little town out in the North-East of London (Zone 6 approximately 40mins from central London). Taking a look at the High Street, finding out where the trains and buses leave from, before - somewhat unexpectedly - being left the keys to the house while the family went on holidays for the week! But that’s okay Jo and I are pretty trustworthy Aussies, we didn’t even have a single party!! (Mainly because we didn’t know anyone to invite). Instead we spent the week… house-hunting *shudder*… this is the point where our overseas holiday stopped being a holiday and Jo and I had to take things seriously.
We spent the first few days trying out the numerous different suburbs of London, visiting cheap properties and flat shares trying to determine which parts of London were ‘dodgy’ and which were… respectable. Our conclusion is really quite simple the East half of London is dodgy!! So we have decided to concentrate our efforts on the western half, which appears to have less ghetto-like suburbs and better transport links, basically the opposite of Sydney.
By the end of the week after trawling through Gumtree.com and visiting numerous properties we were beginning to become a little discouraged as we just couldn’t find the right mix of flatmates, room size, suburb and services in a building that doesn’t need to be condemned. So after adjusting our budget (deciding to spend more), only looking in the suburbs we liked and not wasting our time on adds that were written in poor english, we found a couple of very nice places. But things aren’t necessarily that easy… Once you find a nice respectable house and landlord that is after more than just your money, you then have to be selected by the housemates from a huge list of people just like yourselves who have been trawling through Gumtree.com searching for a place like this! So with that said we had two nice places we’d like to live, one has decided they no longer wish to move and the other, hopefully, will call us back very soon with some good news (fingers crossed). So now that we have potentially found a place to live we get to spend this week looking for a place to work *sigh* when will our holiday be a holiday again???
Monday 20 February 2006
Jo and Jeremy’s Top 5 warnings about house hunting in London!!
1. Don’t respond to ads that are written with poor english and grammar. If you do call and manage to get the address out of them, don’t bother asking them questions as they will likely lie to you or just plain have no idea what you are talking about!
2. When an ad says “10 minutes walk from tube station” it really means 20 minutes walk from tube, or 15 minutes if you are prepared to hop over some peoples fences.
3. You can usually trust the quality of a share house over a vacant studio apartment as people are already happy to live there and haven’t died of malnutrition due to insufficient cooking facilities.
4. When investigating flat shares always remember the golden ratio; Number of tenants: Number of bathrooms! 8:1 does not compute!
5. Question and Answer time in Turnpike Lane (suburb of East London) What’s wrong with these answers?
a) Jeremy: rings buzzer *bzzz*
Tenant: Loud deep intimidating voice from a window overhead “WHO’S THERE!”
Jeremy: “Jeremy and Joanna, we called you 5 minutes ago about the Room?”
Tenant: “Oh… hmm”
Later
b) Jeremy: “So do you get much crime in this area?”
Same tenant: “Oh yeah, heaps!… but not in this street…*tenant smiles nervously*
Jeremy: *also smiles nervously*
2. When an ad says “10 minutes walk from tube station” it really means 20 minutes walk from tube, or 15 minutes if you are prepared to hop over some peoples fences.
3. You can usually trust the quality of a share house over a vacant studio apartment as people are already happy to live there and haven’t died of malnutrition due to insufficient cooking facilities.
4. When investigating flat shares always remember the golden ratio; Number of tenants: Number of bathrooms! 8:1 does not compute!
5. Question and Answer time in Turnpike Lane (suburb of East London) What’s wrong with these answers?
a) Jeremy: rings buzzer *bzzz*
Tenant: Loud deep intimidating voice from a window overhead “WHO’S THERE!”
Jeremy: “Jeremy and Joanna, we called you 5 minutes ago about the Room?”
Tenant: “Oh… hmm”
Later
b) Jeremy: “So do you get much crime in this area?”
Same tenant: “Oh yeah, heaps!… but not in this street…*tenant smiles nervously*
Jeremy: *also smiles nervously*
Monday 13 February 2006
Top 5 weirdest thing about Germany
Well we’ve made it to London and are currently staying 35min by tube north-east of the centre of the city. We’re pretty busy at the moment looking for jobs and somewhere to stay a little more permanently, but we’ll keep you posted as we progress. Meanwhile here is our list of the top 5 weirdest thing about Germany:
5. German bus and train drivers don’t know that the brakes work gradually instead of just instantly.
4. They recycle absolutely everything… you can also get up to 25c back for some bottles in the supermarket… and then go and pick up your fresh coke in scratched and well-worn bottle!!
