We made it to the other side! The move went off without a hitch, thanks to a competent moving company and the fact that the thunderstorms with hail and torrential downpours waited until after the furniture was safely unloaded and in the new apartment.

We spent the remaining three and a half days of last week unpacking everything and re-assembling some furniture. By Sunday night we had finished the kitchen (stove, oven and fridge from the old kitchen installed in the new one, some other minor changes), the living room and André’s office. My office will have to wait a little while longer, but I won’t need it until I start my new job in February. Right now I’m sitting at an improvised desk in our old place, which feels strange and different without all the furniture.

After the long wait for my transfer reality is setting in and I’m starting to realize that I will have to say good-bye to my colleagues and students at the old school in three weeks. Even though I’m really looking forward to living with my husband full-time again and being much closer to some dear friends I’m going to miss a lot of people and some other dear friends, and my last day at my old school will be bittersweet.

Long-time readers know that the above headline usually announces a move and/or new job. This time it’s both.

André started a new job back in April. He’s working for a company near Karlsruhe, which is almost two hours from here by car. When he was offered the job back in January I applied for a transfer right away, but one of the few disadvantages of being a civil servant employed by the state is that you can’t just hand in your resignation and look for a job elsewhere, you have to wait for a transfer. Physics teachers have been in very high demand in Germany for several years, so it was no problem to find a school willing to take me on board, but the school I’ve been teaching at for the past eight years couldn’t let me go because there were only two other physics teachers. My transfer is further impaired by the fact that Karlsruhe is in a different state (Baden-Württemberg vs. Rhineland-Palatinate) and transfers across state borders are very complicated. However, Karlsruhe is right across the Rhine from Rhineland-Palatinate, so there are two schools quite close to Karlsruhe, and both were looking for a physics teacher.

For the past nine months André and I only got to spend our weekends together because he stayed in Karlsruhe during the week while I had to keep working here. Fortunately, it looks like I will be transferred to one of the aforementioned schools on February 1st, 2012 (when the new school semester starts), so we are going to be moving to Karlsruhe in a few days. André and I have spent every day since the 26th packing and disassembling our furniture and will hopefully starting to unpack everything in Karlsruhe on the 5th. I’ll then commute to my old school from a mostly empty house for the duration of January until my transfer, and André and I are both very much looking forward to everything being back to “normal” in February when we will finally be both living and working in the same place again.

This will likely be my last posting before the move, so happy new year, everyone! See you on the flip side!