New City, New Title^^

Hi all, sorry for the long silence, but things have been really busy around here recently. As you read in the last post, I found a place to live in Hamburg, and through some pretty interesting coincidences! A few weeks ago I had several appointments in Hamburg, looking at various apartments. The night before a particularly busy day, I got an email from one particularly interesting group of roommates, informing me I had been selected as one of the top 10 on their list, and should come over the next evening to introduce myself. I hadn't even remembered writing this particular group, but I added them to my calendar. I was a bit skeptical as I looked over at the bright orange house right on the train-tracks, but as I walked in and was greeted by all the roommates, offered a spot on the comfy couch, and was handed a beer, my doubts started to melt away. To make a long story short, despite having a nice night with this group, I wasn't offered the room that was becoming available. I was saddened by this, as I had enjoyed the company of these folks a lot, but continued my search, as I had been doing after every disappointing appointment (diss-appointment??).
After our orientation conference in Altenberg (near Cologne)I returned to Bad Oldesloe growing increasingly desperate for a place to live, not because things were bad in Oldesloe, but because I didn't want to get into a comfortable routine at school, only to have this interrupted by moving once I finally found a place. Anywho, on the very same night I got back from Altenberg, I got a call from Maria, the main renter of the apartment. She explained to me that she and her husband were moving to New York for 6 months, and the girl who was going to sub-let their apartment had just canceled on them, just three days before they were going to leave! They asked me if I would be interested in the big, fully furnished room with the group that I had wanted to live with anyway. I jumped at the chance, and moved in last week, fully half a month earlier than I would have been able to had I been chosen to take the smaller, non-furnished room! Pictures are on Facebook, here (viewable even w/o a Facebook account)
The first night in the new place was a great start, got my stuff all unpacked and set the room up a bit. Went shopping with two of my new roommates, Adrian and Caro, getting the blitzkrieg tour of the neighborhood while we were at it. Afterwards we cooked dinner (spaghetti bolognese!) and, thanks to the internet, watched the new film "District 9." I decided to make it an early night, knowing that 6am would be coming along very soon, and having never done the HH-OD** commute during business hours before. The commute really isn't bad at all, I never have to wait more than 4 minutes for the S-bahn at Dammtor, and when I get to the Central Station, it's just up and over 1-2 tracks. The travel goes by even faster when you happen to have a good book along, in my case Tom Clancy's Without Remorse which I highly recommend, even to people who don't usually like Clancy and his penchant for lengthy and highly-detailed descriptions.

** HH=Hamburg, OD=Bad Oldesloe (KH=Bad Kreuznach) These are the abbreviations used on German license plates, but have become common in daily speech as well. I will probably use them from time to time here on the blog or in emails, so consider yourselves warned!