Thank you for taking the time again! I hope you have (had) a nice and safe Christmas weekend. I'm back from my lovely holiday and have a nice sunny Christmas weekend . I'm not sure if I can set time aside for Simming in the upcoming, so my reply is quick and short.

CAS family: the curtains turned dark due to a mesh glitch when shifted down on a ground floor that's placed on a foundation, so I either have to request a mesh fix or figure out how to do this myself in Milkshape.
Thanks for the info about the backpack logo. I haven't found any other solid dark blue backpack recolors and no Eastpak recolors at all, so this was the best I could pick.

Monty: the desk is a very old one from here and I haven't found any recolors of it, so it's on my request list.

Bauernhof: I haven't found any photos of their garage area, so that's why I wasn't sure if it's a building, a carport, or just an open place between the trees. A sloped house on a foundation only works if the floor is descending (cannot raise the ground underneath a Foundation), so no foundation at all for the Fachwerk barn is the best option I think (it won't likely have a cellar anyhow).

Housing: I was more wondering in general if Maxis stoves were common for German-style kitchens if their colors match with the counters (so the cooktop + stove combo you mentioned), and if these kinds of cooking hobs were already common in old houses, or only in modern houses: https://modthesims.info/d/127495/an...eramic-hob.html

You are welcome! I spent Christmas with my closest family. We even had a bit of snow.

Bauernhof
Garage means garage. Carports also are called carports in Germany and an open space would be a "Stellplatz" or "Parkplatz" (also as a compound noun with "Auto", "Kfz-", "Pkw-" and the like at the beginning of the word).

Housing
As mentioned before, German stoves usually are integrated into a counter. Such a counter looks like this: https://www.inone-kuechen.de/img/ar...sockelwanne.jpg
The stove does not have to be one big object. The cooktop and oven of my stove are just connected by a few cables and not all of the isolating material is covered so that it would look strange if the oven was not placed in a counter.
(One of the heating elements in my oven broke during one of the Corona lockdowns and I decided to replace it myself instead of hiring a company. I was able to move the oven out of the counter so that I could reach the screws on the backside while the cooktop remained in place.)
It was difficult to find a picture of a stove consisting of a separate cooktop and oven because companies prefer to show a ready-for-use kitchen including counters or just take a photo of the front of the oven and from above of the cooktop where you do not see any other sides. This was the best that I could find: https://weltderangebote.de/wp-conte...an-Kochfeld.jpg
In a real kitchen, the countertop would be between the cooktop and the oven.
Thus, the cooktop that you linked in your posting would match definitely better than the standard Maxis stoves, but you have to place an oven beneath the cooktop because it is extremely uncommon to just have a cooktop without oven. The black color is how most rather modern cooktops look like. I have not seen white cooktops so far.
Older cooktops look more like this (also electric): https://mediamag.mediamarkt.at/file..._054b4637e8.jpg (The buttons of the cooktop usually are not directly next to the hotplates. They usually are in the upper part of the oven next to the buttons for the oven.) The change from the older type of hotplates to the more modern type took place somwhen between 1985 and 2000, but I do not know when exactly.
German cooktops usually have four hot plates, two smaller and two bigger ones.
I have seen electrical stoves with oven and the older type of hotplates in kitchens from the 50ies and 60ies. I do not remember any kitchens older than this (except in museums).
A few of the older kitchens (up to 1985) have a wood stove in addition to the electrical one. The ones that I know are similar to that one: https://www.ofen.edingershops.de/Ho..._91251077_0.jpg (except with metal instead of the glass and frequently with an additional door to hide the whole front of it)
These wood stoves are suited for heating and as cooktops, but do not have an oven. They are not used very frequently - only occasionally during winter.

One thing that came into my mind: Since 2002, there are/were subsidies for installing solar panels on the roofs of private homes. That is why many new houses have solar panels (it might also help the house owners to qualify for a credit by the KfW that offers credits at beneficial conditions). Some owners of older houses also installed solar panels, but the percentage is much lower than with new houses.

Bauernhof
Seems like I have to build a garage building from imagination. Do you know by chance some pictures of garage buildings for cars that would be fitting for this lot?

Housing
Interesting to hear that electrical cooktops were already more common in Germany than in NL back in the days. I haven't found yet a standalone oven CC that can be put in an empty counter just like a dishwasher...
I saw a lot of solar-paneled roofs in aerial views! I recall Netherlands introduced subsided solar panels a couple of years later.
How common were beds like HEMNES day bed? https://www.thesimsresource.com/sca...-600-587366.jpg
And metal framed beds like these? https://assets.blog.hgtv.ca/wp-cont...m.jpg?width=435
Also, can you recommend me any downloads from Simsforum.de?

ETA: I found out I can gain more retro furniture ideas by searching [decade] + [specific furniture] on Ebay Kleinanzeigen! However, can you recall what the main differences are between DDR and BRD furniture and interior styles?

Character design
What clothing brands were popular amongst the wealthier people in each generation?
How would you interpret a Teen's media consumption behaviour if they have zero interest points in Entertainment (music, games, pop culture), yet no high interest in Culture either (art, literature)?

Btw, I managed to modify the road & terrain lay-out of Veronaville! For now I have chosen angular roads until I get the hang of placing Criquette's roads (I can always replace the roads again in the future now I have a SC4 base). The river looks wonky because apparently I couldn't create smooth water flows in SC4, so that's something I want to refine with the in-game terrain level cheat.

Bauernhof
No, I do not have any pictures for you. The look of the garage will also depend on when it was built.

Housing
I answered based on what I saw when I was younger. There is no guarantee that these kitchens really were representative for Germany as a whole. But I still do not understand what the alternative to electrical cooktops would be. Wood-burning stoves are out of fashion for many decades and in many rural areas people did not have the option to have a gas port in their houses and regularly replacing gas cylinders is tedious (and I am not sure whether there even were stores nearby where you could get new/refilled cylinders e.g. 50 years ago). Thus, electrical cooktops with metal hotplates were the most common option in the past. At some point, the metal hotplates became out of fashion and glass ceramic hotplates (with black as standard color) became popular. Gas and induction cookers do exist, but they usually are more expensive. I only know one person who had a gas cooker around 2005 and that was a student in a dormitory in a big city. But the gas cooker was only a small one with one or two flames like a camping cooker.
If you do not find standalone ovens, I guess the best option is to use the standard EA stoves as the vast majority of German kitchens has both cooktop and oven.
None of my friends and relatives had beds like your two examples. I had a bed that could be turned into a sofa with some elements made of foamed material as back and arm rest. But when these elements were removed, the bed looked just like a regular bed without a wooden frame on three sides like in your example. At university, a friend of mine had a bed with a metal frame, but that bed looked more similar to the Leirvik bed from IKEA and that was a bit after 2005.
As I only have a minimun of CC in my game, I do not have any recommendations for you atm.
DDR/BRD: I am sorry, but I am too young to really be able to help you with this question. And even after the reunification, I only made day trips to the newly-formed states, but did not stay overnight. In general, I would assume that due to the state-directed economy you had less variety of designs for objects that you usually buy and that more people tried to create objects that you can create yourself relatively easily so that you would have a bigger variety for that kind of objects, although sometimes looking improvisational because the materials could be out of stock. In films, you frequently see that people had pictures of politicians as wall decorations although I assume that supporters of the regime did this while the majority of people did not (or maybe they kept a picture somewhere in a cabinet so that they temporarily place it on a wall when they had certain visitors - you never could be sure whether another person was secretly working for Stasi - even family members, friends and relatives).

Character design
It is rather difficult to know who is wealthier because most people try not to show off too much. And most people wore clothing with rather small and unobtrusive logos. Thus, I cannot really help with that question. For teenagers, I remember Adidas, Puma and Nike because sportswear usually has visible logos and also S. Oliver. For a bit alternative teens also Doc Martens, Chucks and Vans. But these brands were not limited to people from a certain income group.
The teens media consumption still will depend on your decisions. They still could be interested in watching TV (watching sports; reality trash shows already existed by then; or shows like TV total that make fun of scenes from other shows and internet finds) or using the computer (maybe programming if they are a nerd; being active in a forum for one of their interests; or simply to chat with their friends). Depending on the rest of the character and the interests, the teen maybe also could have a dislike for electronics. I would let the sim choose themselves and watch what they do when they have free will and an empty queue.

I guess you also have to fix the placement of the lots and the neighborhood deco. The location of the bridge looks more logical now.
I still cannot see the main road that leads to neighboring villages/towns. Maybe you can turn the road next to the river into the main street by making it longer and by not having a gap close to the bridge.
I like the layout in total better than before because the minor roads now look more like minor roads.
On the Monty side, I would add a short piece of road so that people do not have to do such a long detour to reach the bridge.
With this layout, I think that I would place the sports facilities on the Monty side - either at the end of one of the two roads that go left and end there (if you move the decoration further away) or if you add a new road that goes to the right and ends there (as there currently is not much decoration anyway).

Meanwhile, I've rearranged the lots and added some road deco, although the colors mismatch despite having Criquette's road defaults (have to take a look at my lighting mod). Also, I've built a few filler lots, like this one: https://imgur.com/a/GtN713T . Since the archived housing ad didn't contain many interior pictures, I leave it as a filler lot until I get more the hang of creating room layouts by heart. Also, I've build a church but will share the pictures later on if I'm further with decorating the graveyards.

Rauscher Bauernhof
WIP: https://imgur.com/a/jwI9Jpw
I've decided to omit the foundation for all the buildings since the main house doesn't have a cellar anyway.
Fachwerk barn: no clue to which areas of the barn these pictures belong: https://mapio.net/expose/11427354/?gallery=14 , pic 15, pic 21, pic 22. Is pic 19 taken in the big Scheune or also in the Fachwerk one?
Main house: any layout and deco suggestions for the living room, both bedrooms and the garden area? The entire family is into sports, though, so I was thinking to add some football deco to the living room.

Storytelling
Can you recall what a common age range is within one basketball team in a small town? Are boys and girls also mixed in a Ü16 team if there are too few players?
How do you interpret Sims with low to zero interest in Animals and don't roll Obtain Pet wants either? Would a cat still suit them?

Housing
Do you remember whether or not linoleum floors were also a thing in residential homes?
What kind of house do you imagine for Antonio's family? Would they have the restaurant within their residential lot, or rather in a separate OFB lot? From what I've seen in the pictures, most restaurants in small towns are paired with a hotel or a separate Wohnung on top, but that would mean an empty filler house area if I decide to build the restaurant as a separate community lot.

Filler lots
Most houses are much closer to the street. It is also very uncommon that a house has so many stairs outside leading to the entrence. I guess it is okay to place this house in the neighborhood once, but if you plan to place it several times, it would be good if you could adjust it a bit.
Stairs like this can be very slippery and dangerous during winter. The stair railing also looks dangerous because the uupmost stairs do not have a regular railing - although that might be a lot imposter problem. I would try to place the stairs inside the house or at least build a roof for it.
Regarding interior pictures: In the TV show "Achtung Kontrolle" on "Kabel 1", they started to show a bit of the renovations in the Ahrtal. The houses are just shells and they only show the rooms where volunteers do something (and the way to these rooms),but it might give you at least a little impression of room layouts in that area. There were scenes from such renovations on TV this week, I guess on Tuesday. You can find all the episodes from the show on the website of the TV station. In this show, they frequently switch between different settings like police controls, animal rights activists etc. so that you would have to slowly fast-forward through the show to find the scenes that are interesting for you. If you are interested in all kinds of indoor scenes, you also can look at some other episodes as they e.g. show an exterminator at work.

Bauernhof
Dog pillow: If I remember correctly, 1-tile pillows are okay for cats and small dogs, but large dogs need 2-tile pillows.
Bathroom: I do not remember how the plumbings in the pictures look like, but the toilet and sink look relatively unusual to me. Most (but not all) people hide the tubes with a cover like this (unless there is a cabinet beneath the sink): https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I..._AC_SL1500_.jpg
Many sinks look like this with the cover beneath: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/3...e334a236f8e.jpg
Toilets usually have the cover integrated. Example for hanging toilet: https://images.obi.de/product/DE/800x600/182932_1.jpg
Example for standing toilet: https://cdn.de.hudsonreed.com/media...wd_seat_2_1.jpg
Toilet tanks became popular somewhen during the 90s. Before, there simply was a push button somewhere on a tube behind and slightly above the toilet. The toilet tanks that were installed in existing bathrooms usually are visible. Bathrooms that were furnished when toilet tanks already were popular frequently are hidden inside the wall.
During the 90ies, it already was common to just have a water tap on the sink. The additional metal parts on top of the sink would be more fitting for previous decades.
Why did you put a bathtub in the laundry room? I would put it into the bathroom instead or look for an alternative way to wash the dogs.
I really like the look of the bathroom on the first floor. For the toilet, I would use a plain white color without that decor. As the bathtub has a shower, I think it is okay not to place a separate one.
The Fachwerk building is a combination of house (left side) and barn (right side). Therefore, I assume that the pictures are from that building.

