Overall Friday was a hectic day – we had to go back to the bank since the clerk was not able to process our request the day before due to “bank internal process delays”. As a result, the money we transferred from Germany was not accessible on Thursday when we originally planned to get certified checks to pay for security deposit, brokers fee and first month rent. Yes, Americas still use checks – paper checks! Anyways, this day we left the bank with the checks in our hands. We quickly dropped them of at our broker, Martin and rushed to our apartment to receive our first shipment which came by air.
Another learning here: If you want to transfer money to the US, we can highly recommend using Transferwise. You still have to pay some fees, but at least you get daily exchange rates and the process is very transparent. Just make sure to plan ahead – the entire process will take about 1 week.
Our company supported our move and thus made it super comfortable for us – we had one smaller air shipment with clothes and documents and one large sea shipment containing furniture. The moving companies used, both in Germany and the US were very professional and handled everything with care. We quickly unpacked the air shipment and then started our shopping marathon. We visited furniture stores, like Crate & Barrel, Casper and so on to find a couch, a mattress, a table and all kinds of things. After a successful couch find we gained some strength back at Chipotle and researched the overflow of mattress offers out there. We finally found one with pillows inclusive, brought those to our apartment and showed the apartment to Franziska’s parents via FaceTime for the first time.
After the day’s work was done we strolled through the West Village and had a little Aperol Spritz at a lovely Italian Restaurant Baker & Co on the Bleeker Street, right next to a shop which only sold facemasks, the Mask Bar. There is nothing you can’t find in NYC. The city really leaves nothing to be desired. After a quick refresh at home we took the subway to Brooklyn Heights for a little get-together with our colleague and friend Oleg and some friends of him. Oleg also transferred from Berlin to New York in fall last year.
