Epic Move 1

Our move to Toronto from Berlin was in the works for several years.  We hadn’t spent a lot of time in Toronto since we left in 2003.  Our visits were often short and family oriented and so we didn’t feel confidant that we knew the city anymore.  What neighbourhood did we even want to live in?  The plan was, we would live at my parents’ house in the suburbs for a year and rent an AirBnB in different neighbourhoods around the city and try to get a real local’s feeling for it.  Cute plan!

The café was sold, our tickets were booked, coronavirus hit.  What to do?  We extended our rental agreement, we postponed the movers, and we locked ourselves in our home and watched the news.  Countries were repatriating citizens and we thought: let’s just do it, no-one else is travelling, it might be the safest time.  So we rebooked the movers and informed the landlord.

As everyone was scared to leave their house, nobody was looking for apartments, which meant the beautiful kitchen we built had to go.  The landlord has a policy and nothing, not even a once in a century global pandemic, will change that!  So after a couple of 5 hour wait times at the dump, we deciding to just take it all.  We had a moving container, so we would fill it to the brim.

After a safe, almost empty flight and quarantine, we moved into the house I grew up in and began watching the housing boom.  I must admit that the suburbs are not my first choice of places to live. I loved living in the centre of Berlin, but there were a few downsides: Tour groups blocking the sidewalk, schlepping the groceries home and up four flights of stairs, being incredibly nervous riding bikes to school with the kids, just to name a few. As we settled in here and the kids made friends with the neighbours we started to think, maybe it’s not so bad, and quite frankly, have you seen the price of a shoebox downtown? New plan: we are staying here and renovating.