Dein erstes Forum » How many Americans lived like this,

url=http://www.wholesalesoccerjerseysshoponline.com/cheap-real-madrid-cf-jerseys/]Wholesale Real Madrid Jerseys[/url] , lots of diverse restaurants and culture. Things are well kept, clean and green.

When I first arrived in Leipzig, Germany in 1996 it was dark and gray. All the buildings looked decrepit and run down. There were very few restaurants and places to hang out. I had no idea how anyone could live under such circumstances. I shared an apartment with my girlfriend, which was an unrenovated, pre-war working-class place with two very small rooms. It had a closet for a kitchen, coal heating Wholesale Paris Saint-Germain Jerseys , toilet in the stairwell and no bathroom. After having lived in a house all my life, I felt very closed in, but I was grateful that I had a chance to use coal for heating.

It seemed historic to me. Each room had its own heater, which was made out of tile and stretched from floor to ceiling. Soon, I fell into a routine: First, I had to clean the heater and remove the ashes Wholesale Manchester United Jerseys , then I had to fetch the coal from the basement, cut the wood, go outside and empty the ashes, light the kindling and wait till the coal was thoroughly burned that I could close the door the door of the heater so it could finally warm the room. I had to do this every 12 hours, or whenever I wanted to keep the apartment warm.

Life revolved around the heaters. The toilet in winter was another story; I would run down the stairs, turn on an electric heater and close Wholesale Manchester City Jerseys , run back up and wait 15 minutes before the I returned to use it. Once a week I would bathe at a friend's house. This was all foreign to me. And I liked it too. By mid-winter the novelty had worn off and I found that all I wanted was to turn a knob to have heat go on, and a large warm bathroom so I could shower in my own place.

How many Americans lived like this, I thought. This created more questions like: What was it like to live in the former GDR? Or in Nazi Germany? These were all easier to understand and answer for me after moving here. Living history-and they were still changing times, 6 years after the fall of the wall.

I made friends very easily. I think mainly because I was American and people were curious about America and why I came. They were very eager to show me their lives, how they lived and how they had lived. We had long discussions about how things were, about the change from socialism to capitalism