The Gemeinderatsitzung

I know, I know, I was supposed to blog about this as soon as we got back from the town council meeting, but I learned two lessons: 1) colds strike at the most inopportune times, and 2) lots, and I repeat, lots of Champagne (and probably at times much harder stuff,) will be consumed throughout the building process.
To begin the whole story, I confused the date of the town council meeting. I found out afterwards that Joern didn't want to correct me because he knew it would make me more nervous.
When I got home from work on Tuesday afternoon, Joern called me and told me to come to his parents' house. When I walked in, Joern said, "we have to run to the current owners of the building lot because we have to have the paper signed by tonight. Then, we have to be at the town hall by 7 tonight." Turns out that the town council meeting was not Wednesday night, as I had thought, but actually Tuesday night. Argh!!!
So, first we ran to the current owners of our lot. They are the parents of a friend of Joern. They are such kind people. As soon as we rang the doorbell, they quickly invited us insisde. We sat and chatted for a while. We found out that the duplex will be built by Joern's friend Markus on one side, and the other side will be someone whose brother works at the bank (since it is the only bank in the town, this means everyone knows him.) I'm excited because all of our neighbors will be around our age, except,of course, for Joern's parents and aunt. Then, we talked a bit about America. Like all good Germans, the land owners have traveled extensively through the USA, unlike me. And, they love to talk about their experiences! After our little chat, we showed them the paper that the town sent to us in response to the building permit application, the form for the approval of the land owners for us to build. They quickly signed our form, and sent us on our way to the town hall.

We got to the town hall a few minutes before 7 pm. The town council members sat in the front of the room in a circle, and there were two rows of chairs set up in the back for the public. We were not the only members of the public audience, there were 3 others. Joern's dad came as the mayor started with his opening comments.
First on hand was a discussion of road repairs that are set to begin in May. It was nice to know ahead of time that my route to work will be really difficult starting in a few months. They then discussed an "island" on the main street that holds a sign for local advertisments. Third on the docket was an item concerning another smaller street in the town that would be repaved.
Then came item number four, the planned building of a one family house by Herr and Frau Roesner. I'm pretty sure that my knuckles were white. I became instantly frozen in place, and could only stare at the overhead screen as pictures of our house came into view. The mayor of the town discussed our plan for two full floors above a cellar located on building lots 166 and 158/3, our two garages on both borders, and the size of the house. He then reminded the town council of the discussion about building with two full floors at the meeting on the 2nd of February. He then asked for a vote on the house. He asked first who was in approval: EVERYONE raised their hand! That means our house was unanimously approved by the town council! 3 minutes devoted solely to our house came and went, and pushed us one step closer to our goal.
They then discussed an addition to the parking lot for the school.
At 8 pm, the mayor announced that the public portion of the meeting had come to an end and announced a 15 minute break for town council members.
Mr. Builder came and shook our hand to congratulate us. And then we walked down the stairs. As we were leaving, Mr. Buiding Store Owner (another story for another day,) who is also a member of the town council came to congratulate us. As he and Joern finished their conversation, the man who had been sitting on the left side of the mayor at the meeting, one of the three people in suits at the meeting, came to talk to us. He started with "Herzlichen Gluckwunsch," and then turned to me and started speaking English to me. After congratulating us, he then asked where I was from, and if I was happy in Neckartailfingen, and then told me that he taught my husband how to deal with money (either because of Joern's teenage summer job, or because of their very lage fight a few years ago when the town fined Joern a large sum of money for paying his business tax late.) I later found out that he is the town's Fiscal Officer, and it was a really big deal that he came to us at all, and that he spoke English to me, was an even bigger deal.
From the meeting, we headed over to my in-law's house to rehash the entire night over a bottle of Champagne.