Homemaker

The things I have to do seem simple: keep us fed; keep the house reasonably tidy; care for the dog and cat. Taking care of a house and home is a huge job in the US because of all the many peripheral responsibilities that established families have to handle: kid activities, mail, bills, volunteering in classrooms, church projects, and the myriad of other responsibilities that we take on. But here in our new home, I haven't had a chance to take on any extra responsibilities. I have nearly no appointments, social engagements, volunteer obligations, etc. The kids don't even have any activities yet for me to take them to! So what the heck do I do all day long??

Well, yesterday I spent pretty much the ENTIRE DAY grocery shopping. Without a list of "Easy things to cook for your first few weeks in Germany", I decided to dive right in and try to cook meals from TheScramble.com, which is the menu service I use in the US. (Plug: I love it and have been a subscriber for several years. If anyone likes to cook but wants to simplify menu planning, I highly recommend it. Mention my email and I get free months. :) ) Two meals on this week's menu are Pecan-crusted Trout with Orange Rosemary Sauce and Spanish Chorizo Quesadillas. I made my grocery list, translated it to German and headed out optimistically after escorting the kids to school.

I knew I was going to be buying a lot of groceries because our pantry was bare, so I studied the map to try to find the nicest grocery store with the shortest walk. Our apartment is pretty close to the S-bahn, so even if I had to take the train several stops away it would be easier to hop back on the train and walk home from the train station than to just walk from our apartment to a grocery store. Sadly, I didn't find anything that was a reasonable commute. So I walked to the store, maybe 1/2 mile? 3/4? It wasn't open yet (stores aren't open at all hours here for your convenience. You actually have to plan ahead! Most grocery stores open at 9 a.m., although some open a bit earlier.) So I decided to start my shopping trip in one of the discount chains of grocery stores. I knew they wouldn't have everything I needed but I figured I could pick up some staples there. A half hour later, I popped in next door at the drug store to get the German version of Clorox wipes and some trash bags. I was a bit apprehensive because my backpack was already getting heavy.

Next stop was the "nicer" grocery store. I was in there FOREVER. It was a large store and I still haven't figured out the German layout of products. Where are the spices? (I had to leave my super well-stocked spice cabinet in Montana - boo hoo!!) Where are the granola bars? Where would I find tortillas? How about juice boxes? Whew, and buying fish was a time-consuming endeavor! I had come prepared with the German translation for tilapia, flounder and trout and was prepared to buy any of those fish. But of course they didn't have those. So I went back and forth from the fish counter to my little hiding spot an aisle away where I could look up each fish. If I stood at the counter for the whole process I was afraid they would come over and talk to me in German! Finally I settled on cod (Kabeljau). I used hand motions and grunts to indicate whether to keep putting pieces of fish on my paper or stop. Ridiculous, huh?

I told the fish lady that was all I needed, but shortly I realized that the Spanish chorizo was also probably behind the meat counter. "Haben zie....xxxxx" (Do you have...?) is a useful way to prevent having to search all over the place for something, although I have to be prepared for people to answer this question in German. Ja or Nein I can handle, but anything more complicated than that will produce a blank stare. In this case, "Haben zie chorizo?" led me directly to the chorizo behind the counter, but when she asked me how much, I had no German to answer and had no idea how many grams of chorizo I wanted. (mental note: next time put the metric conversions on my shopping list). Luckily the clerk understood my English response: "A big stack." Again she asked me if that was all, and I said yes.

Shortly I realized that I also needed cheese that was behind the meat counter. Sigh. This is no time to worry about looking dumb, so I went back again to the same lady and said "Haben zie manchego?" I didn't understand her German response but I took it to mean that she had something similar, so I took what she handed me.

Next I went hunting for pecans. Nuts seem to be in many different places in the store - some are with the produce, some with the baking stuff, some in a different and seemingly random location. I guess it's the same in the US. I found hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts, cashews and various candied nuts but no pecans. Eventually I found some whole pecans near the produce and there was a nice display of nutcrackers beside them. I thought about buying the nuts and a nutcracker but I decided I didn't want to spend 7 euros and then spend my time cracking nuts, and I thought surely I would find pecans somewhere. So I passed it up and thought I would try a different store afterwards since I knew there was a bio market in the same shopping complex.

This store didn't carry green beans or cilantro, which were also on my list. It's so weird to go to a large grocery store and have them simply not have things in stock. (Incidentally I tried to go shopping Saturday evening to buy a few staples since stores are closed on Sundays. I tried the local discount store and found many of the shelves completely bare. Seriously. There was NO milk in the store. There was virtually NO produce in the store. Bread was gone.) I also couldn't find the smoked paprika I was looking for. I knew that one would be iffy.

After checking out my bags were so full and heavy! Things like a bunch of bananas, a bag of clementines and a bag of pears are really bulky. I had brought my backpack plus 2 large plastic bags (one for each hand) and I was completely weighed down. I headed towards the bio market but ran into a Mediterranean store on the way so I stopped in there. They had cilantro and feta cheese, so I bought those but that was the limit of what I could carry. So I headed for home. I had to stop a whole bunch of times to put the bags down and rest!

