Short Days, Long Nights

This week has been a fairly uneventful one. Steph has been working most of the week to make up for the six days off she will have over the Easter long weekend. Once again, when she comes home, we stay up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleep in. We ventured down to Altstadt only once this week. There was a group of boys doing break-dancing or something like that and it was gathering quite a crowd. We came at the tail end of it which was too bad. They started up again as we were leaving but we didn't stay to watch. Another favourite pastime of ours is to go to Steph's favourite coffee shop: World Coffee. Steph has become quite enamored with one of the men who works there and so she must go there every day to see him. I am only guessing here, but I believe that since we go there everyday and we are probably the only people who order in English that we are very recognizable. One of the girl baristas started up a conversation with Steph on our third day in a row. I think they like the opportunity to practice their English. We discovered on day four that we are not the only regulars at World Coffee. Steph's Sexy World Coffee Man comes in on his days off to sit and study. Steph watches him and tends to stop paying attention to the conversation at hand. This continued until one unfortunate day when he walked beside her and she discovered that he is only an inch taller than her. I think he lost a few points with her but she still insists on going everyday. After our coffee, we head home and Steph goes to her nannying and I start my studying. I have decided to incorporate German television into my studies and have nightly shows that I watch during the week. On Tuesday, I watch The Simpons and a little bit of Two and a Half Men. Wednesday is Grey's Anatomy and Thursday is Germany's Next Top Model. Friday night is game show night. I watch Who Wants To Be a Millionaire which is very annoying to watch because the host believes he is super funny when he's not. Even the contestants get irritated with him. My favourite is Die Perfekte Minute. It is a very strange game show where there are two contestants on a team (they aren't competing with other people though) and they have to do a task in one minute. The tasks are very strange. There was one where the contestant had post-its stuck to her back and arms and she had to shake them off without touching them and keeping her arms straight. In another one, the contestant had to roll a golf ball down a paper towel roll into a basket on the other end of the table. Another one had the contestant blow cocktail umbrellas out of a straw and get them to land in the champagne glass with the umbrella facing down. They look super difficult but it is fun to watch.
Unfortunately, our apartment is being rented out for Europafest and so we will be unable to stay. Our landlord gave us the option of moving into the next apartment while "ours" is rented out and then move back in when the festival is done. We decided to look at more apartments for the time being before taking him up on his offer. It looks like most apartment owners will keep the place furnished as long as you pay 500 to 1400 Euros for it (that is the least and most we have seen) on top of the damage deposit etc. Fully furnished, we are discovering, are very hard to come by. Yesterday I found the perfect apartment. It is fully furnished, in the middle of Düsseldorf, nice furniture, big windows etc. but it is only available in September because the owner has to go abroad. It was very sad. We are going to keep an eye on it. So far the apartment hunting has not been very successful but we do love the apartment we are in so I think we will end up staying, which isn't the worst thing by any means. I would like to move into a smaller apartment closer in town but I think that will be very hard to come by.