Description
Our 1939 home is nestled at the top of the Berkeley Hills, near the Berkeley university campus and Tilden Park. From the living room you have wonderful views across the San Francisco Bay to the city and the Golden Gate bridge. The living room also has a gas fireplace for those evenings when the fog rolls in.
The house is on two levels, with the downstairs unit having a separate entrance (and its own bathroom). We use it for our au pair, but it would also be perfect for a teenager seeking a bit of independence. The main house is on the upper level (which is also the street level, as the house is built into a hill), and has three bedrooms. One of these is currently shared by our two children, one we use as a study / guest room, and the third is ours. A shady garden courtyard provides a great place for barbecues in the summer. Alternatively you can eat on the deck overlooking the garden and the Bay.
The kitchen was recently remodelled and has high quality appliances (range oven, microwave, dishwasher, large fridge/freezer, etc.) and plenty of work space next to the open-plan dining/living area. We are planning to have the main bathroom remodelled by the summer too.
We do not watch TV so don't have cable, but there is a small TV set that receives the main network channels. The house has high-speed internet with wireless (WiFi) accessible throughout and several computers.
We have one very friendly cat, Jamie, who would appreciate being fed and watered but is otherwise very easy.
The garden is a good size and has a children's climbing frame and sandbox. Or gardener comes every 2 weeks, and most of it is automatically watered by sprinklers, so it takes care of itself.
There are 3 bikes (2 mens, 1 ladies, and 1 small child's), plus a couple of toddler trikes, if you can handle the hills!
An interesting historical note is that for almost four decades, our house was owned by Hans Einstein (son of the slightly more famous Albert), who was a physicist at the university.
Neighborhood
Berkeley is an amazing place: being a university town, there are a lot of different cafes, bookstores, and alternative / independent shops. We are 10 minutes drive from the campus and the main shopping areas and restaurants. However, walk just a couple of minutes out the back of our house and you are in the vast open expanse of Tilden Park, with wooded hills criss-crossed by footpaths. Also in the park is Lake Anza, which has a sandy beach and is open for swimming in the summer.
The weather here is reliably pleasant in the summer - nicely warm and sunny but never so hot you would need air conditioning. Being at the top of the hill, we get to watch the fog roll in over the city but sit above it ourselves.
While we put "town/village" as the surroundings type, we really weren't sure what to put -- although close to the center of Berkeley, we are right at the edge of the housing belt, and literally a couple of streets from our door you're in acres of wide open countryside.
Just outside our door is the bus stop, but buses aren't that frequent and generally you will need to drive (up/down some steep hills) to go most places.
There are lots of great things to do in the area for everyone, including: golf (a very picturesque public course is less than a mile from the house), visiting the Sonoma and Napa valleys wine region, going to the beach (our favorites are Crissy Field and Rodeo Beach), learning surfing, the museums and galleries of San Francisco, great restaurants, some of the best shopping on the west coast, nature walks in the many parks in the East Bay, playgrounds for smaller kids (one small one in walking distance, several really nice ones 5-15 minutes drive), Oakland and San Francisco zoos, historical missions (in places like Sonoma and San Juan Bautista), etc.
About Us
"Dad" is Andrew (37, a marketing executive at a telecom equipment company), "Mom" is Kathrin (41, currently studying for a masters degree in museum studies). We have one daughter (Lauren, 5), and one son (Joel, 3), both born in the US. We have an au pair, Anni, who helps us looking after the kids, particularly important over the last year when we were both studying (Andrew just completed an MBA) and working.
Andrew is English (from near Cambridge), and Kathrin is German (from Hamburg). We are bringing our kids up bilingually so there are kids' books in both languages around the house. We both love music, particularly choral, and in fact met while singing in the university choir in Lyon (France), where we both studied for a year.
Destination
We are especially interested in Alsace but open to any offers.
Need 3 bedrooms - a double for us, two singles for our kids, and a room for our au pair. Prefer a house rather than an apartment, and would like to be in a town or village where we can walk to shops to get basic groceries/bread. Open to village or city but would want to be in a child-friendly neighborhood (e.g. playgrounds nearby) if the latter.
We are looking for somewhere in July, but our house will be available in July and August so it could possibly be non-simultaneous.