3. Being first in line is very important – this may mean standing up 5min before your stop and pushing friendly tourists out of the way.
2. You thought Bankstown had a lot of Kebab shops…
1. Everyone in Germany stares at you and doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, even when you stare back!!!
5. German bus and train drivers don’t know that the brakes work gradually instead of just instantly.
4. They recycle absolutely everything… you can also get up to 25c back for some bottles in the supermarket… and then go and pick up your fresh coke in scratched and well-worn bottle!!
3. Being first in line is very important – this may mean standing up 5min before your stop and pushing friendly tourists out of the way.
2. You thought Bankstown had a lot of Kebab shops…
1. Everyone in Germany stares at you and doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, even when you stare back!!!
Thursday 9 February 2006
To Berlin and back
Well we’ve been in Germany for a little while now and learnt some handy phrases “Ich spreche kein Deutch” (I don’t speak German) we tried it on the un-uniformed ticket inspector in Berlin and shook our heads because we thought he wanted money, then he told us in English he wanted to see our tickets….oops!!
We’ve done a few day excursions to areas around Tübingen that Steph has organised for us. We’ve visited the oldest castle in Germany at Meersburg and the tallest cathedral spire in the world at Ulm, and seen a few other cool things along the way!! We even ventured out for one day on our own… of course only with instructions from Steph with train times, platform numbers and instruction for buying tickets in German.
We took the cheap German airline to Dresden for one night – where we bumped into a girl Jo was friends with in year 4 at school!! Random!! We went out and sat with her in a cool little café until 1am, (Jeremy and I will miss this in London). We had a bit of catching up to do and got some tips for Berlin. Dresden was pretty cool, but still so many construction sites, they’re still repairing from after the war!
Off to Berlin the next day where we stayed with Sarah, Steph’s German exchange student from Year 11, it was great to see her again and Berlin was amazing!! It’s always good to have a local show you the secrets!! We did a city walk (when it was like -10 degrees!! We’re told it’s warmer in London though – Phew!), went to some awesome museums, and fitted in a bit of shopping too!!
But four days was over all too soon and we didn’t have enough time to see it all so we told Sarah we would be back again in Summer, when it’s warmer…
So we’ve been in Germany for nearly 2 weeks and still only payed for only one night’s accommodation in Dresden… we’re doing pretty well, off to London next where we have free accommodation arranged before we find our own place… anyone looking for flatmates in London let us know!!!
- Turns out that Jo is just as bad at keeping a story short, but I guess most of you knew that already
We’ll post some photos when we’re set up in London…so keep your eyes open!!
We’ve done a few day excursions to areas around Tübingen that Steph has organised for us. We’ve visited the oldest castle in Germany at Meersburg and the tallest cathedral spire in the world at Ulm, and seen a few other cool things along the way!! We even ventured out for one day on our own… of course only with instructions from Steph with train times, platform numbers and instruction for buying tickets in German.
We took the cheap German airline to Dresden for one night – where we bumped into a girl Jo was friends with in year 4 at school!! Random!! We went out and sat with her in a cool little café until 1am, (Jeremy and I will miss this in London). We had a bit of catching up to do and got some tips for Berlin. Dresden was pretty cool, but still so many construction sites, they’re still repairing from after the war!
Off to Berlin the next day where we stayed with Sarah, Steph’s German exchange student from Year 11, it was great to see her again and Berlin was amazing!! It’s always good to have a local show you the secrets!! We did a city walk (when it was like -10 degrees!! We’re told it’s warmer in London though – Phew!), went to some awesome museums, and fitted in a bit of shopping too!!
But four days was over all too soon and we didn’t have enough time to see it all so we told Sarah we would be back again in Summer, when it’s warmer…
So we’ve been in Germany for nearly 2 weeks and still only payed for only one night’s accommodation in Dresden… we’re doing pretty well, off to London next where we have free accommodation arranged before we find our own place… anyone looking for flatmates in London let us know!!!
- Turns out that Jo is just as bad at keeping a story short, but I guess most of you knew that already
We’ll post some photos when we’re set up in London…so keep your eyes open!!
