I miss my room.
I miss the sunshine that came through the curtains, as I never kept it dark. I always choose lightweight transparent fabric so I can welcome the sun. I know I hate the light sometimes. But the quiet room that faced the backyard made me fall in love with this apartment. My mind was trying to recall the first moment I came to visit that apartment as I write this post.
1. Decision to move together
Let me tell this clearly, the discussion to move in together came from us months before (maybe 3 months before we got the apartment in Adalbertsteinweg), without any force and it was truly our conscious decision. For whatever reason we had that time, for me, I lived in Crailsheim due to compulsory internship, as I decided to go back to Aachen, I got no room. The second brother was also finished with his bachelor's degree and he couldn't extend his permit to stay in the dorm. We asked the third person, the first brother, to move in with us, and yeah there were some discussions before he said yes, but from my point of view, it didn't take ages to finalize our discussion.
Then, I asked my parents' permission and they gave me it. They trusted me. And I maybe have been a good kid ever since so it was not hard to tell them. Naively, I was thinking that maybe people also had the same thought as I did back then. and the answer is no.
Little did I know many of them gave opinions on what happened and questioned our decision. I never cared, until now. So yeah, if one of us tell that this was a mistake, I now have to agree. Because yeah, as I finally gathered the answer after many whys, I then knew "Allah gak ridha"
2. Finding the apartment
Getting a place to live, whether it is a flat, a studio apartment, or even a dormitory room is not easy in Aachen. Aachen is a small city that has many universities. Of course, during the start of the semester, you will be guaranteed to get no chance to find a room, so at that time we decided to move at the beginning of November.
This was not the first apartment that we visited. There were some more but still in the center of Aachen (by center means just a couple of stations from Bushof). One is located near Scheibenstraße, they both did not like it (I was in Indo back then), the other one was a newly renovated apartment in Julicher Straße, the landlord wanted us as tenants but not each room is accessible through one door, so there would be a privacy issue, especially for the two. The last apartment we saw was near Adalbertsteinweg, but far from the bus station, the one next to is Rothe Erde which is 8 minutes away. This apartment has 4 rooms, one kitchen, and two bathrooms, so there will be more convenient for me to have a separate bathroom from the boys (haha sorry, but they knew what I was thinking about). But we didn't take it because of the proximity to everything and the rent was a bit high.
So yeah, the apartment in Adalbertsteinweg is very much what we needed. Its location is superb, Netto is just across the street, many halal stores and restaurants are nearby, the bus station is just in front of the door, and the Rothe Erde Station is just maybe 8 minutes away, (not considerable, but Allah knew that it helped me a lot during my commute to Cologne as I worked there). I saw the advertisement online on wg-gesucht.de, the second brother was in Indo so I happened to go there with the first brother. (My first impression will follow), I liked it. And I said to him that I would like to take it, but the issue was that there was no storage for the bike, as he owned the bike and the apartment is located on the 3rd floor which is very inconvenient for him. and I understand how the struggle would be. The second brother said that okay if I liked it, he went with me, so after bargaining and discussing, all of them agreed.
The thing is, we didn't know whether the landlord would choose us or not, since there might be many visitors. But thankfully, she chose us, and yeah the journey began.
3. Features of our apartment
You can ask the other two, they might agree that this place is the best place during our life in Aachen. I could not recall how many square meters the apartment has, but it was decent. The apartment has three bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen fully equipped with exhaust; a built-in oven, dishwasher, washing machine, and I love the color and materials, and of course, one petite bathroom.
The Kitchen
Besides my bedroom, the kitchen was the main reason why I wanted to take the apartment. It is dominated by wood, a bit of beige-colored plywood paired with textured oak (If I'm not mistaken) matches perfectly with the dark brown parquette. The natural light shines through the window that also faces the backyard. We bought a white dining table with two banks, so it was not purposefully intended for not only four people but could adequate more. The big and fully equipped kitchen was my dream. I like to cook for people so for me having a decent dining table nearby was truly a dream come true. I liked inviting people to come by. But the dining table was heavily used for just the three of us having casual dinner. Many things happened in our kitchen, the place was full of jokes, laughter, tears, deep conversations, arguments, pizzas, half-roasted chickens, or just us having tee together, oh I missed it.
The Living Room
The second place to hang out was our living room. We bought a secondhand sofa, the fabric was grey, which my second brother hated because it was a bit itchy and the smell was a bit unpleasant. My first brother bought the matching grey curtains from eBay and cut them by himself because it was way too long for the window. I put my TV there, my first brother mounted a hanging rack for it and put his stereo system there. Voila, it was our go-to place for NetFlix and chill (literally). My second brother and I often spent time there to binge-watch, and the brothers sometimes played PlayStation (not owned by us), and the sofa is also a place to crash for whoever wanted to stay overnight with us. In our living room, the old tenant also left the Kallax shelves for us, so we put our stuff there, mainly our books.
The Bathroom
The most unlikely feature of our apartment was the bathroom. Many of our friends criticized how small it was. It was just 2 x 1,5m, but to us, it was okay. I remembered the time we wanted to invite our friends to our welcoming party, the pipes that attached to the bathroom and went through the kitchen were clogged, and we needed to call the plumbers to solve the case, sadly it was a public holiday (after new year's eve), so we had to try our best to fix it by ourselves. Our first teamwork, huh?
So, that was it. It was a short stay but very memorable. I miss the smell, the comfort, the scenery that I could enjoy during twilight, the annoying sound from firefighters, the crowd we heard from the street (Adalbertsteinweg is one of the main streets in Aachen), the washbasin that was placed very close to our toilet, my bedroom door which not built perfectly so I still could hear the footsteps even though I closed it tightly, the night conversation about life that we had in the kitchen and living room, the NetFlix and Catan time, the crowded kitchen when we cooked together, the invasion of the maggot in our trash that summer, the dust we had to clean up. Everything, the good and not-so-good part. I thanked them for finally being so patient to live together.
But life. It must go on. I hope, it brings back some good memories for the brothers and also for everyone who visited us back then. Adalbersteinweg 243 was once, a comfortable place for us to be just the way we were.
P.S. There are many photos I took, but these are the safest, with no human appearance due to privacy
Dresden, 19.01.2022
17:56
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