The house is much larger than it looks. It's unusual because it isn't attached to the neighbors. (The garage is attached, but that hardly counts!). There's a tenant in half the basement, of course (what house in Germany doesn't have a tenant apartment?). The ground floor has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, kitchen, great room. Upstairs there's a Cape Cod-like peaked room with 1 large and 1 small room. The basement has a large storage room plus the laundry and boiler rooms. The 2-car garage and fenced back yard complete the picture.
Living room (or Great Room)

... in a small house in the country.
Backyard. Small, but very private. house1.jpg (50332 bytes) Patio on the back of our house; doors from living room and two bedrooms

Bedroom. Notice the knockdown, efficiently designed furniture ("schrank") Steps to the front door Fireplace in living room, wood-burning
  First Previous Next Last Index Home

Slide 3 of 18

Statistics
Location: About 30 km (18 miles) south of Stuttgart, just off the Autobahn and served by the Herrenberg S-1 S-Bahn train.
Size: I figure the house is about 2500 square feet of living space, plus the 2-car garage and basement apartment (separate entrance).
Rent: Our monthly rent was 2600 DM. We had a 3-year lease. The rent included 300 DM for "furniture rental" (a joke).
Utilities: I don't really know the cost of utilities because the bills went straight to the Company. However, we did fill the underground fuel oil tank after one heating season. It took about 8000 liters (nearly 2000 gallons) at a cost of over 5000 DM. Other utilities included water, electricity, telephone (we paid that bill), and incidental costs for things like the chimney sweep (required every year by law), furnace inspection/cleaning, compost (80 DM per year for the compost bin) and garbage (240 DM per year for each of two small bins).