Storytelling
There were no basketball teams in small towns near the area where I grew up. The nearest sports clubs that offered basketball were in other administrative districts in bigger towns.
I would not buy a pet for a sim with zero interest in pets and who does not have a wish to have an animal. As interests can be changed during gameplay, I would try to increase the sim's interest in animals and maybe obtain a pet when the sim has a higher interest in animals.

Housing
It is difficult to tell apart laminate, linoleum, PVC and the like, but yes, they were and still are common as these materials are relatively cheap, easy to install (if needed, even on top of another floor without damaging the other floor) and easy to clean.
Monty restaurant: If the restaurant is in Veronaville, I would assume that he either rented the restaurant that is part of the sports club ("Sportgaststätte" if you want to google for some pictures) or in a house with an apartment on the upper floor(s) like you suggested. Veronaville is to small for a hotel imho.
With the information that I have about your Veronaville, I think that Antonio should rent an apartment or house. He grew up just ten days ago which usually is a too short period to safe sufficient money to buy a house - especially as his wife is dead and cannot contribute to the family funds anymore and incomes in the culinary career are relatively low in Germany and especially in small villages many restaurants are struggling or have closed. Patrizio and Isabella have a really huge and expensive house that does not really fit to their background as immigrant workers. Thus, it would be too unrealistic to pretend that they gave Antonio sufficient money to buy a house. Thus, just move him and his children into a rented house or apartment that you planned to place in your neighborhood anyway and only choose interior decoration that suits Antonio and his children.
If you decide to have the restaurant in a regular building instead of in the sports club, you could get some hacks that make it possible to have businesses and apartments on the same lot.

Storytelling
I understood that in Germany, transportation by bike isn't as common as in NL, even in the flatter cities and the northern states. So if a rural-living Child or Teen character wants to visit someone in a Nachbarort, do they usually take a long walk, take the bus (if possible), get dropped and picked by parents, or go by bicycle through a rural road? And if they plan to stay until late at a not-so-close friend, what's the best transportation option, or do they rather sleepover?

Housing
The hilly house is originally from the hilly main road in the outskirts of Insul, and there are only a few other houses in that street. The lot imposter may lack some details indeed.

After signing up on Kabel 1, it turns out it's not available in my country! :/

Bauernhof
I realized there's enough space in the bathroom of the ground floor to place the dog bath there instead . Through recent footage of Schuld, I managed to get a better view from the subsidiary buildings, so I modified the layouts of the big barn and the Fachwerk barn. Also, I'm going to start creating AL Wood recolors for simple texture files!

The CAS Family Fachwerkhaus
I'm wondering how short I could make the front yard (if needed, I can use LotAdjuster). Here's an older pic of the front yard distance: https://i.imgur.com/0QI0g9u.png
I realized that most of the FWH with a solid ground floor don't have space for a front yard indeed unless they are a former farm with a barn door or a part of a Bauernhof complex, like this house in Hessen (based on the map view of the address, it has subsidiary buildings right behind). The only small/mid-sized FWH with space for a front yard I found are an old tiny holiday home, and one house from Insul at the Hauptstraße, though the latter one also has subsidiary buildings attached to the back.

Inspired by the main streets from Insul and Antweiler, the street at the river is going to be the main road with the oldest buildings. I may have to fiddle around with the roads to make the main road on the Monty side more smooth. I noticed that Insul, Schuld and Antweiler have many Fachwerk remainders for such small villages! (but I feel very sorry for the inhabitants of what happened)

Storytelling
The parents usually are the best option when you want to visit a friend. In primary school, I had friends who lived up to 15 km away and in secondary school friends who lived up to 30 km away (worst case for some other pupils was up to 60 km depending on where they lived). Going by bike is the second option. Of course, it is less popular in Germany than in the Netherlands, but in rural areas pretty much every child and teenager has a bike (or at least had at the time that is relevant for your game). However, I think that parents just would allow children to visit friends in the same village by bike. Teenagers might go by bike, but when they want to spend time with friends and/or go shopping, they usually do not want to spend too much time on the transportation and also do not want to sweat so that the radius for going by bike is relatively limited. Walking is only an option in your home village because otherwise you would spend hours on the way. Buses also are not an option because there usually are no bus connections that could be helpful for leisure activities. In my administrative district, the only bus connections were the school buses. One of the school buses in the morning also made a stop at the train station and in the town center (so that older women without driving licence had a chance to run errands/go shopping) and one bus around lunch time picked them up again. There were no buses to the town center and train station after school, no buses at all on weekends and during school holidays, there usually were no bus connections either, except if sufficient people phoned the bus company and "signed up" for a bus ride (= the older women max. once per week).
(For a certain period of time, there also was a bus connection on Saturday nights to a club about 20 km away. The bus was subsidized by the club so that for buying a ticket you received a voucher for drinks a the club. The bus picked up people in several villages and towns so that the way to the club could take an hour. But that bus only was helpful for going to the club, not for going to a random other stop because on the way back, the bus driver asekd for the destination of each passenger and left out all the unnecessary bus stops.)
If you go by bike, you use bike paths, if available. If not, regular streets usually are the second-best option - regardless of whether or not it is a narrow street. Rural streets are rather uncomfortable because they usually just consist of earth with a bit of pebble stone on top and frequently there are holes in the road because some heavy vehicles drove there while the ground still was wet from a previous rain.
For teenagers older than 16, maybe 10-20 % of each grade obtain a driving licence for motor scooters and the like. In my grade, the percentage was rather 10 %. For apprentices (Auszubildende) the percentage might be higher as they have to go to school (Berufsschule) and to the company for which they work and at least the latter frequently is a problem with public transport.
Many people also have friends who are a bit older and already have a car driving licence and have a car/may use their parents' car. From the age of 16 on, for me, this was the most common option for going out in the evening.
In the evening, going by bike is much less common and going by car is much more common. However, parents usually are not too keen on regularly picking up their offspring late in the evening, so that this is really uncommon for children and also not too common for younger teenagers (only for birthday parties and other special events). For older teens it usually is not a problem anymore because a friend or a sibling of a friend has a driving licence. Sleep-overs were relatively uncommon amongst my friends. We often went home - even at 4 or 5 a.m. Sleep-overs usually took place when there was some kind of event in a village or town and when you went to this event with a friend who lived in exactly that village or town. There also were a few unplanned group sleep-overs when the person who was supposed to drive the car drank alcohol.

Housing
As I wrote, placing the house once is not a problem. It just should not be placed too often because the layout is raher uncommon.
I am sorry that you are not able to access the videos. Have you considered using a VPN?

CAS family Fachwerkhaus
With the foundation and the stairs you cannot move the lot closer to the street. If you turn the stairs in a 90° angle so that they are parallel to the wall, you can move the house one tile closer to the street. For buildings without foundation, one tile away from the street also is the maximum.
For the lots next to the main street, you also might place a line of tiles that match the sidewalk so that the sidewalk looks wider than it is.
When we had that topic for the first time, I found a few more pictures of FWH wih a bit of space between the house and the street, but the majority of houses is quite close to the street, frequently even built directly on the lot boarder.

Villages often have relatively many old houses because they were less destroyed during WW2 than towns and cities.
Yes, it is very tragic what happened and the worst is that about 12 hours before the flood, local politicians already had information that the area would be hit very hard, but they underestimated the danger. So many lives that could have been saved ...

Thank you for the detailed information about your experience with transportation! It seems like that car culture is more prominent in Germany.
I have to do some research on the use of a VPN (free vs paid).

I was thinking about the poster size: didn't German magazines had their own paper ratios that aren't A4/A5?

Housing
Is it common that side walls of detached houses don't have windows?
Capp mansion: would it make more sense to reduce the size of the front such that I will shrink the lot to like 30 or 40 tiles long and 40 tiles wide? Link: https://i.imgur.com/3Sp1jlr.png

Furthermore, I have new lots to share!

Capp villa/chalet (Goneril's family)
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/E51QWUF
Reference: https://www.immowelt.de/expose/22t2u5n
I picked Victorian-style sets at first hand because Consort has British roots in my canon. Do you find Victorian fitting for Albany and Goneril, or would they rather suit the taste of Contessa and Consort, and are Glamour-Life modern objects more suiting for Goneril?
Which size bedroom would suit best for each Sim(s)? I think the largest one on the top floor are fitting for the parents, the second largest one for Miranda (perhaps together with Desdemona?), and one of the smallest ones for Hal. But I haven't decided yet whether or not Ariel still would sleep with her parents (I suspect she is still a "Saugling" instead of a "Kleinkind" because I recall she has yet learn to walk).

St Maxis church
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/nVViQix
TW: death-related deco
Looking for feedback about the frontyard layout and the purposes of the subsidiary buildings. The amount of clear pictures I could find of the Antweiler church was limited.

Monty restaurant
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/zJlLctK
The exterior and the restaurant are as much as possible inspired by this clubhouse , but I had to improvise on the floorplan layout of the entire building, so I googled further on "Grundriss" "Sportheim". So I was more focused on the room layouts than the outside deco. Any suggestions are welcome.

In many rural areas, there is no good alternative to owning a car. Public transportation is very limited and distances often are longer than people are willing to go by bike regularly (e.g. a one-way 30-40 km commute to a bigger town/city for work). During winter, snow rarely is cleared from separate bike paths and if there is a lot of new snow and the road leading to a village is not important enough, it might take a while before it is cleared (worst case once was 3-4 weeks - the snow already had become ice).
Not all magazines are exactly A4, some are a bit bigger, but the ratio is the same or very similar.

Housing
There might be a few detached houses without windows on a side, but it is not too common. For houses that are close to the lot border, the house owner might be forced to choose windows with opal glass so that the neighbor's privacy is not impacted.
As the building is a mansion, you can keep the lot size.

Goneril's house
The living room and dining area are very light-flooded due to the skylights. If you cannot find any skylight CC, you should place one or a few additional windows (especially close to the dining area) because your house is darker than the reference house.
The laundry room originally is a storeroom/larder.
The roof on the backside of your house has some wall pieces that are in the wrong place.
I think that the furniture is fitting because Goneril was very young when she married and I think that it is more likely that her parents picked the furniture for her.
As far as I know, the current recommendations for moving babies to their own bedroom vary between 6 and 12 months. That is why my toddlers always have their own bedrooms (unless there is no other bedroom). Goneril and Albany should have their bedroom on the same floor so that they can hear if Ariel wakes up at night.
But even if you decide that Ariel still should sleep in her parents' bedroom, it would be normal to have a bedroom ready for her. There is more time to prepare the bedroom during the pregnancy than after the birth. It is also considered healthier that some weeks pass before somebody sleeps in the newly renovated room because otherwise you still can smell the paints, adhesives and new furniture. And it is useful to already have a place where you can store all the stuff (clothing, toys, changing table, sanitary articles) for the child. As Ariel is the forth child, I assume that the nursery is not new and that her older siblings used it before her and that Goneril and Albany decided to keep the furniture for the following children.
In my opinion, the bigger bedroom on the first floor would be the best choice for Goneril and Albany. It has a bathroom ensuite (btw: Is that an open door between the bedroom or bathroom or an arch?) and a separate dressing room. It would be really strange to have this for a child's bedroom while the parents's bedroom does not have this. And the smaller bedroom on the same floor has a good size for a nursery imho. In my experience, it is also very common that children have the bedrooms on the top floor because they usually do not mind the stairs, frequently also can deal better with warm temperatures (during summer the temperatures directly beneath the roof can be quite high) and that way it is easier for the parents to keep track of their children's friends who might come over for a visit.
For the top floor, you could group the children either by gender (Miranda and Desdemona sharing a room) or by age (Desdemona and Hal sharing a room). I guess I would go by gender because then you do not have to reorganize the children after Hal and Desdemona grow up to teens. Moreover, Ariel will also grow up very soon and might move upstairs, especially if Goneril and Albany decide to have more children - and Albany as family sim definitely will want more children.
My suggestions are for the layouts that were shown for the reference house. I saw that you changed the layout and made the kitchen and smaller bedroom bigger than they are in the reference house and that the dressing room is missing and bathroom and bedroom are slightly smaller than they should be. Maybe you can change the layout a bit so that the bedroom with dressing room has a size more similar to that in the reference house?