Isn't this the cutest little head of romaine
lettuce you've ever seen?

I was home long enough to eat lunch and put the groceries away, and then I headed out again. I took the train to the bank to drop off the paper that will authorize me to get a debit card, and then walked to the closest post office. I successfully bought some envelopes there and mailed a letter that Haley wrote at least a week ago to a friend. Then I got on the U-bahn to head over to get the kids from school. I had a little extra time so when I spotted a grocery store in a different part of town I hopped off to see if I could find my last few items. I was excited to successfully find a small package of green beans, but still no luck on the pecans. (mental note: bring pecans from US) This store did have the whole pecans but no nutcrackers! So I bought walnuts.

I worked on my blog for an hour after the kids got home from school, and then it was time to cook the meal I had worked so hard to purchase. Man, I can't wait to have my own stuff in my kitchen. The knives here are understandably not very nice and the kitchen is completely bare bones. I couldn't even find a peeler to peel the sweet potatoes so I had to scrape the skin off with a knife, which took forever. I swear it took me almost 2 hours to prepare this meal that was supposed to take about 40 minutes just because the kitchen is so small I was knocking things around and I didn't have the tools or the pans that would make the job easy. I panicked initially because I didn't think there was a baking sheet, but then I remembered that there had been a new baking sheet in the oven when we first got here. I had taken it out because it was still wrapped in plastic. So I had to wash that before using it. Etc. Etc. But I'm happy to report that at the end of it all we had a nice dinner of "Walnut-Crusted Cod with Orange Rosemary Sauce". :)

After dinner I spent the evening washing fishy dishes in our tiny sink.

Today I have no errands to run so it is a purely domestic day. I am losing the battle of the laundry. The tiny washing machine only fits about 7 or 8 items at a time and takes 2 1/2-3 hours to run. Clean laundry takes 1-2 days to dry. With 4 of us wearing about 4 items each day, you can do the math and see that I will never catch up. Dan and I are trying to wear things multiple times, but the kids aren't really doing that. I'm not sure how the natives do it here. One thing I learned from my relocation specialist is that you use different detergent for colors versus whites. Apparently the white detergent has a bit of bleach or something in it. Which explains why after I accidentally put a pair of navy socks in with the white laundry everything came out blue. Thankfully it wasn't anything too precious. I also have no idea how much laundry detergent to use. The cartons don't come with a scooper! I asked 2 different people at the kids' school, thinking I would solve the problem. But Haley's teacher uses liquid detergent while I have powder. And the person she recruited to help answer my question uses some special kind and didn't know about standard detergent. For now I'm using a handful, and who knows if the clothes are clean or not but at least we can pretend.

I put a load of laundry in and got set to vacuum but the hose is broken. We tried to tape it together with duct tape last week and have used it twice in that condition, but it's really not working. I spent about 20 minutes trying to maneuver it without pulling the hose off but the suction wasn't working well and I got fed up. I took out the vacuum bag and figured out how to replace it, but now the suction is worse and it's making an ear piercing sound. So it seems I have done something wrong but I can't figure out what. Ugh! Nothing is easy. I had to email the landlord and ask her to replace it. We can't be living here with 2 animals and a non-operative vacuum cleaner!

I picked up the bathroom rug to shake it out but then realized that I have a problem. We are on the 4th floor of our building and there is a lot below us. Other people's balconies. People walking on the street. An Italian cafe next door with outdoor seating. If I shake the rug out from this height the hair and dirt is likely to travel a bit as it floats down. Who knows if I will end up dumping it on the people at the cafe or the balcony of someone below me?? I stood outside for several moments but there was continually someone or another walking directly below me. Finally there was a break in pedestrian traffic and I shook the rug just enough to make some of the tracked out cat litter fall to the sidewalk below. Hmmmm....Maybe I just need to vacuum the rugs once I get the new vacuum cleaner!

The next task was to take out the garbage. Seems easy enough but here in Germany the trash is complicated business. I won't rewrite what has been written by others so if you're interested you can follow this link: http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/recycling.html. Suffice it to say for now that in our tiny kitchen we are trying to separate out bio trash (compost), recyclables (almost all packaging here is recyclable: plastic, foil, paper, etc.), glass and regular trash. Usually the kids and I have trekked down the 4 flights of stairs, each of us carrying a type of trash, and made our way next door into the locked courtyard where the bins for our building are. But today I gathered it all up and took it down myself since I needed to get the stinky fish packaging and used cat litter OUT!

Next I will eat lunch and then take Diablo for a long walk. Then it will be time to get the kids from school. And this is the exciting world of homemaking in Berlin! Feel free to use this post as ammunition for sleep tonight.

Color coded trash bins: blue for paper, green for glass,
yellow for recyclables, black for trash. And some
extra colors thrown in to confuse people.

Compost

Apparently in this bin you can recycle ducks, watering cans
pots

This is for regular trash

Bonus photo: Two trees frame the steeple of a former
church and the big moon on my walk home from
school this morning.