New Couple from U.S. just moved to Koblenz

Hi there,

My wife and I just moved to Koblenz from San Francisco. I have a post-doc at WHU in Vallendar, and we are looking to live in Koblenz. We'd love to meet some English-speakers in the area. But first, we need to find an apartment! If anyone has any advice on the first few weeks in germany (why don't any of the apartments come with kitchens?!?!) or would like to drop a line and say hi, please do!

Take care,

John

Hi John,

and welcome to Germany.
Indeed the kitchen seems to be a cultural difference. But there are apartments with kitchens, they are often explicitly mentioned in the adverts (Wohnung mit Küche). If you want to rent a fully furnished apartment look for "möblierte Wohnung" . A lot of previous tenants also sell their kitchens quite cheaply, because it would not suit in their new place for example.

Thanks, Frank. We're looking at our first place tomorrow. Do you know if there are any websites that sell used kitchens (the equivalent of a craigslist in the US).

Thanks again for the help.

John

First one´s her: http://www.gebrauchtkuechen.de/index.php?seite=kaufen&mkat=2&umen=15&mod=2&kat=1
You have to enter your zip-code (PLZ-Postleitzahl in German). I don´t know which one Koblenz has. Or click on "alle" (all).

If you want to look at other pages type "gebrauchte Küchen" in google.

You also should pay your local second hand store a visit.

Hi John
I have been living in Koblenz on and off for a couple of years. I split my time between here and the US ( my children live there, my soon to be husband lives here) I don't speak German yet, but I'm learning (slowly). I would also like to meet other Americans living here in Koblenz. How has your search been going? Silly of me to think I was the only one here...I guess I need to get out more.

Hey John if you think that they don't come with kitchens is weird try them not coming with any light fixtures!!!

Hi and welcome to the area. There are actually quite a few English speakers about; not that I'm aware of English-language meetups anywhere.

Germans aren't so great at selling things second-hand (not like Craigslist anyway) but you can find a fair few larger-value items through Quoka and Such und Find
http://www.quoka.de/
http://www.sufi.de/

One piece of advice from our experience looking for an apartment in this area: take a great deal of care with apartments where a Makler will show you around. We ran into a particularly nasty Makler (shall remain nameless, but his initials are "TB") and ended up having to get a lawyer onto him to get him to stop harassing us with fake invoices. IF you ever run into a situation where a Makler sends you a list of "AGBs" (standard business terms") BEFORE viewing the apartment, take care to understand what they contain.