What kind of homes did germans live in

Registering with the energy and water companies: If electricity, hot water or heating gas are not included in the ancillary rental costs, you will have to find a supplier yourself and sign a contract with them. Registering for telephone, Internet and cable television: Germany has a variety of service providers. It pays to compare them; online portals might be helpful.

A tip: Setting up a telephone, TV and Internet connection can take several weeks. It is best to contact a provider before moving in, if possible. Fees for television and radio: In Germany, you are obliged to pay a fee approx. Click here to register online. House-hunting and moving — this is how it works. Watch out for these things in your lease contract. Why do I need a Schufa statement?

Tips on how to find accommodation in Germany. This website uses cookies that are strictly necessary for the technical operation of the website and are always set. Other cookies requiring consent, to personalize content and ads and to analyse access to our website, are set only with your consent.

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Prospects after your vocational training. Safe Travels!! I wanted to know how you found a second hand ac unit in Germany. Are there websites for second hand appliances and furniture? Great question. We purchased 2 units for Euro total. My parents lived in a Swiss-German house for five years and I loved those shutters.

I swear those things will withstand being hit by a tank! The ones in their house were awesome: totally power operated. Then you can push it again to make them go down. They stop with slight cracks between them like American blinds. My room was next to the living room and, oddly, had massive folding walls made of framed glass. The windows in my room also had German blinds and even in the middle of the day, they could seal out all the light.

I miss those things. The all-wood floors never creaked. The doors were steel and that was bad. Oddly, they were designed to come off the hinges easily and the movers took advantage of that when I saw them bringing new furniture in Ikea of course!

We will be moving to Wiesbaden in a couple of months from a 3, square foot home in NC. What do we really need to bring that will fit in a wardrobe or a closet if we are lucky enough to have one?

Should we have our car s shipped, and if so, is an SUV too big for practicality there? Do we need to buy ALL new electronics, including things like Macbook laptops? Also, do you know of an area in Wiesbaden that we should look for a rental? At least 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms is needed. We speak about 5 German words as of right now, and I will begin to learn more once I can figure out how this move is going to work.

Thank you for any help that you can provide! Hi there, my apologies for the tardy response back as we have just finished our move back to the US over the past few weeks. It is a wonderful experience…but a stressful one in the pre-move and the first few weeks upon arrival. Wiesbaden is a great area.

Are you moving due to military? With the military base there, there is a American community in the area. Also, the locals will speak English because of so many Americans in the area. Most people buy wardrobes. IKEA usually has good ones to select, or check with classified ads you may see in Wiesbaden as Americans who had bought a wardrobe may be looking to sell theirs if they are leaving.

Hmmm, it depends on how old the car is what condition , and can they pass German air emissions test. Different cities have restrictions on what cars with certain emissions are allowed.

On one of our first trips to Germany, we rented an SUV, and regretted it because it was a beast to park. And, Germans are very particular about not dinging car doors in parking lots. So, I would recommend not bringing over an SUV. Apple products are okay. My iMac and Macbook worked with no problems.

After you check the voltage, the next thing to buy before coming are EU electric adapters Google this. The electric plug in EU is different than the US 2 small round prongs vs. If you must absolutely bring over an electronic that is not dual voltage, you can buy a step-up transformer to convert the electricity.

We did this for a crock pot and a paper shredder for example. Also, televisions from the US generally do not work here because the cable TV is different.

We brought one from the US and only used it to connect our laptop to it to watch vids online. We lived in Mannheim, about an hour east of there. Try to learn the basics: numbers, how to tell directions, ask for help, where is the water closet, etc. Use Google Translate if you have a smartphone, use the app, you can actually use your camera to translate words. Again, most Germans can speak some English. Hope this helps…send me more questions and I will try to help more..

Best of luck with the move!! The fridges were actually bigger here in America in the 80s and 90s back when things were not so much made in China. Now if you buy the most expensive products you are not really getting much of a better deal except maybe it lasting TWO extra years extending the products life to four years instead of breaking down after 2 years because everything is made in China now with slave labor…….

What they do now is they make it look like you have more spaces to put things in but they do not extend very far back so you have to do a lot of hunting to find the right fridge to suit your needs and compare. We purposely find ones that DO NOT have ice makers as it allows extra freezer space and ice makers are just a pain to take care of anyways which if they break or corrode it will leak into your freezer ruining everything inside it and possibly damage the mechanisms.

As a result of going to Costco we do not need so much food every week and it really cuts back shopping trips for fun trips instead. I am not given up on my dream to build a German — environmentally friendly, efficient, simple, tasteful and very functional house.

