As I mentioned last week, our new apartment came unfurnished, down to the light fixtures. 

The way all the light fixtures looked when we got the place

The light fixtures were  just hanging wires like the ones in the photo above, although most were dangling from the ceiling, and not on the wall like that one. This is considered a desirable feature in apartments around here – it’s ready for your personal, do-it-yourself vision of what you want your apartment to look like.

Well, that might be nice for some people, but Chris and I are not exactly handy when it comes to doing home repair, or in this case, home remodeling. But, we dutifully trotted off to the local Home Depot equivalent, called Toom, which we’d stumbled upon one day as we were wandering around, and pretended we knew what we were doing in order to find some lights for the apartment.

BTW, the best part of the Toom store was their slogan, which Chris recognized as being a little pun in German. Cute.

The  store itself  was pretty much what I think your basic home supply store is like, although since we didn’t tend to go to them much when we last lived in North America, my knowledge of them is based on a years-old memory of a visit to a Home Depot in California. At Toom, Chris and I managed to muddle our way through choosing some basic light fixtures for the apartment (we needed 8 different ones), which our landlord kindly agreed to put up for us at no charge.  As you will see in the photos below, we didn’t choose particularly well for the kitchen: for example, the hanging one is really low (even I can bump my head on it, so you know it must be low).  The other kitchen one doesn’t hang down, but it is next to a beam, so most of the light from the fixture on the ceiling is actually blocked by the beam next to it. So, that light should be a slightly hanging one, as it turns out.  Ah well, details, details.  At least we have light in the apartment now. We’re hoping some friend or relative who is good at this kind of thing will eventually visit and  enjoy figuring out something better. 😉

Of course, you might want to hold off visiting until after we have some furniture. We’ve been making some headway in that department, but there doesn’t seem to be a used furniture market here in Tübingen.  A five-hour foray last Saturday to visit two different furniture stores resulted in ordering a bed, armoire, sofa, and  a kitchen table with chairs, but we have a long ways to go.

Anyway, I’ve posted some views of the unfurnished apartment below. Note that the kitchen did come full equipped (stove, refrigerator, dishwasher), as well as a few cabinets.  But that’s the only room that has any storage space in it ; German apartments, like those in Italy and other European countries, don’t come with any closets. People buy freestanding armoires for their clothes, and other cabinets for their other stuff.

The biggest items we still need, furniture-wise, are bookshelves. We have an incredible number of books for people who are so mobile — I mean, books are heavy, so you’d think we’d have fewer to move around, wouldn’t you?. Tomorrow it’s off to Toom again to see what kind of do-it-yourself shelving we can find there. As long as it just requires nothing more complicated than a screwdriver to put together, I should be able to handle that.

I hope. 😉

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Photos of unfurnished apartment: Click on a photo to see a slightly larger version, then click on that version to see an even bigger version.