Church
The inside of your church looks too clean and empty like a Protestant church imho (although the church of Antweiler is quity empty and undecorated for a Catholic church. but that is due to the fact that it was severly damaged during WWII). I would add more/bigger deco, more colors (especially on the ceiling), more decorative windows (Do you know the cathedral set by Julsfels? Maybe it contains some build mode items that could help you.) and two more windows next to the altar.
The gallery only should have a half-wall. The floor/ceiling should be relatively thick. It makes no sense to have a full wall in front of the organ because that would disturb the sound. As the organ is much bigger than the one in your church, maybe you can find some decorative items that look like organ pipes to make it look bigger. Often, there are a few more benches on the gallary. It looks like a floor tile is missing close to the stairs. You should either add a floor tile or add half walls or fences to protect people from falling.
The wall decorations in the reference church are the Way of the Cross. It consists of 14 individual pictures (if I remember correcty) that have the same size, frame etc. Maybe you can find some decoration that resembles this a bit better. And is it possible to place some statues on the half walls of the gallery? Your church definitely needs more statues of saints. The bigger one in the middle most likely is St. Maximin, the patron of the church.
In the reference pictures, there is a confessional box in on the right side. The golden item on the right looks like it might be a left-over of the pulpit that was located somewhere else before the church was damaged. There is also a small white door behind the golden item that is leading to the sacristy with a small bell next to the door. It looks like the baptismal font is in the back of the church in the middle between the two entrance doors (although this location is quite unusual). I cannot identify it in the pictures, but there also should be small decorative boxes filled with holy water close to the entrance. On the walls on both sides, there also are some speakers. And you also can add many more lamps. If you are willing to look for CC, you also could try to find some benches with kneeler.
The subsidiary building most likely is an "Aussegnungshalle" - three walls with a roof on top (frequently with a big roof overhang on the open side of the building) where some attendees of a funeral can stand while being protected from wind, rain and snow. Frequently, there are some benches and/or chairs inside (only directly next to the wall, not several rows of benches) for people who cannot stand for a longer period of time and there is a cross on the wall. In front of the Aussegnungshalle, there usually is a bigger area with solid floor where the coffin is placed (still beneath the roof) and where more attendees can stand (not beneath the roof). You can add a few more benches outside at the border of the solid floor. Next to the solid floor, there usually is just grass.
In most graveyards that I have seen, most graves are family graves (= long and wide enough that two coffins fit next to each other), there are only a few single graves (often when there is not sufficient space for another family grave due to a walkway) and the size of graves usually is the same regardless of who owns them. When a person is buried, the person's family rents the grave for a certain period of time (usually between 15 and 25 years - depending on the type of earth) because after that time the body should be gone (embalming and preservating of bodies is not allowed in Germany). If more people are buried in the same grave (the maximum is four - two next to each other and on two different heights) during the following years, the period of time will start anew. When the period is over, families have the option to continue renting the grave or to end it so that another family can rent the grave. In this event, the gravestone (there is just one gravestone for the whole family, not one per person) will be removed. I know that it is not possible to mimic that ingame, but it is another explanation why there should not be special graves for the Capp family because in real life, the family would have one or at maximum two family graves (for Consort's and Contessa's sides of the family) while the nine graves in your graveyard stick out.
If you want to, you could add some special urn graves and/or an urn wall if you think that some people would not want to rent a grave and plant flowers and take care of the regularly for such a long period of time.
Most graves are planted with plants and flowers, but there also are some graves with a big flat stone plate or small stones and other decorative items on it. Many grave stones are relatively wide and rectangular so that a lot of text can be written on it and often there are some decorative symbols and/or photos as well. It is common to have a candle in a lantern (might be more common in Catholic regions than in Protestant regions) and in Catholic graveyards to also have a decorative box with holy water on the grave.
Decoration options for the graveyard as a whole are hedges (definitely more common than trees) because graveyards often are not observable from the street. Some graveyards also have some sculptures, e.. the Way of the Cross placed in different parts of the graveyard. There also has to be a well somewhere and lots of watering cans and somewhere there should be a place where you can throw away garden waste (often more than just a waste bin).
The wall should not fence in the church entrance while. It should be possible to reach the entrance from the street without having to open doors. It is okay, however, to have a fence/wall and a gate between the church and the graveyard and all other entrances to the graveyard definitely should have a gate.
Most graveyards that I know do not have any border around the grave. Some graveyards limit the size of the graves with a narrow line of tiles between two graves, in other graveyards, there is a bit of grass left and right of the graves. The only graveyard that I know with some kind of border around the graves has some kind of curbstone that is only a few centimeters higher than the tiles of the walkway and it also has the same color. In addition to that, many graveyards have a few graves where the owners bought some individual curbstone, usually matching the color of the gravestone.

Monty restaurant
The room for the referees is too big in comparison with the changing room for the players and it lacks a shower. Home team and guest team have separate and lockable changing rooms and showers, not a shared one. Too many toilets. In restaurants, there usually are no staff toilets and two toilets for the players would be sufficient. The club houses that I know do not have any space for an office, just a small additional storage for food.
The clubhouse usually also has a gym inside that is used for other kinds of sports and for training during winter (matches usually are paused while the pitch outside is frozen). I do not know whether SV Massenbachhausen has a second building with the gym (although it makes no sense to have changing rooms and gym in different buildings) or whether the building has a cellar or how the floor plan could look like. Next to the gym, there should be a room where all kinds of sports equipment (e.g. table tennis tables) is stored and another room where many chairs and some really long tables are stored so that the gym can be turned into a venue for weddings, annual meetings of clubs etc. Maybe Massenbachhausen is too big and the sports club has several buildings, but in small villages, all this is usually located in the same building.
The clubhouses that I know do not have a big hallway. The restaurant has its own entrance and a small door that leads to the gym. The changing room part of the building usually has its own entrance and a small room as hallway with doors leading to the three changing rooms and maybe to a storage room for sports equipment and/or a bathroom with one or two toilets. The changing rooms are connected to the shower rooms and the two team changing rooms also are connected to the gym. In my home village, the storage room for sports equipment is between the changing room for the away team and the gym. The referee's changing room often does not have a direct connection to the gym. The gym part of the building usually is in the middle and does not have its own entrance. On one side (usually south or west because of the sunlight), the gym has many windows, on the other side, there might be (usually rather narrow) rooms next to it, e.g. the storage room for sports eqiupment, a room where additional chairs and tables are stored, s storage room or refrigerator room that belongs to the restaurant etc. There also might be a room for the heating system, connections for water, electricity etc., but that room also could be located in another part of the building. In my home village, there is a small "cellar" (it is above earth because the terrain is a bit sloped) beneath the changing room part of the building where that stuff and also the ride-on mower and other equipment are located.
Sports clubs in small villages usually do not have stands next to the pitch because the number of spectators is too low. If the terrain around the pitch is uneven, some clubs might use that for a better view on the pitch, but nothing that needs maintenance. Trainers and substitute players usually sit on simple benches. Behind these benches there are barriers (at least on two sides, sometimes on four sides) behind which the spectators have to stand. These barriers usually are made of metal, with just one horizontal bar on top of it. Behind the goals, there should be some kind of nets so that balls cannot fly too far. If you place more lots close to the pitch or if the river is close etc. the nets should be really high. If there is just a meadow behind, the nets do not have to be that high. Floodlights are uncommon because they are really expensive and matches usually take place in the morning or afternoon, not in the evening and not during winter due to the winter break (which is longer in lower leagues as there is no pitch heating etc).

Again, I am very impressed with your attention for architectural and floorplan details!

Housing & room layouts
Do you know by chance how common Siedlungshäuser are in the Eifel area? I understood they are more a thing in e.g. the Ruhr area
Where are the toilets usually located in a church? (if they actually have a restroom)

Social day-to-day life
If a teen Sim/character hangs out with a friend from the same school but from a different town, is it usual that the visiting Sim joins the schoolbus ride of their friend and thus have lunch at their friend's home (just like in-game), and gets picked up by their parents when they want to go home in the early evening? And how would they usually secretly meet up with someone from a different town without involving parent's driving? (e.g. secret dates)
I must say that the way of visiting peers in rural Germany sounds different than in Dutch villages. For example, my SO biked 15 - 20 km to/from school, and when visiting friends that live in the same town as where the school is located. I guess it's because NL has worked hard to create a safe cycling infrastructure post war, aside of having a flat landscape.
ETA: is it correct that it was perceived as "cool" if one remains invisible when they're online on ICQ? If yes, what awkward things happened if they accidentally go online? (asking this for a part of my written/drawn story)

Pre-made characters
How would the death of their parents affect the behavior and coping mechanisms of both Romeo and Juliette in day-to-day life? In my canon, I imagine they're best friends and find support in each other during the grieves, which has led to a kiss.
Inspired by cornyregans' headcanons , the parents of Juliette have been suffocated by fire smoke in the sports restaurant. Juliette supports Romeo and she didn't blame him. But since the fire would have taken place at the football club, how would the football players deal with it?
Romeo has a bland personality except being a bit sloppy, but he can get carried away by more outgoing friends and gets tempted by doing edgy teenager things like smoking cigarettes and other stuff. And he has a 3-lightning bolts chemistry with Eva from Windenburg (4t2 Sim recreation), who also attends the Realschule, so they're more likely to hang out together during the short breaks or during trips (I imagine she's 8th grade and Romeo is 9th). I imagine they would have romantic interactions with each other with no strings attached since she's also a stereotypical Romance Sim . He sees Juliette as a good friend and they have gained a deeper bonding, but they only have one lightning bolt chemistry with each other. I imagine she has a bigger crush on him than vice versa.

Thanks for your kind words! Actually, I am not an expert on architecture at all. When I see a picture, at first I only can tell whether it looks similar to what I am used to or not. It often takes me a while to figure out which things make it feel right or wrong to me.

Housing & room layouts
I do not know whether Siedlerhäuser are common in the Eifel region, but the chances should be relatively low because urban regions and especially centers of industry like the Ruhr area were much more destroyed during the World Wars than rural areas with many farmers. Therefore, there was much less need to build new houses during the years that you mentioned and in rural areas, the owners (plus family and friends) usually build the houses themselves and not according to identical plans so that the houses should have a more individual look. In addition to that, many houses from that period of time should be demolished because water supply, heating, plumbing, isolation etc. are not up-to-date and it often is just as expensive to renovate and modernize the house than to build a new, better house. Bigger settlements like in the Ruhr area might have monument protection, but in a small village, there is no bigger settlement.

In the villages where I know enough about the history, the expansion began at a later time. If houses were destroyed during the war, they were rebuilt at the same place. When there were no/hardly any free lots available anymore one or a few streets were added in the outskirts of the village. These new lots then were sufficient for 10-20 years and then more streets were added somewhere else. This continues until present day, although it becomes more and more common that you cannot buy an empty lot anymore, but that a company builds (almost) identical houses on all new lots and that the houses are sold to people afterwards. This mainly applies to cities, but some villages also started doing this.

One more thing: After the war, many Germans were exiled from the regions that did not belong to Germany anymore. Directly after the war, there were strict rules that everybody who had a room to spare had accomodate people who had lost their homes. Many of these people were assigned to houses in villages because more living space was available there, but as soon as these people had a chance to move out and move into a house/apartment of their own, they often at least moved to the nearest town because there they had more options to earn some money. Just having some chicken and a garden will not provide sufficient income to survive and in a village there are not many other jobs and the villagers most likely will prefer hiring a family member or a friend, not a stranger. Thus, this could also be a reason that there was more need for new houses in towns and cities than in villages.

Old churches usually do not have any toilets. There is the sacristy as a separate room and the room with the bells is separated from the gallery, but apart from that, churches consist of one big open room. You can place toilets in the parish hall/vicarage instead.

Transportation
It is rather unusual to have lunch at a friend's house. Depending on where the friend lives, the bus company can be a different one so that pupil would have to buy a bus ticket. Around the period of time of your Veronaville, a single bus ride of 5 km cost 3,50 €. Thus, for the child/teenager it is cheaper to not use the bus because your parents will not charge you for a car ride. A visit from lunchtime until evening also would be a really long visit. We never made homework together which is why our parents preferred us to do homework first and meet friends afterwards.