Love my German windows toilets and appliances …. Hoping you can be of help. You are welcome to come and visit …. I just moved here to Germany, another thing, too is they take all there light fixtures. The previous renter offered to sell me their window covering, so when I arrived at the home was shocked that they had removed almost all the light fixtures.

Very informative, especially the little videos. I loved your article. We have German friends in the Rhine-Pfalz region that we have stayed with. I was always fascinated, not only with the efficiency of the doors and windows, but the quality of their construction! I often thought it would be great to build a house here in the US with them, but the cost would be prohibitive to get them here.

I was shocked that a large family of 7 had such a tiny kitchen! Of course, typically German families do much more local day to day shopping then us Americans. We shop like we are stocking up for the apocalypse every week…lol. Yes, and the next week-end to trash out the same amount of grocery or food from the fridge because simple… you bought too much. This one of the problems in US. This one looks at the differences in housing between the US and Germany in terms of architecture and interior design, written from the experiences of two columnists who lived in these two different dwellings.

Have a look at their work and the examples and feel free to comment. The link is provided. Chinese person living in the US. Gravity will simply pull the window down and smash it shut. This is what I have to deal with everyday… Gives me heart attach sometimes…. I moved from Germany to Charlotte, NC a while back and needed some time to get used to the flimsy houses and the waste of resources water and electricity because, e. Even in new buildings.

You shared a great article about the designing of home with the images which help you to save your time and money by using the current technology ,material and construction process ,if you plan to design and build a new home or do an extensive remodel on an existing house within a short period of a time without the wastage of money and time then the best solution for you problem you must communicate with professional home designer consultants for given a graceful ideas of home designing with the techniques of sustainable design principles for domestic home design and construction.

So you must fallows the ideas of profession home designer to build luxury home easily after the save of money and time according to my opinion. Almost all yards are surrounded by tall walls and gates. Having lived in both Germany and the US, I think this is for the most part true. The one thing I saw from a different point of view was the insulation.

The German masonry homes are difficult to heat in the winter and they constantly feel cold. If you finally get a room warm, you have to air out the room and let all the heat out or the walls will begin to sweat and cause mold problems which is a common problem in German homes because the warm moist air condensates on the cold masonry walls.

The old German fachwerk houses are better insulated than many modern German homes, but are costly to upkeep and repair. Fachwerk houses are also cut strange making it difficult to use the space in a modern way and often have very low ceilings. There is some movement to increase insulation in German houses, but it is very expensive as it usually requires the owner to hire a company to add another 15cm of insulation on the outer wall, which often time looks goofy as non-insulated walls are already 30cm thick.

I was born in Munich but did get the chance to live in the Wiesbaden area for 11 yrs. My parents and I and my daughter loved it….

I did not find any problems living in Germany…. I tell my friends about it…. I do miss the bread, rolls, luncheon meats and pastries….. This brought back fond memories…..

Thanks again. I will write this on my Twitter now. Highly informative post and lots of valuable comments that have enhanced the post even more! Thank you very much everybody. If I remember correctly, the basements in the US are the same height as the other floors, but in Germany, they are slightly lower in height. Also, is there a difference in how the sizes of the homes are measured? When someone says sqft in US or sqm in Germany, what are they referring to?

Do you offer guest writers to write content in your case? Again, awesome weblog! Great article, very informative! It brought back a lot of memories from when I lived in Heidelberg, Germany many years ago. I remember the transformers! Although I loved Germany very much and would like to go back and visit again someday it does make me very thankful for my American home.

Hi Chad, remember to mention that German windows are also a lot more airtight, have a higher U-value and R-value and, in cooperation with the thicker and better insulated walls, keep a lot of the temperatures more moderate inside a house. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Of course, all that policy-design detail is interesting.

But there might be a simpler explanation for the popularity of renting in Germany. Why is renting cheap in Germany? Without that deduction, the benefits of owning and renting are more evenly balanced. And because one of the main reasons to buy a home is to hedge against rising rents , the tendency of German rents to rise slowly results in fewer homebuyers and a lower homeownership rate.

For example, German banks are quite risk-averse , making mortgages harder and more expensive to get. Others argue that the supply of rental housing might be higher in Germany because of its decentralized, regional approach to planning. The UK is much more centralized. Not necessarily. The data below show Germans actually pay more for housing—as a percentage of disposable income—than housing-crazed countries like the US, Spain and Ireland.

And German people clearly like how their system of housing works. Then again, the Irish and the Spanish—where homeownership is much more widely spread—seem just as happy. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy.

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