Buying an aparmtent in Germany - A little different

For over a year now, I have been searching the real estate websites for a VERY small apartment to buy. We know we will have to move one day (after the Belgium thing, the reality of that is now VERY REAL), and we wanted a place to come back to not only stay when we visit, but also to let the kids come with their friends later on, and to have after retirement. It has been a difficult search for many reasons...
1. People don't seem to leave Bamberg. Students come to the University here, and then end up staying for ever, the people born here don't want to leave, and lastly people just aren't as transient as they are in the U.S. Nothing is available!
2. There are no shared real estate websites where you can find everything that is available in one place, instead you have to figure out all of the different sites on your own. Agents don't share listings, and you don't "split" commissions.
3. Because nothing is available, you can't just call a Real Estate agent, and say, "I am looking for this, can you please show me around" - it just doesn't work that way.
4. Everything is slow. By the time you are able to see an apartment, it might already be sold to someone else.
5.The University is free here, and thousands of students are in competition for the same small apartments that we have been looking for. Parents or other Investers may invest in an apartment knowing that the return is solid.
6.Bamberg has been here for over 1000 years, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and it isn't going anywhere. It is a great place to live, and people know this.

With all of that said, after over a year of searching, we finally found a tiny apartment to buy. The process has been quite funny and interesting. I came across the apartment on the website of a Realtor from a Village outside of Bamberg, and I think that is why it wasn't already scooped up - no one knew it was available. Not knowing anything about 100 year old German construction, we needed help to know if this was a smart decision. We also needed help with translating everything, and also understanding what all of the bills, taxes, liabilities would be etc. The realtor probably thought we were hilarious, because out of the woodwork, we had; our friend who is an architect look at the buildings structure and heating units, our friend who is VERY good with construction look at the cosmetic possibilities, our friend who speaks perfect English to translate, and our friend who is a lawyer help us translate and confirm that what we were signing was normal and not in any way unusual. Our Real Estate Agent (or Immobilien as it is called in German) spoke no English, so it was a little difficult at times, and quite funny. We had to open up a German Bank account, which is another funny story, because we found out that the Bank is so old that it still accepts payment in Grain (unfortunately we have no grain to give, so we have to use real money :-)). It is also a little unnerving because the Euro is very low right now, but has been changing daily, and we needed to find the perfect time to exchange our Dollars for Euro (so we could get the best bang for our buck). That has been an interesting education in itself. Everything is now signed and notorized, but the process before we finally pay is interesting because they have to send the sale contract to a "court of records" type office to provide time to make sure that the apartment does not get sold to someone else at the same time. A little weird, but Bryan explained it as if you were selling something on Ebay, and sold it to two different people, and they both paid (I guess being 1000 years old, this could have been a problem at one point in time). We are very excited, and I am sure I will have photos of the before and after - I forgot to mention that the person that was living in it before had rented the apartment for 30 years (a very common thing here), but that means a lot of it is quite dated.... As always, I am probably boring you to death, but want to remember this experience one day later on...