I do not think that it is possible to go to a different town without anybody noticing. There is always a risk that somebody sees you on the way and recognizes you. If you know a person from a certain place like school, you can try to spend time with that person there or within walking distance. Every now and then, school lessons had to be cancelled and the school tried to rearrange the other lessons that way that pupils could leave school earlier - but you are not forced to go home so that two pupils could stay at school and spend time together there. It might be problematic if you have class mates from the same village because one of your parents might see that the class mated returns from school earlier than you, depending on where the bus station, your house and the house of the class mate are located. Apart from that, you also can spend the regular free time at school together. In the morning, the first pupils arrived by bus around 50 minutes before the first lesson started. There are two 15 minute breaks in the morning and if you also have lessons in the afternoon, there is a one hour lunch break. It was not really common to have "dates" as a teenager, couples rather just hanged out with each other without a special location and activity.
If the two teenager have a common friend, they also can tell their parents that they want to meet that friend and then meet at the friend's place.

The infrastructure for biking definitely is important and I guess you also have the right mentality for it after so many decades. Here in Germany, if there is no separate bike path, cars will come dangerously close to you and that definitely is not fun on streets where cars may drive up to 100 km/h. I do not think that the flat landscape really matters because in some university cities like Heidelberg, going by bike is very popular amongst students although the city is not flat.
As mentioned before, the streets to my village were not always cleared from snow within a reasonable amount of time (and just for the record: I did not grow up in a mountain area with lots of snow). That meant that sometimes you had to drive on snow or ice for a couple of weeks and my village did not have a separate bike path back then. Pupils from other villages and towns regularly missed one or a few days of school during winter because their school bus was not able to drive up a small hill due to the slippery streets. Later when we were old enough to have cars, several class mates had accidents due to the weather conditions (and due to being unexperienced novice drivers). I almost ended up in the ditch once myself although I just drove 20 km/h. Of course, these problems exist just for a short period of time every year, I can understand that parents do not want their children to go by bike under these conditions even if the children behave carefully and reasonably - the other road users might cause an accident as well.
For the way to school: If I remember correctly, pupils from grade 1-10 receive a free annual bus ticket if they live more than 3 km away from school and/or if their school way partly is out of town because that is considered too dangerous to expect e.g. by a 6-year old without company. Pupils from the same town where the school is located usually walk to school or go by bike. If they go by bike, they usually have an old and rather worthless bike for going to school because many bikes were stolen or damaged while they were in class. This happened so often that the pupils with bus ticket used the bus almost always because we just had one bike per person and we did not want to lose the bike.

Pre-made characters
Claudio Monty's biography mentions the romance between Romeo and Juliette. Therefore, they must already have developed feelings for each other before four of the deaths occured, probably even before any death occured.

I do not think that the theory from the blog would work in a small German village.
The place is too public for such a conversation. There is no place where they could sit and be undisturbed and be out of earshot of others.
The restaurant in the blog also sounds like a big business with many employees. In a small village, a restaurant often hardly provides sufficient income for two people (one chef and one waiter).
Hero also had no realistic reason to leave the restaurant: The waiter would have answered the phone call and there is no point giving her all the details of the call during her shift at the restaurant. A restaurant at a sports club also is not the kind of business that would be hired for catering by a society dame. Nobody would expect a caterer to prepare food immediately after a phone call. People would interpret that as a sign of desperation and that the caterer/restaurant has no other guests which always is a bad sign. Even if there was a reason to prepare some food, it would have to be prepared in the restaurant kitchen because there are laws that require that the preparation has to take place in a professional kitchen.
Professional kitchens usually are made of stainless steel so that there is not much that could catch fire and professional kitchens also have to have powerful extractor fans. Therefore, it would be quite difficult to start a fire even if you forget to turn off a burner and even if there was a fire, it would spread only slowly and at least some of the smoke would be removed by the extractor fans. Even a grease fire should only be able to cause a shooting flame, but nothing that will spread sidewards quickly. It is quite likely that at least one of the guests is a volunteer firefighter who could extinguish the fire quickly and the local firebrigade also would be present within a few minutes.
As most people are used to fire alarms and evacuations from school or work, the guests would not panic. They would leave the building calmly and quickly and I assume that they also would ensure that no one is running inside anymore at that point.
Therefore, I do not think that Cordelia and Caliban could have died as described in the blog. The only thing I agree with is the fact that an event like this would be the end of the restaurant. There is no way to recover from this with all the gossip and the rumours and probably the prosecution (involuntary manslaughter).
"Starvation" as a reason of death for Claudio and Olivia also should be difficult to explain. I can imagine that somebody forgets to eat and collapses at a certain point. But in RL, people would collapse quite some time before they would die from starvation. Somebody would call an ambulance and the collapsed person would be taken to hospital. If a person refuses to comply, this can even be done against the will of this person.

There is one more thing that came into my mind: In Germany, for custody, it is considered more important that a guardian (or single parent) can care, educated and parent a child. The income of this person is not really important, as the state will provide social assitance/welfare, if needed. If Contessa did not have a job at the time when Cordelia and Caliban died, I can see that she and Consort were seen as a good choice, but widowed Consort with a very time-consuming job would not be seen as a good guardian anymore. However, I am not sure whether the other family members are more suited. Goneril and Albany already have four children so that the family would be really huge afterwards and as they do not have much money, most likely both of them will have to get a job to make ends meet and therefore they will not have a lot of time for any child. The household of Regan, Cornwall and Kent is smaller so that three additional household members might fit in better, but I think that Regan and Cornwall are just interested in their (future) careers and not interested in children. I assume that the authorities in RL would suggest Consort to drastically reduce his working hours or retire so that he has more time to care for his three grandchildren.

How many pupils do your schools have per grade? At my school (more than 1000 pupils, about 150 pupils in 5th grade, about 100 pupils in 13th grade), it was rather unusual to spend time with people from other grades unless you were in a relationship with that person. Maybe it is easier to get into contact with pupils from other grades if there are less pupils in your own grade.
We never had any trips for two or more grades. Recurring one-day trips like hiking day were on the same day for all classes and grades, but each teacher and class decided individually what they wanted to do on that day. It could happen that two classes had the same destination, but even then the classes usually did not to the same things at the same time. Longer school trips usually were only arranged for one or two classes at the same time because these trips require more supervising teachers at the same time and the school had to ensure that sufficient teachers remained at the school to teach the other pupils. It is rather the one-day events directly at the school, like sports festival, where you can spend some time with people from other grades, but there only were 3-4 such days per school year at my school.

Now that I know better how to reduce pink flashing and crashing, I managed to proceed with building and decorating.

Monty restaurant
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/rKIJ5qY
Which windows would represent the changing rooms best? (based on clubhouse SV Massenbachhausen) I've collected some floorplans of other sports clubs, but they have more symmetry regarding window placement. It must be noted that I've never visited a football clubhouse and didn't attend sports games of peers, so I have no clue about what this type of sports club floorplan layout usually looks like. And if I'm going to make an OFB lot from it, how many people would work there? For now, I have in mind Antonio, Bianca, the mother of my CAS family (secondary cook), and Mercutio. Alternatively, some of them could work in another Monty restaurant in a different town.

Capp Villa
New pics: https://imgur.com/a/8Fvee6c
Would it look sensible if the washing machine and dryer are placed in that guest toilet next to the parent's bathroom instead?
Could it be that the left side of the lot is sloped up? The left side doesn't have windows and the wine cellar isn't connected with the balcony, yet the front left side has windows in both the basement and the 1st floor.
Any ideas for a garden layout? I definitely want to place a garden house somewhere and some playground stuff
What is that wind thingy at the front door? I just placed walls for now because there were no pictures made from the front side in the reference
For the kids rooms, I picked old-fashioned style furniture for now (Quaint/Country/Romantic). But I doubt if the teens from Consort's household would also have old-fashioned furniture since they're old enough to choose their own furniture.
Any ideas regarding placements of cabinets/sideboards in the kids rooms, nursery and hobby room? For now, I haven't added much deco yet (paintings, posters, clutter) because I first want to add more deco furniture and arrange them in a logical manner.

Monty Ranch
Which room on the 1st floor would suit best as the former bedroom of Claudio and Olivia? https://imgur.com/a/FHclhWc

Housing & interior
Yes, I noticed from the impressions in Ahrtal that the houses look unique from each other -- even both parts of a single Doppelhaus can look very different from each other.
Can you find some images of what sofa beds roughly looked like, like the one you and your peers have? Perhaps I can find a similar CC.

Pre-made headcanons
Do you have any headcanon ideas about the causes of deaths of the Monty and Capp parents and Contessa and the timespan of various death events? In my headcanon that takes place in early 2005, the last pre-mades deaths already happened in the previous year (Claudio and Contessa being the last ones since they clearly mentioned their offspring's romances). Since hunger failure doesn't sound logical (unless I throw in Sims absurdity where they neglected their needs), what could be an alternative cause for Claudio and Olivia?

How would Romeo and Juliette meet up best without getting caught in gossip amongst lurking fellow villagers? At the Summerdreams house, or at a gathering/party in a Nachbarort, or somewhere up in the forested hills in the outskirts? (I haven't made up whether I would place the Summerdream mansion in the center of the village or at the border)

School & transportation
If a feud-neutral Sim from the Capp side of the river wants to visit someone on the other side or go to football training/match, would they usually walk or go by bike? I don't know where the threshold lies between walking and biking for Germans because it's much more common for Dutch people to bike somewhere within a short distance (5 mins biking vs 30 mins walking).

Was your sports festival the counterpart of the anime sports festival? (I can always throw in parodies or exaggerations in my story)

I want to use the Adenau schools as references regarding building and number of pupils. According to English Wiki, the Gymnasium had 700+ pupils in 2008.
Dutch "village" reference: my SO estimates about 100 pupils per grade for Gymnasium and 150+ per grade for Realschule. The school (Real + Gym) in a 45K town they attended had more than 1000 pupils. That town has four secondary schools with 500+ pupils, but my SO attended the largest sec school. There is also a secondary school in their hometown ("village" with <10K inhabitants), but back then, that school didn't offer the Gymnasium tier equivalent, hence they had to bike 45 - 60 mins to the nearby Gymnasium school because bus transportation for pupils is not for free, and their (active) parents were like "why not go by bike?". So in Dutch villages/small towns, it's very common to bike 30+ minutes to secondary school, and going by bus was more an exception unless it's very rainy (or very occasionally slippery freezing). The cycling path could be occupied with 30 - 50 pupils from smaller towns cycling to the secondary school of the 45K town and nobody wants to cycle in front because otherwise, they would catch the most wind .

Monty restaurant
The Sportheime that I know had rather big windows. Therefore, I would prefer the bigger ones from your screenshots. However, the changing rooms often did not have any windows at all.
If you want information on an exclusive soccer clubhouse, I cannot help you either because I have never been in one. Sports clubs in villages offer several sports. By offering more than just one sport, the club attracts more paying members which usually are the main source of income.
I think that your plans for the restaurant are too big. On most days of the week, people just will have a drink or two after participating in the training (and some might not even buy a drink), a few ones might also order a dish. Therefore, the restaurant will only provide sufficient income for a maximum of two people. If the restaurant manages to attract some guests for Sunday at lunch time, the owner might hire a temporary help for a few hours, but that would be so few hours that it is not even a real part-time job. The restaurant definitely would not have a second cook. Antonio with his relatively high skills also seems to be a bit overqualified. Maybe Bianca and Mercutio/Romeo can work there while the others should work at the other restaurant in a bigger town.

Capp Villa
Guest toilets usually are too small to have washing machine and dryer there.
The terrain looks rather flat in the original pictures. I think that the lack of windows on that side might be because the owners wanted to have lots of privacy. In the pictures, the side withou windows seems to be the one facing towards the road through the forest where it is explicitly mentioned that it is not possible to view the lot/house from that road. It looks like there is a high wall with a fence on top on the lot border and the wall and much of the fence are covered with plants. I assume that the wall and the plants create a lot of shadow so that windows would not really provide much light anyway. Maybe that side of the house is facing towards North which would reduce the amoun of daylight even more - but the original pictures do not show the directions.
For the garden, I would remain close to the original one: Many big plants along the lot border and a trimmed lawn inbetween.
The thing at the entrance could be an oriel. Unfortunately, it is not shown in any of the pictures, just in the layout. I definitely would put a roof on top of it and maybe close the wall and add an arch (without the layout as reference, I rather would place a door instead of the arch and remove the other door instead).

