Busy life on pause

It is noon and I am on a train to Copenhagen. For the next 3 days I will get a much-needed break from constant rushing and stress and never-ending to-do lists. I have been greatly anticipating this 7 hour train ride as a time to write, sleep, read and have time to talk to Dan about more than just which delivery is coming in which time window.

I don’t even know where to begin to try to share all that has been happening the last few weeks when I haven’t had time to write. I’ll start by just talking about our current status, and hopefully over the next weeks I’ll have time to write a bit about Christmas markets, the kids’ school, our trip to Dresden, and many other things.

First I just want to say how much I miss everyone back home in Missoula, Birmingham, Texas and all the places that hold people I love. My heart is longing to reach out to each one of our dear friends and family and have long conversations and answer questions and find out what has been going on in everyone’s lives. Some of you have written me emails that I haven’t answered and it isn’t because I don’t think of you constantly. I literally have NO TIME that isn’t filled with some sort of task that needs doing urgently, and while I’m doing that task I’m planning what happens next.  We are all exhausted from the pace of our new life and hoping for some routine and normalcy sometime early in the new year.

So…here’s the latest. Thursday Dec. 11 I met with our new landlord and got the keys to our new house.  At that time the house was absolutely freezing, to the point where we were shivering and it took me hours to warm up when we were finally able to leave. The landlord called the heating people but they weren’t able to come until this past Tuesday. So we stayed in our apartment until Tuesday. Unfortunately, even though the heating guy came and got the system to turn on, the heater has been unable to adequately heat the house. That first night we froze so we ended up pushing all our new mattresses together in a row and we snuggled close for warmth. It reminded me of spring camping in Montana where you zip your sleeping bag all the way up around your head and face with only your mouth and nose exposed. Yesterday I turned the thermostat up to a ridiculous 29 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) and it was able to heat the house to 15 (59 F). (Last night my top priority was to find an indoor thermometer so I could measure the temperature and report it to my landlord, who wasn’t comprehending exactly how frigid the house was. I don’t know how cold the house was that first night but Dan’s guess was 5 degrees C/ 41 F. ) The landlord agreed today to send the heating people back out here on Monday after we return from our trip. Unfortunately, that is the one day I had free to go accomplish some things in town and now I have to be at the house right in the middle of the day to meet this guy. My fear is that this heating unit isn’t capable of heating this cold old house. If the landlord won’t do what is needed to fix it, will we have to move again??? In truth, we are discovering so many things about this house that we don’t like. Of course it’s natural that not everything about a new place to live is going to be perfect, but in every room there is a list of things that need to be done in order to make that room livable. In the bathroom there are no shades on the huge wall of windows so the neighborhood is treated to a peep show any time one of us goes in. There’s no shelf or cabinet for our toiletries. There’s no mirror. There’s a bare light bulb hanging above the sink. The four of us have to share a bathroom. The kitchen has not much more counter space than our apartment (we knew this and it was a drawback to the house) so I’ve got to find some piece of furniture to act as additional counter space. But on top of that, I thought it had lots of nice pantry and cabinet space but upon actually trying to put our things away in the space I realized that most of it is unusable. The above-counter cabinets are up so high that I can barely reach the bottom row and can’t reach the top row without a step stool. Of course that means the kids can’t reach the dishes, so I need to try to find some sort of cabinet that they can reach. The pantry is large but only has 3 shelves so there is tons of wasted vertical space and not enough space for our food. I will need to measure the space and have extra shelves made. The refrigerator cabinet is bigger than the one in our apartment but apparently to save money the landlord chose to put a smaller refrigerator inside the big cabinet, so there is a useless compartment that is unrefrigerated above the refrigerator, and you can only access it by opening the refrigerator door. Every room needs a light fixture. There’s no good place to put the litter box (this is probably true of most homes). We put it down in the cellar and there is actually a cat door installed in the cellar door, but the cellar stairs are so steep that Rhythm can’t reach the cat door from the stairs. So we are leaving the cellar door propped open, which of course lets more cold air into the house. We’re thinking we will need to replace that door with a custom door with a “mouse hole” cut out of the bottom so Rhythm can reach the stair. Our washer and dryer were delivered Tuesday but the delivery people were unable or unwilling to do what they needed to do to hook the washer up, because apparently the laundry room was missing some sort of water connection. After some unpleasant back and forth I had to call the landlord to speak to them in German on the phone. She said they were very rude and they left without finishing the job. More on rude German service in another post. Anyway, the point is that the laundry room is still a “to do” since we now need to get a plumber to finish hooking up the washer, as our dirty laundry mounds up in the empty room where we are currently staging our suitcases of belongings. We had thought the yard was fenced all the way around but it turns out the back of the yard has only a fence of bushes, no actual fence. So we’ll have to put a fence in if we want to leave Diablo back there, or build a dog run. The yard has large areas with no grass, which are big muddy puddles that we and Diablo track into the house when we go out. There is no overhang over the front door so when you set down bags to open the front door and it is raining, as it has been doing a lot lately, you stand in the rain and fumble with your keys and set your bags down on the wet ground.

