Location, Location, Location

Having participated in a few too many real estate transactions of late, I thought I'd start the description of the house off with an explanation of where we are.

We are in the state of Bavaria (south central Germany), halfway between Munich and Nurnberg. The city (pop. 120,000) of Ingolstadt is in the center of the county of Ingolstadt. The county is made up of four townships; three outlying townships and one central township that includes the city of Ingolstadt and a little sprinkling of a few extra towns.

We bought a house in the tiny (pop. 2,000) town of Etting, within the township of Ingolstadt; i.e. one of these little "sprinkled" towns. So we have all the advantages of being in the city limits of the big city, and all the advantages of living in a tiny town too.

Etting is one mile north of Audi HQ (northwest of the city of Ingolstadt), which is why Martin picked it. He started out looking on the east side, and quickly discovered there are three oil refineries (read "constant smell") in that area. No wonder the housing prices were good. ;) Another area he steered clear of was the south side of the city, as it gets pricey the closer you are to Munich. Even so, we're only 45 minutes or so to Munich, which is nothing when compared to the typical Detroit area commute.

Etting is about a five minute drive to the main shopping center (West Park), and a ten or fifteen minute drive into downtown Ingolstadt (known as "old town," bounded on the south by the Danube). The mile-long stretch between Etting and Audi is filled by community garden space, not unlike the community garden project run at County Farm Park off Washtenaw Ave., back in the day.


About 1/2 mile (halfway to Audi, shown here in gray) south of the house, we found a small skateboard park and playground area. We were able to navigate home from the park using just the community gardening access (gravel) roads and about 50 yards of residential street.

"Downtown" Etting consists of one main intersection (no traffic light, the town is THAT small). Ettingerstrasse (translates as "the road to Etting") which you can take south to Audi and then on to Ingolstadt, is crossed by St. Michael Strasse (St. Michael's church is on the intersection's corner).

We have two butcher stores, two bakeries, a couple of banks (including ours), and a small outlet of a grocery store chain (something along the size of a Buster's Food & Drug Mart, for Ann Arborites). There are also two kindergartens, one is downtown (800 yards) and the other (formerly Catholic) is 200 yards from the house. Kindergarten here is what we would call Preschool. Running both half and full days (I believe) from age 3 to 5, it consists of structured play and social time. Preschool (age 5), what we would call Kindergarten in the U.S., follows with a little bit of learning mixed with play; and then just plain school (age 6 onward) corresponds to our first, second, etc. grades.

Our street is really one of the outermost streets in Etting (along the southwest side of town), which was another thing that was appealing about it.

So that sums up our location, and gives you a little overview of Etting.