Old enough to choose one's own furniture: It is not only a matter of age. Amongst the teenagers that I knew, it was more common to keep the old furniture than to replace it at some point. The teenagers who got new furniture at some point were the ones who previously had the kind of children's bedroom furniture sets that were common at furniture chains: available for an average price, including everything from crib and changing table to a (often rather small) regular bed (strange sizes like 1,8 x 0,8 m because some people believe that children could feel lost in a regular 2 x 1 m bed) and a desk with the right height for a primary school child, often with a style or decorations that seemed fitting for that age group. People with more expensive furniture often kept it and just bought addons, if needed. People with cheap furniture often could not afford replacing it. And there were quite a few people who never bought age-typical furniture for their children but rather something ageless which then also was not replaced. The second biggest group of people who bought new furniture for their children/teenagers were people whose children used o share a bedroom and do not have to share a bedroom anymore after they moved house. However, even if teenagers got new furniture at some point, this does not mean that the teenagers could choose whatever they wanted. The parents would go to the furniture store with them and tell them which furniture sets they definitely will not buy (due to the price or style or other reasons) and the teenager then can choose from only a few options. 10 or 12 years also seems to be a more common age for changing the furniture than at a later age. At that age, some of the old furniture already might be too small for the child and it is easier to tell a 10-12 year old that they only may choose from a few options than telling this a teenager and it does not make that much sense to buy new furniture for e.g. a 15-year old teenager who will only use the furniture for a few years before either moving out or having different furniture needs due to job, university, hobbies etc.

Cabinets/sideboards: You definitely should place more of them and maybe you can find a CC set with objects in different sizes that you can combine in different ways so tha you can use all the available space in the rooms. When children had longish rooms, it was common that furniture (a bed, a desk and many cabinets) was placed along the two longer walls without gaps inbetween with door and window on the two shorter walls. The nursery definitely lacks a lot of cabinets as well. I would place the thing for lying on the ground in another room (maybe the living room so that Ariel can spend some time with the rest of the family) and place the toys somewhere in the middle of the room. Then you should be able to place cabinets on 3 or 4 tiles (which still would be below average, I guess, but fitting for the room size. Maybe you also can move the make-up table from the parents' bedroom to the big bathroom so that you have a bit more place for cabinets in the bedroom.

Monty Ranch
None of the rooms has a comfortable size for placing a double bed. I would enlarge several of these rooms to be big enough for a double bed as I can imagine that Patrizio and Isabella as family sims would be happy about any relative who decides to stay in the house after marrying.
I think it would be strange if Bianca, Mercutio or Romeo would have moved into Claudio and Olivia's bedroom such a short time after their death. Therefore, I would suggest getting rid of thst strange short staircase on the top right and extending the room next to it in such a way that a double bed could have fit in there in the past.

Housing and interior
Just to avoid misunderstandings: I was taking about a way to turn a regular bed into a sofa, not a sofa that can be turned into a bed. I just could find one picture of such a bed:
https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/z/zDMAAOSw8qNh~l3D/$_59.JPG
The ones that I saw when I was younger usually had more unobtrusive colors. Often, the mattress had the same design/pattern as the back and arm pieces although you usually could not see it because people were too lazy to take of the bed sheets during daytime. The beds like this that I knew were bought somewhen during the 80ies or early 90ies. I cannot tell you whether they also were sold before and after this period of time.
While looking for images, I also found this image: https://img.ricardostatic.ch/t_1000...-80er-style.jpg
I knew two or three friends who had bedsofas like this (completely black without the pattern) as teenagers. Most friends, however, did not have sofas in their bedrooms at all.

Pre-made headcanons
I never had own headcanons about the deaths. I agree with you that starvation is a quite uncommon and therefore unrealistic cause of death in Germany.
If I ignore the colors of the ghosts, but stick with the order of the deaths and that a Monty family member is involved in/responsible for the deaths of Cordelia and Caliban and try to use relatively common causes of death, I could imagine something like this:
Olivia has some pregnancy-related health problems and is submitted to hospital. Claudio is informed and wants to rush to the hospital as quickly as possible. He drives to fast/is too distracted while driving and crashes into another car. Cordelia and Caliban are in the other car and are immediately dead. Olivia dies some days/weeks/a few months later in hospital due to the pregnancy-related health problems. Claudio is devestated by her death, feels guilty because of Cordelia and Caliban's death, faces charges because of the crash and maybe also has serious health problems due to the crash and sees no other option than to commit suicide.
Alternatively, Olivia could have premature contractions and Claudio therefore wants to drive her to the hospital as quickly as possible. As she is in the car at the time of the crash, she gets injured seriously and dies from these injuries some time after later in hospital. The rest of the story would be the same.
Another option would be that there was no direct crash between the two cars. Claudio was on the wrong side of the road, Cordelia saw it and wanted to avoid the crash by driving to the right and leaving the street, but unfortunately she crashs into a tree and she and her husband die that way (works with the original story where Olivia already is in hospital). That might resemble a bit the aspect of your previous headcanon that Cordelia would risk her own life to protect others.
No matter which option you choose, Claudio would be responsible for the death of Cordelia and Caliban, but as it is an accident, it is understandable that not everybody would blame him (especially because he was in an exceptional situation and also lost his wife soon afterwards). Consort could be annoyed because he thinks that the suicide was a coward way of avoiding the trial due to negligent killing and that it would have been a bigger punishment if Claudio still was alive and faced the consequences (coping with the loss of a beloved person, rumours of the people, a huge fine or prison sentence which also could ruin the restaurant etc). Juliette as a more empathic person, in contrast, would understand that Claudio simply felt desperate, guilty and extremely unhappy and would have needed help instead of accusations.
Contessa was heartbroken and died in a natural way because of that. Hero's death would be unrelated to the other deaths, but I guess that this is a better option than making up unplausible explanations. Drowning (as in the link that you posted in a previous posting) is rare, but a few hundred people die that way each year in Germany. I do not think tha she died in a pool because pools in private house are very rare (and I already explained that I do not think that they owned a house, let alone a house with pool) and in public pools there are lifeguards. Maybe she liked swimming or boating in a nearby lake or river and she did this very early in the morning at a time when no other people were present so that there was nobody who could help her or explain what had happened. That way her death would be classified as accident, but never be fully resolved which matches Benedick's biography.

I assume that Romeo and Juliette would meet at the Summerdream's house and somewhere outside of the village. Many lots in villages can be accesed from the front and from the back and as there is a lot of stuff on the lot that blocks the view, it is quite likely that one neighbor always just sees Romeo entering the lot from the back and another neighbor always just sees Juliette entering the lot from the front. That way each neighbor only would know half the story which would not be interesting enough to talk about -especially as I imagine the Summerdreams having more people over at their house regularly. And inside the house, Romeo and Juliette could spend their time in a quiet room where they do not have to fear being surprised by the other guests. Considering the Summerdream family biography, I would expect them to actively support the relationship.
A party or gathering seems too risky to me because it is quite likely that other guests see them and then there would be gossip and Consort might hear about it at some point. Moreoever, he does no seem the kind of person to me who would have his grandchildren attend parties (except maybe smaller birthday parties of friends - if he knows for sure that no Monty will attend the party). I see him as a rather strict person who would try to urge the teens to learn a lot from school and not allow them stay up very long in the evening and hardly allow them to go out in the evening so that they pretty much only can spend time with friends on weekends in the afternoon.

School and transportation
I guess you overestimate the size of small villages. It usually is one kilometer or less from one end of the village to the other end. Therefore, it should not take more than ten minutes to walk to the sports club or visit a friend. For that reason, you usually are not really faster if you go by bike. You have to get the bike out of the garage which might take 1-2 minutes and you cannot cycle too fast because on most streets you have to give way to the right which means that you have to be able to react quickly to other road users. We usually walked to destinations within the village unless we had planned to do some activities with bike, inline skates etc. In these cases, we of course already used the item(s) for the way to the friend's house as well.
Many of the older men who played in the table tennis team went to the sports club by car - even if they only lived 300-400 m away from the sports club. (And of course, many of them also drank beer with alcohol after the training before driving home again ... )
I do not really know how the young adult soccer players usually went to the sports club. Some of them used to show off their new cars e.g. when they came home from work (= from a nearby town or city), others drived in a more mature way, but I do not really know what their personal limit for different means of transport is.

I do not know what the anime sports festival is. The sports festival at our school was part of the Bundesjugendspiele. There is an English Wiki article with plenty of information. In contrast to usual physical education at school, we were grouped per calender year instead of per school class which means that it was one of the rather few ocasions when you did something with people from one grade above or below you. My school had a sports (= track & field) and a swimming festival per year. On both days, you only spent a relatively short time competing and the rest of the time, you spent time with the others of your group doing things that you like. After competing for the last time, there was no need to stay with the group anymore so that you also could spend time with friends. The official part of these school days usually ended before lunch so that we often went to school by bike on the day of the sports festival so that we did not have to wait for the school bus. After the swimming festival ended, you were allowed to stay at the pool for the rest of the day. We did not stay until the evening, but at least a bit longer because the town had a really nice and big outdoor pool with diving platform, slides and other fun stuff.
Not everybody liked these festivals because the results were recorded and depending on your performance, you could get a certificate for very good results, for good results and a participant certificate for everybody else (some years earlier these people did not receive anything at all) and the certificates were handed out publicly so that everybody knew how you performed.

The Gymnasium should have more pupils than the other school types. The numbers vary per state, but around 2005, in 5th grade about 40 % of pupils attended Gymnasium and about 30 % each Realschule and Hauptschule (ignoring states with Gesamtschule that does not yet require a decision and Sonderschulen). In higher grades, the percentage for Gymnasium should be a bit lower. For Realschule and Hauptschule there should be only small changes because they get new pupils and lose other pupils. Around 2005, about 10 % of pupils dropped out of school without passing 9th grade (= without a school degree).
Another factor for bigger Gymnasien is that usually there are fewer of them than Realschulen and Hauptschulen. In rural areas, administrative districts often pay for Gymnasien (because no municipality has sufficient pupils to operate a Gymnasium of its own) while municipalities pay for primary schools, Realschule and Hauptschule. Therefore, the administrative district is interested in having rather few Gymnasien in relatively central locations while municipalities try to have a school of each of the other types in their area so that they do not have to care too much with school buses, joint funding with other municipalities etc. I did a bit of counting for a administrative district with about 80 000 inhabitants. That district has 2 Gymnasien (in the two biggest towns), 5 Realschulen (in five of the six biggest towns/municipalities) and 12 Hauptschulen (one in each municipalitiy or administrative community).
The administrative district has a diameter of about 60 km which means that some Gymnasium pupils have to drive up to 30 km to attend school while the Hauptschulen are spread out in such a way that probably 80-90 % of the pupils live close enough to the school that there is no school bus available for them.

As mentioned before, pupils receive free bus tickets up to 10th grade if they live more than 3 km away from school or if a part of their school was is out of town (might of course be different in some German states). Back then, my home village did not have any cycling path at all and most parents definitely would not want their children to drive on the street because it is rather dangerous. During my freetime, I have seen cycling paths blocked by parking cars and garden tools lying on the ground next to them close to a Schrebergartensiedlung (and the driver of one car threatened to hit me with his car because I congratulated him on his ability to block the whole cycling path). When roads were damaged the administration often decided to "repair" it with loose gravel. During the first days after such a "repair", some of the gravel would fly away whenever a car or truck was passing by. When you were cycling or walking there, this is extremely painful and even can cause bleeding wounds on your legs. During winter, many truck drivers are too lazy to remove the ice from the top of their trucks and when they drive, it falls off sooner or later. My car once got hit by a 2-3 kg piece. I am quite sure that even a helmet would not help a lot if I had been there with my bike instead of my car. And as I once mentioned before, there was on winter when there already was lots of snow in the middle of November and the road maintenance depot was not yet prepared for this. My home village was not considered important enough so that they did not clean the roads from snow. After about one week, they sent a sal vehicle which made things worse because the layer of snow was so thick that the salt only was able to melt the top before it froze again and turned into ice. In the end, it took more than three weeks before the street was cleared and during that time you could see at least one car in the road ditch every day and at least two of my class mates were involved in accidents because their villages had not been treated in a better way. If there had been many cyclists, I am quite sure that sooner or later one of these cars would have hit them while the drivers could not control them. These are only some examples, but I guess it should explain why parents in Germany are not such big fans of sending their children to school by bike. As most schools have the first lesson at 8 a.m., the pupils would cycle at least a part of their way while it still is dark for 5-6 months per year and for about 2,5 months the whole way to school will be completely dark (and in Germany there are no road lights out of town which means that car and truck drivers will see you relatively late with regular bike lights).

In addition to the risks on the streets, my school had a great problem with vandalism and bike theft. I had some friends who went to school by bike and they had to spend a few hundred euros per year to have their bikes repaired or replaced. The costs were lower than the costs for the annual bus ticket, but not that much lower that it was really attractive considering all the hassle that you have when you have to have your bike repaired every few couple of weeks. Therefore, when my parents gave me the money equivalent to the price of the annual bus ticket in grades 11-13, it did not even occur to me to go to school by bike. In 11th grade, I bought the annual bus ticket, in 12th grade, friends often took my along and I just bought some single tickets and in 13th grade, I used it to pay the fuel and insurance for my own car.
One more thing where I am not sure whether it is handled in a similar way in the Netherlands and in Germany: Satchels and backbags can be really heavy. You have at least one school book for each subject (except for physical education) and you can have up to eight subjects per day. You have to bring the books with you and take them home again after school because pupils only are in school for the classes and homework and learning is done at home. (That has changed a bit during recent years as many schools offer supervision in the afternoons.) In addition to the usual equipment like excercise books, you also needed special equipment for many subjects: atlas for geography, monolingual dictionaries for foreign languages etc. Nobody forced you to bring along that stuff, but if you did not bring it along, you had disadvantages. The monolingual dictionaries e.g. were allowed to be used during exams and there were no restrictions which means the bigger = the more entries = the better. You also had to bring along your own food and drinks as the school only had a kiosk where you could buy bakery products at regular bakery prices and drinks vending machines where half a liter of water cost an euro (and the school was requiring renovation that urgent tha nobody would have considered drinking tap water - if the water tap was working at all). There was no supermarket or other grocery store close to the school either so that you could not get food or drinks somewhere else. Thus, for a school day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with an additional 1-2 hours for commuting, your backbag could easily have a weight of 20 kg or more. I have to admit that I am too lazy to consider cycling 2 x 60 minutes per day when carrying this much stuff with me.

Premade headcanons
Your ideas sound good! I do wonder how the teens would deal with these tragic situations (I haven't consumed much media that describes similar experiences). The blog I've linked before suggested that Hermia goes through a depression phase. I see Mercutio resorting into substances (smoking, booze, etc.), and Romeo might cope through smoking and underage drinking and distracting himself with attention from girls at school. Juliette might get a closer bond with Hermia and Miranda, and Romeo as well because they share the same tragedy (losing their parents).

Restaurants: then I pretend the main Monty restaurant is located in the future Downtown hood and let Bianca and Mercutio work at the local sports restaurant (Romeo hasn't a parttime job in my game).

Architecture & interior
Were top bunk beds (with a desk underneath) and double bunk beds also common?
Do you know in which regions aside of Eifel Bruchsteinhäuser are common?
I recently found pictures of a Fachwerk rental ad, and noticed that the first floor doesn't have exposed ceiling beams unlike the ground floor (although the attic wasn't photographed). Is it common in FWH that only the ground floor has visible beams, or is it highly variable?

Hood planning
Screenshots of both Veronaville and some German plot maps: https://imgur.com/a/chIDI4U
I've found a street with multiple detached Fachwerkhäuser, which is in Wallefeld (NRW), and they don't have many subsidiary buildings unlike the FWH in the Eifel. The small town is part of a bigger municipality and it's 8 km away from the 50K Kreisstadt Gommersfeld. What kind of small town is Wallefeld and how does it differ from the Eifel/Ahrweiler villages regarding house placements? I could use Wallefeld's street as inspiration for the Via Veronaville street, since I want to fill it up with more FWH just like in the original Maxis setting with the Tudor houses. Since the house I've built the CAS family looks like an old detached residential home just like those in Wallenfeld, how would it fit in a streets with attached FWH as well, such as Hofanlage complexes?

School & customs
Is it common or not to allow cats or dogs in someone's bedroom upstairs, provided their paws aren't dirty? I can imagine that Neat Sims won't allow them in bedrooms anyway, while Sloppy Sims care less.

Slightly off-topic/non-Sims answers & questions are within the spoiler

Premade headcanons
Thanks! I tried to stick to your ideas as close as possible, just with more common causes of death.
I do not think tha there would be big differences between German and Dutch teenagers coping with such a situation. One thing that might be interesting regarding Antonio: The men that I know who became widowers usually ended up in a new relationship very quickly, about 3-4 months after the wife's death. In the opposite cases, the widows, in contrast, remained single for at least a couple of years, some even never dated again.

Architecture and interior
I only know one family who had a double bunk bed because their two children had to share a bedroom. But that family did not live in a village, they lived in an old, small FWH in a nearby town. The children only had to share a bedroom until they became teenagers (because their parents wanted to be relatively close to them at night while they were younger). Then the family converted the attic into additional living space. In a village, it might be an option for a family with small funds who lives in a rental property.
Top bunk beds also were rather uncommon amongst the people I know. I would say that less than 10 % of the children had something like that. One child had their bedroom in the attic of the house and there was some kind of gallery in the room that was accessible with a ladder and on the gallery, a mattress was lying on the floor as bed for the child.
No, I do not know where this type of house is common.
I think it depends on the house owners whether the beams are visible or not. I think that most people perceive the beams as nice to look at. As Germans usually hide cables, tubes etc. in walls and floor/ceiling, however, having the beams visible will result in more work than having a suspended ceiling. Maybe the owners of the house in the ad therefore decided to have them visible in the rooms where they spend most of their time (while being awake) and where guests can see the beams as well and for the rooms where you do no spend too much time (with open eyes and sufficient light), they have chosen the easier solution.

Hood planning
I cannot really tell you something about Wallefeld.
In the past, pretty much every house in a village had some subsidiary buildings (except maybe regions where people had all-in-one houses like the "Ernhaus"). Some people decide to keep the subsidiary buildings, others prefer to demolish (some of) them. In some places, more people decided in a similar way (due to high or low taxes, fire risk, (lack of) permanency of common building materials etc.) while in other places, people decided more individually. Therefore, I do not think that a detached house amongst many attached houses is a problem. Just imagine what kind of subsidiary buildings the lot may have had in the past and what layout they had. That will have effect on the layout of the rest of the lot and maybe there even are some leftovers of demolished buildings - like a wall that was kept because the owners wanted to have some kind of wall/fence on the lot border anyway or some stones that now form the border of a flower or vegetable bed etc.

School and customs
Pets with clean paws were extremely rare amongst the people I knew. Cats and dogs spent a big part of the day outside. There were also quite a few people who kept the dogs outside at night as well. A few households even still had bandogs although legislation in that respect had become much stricter in 2001.

Off-topic
Large handbags were not common at all at my school (except for days with special events when you did not have to bring along the usual equipment. Some people (including me) had messenger bags in Oberstufe (11th to 13th grade). I started using the messenger bag when I stopped using the school bus regularly.
In primary school satchels like this (although a bit more boxy back then) were common: https://www.google.de/search?q=schu...ih=754&biw=1536
At the beginning of secondary school, maybe half the pupils had satchels like this: https://www.google.de/search?q=b%C3...ih=754&dpr=1.25
I assume that many parents were reminded of their own childhood by these satchels and they also were a sign that you were a bit older and not in primary school anymore. However, these satchels are quite heavy, even when they are empty and Eastpak-like backbags simply were more popular so that soon almost everybody had a backbag. And while messenger bags became a bit common in higher grades, the backbags still remained the most common choice until graduation.

I do not have a lot of knowledge about anime. I have some friends who really like it, but it never caught my interest.
For a summer beach episode, you have to choose Mallorca, if you want to go for the cliché. The Netherlands and Scandinavia are not really popular for beach vacations. The German coast (both Northern Sea and Baltic Sea), Spain, Italy, Turkey, France and Greece should be the most popular options for such a vacation. If you told somebody that you went on vacation to the Netherlands, the other person most likely would think of coffee shops, not of beaches (I am sorry for this prejudice). And Scandinavia usually was/is a vacation destination for people who e.g. like to go hiking and camping in the nature. I also know some people who went there for a fishing vacation, but this usually applied to middle-aged and older men and therefore not exactly the target group for your parody, I guess.
If you want another school episode that is not related to sport, Abistreich (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abistreich) could be a good choice. The pupils who graduate from Gymnasium host a party for the whole school during teaching time. There is music, food and drinks (including free beer). Each grade picks a theme that usually contains a pun with the word "Abi" that is used for decoration. The Abiturienten try to stop other pupils from attending classes by modifying the school building in the night before the party - using barrier tape to block the ways, balloons to fill the stair cases etc. Very few pupils choose even more drastic options like closing all the doors with bricks. During the party, groups of Abiturienten go back to the school building to search for pupils who attend classes and if they find some, the class room will be stormed and the pupils will be "kidnapped" and guided to the party. At the party, the music often will be interrupted to ask teachers to come on stage where they then will be roasted. All Abiturienten have matching shirts with the theme printed on it and they are signing each others shirts so that in the end you should have signatures of everybody on your shirt. The Abiturienten also create a magazine about their grade, all the pupils and all the special events during the weeks before the party and the magazine then is sold at the party.

Riding a bike: It depends a lot on the parents. For me it was like that: At Kindergarten age, we just were allowed to ride the bike within the village when our parents were around. At primary school age, it was okay to go to a friend's place (within the village) by bike without a parent accompanying me and we made bike tours to other villages and towns with my parents and/or grandparents. Around the age of about 12, I was allowed to go to other villages and towns with my sibling or somebody else and about at the age of 14 without anybody accompanying me. My parents never explicitly said that I was forbidden to do it before, but they made suggestions that somebody should come along. Regarding sidewalks: Sidewalks usually only exist within built-up areas and in villages you usually even find a few streets without sidewalks. However, it is forbidden to use a sidewalk by bike anyway, except if you are a child younger than eight years old or if there is a special traffic sign that signals that the sidewalk is a combined walk and bike path - although within built-up areas that is only common in (bigger) towns and cities, not in villages. Outside of built-up areas, there might be walk and bike paths (usually separated from the road by the road ditch), but there are too few of them. Around the time relevant for your Veronaville, my village did not have any walk and bike paths at all. A few years later, a path of about 1 km length was built that ends at a country lane that is also used by tractors and cars (especially by people who are too lazy to walk their dogs and somehow attach the dog's leash to the car and then drive slowly). The lane is so narrow that you have to leave he country lane pretty much whenever there is a car or tractor which makes it not that much fun to use the country lane. After using the country lane for about 2 km, there is another walk and bike path which leads to the outskirts of the nearest town and it ends there inan industrial area. From there on, you have to use the regular streets again. Honestly, I am not sure if I would use this route (I do not live there anymore). I guess I would prefer using the regular streets because they are less curved and with less trees and other objects blocking the view. I assume that cars and trucks would see me better on the regular way, but, of course, you cannot expect too much courtesy on the road in Germany. Thus, for me, going somewhere by bike was an option for trips on weekends and during warmer seasons, but nothing that I would have considered for recurring, e.g. weekly, appointments all year long.

Back then, cigarette vending machines did not check the age of the purchaser. Therefore, it was easy to get cigarettes. Schools are considered safe. Thus, there are no security checks at the entrance and schools are not surrounded by fences or walls. My school had entrances at three sides. There only was a fence around the outdoor sports facilities and that fence had the purpose to keep other people away (so that they do not damage anything), but pupils always could leave the lot. Smoking was common either on the toilets (The smell was in there all the time so that teachers could not tell whether somebody was smoking while they were in there or whether it was old smoke. Nevertheless, the toilets only were an option for those pupils who were really addicted to cigarettes, not for those who thought it was cool to smoke.) or outside. Our school had several meadows where pupils can spend the breaks and in a few places there were some trees or higher bushes where other people would not immediately see you and the teachers were not really searching for people who were smoking. Nevertheless, most of the trees and bushes were removed at a later point to make it a bit more difficult for the pupils. You also could leave the school lot at any time (our school had two main buildings that were a few hundred meters apart from each other and you were expected to walk from one building to the other by yourself) and then had almost endless possibilities to smoke without being caught. You also should be aware that smoking was legal from age 16 back then (if I remember correctly) which means that at least at a Gymnasium there were many pupils who did not do anything illegal. The school, of course, prohibited smoking for all pupils on the school lot, but if you were old enough, you could stand 1 m next to the lot border and smoke and no teacher could do anything against it (and teacher had two teacher's rooms - a bigger one for everybody and a smaller one just for smokers. I doubt whether this still is legal today). In summary, I would say that it was very easy to get cigarettes and also to smoke them at school.
If you were smoking outside, it was not difficult to hide the smell. You just had to ensure that the wind blew the cigarette smoke (of all people who were smoking) not in the direction where you were standing. I tried the first cigarettes when I was twelve years old and my parents never had a clue. For me, it would have been a bigger problem, if I had carried around cigarettes and equipment because my parents could have found that. It might have been a bigger problem for those children/teenagers who smoked regularly because I assume that sooner or later you become inattentive which increases the risk of being caught by the parents. I think it is more dangerous to smoke somewhere in or close to the village because almost every inhabitant knows you and your parents and many of them even would enjoy peaching on you. Fun fact: My parents were worried that I could have started smoking at the age of 16. At that age, I started meeting my friends in a cocktail bar every week and smoking in bars, restaurants etc. was not prohibited back then (even today in some states it is legal). I did not smoke, but sitting in a room where several other people were smoking made my clothes and hair smell strongly while smoking myself a few years before did not have this effect. And just for the record: If you have long hair, the hair smells much worse than the clothes and it is more difficult to hide/change.

