xinäred

Imagine this – it’s Midnight on the first night you are living in your new apartment. You’ve spent all day moving, you’re exhausted. You just got done putting together a brand new bed and dressing brand new mattresses in newly-washed bed sheets. The cold winter air is blowing outside as you lay down to enjoy the warmth and comfort of your new bed. You close your eyes and smile, because you don’t have a devil child running around in the apartment above. Pure silence.

You are about to slip into long-awaited and needed sleep, especially because you have to take the German Theory Driving Test at 8am the next morning, and notice suddenly, that your ass is cold. You reach over to the nearest heater and notice that although it is on level 3, the thing is barely warm.

You address this issue to your partner, and they respond with the following:

“The heaters automatically get shut off for the whole building from Midnight to 6am, even during winter, didn’t you know?”

Seriously people, it took 10 minutes and Guido to get annoyed for me to realize that he was not joking.

The following bitching ensued, throughout the next week:

“WHAT THE HELL? NO I DIDN’T KNOW THIS!! IF I WOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS!! WHO SAID THIS, WHERE THE HELL WAS I? IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO WARM MY ASS AT NIGHT? HOW CAN YOU TAKE MY RIGHT AWAY TO WARM MY ASS? IF I WANT THE THING OFF I WILL TURN THE SHIT OFF MYSELF!! CAN SHE CHANGE THIS? WHAT THE HELL, NO I DON’T WANT TO BUY AN ADDITIONAL ELECTRIC HEATER WHEN OURS WORK PERFECTLY FINE!! THIS IS THE LAMEST SHIT I HAVE EVER HEARD!! WHAT IF LIKE, PEOPLE HAVE BABIES AND WHAT, THE BABY HAS TO SLEEP IN THE COLD DURING THE DEEPEST COLDEST WINTER NIGHTS!!? THEN THE PEOPLE WONDER WHEN THEIR KIDS ARE SICK!!!! WHEN I HAVE VISITORS COMING FROM AMERICA, THEY WILL FREEZE THEIR FACES OFF!! WHEN I WAKE UP AT 3AM TO PEE, YOU ARE TELLING ME I HAVE TO PUT A JACKET ON AND THEN SIT ON A COLD ASS TOILET SEAT!!!!!?????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????????”

Responses from Guido and other Germans were:
“You can complain all you want to the landlady, she will not change this, it is shut off for the whole house/building, and that is totally normal in Germany. We are brought up this way. It is healthier to sleep in the cold. Get more blankets or a portable electric heater then if you want, but when you sleep in heat, you can get dust particles up your nose and blah blah”…more shit I didn’t want to hear.

One thing though, besides the “healthier to sleep in the cold” thing and saving of energy, no one could give me any REAL REASON for this insanity! The renters pay for the heat themselves, so, I don’t get it. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am all about saving energy, and do so in several areas of my life, but that also includes the energy I choose to save for myself by sleeping warmly throughout the night.

There are 2 other things to which I need to adjust my life:
1) the water heater thing under the kitchen sink
2) the water heater thing hanging in the bathroom

Water comes out freezing at all times, unless these things are on. They are activated when you turn the dial to the HOT side. Water will then pass through these things and get heated very quickly, therefore, after like 5 minutes, water will come out of the faucets scalding hot and will burn your freckles off. When you move the dial ever so slightly to the COLD side, the freakin’ things turn off and therefore, water returns to freezing. It takes a magician to figure out how to balance this shit, and thank God I am engaged to one.

All of the above makes me think, “If I wanted to live in hardcore cold conditions, I would have moved to Russia or a Nordic country. FML! Now Germans think I am a spoiled American, but fine then, guess fucking so! I knew you Germans were brutal, and now I am beginning to see why!”

Oh to get back to the sleeping thing….on top of having a frozen nose throughout the night, at 6am, I heard a devil kid running around screaming and banging into things above my head.

“Devil child? But I thought that was the old apartment.”

You are right, however it so happens that between the time we signed the lease (Dec) and the time we moved in (Mar), the man above us did not move out, but instead had his girlfriend move in with her son. And apparently, all children are devil kids in Germany, particularly the males.

Jesus H in the sacred name of SLEEP can you people calm your kids down!?!? Even just 1 notch will be appreciated!

Good thing that this new apartment has many more positive attributes than the old one. In fact, I would rather sleep in a cave and potentially get eaten by bears than sleep in that Nightmare on Jägerhof Street apartment for one more night. And good thing that the new apartment is almost finished being renovated and broken in, just waiting for our new bad-ass kitchen and new couch to arrive. Oh and the internet and phone to be switched over.

Finally, to end this 2 page bitch rant, it may not surprise you that I did not pass my German driving test that next morning, while all of the 17-18 years olds sitting around me in the class did. Yea…I felt pretty crunchy.

The next entry will be about the questions I was asked, and the general process of getting a German driver license. This is one area where Germany continually beats America with a 2×4 across the face.

We bought a new kitchen at Schaffrath today – first thing we financed together (“awww”).

Our new kitchen is the most bad-assed kitchen ever! Sign up now for a personal VIP tour which includes a free welcome beer*!
*as long as supplies last – which…well…isn’t that long

YES! Glad you noticed! We had to BUY A KITCHEN for our RENTAL APARTMENT. 

When you move in the Deutsch, you are lucky if a kitchen is included in your next apartment. You are even luckier if you have flooring and wallpaper, instead of just everything being ugly gray. You normally have a totally ripped out apartment, for you to begin anew (pretty brutal, right?). Here, kitchens are made to be easily uninstalled later so that you can take it with you to your next place. 

Pros – means you usually get to customize your apartment how you like (paint, flooring, kitchen, even change bathroom sinks). Also means you don’t have to use someone else’s gross appliances, like an oven that has pig fat chunks left on the rack. <—true story. Eden Street, Framingham, MA, 2004

Cons – you can only really take some of what you customize with you to your next place - like a kitchen, but not laid tile – and if you are starting from buck nakedness, moving will end up costing you big $$€€ and work. That, + having to give your current landlord the standard 3 months notice (which usually means you end up paying double rent for at least 1 month) + having to pay 3 months rent as security at your new place = Germans make themselves like their current apartments.

Just realized – this will be my 4th address in Germany in less than 2 years. Didn’t know I was rich?

Tomorrow is 13-Feb (our “day”), and Guido is going back to work (yes, still with a broken rib – I know, I know! I already told him!). While he is at work, I will pack, buy deoderant, call Carol, pack, take Roxy to play in the woods, and pack some more.

That means I will be thinking the following to myself a lot:
“How in the hell did I gather this much useless shit in less than 2 years!?”
“Eff it, trash.”
“Did I actually buy and WEAR this!?”
“Aww, Fenway. *Sniff*”