Time To Hit The Treadmills

Today, we decided to go and sign up for a gym pass. The Germans seem to be big fans of the gym and so we thought it would be a good way to get fit and potentially meet some people. There is a woman's gym by our apartment and so we thought we'd go check it out. It was not what we bargained for...
My only experience with gyms were with rec centers or expensive exclusive ones...this is exactly what the Düsseldorf woman's gym was. We quickly learned that Germans do not do gyms but do "Fitness Centers". Normally, you can't sign up for a month by month pass. Instead, you buy 6 or 12 month packages so the lady helping us, Vanessa, was very confused by our request for a month by month. We asked for the price and she said she would tell us...after a tour of the facility. The place is amazing. They have mostly cardio machines (being a woman's gym and all), a room for aerobics, personal trainers, a kid's daycare, a juice bar, and a sauna/steam room complete with tanning. They also have a bunch of DVDs for you to rent for three days for free. New movies by the way. Her English was good but she needed to use quite a bit of German and so with our knowledge of both languages, we were able to communicate quite well. She told us about how the gym is more family oriented and that it was better to do work outs without men. We sat down with her after the tour and she told us how things were normally done. We explained our situation and she got on the phone and got us a month pass...which was 80 euros each. On top of that, we needed to pay a 50 euro registration fee and a 75 euro starting package. We were on the verge of declining when Vanessa brought her supervisor in to bargain with us. In the end, we got about 150 euros off of what we were originally supposed to pay with everything included, an extra month free, and a VIP pass into a disco club the gym is sponsoring. We also can go to any "FitnessFirst Fitness Center" in Düsseldorf and the surrounding municipalities. It was a pretty good deal I would say. We were very lucky. Word to the wise, always hesitate and say it is too expensive...when it comes to German gyms anyway.
We also moved back into our old place which was kind of sad. The place looks amazing and clean. The mattresses have been replaced with nice, new ones which is good but it will be sad to go back to single beds. I shall miss our bathtub and Tassimo machine but the Tassimo will be most missed by Steph who will quickly fall into caffeine withdrawal. I wanted to ask if we could take it with us but Steph thinks that we shouldn't ask...