Architecture & interior
I'm gonna try finding more Fachwerk ads for more interior inspiration
If the ground floor of a Fachwerkhaus is made of solid outer walls (Massivbauweise), were the inner walls on that floor still half-timbered instead? Do you know if Fachwerkhäuser with a solid-built ground floor are more likely to have a non-vaulted cellar underneath? (It's too much work for me to deepen the cellar to two floors with Grid Adjustor in already-furnished lots).

How common was cottage/country style (Landhausstil) furniture amongst rural families during the late 90s until halfway 00s? Or was it rather a thing amongst elders, just like Gelsenkirchener Baroque + still owning a Fliesentisch after 90s? Example of 90s Landhausstil: https://www.schoener-wohnen.de/einr...8-12636180.html

Infrastructure
It's hard to imagine that there were no walking paths at all in a village back then! (even in the village center)
I guess I'm going to imagine that the more active Sims travel by bicycle to a Nachbarort within 10 km when it's nice and pleasant weather in spring to early fall, but that the parents discourage their teens to bike long distances during frosty/rainy/foggy weather, due to the recent car accident events involving the Capps and Montys.

Monty Ranch
New screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Z5aQ4DP
If I understood correctly, if a villa Rustica would be utilized as a residential home or accommodation, is there more flexibility regarding room layout rearrangement because the building is made of solid walls instead of timbering? Any suggestions regarding Sim bedroom placements on the 1st floor? And for the ground floor, which rooms could be merged, and what to do with the spare rooms?
What kinds of carport types were the most common?

Storytelling/pre-made character design
What are plausible reasons why Juliette and Mercutio are scripted to dislike each other? Although in my game, it escelated into attacking each other . On the other hand, they have two lightning bolts towards each other.
Miranda's original OTH is Science, but swapped it to Music & Dance atm. What music hobbies do you imagine for her: playing guitar, singing, or both?

How common was pranking amongst 8th - 9th grade boys during classes just to get through their day? (Either praking between two friend groups, or towards teachers, or stealing minor supplies from schools). And if a pupil had detention, did they have to call their parent to be picked up? (I have no clue whether or not sec.school teachers were generally more strict in Germany than in NL)

Architecture and interior
No, a house with solid walls does not have half-timbered walls inside. It does not make sense to have two walls next to each other. I also do not think that half-timbered walls could survive next to a regular wall because it would have a negative impact on the level of humidity of the half-timbered walls.
The half-timbered houses in villages that I know do not have any cellars at all. There are vaulted cellars somewhere else on the lot or even somewhere on agricultural land outside of the village. And even in towns, I only know two half-timbered houses with a cellar beneath the house and they both are vaulted cellars. I think the most common option for a half-timbered house is not to have any cellar at all. Building a cellar with a ceiling solid enough to build a house on top would have been too expensive and would have required better building materials than available. If people could have afforded stone or bricks, they would have built the whole house with these materials before even considering building a cellar with it. Why spend a lot of money/resources/energy on a cellar if your lot is big enough to build as many subsidiary buildings as you need?
And just for the record: I know quite a few people who live in modern houses that do not have a cellar either. There are still plenty of bombs in the ground in Germany and if you build a house with cellar and a bomb is found, the owner of the lot has to pay for the disablement/removal of the bomb. Therefore, many people had a look at old aerial photos to assess whether there could be bombs on their lot and if the risk was high, they decided not to have a cellar.

In my environment, there only was one family that had (modern) Landhausstil furniture in their house. The family had two children that were about my age. The family only built the house somewhen in the 90ies so that it was a relatively new house. The family were fans of Bavaria. Maybe that was the reason for their choice.

Infrastructure
Sorry, if my answer was confusing. In villages, there are sidewalks, but they are exclusively for pedestrians (and people with "toys" like skateboard, inline skates etc). Sidewalks may not be used if you ride a bike (except for children younger than eight years). Combined walk and bike paths exist outside of villages, although my village and several other villages did not have any back then - and the situation only has slightly improved since then.
There might be roads with only one sidewalk on one side of the road. Usually that is the case in narrow roads, but my parents' house also does not have a sidewalk although it is next to the main street. There also are several narrow roads completely without sidewalk. However, there is not much traffic on these roads so that it is not dangerous to walk on the road there. Usually, the "rechts vor links" right of way applies to these roads so that cars cannot drive very fast.

Infrastructure
Sounds reasonable to me although I would not use the Monty/Capp car crash as reasoning. The crash took place too recently which would imply that the teenagers changed/had to change their behaviours only very recently.

Monty Ranch
Houses with solid walls have some weight-bearing walls that have to remain in place and some other walls that can be removed, if needed. I guess you have to get some information on structural engineers to be able to tell which walls would be weight-bearing walls in RL. The outer walls definitely are, but as the house is so big, there would be more weight-bearing walls.

Carports still were relatively new because before, people either built garages or used subsidiary buildings or simply parked their cars without any protection. Carports consisting of four wooden columns with a gabled roof on top were the most common option because in winter the snow would slide down automatically so that you do not have to take the additional weight of the snow into consideration. The second most common option would be four wooden columns with a completely flat roof on top. This, however, could create problems during winter because people might have to remove snow manually when there is a lot of snow to avoid that the carport collapses.


Storytelling
Maybe Juliette's dislike for Mercutio is related to his relationship with Hermia (two-sided crush) and Miranda (one-sided crush by her). She might think that he is a romance sim and might hurt her sister and/or cousin. Or he could have said something inappropriate after her parents' deaths. This would hurt Juliette and explain the low short-term relationship. As she understands that he also has to cope with the loss of his parents, which explains why the long-term relationship still is relatively neutral.

Miranda: If I remember correctly, you once mentioned her preferred music style, but I could not find that sentence anymore. What is Miranda's preferred music style? I think that her music hobby should match that style.

Pranking: It was not that common and definitely uncommon towards teachers. There were no minor supplies lying around that would have been worth stealing.
At my school, there was no detention at all. A teacher would have to stay at school to supervise the detention and that would have been unpaid overtime. The most common reaction was a "Verweis" which is note in your school record that you did something seriously wrong and your parents would receive a letter about it and have to sign it so that the school knew that the parents were aware of the behaviour. In a few cases, the Verweis was issued by the principal themselves and/or the parents had to come to school and have a conversation with a teacher or the principal. After receiving more than one Verweis, the school could temporarily expell a pupil, but I do not know a single case when this happened.
I only remember two more serious incidents (one pupil injuring another pupil so that the latter needed medical treatment and one pupil creating a website to make fun of a teacher). Both times, the police came to our school, knocked on the door of a room where we just had a lesson and asked the pupil to come with them. As the pupils were incapable of crime due to their ages, the police just had a conversation with them, but it made an impression on them, nevertheless.
I only can share experiences from Gymnasium with you. I do not know how it was like at Realschule and Hauptschule although I assume that there was more trouble at Hauptschule and maybe also at Realschule. The trouble makers at my school also had rather bad grades so that sooner or later they had to leave Gymnasium and enroll in Realschule. That way our school had less problems and the schools that took them in had more problems.
My school also arranged meetings/conversations to conciliate and prevent bad situations. One of my class mates had serious psychological problems (maybe even was suicidal) due to problems with their parents. Teachers or the principal talked to the pupils parents and tried to solve the problems (with limited success) and even visited the parents at home. As the classmate was not really popular in our class, they also set up a meeting with us to explain the situation to us and ensure that we behaved in a way that was no additional burden to the classmate. (The family moved away a bit later so that I do not have any details on what happened afterwards, but the former classmate is alive, has a university degree and has moved far away from their parents.)

I forgot to mention in my last posting that on Thursday (if I remember correctly) last week, in "Achtung Kontrolle" they showed some houses from the Ahrtal region again - including a FWH. They showed a few ground floor rooms. They mostly were without furniture, but you could see floor, walls, ceiling, windows and doors which also are of interet to you.

Thanks for the tip! :D
Is it correct that they are also uploaded on YouTube? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn...ch?query=ahrtal

Also, did you have any additonal suggestions regarding bedroom arrangement for the Monty Ranch? In my latest screenshots from March, I've opened up some walls and rearranged the rooms. If the rooms might be too big to be realistic for a renovated Roman villa, I can consider placing arches within the room.

And I wonder, what do you notice the most about the Eifel dialect during those episodes? I couldn't find good Google/YouTube results diving into those dialects.

Yes, the YouTube channel contains videos from the TV show. It might be the better option for you because on TV they show one topic for a few minutes and then switch to the next topics for a while and return to the first topic again later. On YouTube, they apparently offer each topic as a separate episode. However, as your search results showed episodes from a few weeks ago, they have not yet uploaded everything that is interesting for you.

I guess you are rather free regarding the layout because it is not an original Roman villa. The oldest still inhabited house in Germany is slightly more than 1000 years old. Thus, the Monti ranch is only inspired by Roman villae.
As you still have so many unused rooms, you could have 6x6 rooms (minus the space that you need for the hallways) or 4x6 rooms with a 4x2 bathroom next to it. The 6x9 "corners" seem to be a bit too big imho because that space would be sufficient for a small, detached house. But for me, it is rather the look from outside that seems to big, not the room size.

I am sorry, but I am usually rather busy at the time when this show is on TV. Therefore, I do not pay a lot of attention to it and cannot remember anything especially worthy of mention. As I grew up in a completely different region of Germany, however, I would not be able to distinguish the Eifel dialect from other dialects in the greater region anyway.

Monty Ranch
I noticed during a quick google search that some villa rusticae are completely reconstructed, like a few in Germany (Borg in Saarland, Pompeiianum in Bavaria) so I see where you're coming from regarding more flexibility in rebuilding a Roman villa.

CAS family home
Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/T29BkAd
I am almost finished with decorating the dining room. I haven't found any 1-tile bars except one converted from Makin' Magic, so I cluttered up a tall dining buffet instead. I swapped the buffet underneath the wall cabinet for a 1-tiled thing because otherwise, the Sims cannot walk to the kitchen (despite using the walk-through OMSP). However, would this counter fit or rather the Hemnes shelf cabinet? Any more clutter ideas I could place on top of the tall cabinet, and on that cabinet next to the fireplace?
Any deco suggestions for the parents' room? Were vanity tables common?
Any other suggestions for the CAS girl (5th grader) room? For example, what kind of toys were common amongst pre-teen-aged girls that just started secondary school?

General deco
Were custom wall drawings in kids' rooms (of property homes) already common, or only just during the late 2000s?
For sloppy/lazy Sims, does it make sense they have lots of empty Pfand bottles around before returning to the supermarket? Or could Pfand bottles also be returned at the local Tante-Emma-Laden?
Do you know during which part of the 2000s chandelier light fixtures were a thing in bedrooms. I saw it often in Zimmerschau, but most pictures are from 2007 and newer.

Lifestyle/storytelling
How likely do you imagine the Summerdreams hosting a Carnival party during the Carnival weekend, although the village is too small for parades and it doesn't have a (dancing) bar?

For village kids/teens with limited public transport, how did the day-to-day life after school look like during the workweek? I assume it's something like lunch at home -> homework -> sports, hobby club, entertainment (watching TV shows/anime, video games, being online if they already had internet), or hanging out with peers from the same village -> dinner -> entertainment like reading, board games, TV/computer/console -> shower if not done in the AM or at sports -> bedtime (22 - 23h, though my Sims sleep in later lol).

