Downtown Girl

I have finally become a Downtown Girl. I live in the midst of all that is happening . . . in Kiel, Germany.

Asmus got some IT work for a bank in the town of Kiel, so we moved last March. Sorta. We still have the Hamburg apartment but we also rent an apartment in Kiel.

Before I arrived, I was a bit frightened. Everyone. By "everyone," I mean every person to whom I said the word "Kiel." Everyone said Kiel was ugly and boring. Asmus lived here for months before and he said it was boring and ugly.

I wasn't sure if something was wrong with me but when I came to scope out an apartment in March, I found Kiel to be your average-looking town. It was not Paris but it was not Gary, Indiana. I suspect people are remembering an old incarnation of the town or repeating what their parents' said.

I scooped up an apartment in the heart of Kiel. We walk everywhere. To restaurants, to the sea, to the train station, to the gym, to the grocery store, to bars. I love living in the middle of everything. I grew up on the edge of Philadelphia. My first apartment was in Northern Liberties. That rocked. I was next to the fun but in the middle of the noise. But Germany is not as fun or as loud as Philadelphia, so it is great to be in the middle of everything.

I am a block away from two ponds -- the Kleiner Kiel and the Grosser Kiel. The Kleiner [smaller] is closest to me. In the middle of the summer, landscapers mowed the lawn and let the clippings flow into the water. The two Kiels have not looked good since then.

Since May, a fountain spray water from the Kleiner Kiel back into the Kleiner Kiel. The clumps of algae or whatever float on top. The spire of the old Rathaus [German for "City Hall" pokes up behind the Kiel Opernhaus [Opera house].

That is the ugliest thing about this city of 280,000 that sits on the Baltic Sea [that's the East Sea to Germans].

A lazy summer day in the park next to the Kleiner Kiel