I’ve just started this blog to talk about our family project, an Umgebindehaus renovation in Oderwitz Germany.
In July last year, after finding a couple of houses for sale in East Germany by an English couple (which meant I could do the contact), we made an offer pending viewing.
Convincing my husband it was my dream to renovate an old house, preferably historic, but over 100 years was okay, and myself convinced that the children and I desperately needed some German influence to improve our language skills, so we went to see it.
The properties were in the Zittaur Gibirge region, or Zittau Hills, it is closest to Dresden, and the nearest hubs are Prague and Berlin, close to equal distances for travel by road, but with train from Prague one must come up to Dresden first.
We travelled via Prague the first time, since we wanted to see Prague too, and spent a few days there.
Arriving in the Zittau surrounds, I fell in love with the area – the people, the houses, the countryside, the culture. It was refreshing.
We had booked into an amazing hotel at the top of the hills in Waltersdorf, and just loved sitting looking at the view.
And loved the kids play areas…
A long story short we met a great agent, Christine, at Dr Thomas Immoblien, and bought our very own Umgebindehaus, built in .
The property transferred in November, and we returned in February to make arrangements for starting the renovations with Dr Thomas’s rental division.
Our German family, Ricco’s aunt and uncle joined us, driving the 7 hour trip across from Dussledorf, and were not only an enormous help on the technical German stuff, but great company too.
In February it was winter and even more amazing. Zehnya saw snow falling for the first time (Sascha did too, but he didn’t really know what was going on).
I forgot to mention they had lots of chances to meet friends, and for Sascha, the car deserts were just in his element. We even made friends with a friendly ice cream shop owner who we just loved visiting, great people, shop, toys, ice cream, and 5 minutes from our house. And Ricco found a model train shop half way to the ice cream shop.
After a few days in a holiday rental flat, we bought a few items of second hand furniture, and some new bedding, and moved into the house.
After a long discussion with the agent about what needed to be done, we left for home.
A few months later we received the quotes. After a little two and from, some work that was overlooked by both of us, a few conversations by Ricco in German with our helpful rental manager, Torsten, also from Dr Thomas, we received some more quotes and okayed the works.
We’re now preparing to go back to arrange the finishings (bathrooms and kitchen) for the upper part of the house, more on the plans in another post.
