House Hunting Internationally, Back On Two Wheels Style

As I briefly mentioned the other day, we successfully located a place to live last week. For those who are fans of House Hunters International and wanted us to be on the show (and there were a lot of you), here follows a description of how we found the house and what we found.

When The Company moves someone, they take really good of the employee and their family. Their package allows people to live in places that they are comfortable with without downsizing them to the point they can't function. The way it usually works is that they link you up with a real estate agent here in Lux who will show you the properties they have listed that fit in your budget and needs. Unlike the way it works in the United States, agents here only show you what their listings are. They don't work for you to find a place not matter who's listing it is. The agency The Company uses only has places in the suburbs of the capital city. For most of the American's this isn't a problem. They look at three or four places and choose one from the list. Of course, as usual, we like to do things differently.

First of all, we didn't want to live in a suburb of the capital. Why? Well, we live in a suburb now. Just like the burbs in the States, these areas are spread out communities with strip mall areas and neighborhoods. Even though this country likes bicycles much more than the USA, these suburbs aren't very bicycle friendly because of their design. The fact is, they are for cars only. Most of them are too far away from the downtown area of the capital to walk or ride there and so for a car free person, you have to take the bus. Personally, I don't want my life dictated by a bus schedule. That's the way you'd have to live in Akron anyway. If we're going to live in Europe, we want to take advantage of everything it has to offer, not try to recreate the Akron experience. The other reason we didn't want to live where everyone else does is because we don't want to get sucked into the American community.

That probably sounds pretty weird, so I'll do my best to explain what we mean. It's not that we don't like Americans, but we've lived among them our entire lives. We know the culture because it's our culture. We know how they think, how they do things, and what they like. Basically, we don't have much to learn from other Americans. If we're going to live in Luxembourg, we want to live among the local people, not hide from them. It's not just the anthropologist in me that desires cultural immersion, both of us deeply desire to learn as much as we can from this experience. If we lived in the same neighborhood as all the other Americans in Luxembourg, we wouldn't have that opportunity.

Also, if we lived in the burbs we'd be living in a huge house, and I mean HUGE! Most of the houses they showed us were larger than the one we have in Akron, one was double the size! Two people don't need six bedrooms and we don't want to clean 4 bathrooms! The reason why we'd have to get a rental house is because of the animals. Most apartments don't allow them, which is weird to me since everyone has dogs here and nearly everyone seems to rent.

Finally, we didn't want to live in the suburbs because it's far away from my husband's job. On a good day it takes 30 minutes, but usually its close to 45. When the weather is nasty it can take at least an hour. It would be like working in Akron and living in Cleveland (which I know people do, but its not the way we want to do things). We figured since he'd have to go there everyday, might as well live as close as we can instead of living in the city which we don't need to be close to.

Ok, so we wanted to live in the north of the country somewhere around the city of Ettelbruck where there's plenty of amenities, but still close to nature, and close to the Mr.'s office. Since the agent from The Company didn't have any listings up in that area, we had to contact realtors on our own to set up some showings. That's pretty difficult with the language barrier, but most of them had just enough English to get by with our minimal French. We contacted every agent in the area with listings that were large enough and allowed pets. Our first day looking at houses, we visited one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning house was pretty awful, as in it had been empty for two years and no one flushed the toilet since then. We were pretty discouraged. It was also on a huge hill that is crazy with traffic, not the best place to ride a bike.

However, the evening house was perfect. It is located right in the center of the Ettelbruck, so it's within walking distance of all the stores, two minutes to the cycling path and train station, it has three bedrooms and two baths, it allows pets, and best of all- it's brand new. The house is owned by the local pharmacist and his brother. This year, they knocked down the original house and constructed a fresh modern one in it's place. The original house was owned by their father who bought it about 10 years after WWII. It has a massive garage that will provide plenty of storage space for us, and another one car garage off the back that the landlord descibed as "perfect for bicycles." I think my heart skipped a beat. The first floor has the kitchen, living and dining rooms, and half bath as well as the master suite. The second floor has two more bedrooms and another full bath. Their houses are much different in design from ours as in they have more advanced and economical features and also they are extremely modern in design. Ok, I think pictures would best describe what I mean:

Nifty kitchen cupboards that slowly close on their own without slamming

Vaulted ceilings and skylights make this small, narrow home light and airy.

Lets look at these space age sky lights again.

Why don't American kitchen designers make utensil drawers like this? Brilliant!

There are also all these other cool things like heated towel racks, an intercom and security cameras, and windows that close on their own when it starts raining. Things that are very different from American houses were the lack of carpeting. No one carpets their floors, they just buy throw rugs to soften the room. They think wall to wall carpeting is unsanitary, can't say I disagree. They also don't have any wood trim, no base boards, chair rails, or crown molding- less to dust! The bathrooms are tiled floor to ceiling and all the fixtures have clean, smooth surfaces. The doors of the house are designed to be a part of the wall and the refrigerators are made to look like a cabinet. They do not have incandescent lights, everything is high efficiency. We really like the modern design and all the features and if we ever end up building a house in the States, we'll definitely be incorporating some of these features into the plan. I think the only thing that may take some getting used to is the lack of window screens. Since there's no air-conditioning we will have our windows open most of the summer, I'm hoping we won't get too many bugs. Although if that's the worst thing, I think we'll be really spoiled after the next few years of living here.

For more on the city, check out this massive yet informative video: