International Apartment Hunting 101 Part III: Private vs. Agent

It’s time to continue my blog series on Apartment hunting in Austria. I apologize for the long hiatus, but in the mean time we found an apartment and well; it’s quite the undertaking to get moved around here. I’ll talk about that in another post but let me talk about something that you should consider way before you move, when you first start looking into an apartment.

Here in Austria we you can use a real-estate agent to help you find a rental property. This may sound strange to many of you, but renting is so much more common here and what are the real-estate agents to do? Of course, agents don’t do it for nothing, and they can really add to the expense of finding an apartment. Most apartments here require a hefty deposit up front, usually at least 3 months Kaltmiete or flat rent (without utilities or building costs). Agents usually charge another 3 months flat rent in Provision (realtor’s fee) so going with an agent can cost you 7 months’ rent up-front! Most if not all of that you will never see again (landlords are notorious here for not getting your deposit back to you-we are still waiting on ours, in fact). It’s much cheaper, then, to find an apartment through a private individual. The downside is that private offerings are much more rare and since you are likely not dealing with someone who is a real-estate professional. This means that you are subject to their schedule when it comes to viewing the apartment and much of the time this means that they will book multiple showings at a time. This gives the potential landlord a huge psychological advantage when it comes to any negotiations because group showings tend to have an auction-like atmosphere. The first one we showed up to there were at least 4 other couples there and we were the only one with a small child. It starts getting really hard to be objective in your evaluation as you start hearing others in the group getting excited about certain features in the apartment. The place we finally settled on was a private place but the landlord owns a number of apartments and we were the only ones viewing the place at the time. It was a great experience and we have a really good relationship with our landlord.

International Apartment Hunting 101 (Location)

Part I: Location

This ain't HG TV. Trying to find an apartment overseas can be a daunting task and you would be really lucky if you end up with three awesome places to choose from (don't get me started on all those whiners on House Hunters). I'm no expert, this is only my fourth time apartment hunting internationally over all and second time in Austria, but I've gained some insight into the process and I thought I would share.

Location is a huge consideration and there are so many variables. There's normal stuff like distance to work and quality of the schools, but there are a few different things to consider when trying finding an apartment in an urban environment in Europe.
1. Parks- Not having a yard, you’ll want to find a place that has at least a small park with a good playground nearby. We are really lucky here because Vienna is packed with little Kinderspielplätze. (Now only if Adam Spencer were around to help us find them-it’s a talent only he has.) There are a couple of bigger parks around town and we are certainly looking around those areas. I think it would be a great way to get to know people by going down to a park and playing a game of soccer or frisbee or something. Who knows, maybe we could invite them over to our place afterwards for fellowship…start a Bible study. The possibilities are endless.
2. Public transport- Whether you own a car or not your access to public transport is a pretty important factor. Right now we don’t have a car so for us it is essential. There are three main kinds of transport here in Vienna. First, is the subway or U-Bahn. Over 70% of the population uses this form of transport on a daily basis. So even if you have a car, it’s still a good idea to think about how far you are from a U-bahn station if you want to have other people over dinner or a small group or something. The U-bahn is your quickest form of public, allowing you to get almost anywhere in the city usually in 30 minutes or less. The next two types of public transport are trams and busses. A tram, also called a Bim in Austria, is a lot like those trolleys running on tracks in San Francisco that you see on the Rice-a-Roni boxes. They are great for short distances but not a U-bahn substitute because of their slow speed due to frequent station stops and street traffic. Busses, or Autobusse, are in the same category as trams, but they seem a bit faster to me. What you really don’t want is to live somewhere with a long Autobus or Bim ride before you get to the U-Bahn station. That can turn a 15 minute commute into a 30 minute commute really quickly…or, um, slowly.
3. Shops- Shopping must be done almost daily. This is a result of limitations due to transport (imagine walking home with all of your groceries), and storage (smaller fridges, freezers and cupboards). It’s a really good idea to find a place that is a short walk from some type of grocery store. It’s even better to be close to several stores because different stores are good for different items. For instance, there are lower-budget stores like Hofer (the Austrian name for Aldi), Lidl, and Zielpunkt that have great prices on your basic staples. There are also higher-end grocery chains (Spar, Billa) that have a few specialty items that are nice to be able to get. It’s also not a bad idea to have a DM or Bipa nearby. These are Liz’s favorite. They are kind of like Walgreens or CVS without the pharmacy. Pharmacies are always stores unto themselves and are generally pretty easy to find just about anywhere you are.

Making Strides in the Langage

I wanted to share a quick update about language learning. When you live in a foreign culture and desire to interact with people in their heart language like we do, language learning is a life-long endeavor. However, the first months of our being here has been dedicated to focused language learning. In two weeks Liz will finally be finished with her time of focused language learning. For the last eight months she has been faithfully going to language class every morning, four hours a day Monday through Friday. It may not sound like much, but believe me there is nothing more mentally taxing than struggling to express yourself in a new language for four straight hours a day. She has progressed very well and I am quite proud of her. She started from zero and now has full-on conversations all of the time. We are looking forward to the time it will give us for ministry.
I have been done with language classes for a while. Since I majored in German I only needed a refresher course to get me back in the groove. However, I have found that since I have been out of language class it's sometimes hard getting practice. The majority of our ministry at the moment is among refugees, who may or may not speak German. Because of this I've been trying to find a language partner, someone I can practice my German with in order to keep it sharp. Just this last week the Lord provided me with a guy from our church who has the time to meet with me twice a week. This has been a great motivator to continue to improve my German skills. Please be praying that we can find a similar situation for Liz as she finishes. Pray also that our ministry would grow and branch out more into the German-speaking community here as we wish to be light and salt not only to the internationals, but also to the nationals as well.

The Leaky Bucket

Have you ever heard the story about the leaky bucket? In case you haven't, I'll tell you the short version. There was a leaky bucket that was ashamed that he wasn't doing a good job since he could only deliver half of the water a normal bucket could because of his holes. However, one day he noticed that because of his daily routine of bringing water from a stream, there were many beautiful flowers along the path where he had leaked. Yeah, it's a cheesy story, but I have to say I've been feeling a bit like the bucket lately. Despite how well things have been going for us here in Austria, sometimes I wish we weren't starting over again. Instead of having a laser-focused action-packed ministry, I'm learning culture and language again while doing a Bible study here, a meeting there, refugee center once a week, while throwing in the occasional project for a little variety.

However, like the bucket, faithfulness (and of course GRACE) can make up for our inadequacies. Just the other day I was reminded that even though David was anointed as king at a young age, it took him many years of hiding in caves and running around like a crazy man before he became king. God was using this time to build his character-- it was not wasted time. In the midst of my discouragement last week God had me stop and look at the flowers I had watered along the path that I'm beating. Last weekend we had some visitors in from our missions office to do a presentation on Biblical leadership training. Russ and I had spent several weeks beforehand inviting people who we thought might be interested, and we weren't getting many commitments. But as the day of the meeting came and I looked around the room, I saw a couple of guys from my Bible study, some other friends from the refugee center, and the pastor of the church we attend.

I don't know what the fruit of last week's meetings will be, but I am encouraged to see what God will do. So if you don't mind I'm going to grab my leaky bucket. I've got a path to water.

The Feeling of Possibilities

You know that feeling you get when you step onto a college campus--the feeling of newness, future possibilities, and exciting things to come, like anything could happen? Well, that's the feeling I had as Matt and I stepped onto the UNT campus last Thursday to attend German Club. I felt like a student again, and unofficially, I am. I am beginning to learn some basic German before we ship out to Vienna in June with the help of Matt, a textbook, this once-weekly conversation club, and soon, Adam's set of German cd's (thanks, Adam)!

The club was fun, and although I was the beginningest of beginners there, I was still in the company of some beginners with a few advanced speakers thrown in the mix. At first, I froze when someone asked me a question, and I kept wanting to ask questions in Russian (thanks, Moscow)! But by the end, I was able to clearly say, "My name is Liz", to spell my name in German, and also nailed my target phrase, "How does one say...?" This week I plan to bust out a few more new phrases I've been working on and to get a good start on my numbers. I'm convinced that all of this learning will keep me young (or at least help me not to feel so helpless as I first land in a German-speaking environment for real)!