Thursday, May 7, 2026 - 5:47 PM

No It Doesn't Matter Update This Week, but Hey, We Have an Apartment!

Unfortunately, I won't be able to post a progress update for It Doesn't Matter this week.

So. Let's get into it. I just moved from California to Germany with my mates. We had planned to end up in Gießen for a job one of my mates had been expecting to get...that we didn't find out had fallen through until a week before we were scheduled to fly out. Soooo, yeah. Because we'd been waiting on the specific location of the job assignment (since there were several locations vi could've ended up working) we'd delayed getting an actual apartment, and Vi had set up a two-week short term rental for us.

We'd decided, back when we were only worried because we were still waiting for the assignment a month before our flight, that we would still come out here regardless. We'd decided we needed to do this move as of the 2024 election results, and after a full year of trying to make this happen, we wanted to just pull the trigger and go.

So, we flew in to Frankfurt and started to get running!

The first week was mostly a frenzy of job applications, exploration, and working to make sure we got our kitties back after the whole mess with their paperwork. The second week...well.

We needed to leave after two weeks. We knew that. Violet had applied for a bunch of rentals, posted for lodging, and we'd viewed two places, one sublease and one group home with a bunch of awesome queer people.

But then Friday rolled along. Move out day. And the rental we'd signed up for wasn't getting back to us...and it was May Day. Labor Day. And a national holiday. There was a very real danger we wouldn't hear back from them until Monday, and in the meantime, we had no income, no place to stay, and couldn't make ANY progress on our visas to stay here until after we had a place we could establish with the Rothaus as our current, permanent address--a place we could receive mail and have a rental agreement.

We did our move-out, and Vi scrambled to book us a cheap hotel to help preserve our resources as much as possible. And OOF, was that the saddest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It was small, crowded, and HOT, and packed to the gills with the three of us, all our luggage, and the kitties.

In this depressed place, we truly started churning on finding a new apartment.

Chaos, I sent so many messages, submitted so many fuckin' applications.

And fortunately, one panned out.

We were able to move in to the new place on Sunday. Relief.

Then the work started. We picked up emergency housewares on Sunday from the hardware store, cuz hey, EVERYTHING is closed in Germany on Sundays. Monday we walked to Ikea, got mattresses and a few indispensable kitchen items, like silverware, pots and pans, and a trash can. Tuesday we had our appointment at the Rothaus for our Anmeldung, the address change paperwork.

Just like everything else, that was harder than it had to be. We had to get a DIFFERENT form from our new landlord because the office didn't like that our rental agreement was more than one page, because we could have slipped ANYTHING IN THERE. He got back to us soon enough that we could just go back, and don't have to set another appointment...but Germany doesn't want to recognize Violet and Robin's marriage, because of name changes, so now they're having to go back and forth with getting MORE documents.

At least I was able to get my blocked account, German health insurance, and establish a German bank account.

So yeah. It's been a crazy week. We've been going full speed until now, and only now are things starting to get back under us.

Speaking of "under us," since the only furniture we have right now are the mattresses and one surviving air mattress, I don't have a non-painful place to draw right now. We explored our options, cuz again, no income right now, and ordered a cheap table and chairs yesterday that'll arrive Saturday, and then I can get rolling again.

But Vi rocked vir job interview yesterday, has several other interviews lined up, and, to borrow from Dimension 20 Starstruck Odyssey: The Ball is Rolling Up!