die Wohngemeinshaft (WG)

If someone (from Germany) asks you if you live in a WG (pronounced vay-gay), they are asking you if you share an apartment with other people. From what I've gathered, 2 people living together also constitutes a WG. So right now, I live in a WG with Paul. I think there are unwritten rules about what is considered a WG as well. If two people are dating, and decide to get a place together, that is not WG. In that case when someone asks, 'do you live in a WG?', you would respond, 'no, I live with my boyfriend/girlfriend'.

WG stands for Wohngemeinshaft which translates to living community or more generally, a shared flat. Now a little bit about Berlin. Berlin is a pretty poor city. Therefore it is a very cheap city. Aparentments avaiable to rent are in abundance. However these apartments are all empty. Available rooms in a WG are in abundance as well, but the amount of people searching for a WG is probably about 15 times that. I say 15 because that's around the average number of people who were looking at each of the places I was looking.

In case you haven't figured out what I'm alluding to, I'm going to move to a differnt WG. I was first inspired to do so by Mark from Michigan. One of the guys with whom I play american football on Sundays (although I haven't been there for 3 weeks now). He's hanging out in Berlin trying to learn German. He was living with a lady from Kenya. So needless to say, they didn't speak German in his flat. He mentioned the website wg-gesucht.de where young people post offers about available rooms, so one day during the following week, I decided to check it out (during down-time at work [like right now]). What I discovered were tons of available rooms all around Berlin. My only requirements were that the people speak German (the entire website is in German, so that's pretty much everyone), that the room is cheaper than the one I have now, and that more than just one other person live there. From the first batch I contacted (I don't remember how many) I got one responce saying they already found someone. I decided to try again and was invited to my first 'let's find a new flatmate party' (There's an actual name for this in German, but I forget what it is). After the first one I knew what to expect. I started contacting lots more places because I had seen the number of people at the first place all vying for the same room. In order to get the room, you have to somehow stand out or impress the other people currently living in the WG. It's quite interesting. I certainly don't enjoy being on this end of it, though it's probably a nice way to pick an interesting new flatmate. I honestly can't tell you how many places I visited. For close to two weeks my evenings and weekends were packed full with looking at different WG's. I know a little bit about probability, and the more places you look, the better your chances that you'll get one of them. Most of them had one person come at a time in half an hour or hour intervals to look at the house and talk about interests, how you want to do food, the cleaning plan, and stuff like that. But there were three of them where people just mingled around chatting.

After rejecting via text message from some, and just never hearing from others, I finally got a call and an email from Mascha. I got picked! The room is much smaller than the one I have now, but the flat itself is much nicer. The rent is €90 cheaper a month and they have a kitten. It's directly north on the same U-Bahn I take now (U8) and it's on the boarder of Wedding and Prenzlauer Berg (which means nothing to any of you). But I didn't really care where it was. It's pretty much the same distance from work. Aside from Mascha (who is female and 19) Katherina (f,19) and Martin (m, 18) also live there. As well as some girl whose room I'm moving into, but I don't know her name and didn't really meet her. I'm not moving until the 1st of December, and I saw Monika and Dieter (my host parents from last summer) on Sunday and they offered to give me boxes and drive my stuff from one place to the other so I don't have to take the U-Bahn. I'm pretty sure I'll take them up on their offer.