In NL, lunch at school has always been the norm for sec-school pupils (unless many lessons were cancelled at noon). And since I'm from a city, and some are used to 30+ mins long bike rides, we had more possibilities after school like shopping, hanging out in the town center or park, going to the cinema, etc.

Monty Ranch
Not only some villa rusticae. The oldest still inhabited buildings in Germany are about 1000 years old which is several centuries younger than the Roman buildings in Germany. Many really old buildings are owned by the state because of their historic value. I am not sure whethere there is any original building from Roman times (regardless of ownership and original purpose) that still is in a sufficiently good condition that it could be considered habitable. Wooden parts usually did not endure and as soon as the roof was gone, the condition of the remaining building also impaired. Many ruins of Roman buildings were covered by earth over time and only were dug out again at a later point. In urban areas, ruins from Roman times either were integrated into city walls/buildings from later periods or demolished to make space for new buildings. Monument preservation is a rather modern thing.

CAS family home

Dining room
I think that the color of the counter matches. However, I think that it is strange to have just a 1-tile object on the floor with a 2-tile object hanging on the wall. If there is not sufficient space to have an object on the floor, there also should not be an object on the wall because your sims might hit it with their heads/shoulders when they try to walk past it. And the two pictures on the wall cabinet also look like they could fall down relatively easily.
Can you place a second counter if you remove the decoration next to the fireplace? Or you could move the fireplace into another room. For a historic fireplace, the kitchen would be the most common room. Alternatively you also could place it in a rather central place and build walls covered with tiles around it because that was the most common type of fireplace for heating. If the fireplace is modern, the living room is the most common location, I guess.
Can you place a third chair next to the table? As there is room for one more chair, I am quite sure that the sims would have bought the maximum number of chairs eeven if they have less household members. If there is not sufficient space to place it next to the table, you might place it e.g. in the corner so that it is available quickly when the family has guests.
The Hemnes shelf cabinet also fits with regards to the colors, but it would be unusual to have a piece of furniture there without doors or anything similar. You already have cabinets with glass doors above where you usually would place drinking glasses and other decorative stuff.

Girl's room
The wall heater looks out of place. Maybe you can move it a little to the left with the quartertile cheat? In RL, the heater either would be directly and centered beneath the window or it would not be close to the window at all. The furniture (not only in this room) looks much more matching now. Desk chairs usually are padded and much more comfortable than the wooden one. I think that the desk lacks a desk lamp. The ceiling lamp is behind the desk chair so that the girl's body would cause shadows on the desk. I also would place some pens and pencils on her desk.
I do not remember any special toys that were popular at that time. We spent a lot of time outside with inlineskates and we had some chalk to paint on the street. Chinese jump rope also was popular, but I do not think that a rubber band would make a good decoration item. Apart from that, Diddl stuff was quite popular at that time (mainly pages of note pads with different illustrations that you could collect and exchange with others). Some girls also had stuffed Diddl toys (mainly key fob size and attached to the zipper of your backpackg), but they were purely decorative and not used for playing.

Parents' bedroom
I would remove the vertical beam. The big beams go through the whole house and provide stability. I seriously doubt that it would be possible to have cut outs without any negative effects on stability. I am not an expert, but I always thought that beams in another direction are on another height. And in the houses that I have seen, either no beams were visible at all or all visible beams went into the same direction.
I have never seen a vanity table in RL. I have seen more kid's and teenager's rooms than parents' bedrooms, but I do not think that they were popular amongst adults either. Most people used either no make-up or only small amounts and the small amounts were stored in another piece of furniture in your bedroom - wherever there was some space available. For hairstyling, many people went into the bathroom because most people had really big mirrors and good lighting there.

General deco
I only saw wall drawings in shows on TV that were about house renovation/decoration, but I never saw one in RL.
I do not remember any chandelier light fixtures in bedrooms.

Pfand bottles
Are you really sure that you want to know more about this topic?
Until 2003, only reusable bottles (the type that is usually sold in crates) had Pfand.
In 2003, there was a new law that Pfand also had to be paid for cans and single-use bottles. However, the law was rather complicated and I cannot remember ever paying Pfand for single-use bottles after that date (I did not buy cans, but I think that they charged Pfand for them). In theory, the Pfand varied between 8 and 15 cent depending on the type of can/bottle and you only could return them in the store where you bought them and you had to show the purchase receipt and an emloyee of the store had to take care of the process.
In 2006, there was another new law. Now the Pfand for each type of can and bottle was the same (25 cent) and it became easier to return them to the store. Stores have to take back all types of cans/bottles that they also sell regardless of where you bought it. There is an exception for very small stores so that they only have to take back the brands that they sell and not similar cans/bottles, but only very few stores make use of this exception. At the beginning, returning bottles still required employees, but sooner or later all supermarkets got machines that the customers can use without supervision. There must have been some grace period after signing the law because I remember at least two situations in the end of 2006 when shops did not yet charge Pfand.
This just applies to refreshing drinks so that bottles with juice or wine were exempted until a few months ago.
Crates with reusable bottles only were sold in beverage shops, not in supermarkets or Tante-Emma-Läden (nowadays a few really big supermarkets also offer crates, but average sized supermarkets - especially the discount supermarkets - usually do not). The shops are used to selling crates, not individual bottles.
Cans and single-use bottles also are sold in supermarkets and Tante-Emma-Läden. The number of cans dropped significantly after the 2003 law and many shops tried to stop selling them at all. Recently, there is a bit of a can revival, but the numbers still are much lower than they used to be. The number of single-use bottles sold was not really affected by the 2003 and 2006 laws.
For your CAS family, you now have to decide what kind of drinks they would buy. I would assume that people with interest in health rather buy crates with glass bottle. People with an interest in food might also rather buy crates (regardless of whether the bottles are made of glass or plastic) because in a beverages shop you have a much bigger selection than in (regular) supermarkets. Discount supermarkets for many years only had softdrinks from no-name brands (thus no Coca Cola, Pepsi and the like).
Usually, the parents buy the drinks for the whole family (except for the alcohol that the teen drinks). Therefore, it also usually would be them who return the bottles. Therefore, I do not think that the teen would return any bottles at all (except if he is very broke and needs money very desperately). If the CAS family regularly buys crates at a beverage shop, I imagine that they tell the CAS teen the day before that he has to pick up all the empty bottles in his room so that they can return full crates to the shop. If they buy single-use bottles, they might care less how long the bottles are in his room.

Lifestyle/storytelling
Carnival: You should not call it Carnival weekend because it is not limited to a weekend. The most imporant day should be Rosenmontag.
I can imagine them hosting a party for that ocasion. In my village, there was a Carnival party for the pre-school children in the gym that was attended by many people. In several states, there is a week of school holidays around that period so that parents would be less likely to object their teenage kids to attend the party.
The day-to-day life sounds quite reasonable. Two comments: Stricter parents (with only one TV for the whole family) usually would not allow that the TV is turned on before dinner while less strict parents might not even care if their child watches TV at night in the child's room. Bedtime sounds too late to me. Most pupils stood up around 6 in the morning because of the bus schedule etc. This means that 22 h is the latest relatively reasonable time for going to bed. As children need more sleep (in RL at least), they usually had to go to bed earlier. I do not remember the times when we had to go to bed as children, but I remember that a primary school teacher once suggested that first grade children should go to bed around 20h and that this time can gradually be moved with each school year (e.g. 20:15 in second grade, 20:30 in third grade etc). Of course, this is the version for rather strict parents while less strict parents might not care. And older teenagers usually will stop listening to their parents at some point. As soon as the first friends of mine had a driving license, we started going out much more often than before. There was a bar in a town nearby that had a happy hour for the whole evening on Wednesdays and some clubs in two "nearby" university cities (about 1 hour drive one way) had music according to our taste on Thursdays. One of the two clubs in our administrative district also had music according to our taste biweekly on Friday. There were some days when I went to bed at 5 a.m. to get at least one hour of sleep before going to school again. On Saturday and Sunday, I would sleep until lunchtime to make up for the lack of sleep on the days before. My parents hated it, but did not really have reasons to stop me because I attended school and my grades did not drop. After going out, a shower was definitely necessary in the morning and could not wait until evening. Smoking was allowed in bars and clubs and you would smell really disgusting even if you did not smoke yourself.
School: We usually had school from 8 to 13 h with two short breaks (15 m) breaks inbetween. Most pupils brought along some food from home that they could eat if they were hungry. Alternatively, there was a kiosk that sold baked goods. Pupils preferred the food from the kiosk, but most of them only got money from their parents ocasionally so that they could not buy food from there too often. Pupils usually crowded around the kiosk so that it could take most of the break to buy food so that hardly any time was left for eating it. Lessons in the afternoon were not that common. 5-7th grade did not have lessons in the afternoon at all, 8-10th grade once per week and during the last years, it would depend on the subjects that you chose, but I do not think that any pupil at my school had lessons in the afternoon on more than two days per week. Lessons in the afternoon took place from 14 to 17 without a break inbetween. Between 13 and 14, there was a one hour break, but the kiosk was not opened anymore. As the school was located in a residential area (The school was built in a remote area of the town somewhen during the 70ies. They needed a lot of space and the school had to be located somewhere without too much traffic so that the buses are not delayed. The previous school builduing was located in the town center, but it was from a time when only children from the town citizens attended the school and not the children from the farmers in the villages.), there only was a butcher shop (with delicious Schnitzel sandwiches, but few other options) within walking distance.
In theory, if you had lessons until 13 h, you could go to the town center and spend some time there, but as it took almost one hour to walk there and the same time to go back again, not much time would be left for activities if you wanted to be back at the school to catch the bus at 17 h (and it had to be on a day when at least one class of the school had lessons until 17 h because otherwise there would be no bus anymore). And the options for activities were more limited: The town did not have a cinema. Stores in the town center were tiny and usually did not contain interesting stuff (opticians, acousticians, pharmacies, banks, insurance companies etc). More interesting shops usually were in more remote parts of the town that you could not reach by walking within a reasonable amount of time. Clothing stores usually had clothing for older people (generations of your parents and grandparents) and there was no café, only bakeries also selling coffee, but they are not a place where you can stay for a bit longer.

Deco updates of the OC/CAS family house
https://imgur.com/a/z2ZnU3A
After decorating, I was more busy making screenshots for drawing the backgrounds in my comic, so I haven't decorated the Monty Ranch further, or creating new Sims (I'm working on Windenburg recreations). Unfortunately, the CAS family household is very prone to pink-flashing/crashing right now because of too much clutter (and perhaps not having found the right texture memory setting for my laptop), so I spend a lot of time on re-loading the game these days :/

Interior
For lighting next to the bed, what kind of (basic) table lamp fixtures are the most common? And if a wall-mounted lamp was used instead, how did they usually look like approximately?

Questions for storytelling ideas
Did secondary schoolyards include playground equipment for the younger kids? (5th - 7th graders)
Since the school breaks were short and often spent on waiting in line for food, how easily did someone become friends with a pupil from the same grade but different class, if they don't know each other already through e.g. same town, Verein, or elementary school?

Can you recall what (playful) behavior was "uncool" from a certain age (E.g. using/fooling around with playground equipment), and what was considered "cool" amongst most peers (for boys: e.g. smoking, littering, getting drunk, kissing, first WooHoo experiences at a young age)? I keep in mind that the gender matters too. My SO and I wonder if the current teens remain childlike/playful for a longer time than most of the youth in our generation (SO recalls that they witnessed mainly the Gym kids doing childlike things when older than 13 y/o)

When younger than 16 years, about how often did any outgoing friend host a house party and until what time did such parties usually last if the neighbors are at home? (Due to Ruhezeit rules). I assume the common home party areas are the backyard/garden shed (if the weather is warm enough), living room (if parents and siblings aren't around), hobby/game room, or cellar (if suitable).

Was it considered to be "cool" to chat in Invisible mode on ICQ? I read it somewhere in a German throwback article, but I've never used ICQ so I don't know how accurate those experiences were.

Redecorated rooms of Romeo and Mercutio: https://imgur.com/a/g27sqDd
Let me know if you have any suggestions regarding layout/deco

And I made an attempt to assemble a 70s Schrankwand


Last weeks I was more busy creating new Sims than being in Buy/Build Mode, but I hope I can make time soon for new builds and designing the Downtown hood (Windenburg recreation) with HoodPlanner.