After 32 nights at the Hyatt in Mainz, we moved into our house on August 4th. Somebody from church watched the boys while the household goods were being delivered. That was a big help. A few days before we moved in, the movers placed a "no stopping" sign in front of our house. This was rather humorous to us because the house is right in front of a busy bus stop.
The movers arrived with our stuff right on time.
In the States, our stuff was loaded onto a huge 18-wheeler. In Germany, they use smaller trucks and make multiple trips. We had seven "crates" of stuff. The truck could only hold four crates so they unloaded four creates in the morning and then came back after lunch (and a trip to their warehouse) to unload the other three. Here's a photo of one of the mover guys opening one of the crates.
Everything in the crates had a numbered tag on it. The numbers were placed on the boxes in Maryland. My job at delivery was to check off each box as it was unloaded from the truck. At the end of the day, the movers expected me to sign a form saying everything was delivered. Of course, this sounds like it shouldn't be a problem but in practice it is very hard to keep track of everything. Several boxes came off the truck with no labels; others had already been checked off when I went to check it off again. The experience was confusing and stressful. While I was doing the inventory, Tina was telling the guys where to take each box. Here is a photo of me with the clipboard, checking items off the list.
When we were done, there were several items on the list that were not checked off but all of the expensive stuff had been delivered so I figured the rest were just oversights or mistakes. In time, everything that was packed did turn up. We are not aware of anything that was stolen by the movers during the moving process.
One curiosity is that our mattress and box spring (queen size) would not fit up the stairs. So they had to come in through the window in our bedroom. Fortunately there is a balcony so the window is actually a door. The guys did a nice job lifting it up and over the balcony and sliding into the bedroom.
The movers were very nice. A few things were damaged in transit and we are filing a claim for those. Overall the move was very successful. We know people who have had horror stories with moving ($20k worth of damage, entire crates that get left behind in the States, etc) so we feel fortunate to have gotten through this without much difficulty.
After the movers left, a German neighbor brought us some flowers from her garden.
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