Shall I go on? Ugh. Moving to a new place always requires a certain amount of customization, but everything is so hard to accomplish here due to the language barrier and the difficulty of understanding exactly which store to go to to get what I need, and which products are even available in this country, and which brands are reliable and not a pile of junk, and the time it requires to travel someplace on public transit. I am feeling really overwhelmed by the prospect of setting up a house from scratch in a foreign country. I thought IKEA was going to be my savior, but I have been very frustrated by that store. “Do it yourself” can be challenging in your own language, but I’m finding it much much harder to navigate that store in German than I thought it would be. I went late Monday night to try to get our closets ordered and couldn’t find anyone who spoke English or who was willing to sit down with me and help plan out the closet. Oh how I miss The Container Store. Trying to do it myself was futile and bound to be fraught with errors so I abandoned the task and instead raced through with my cart as closing time was nearing and tried to choose some towels, bath mats, trash cans, a lamp, a knife, and a few other necessities so we could survive in the new house until our things get here. I was the last one out of the store, which I felt bad about. I’m sure there’s someone checking out 30 minutes late every single night as they try to shoo people out of the store. I have worked retail before and I know there’s lots of work still to do after the customers leave the store, so I hate to make everyone stay late. I also haven’t been terribly impressed by the quality of the merchandise. Of course some things are higher quality than others, but our apartment was furnished with IKEA stuff and much of it was low quality. The table was rickety, the bed broke, the paper lamps were easily torn. Our new kitchen is an IKEA kitchen and it’s fine, but nothing great. I found a box from IKEA in a drawer and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to be. The instructions are just a picture, no words, and I couldn’t figure out how to put it together or what to do with it. There’s a fine line between simplicity and not enough information to do the job.

Aside from the challenges of setting up a house, I’m having some unexpected feelings of sadness and loss as we move from our apartment in town to the suburbs of Berlin. I don’t love the crowds, but there’s something about using my own two feet to walk around and my own two arms and my back to carry things that makes me feel alive.  Walking miles each day has been my only form of exercise. Our apartment was a 6 minute walk from the U-bahn and even closer to the S-bahn, so fast trains were easily accessible. I could walk to 7 different grocery stores in 10 minutes or less. There was a bakery 2 doors down from our apartment. A shopping mall was a 5 minute walk away. All this accessibility meant that I could buy anything I needed with my own two feet, not dependent on traffic or any bus schedule. If we wanted to go out to eat we could strike out in any direction and find dozens of restaurants on the multitude of streets in our neighborhood. All kinds of wonderful stores and shopping were a short bus ride away on the Ku’damm, which I never had the time to explore. I had become really familiar with 10 or so different routes to walk Diablo on, all of which took me past stores and cafes and coffee shops and vibrant life. When I went out to walk him at all hours of the day or night I was never alone. There was a nice camaraderie in sharing the sidewalks with others, many of whom were fellow dog-walkers.

And now we have moved to the suburbs. When I walked Diablo Monday night I was alone in the park. We can walk to a bakery and a pharmacy, but those are the only businesses nearby. We had decided that we would just eat our meals out until our shipment arrives next Tuesday, since we don’t have pots and pans and stuff to cook with. But I realized last night that is easier said than done. We dropped off Diablo with our relocation specialist, who offered to dogsit while we’re in Copenhagen. I asked her where we can pick up food on the way home and learned that that doesn’t really exist here. There are sit-down restaurants, but we didn’t have time for that. In Charlottenburg there is a Döner store on every corner, and currywürst stands, and brats from the Christmas market at the nearby mall. But in Zehlendorf it’s not the same setup. We had the car, so it would have been difficult and stressful to park in the center of town, and the pick-up choices were limited to nil. Our friend suggested a nice Italian/pizza place that does takeout and she suggested we call ahead. Sounds great except that phone calls are impossible with my limited German. She offered to call for me, so we were able to solve the problem of eating at least for one night. But the lack of available quick food is definitely a downside to our new location.

An even bigger problem is that the only way in and out of our neighborhood is bus service, and the buses only run every 10-20 minutes depending on the bus and the time of day. All the shopping is in a central part of the Zehlendorf neighborhood, which means everyone has to go to the same area for anything commercial that they want to do, so that area of town is crowded and congested, and you have to drive through it on your way to any other part of Berlin.  Since you have to take a bus through this area to get to the trains that take you to other parts of Berlin, any trip to any other area of town, including our old neighborhood, takes 45 minutes or more. That includes Dan’s commute to work, which is now over an hour. We got our car last week (a Volkswagen Touran). I hate driving in Berlin and want to avoid it if at all possible, but it’s necessary for helping to cut down transit times and also for carrying all the stuff we are buying to set up our house. Not only is it stressful to drive, trying to park is a nightmare. The two or three times I have taken the car to our old apartment to help move our things to our new house, we have circled and circled in either heavy traffic or narrow streets for 30-40 minutes trying to find a place to park the car. I loved not having the burden of a vehicle and enjoyed the limits imposed by having to be able to carry things home myself. Now we are going back to the way it’s done in most parts of the US, where you need a car to get anywhere and you can buy as much stuff as you want because you just transport it home in your car. I wonder if there isn’t a lesson in here somewhere about how we want to live our lives.

One of the houses we discarded at the end of our housing search was much closer to the center of Berlin. It was much less expensive than our current house, it had a master bathroom and a larger kitchen than what we have. It had nice automatic window shades. We rejected it because a) it was a townhouse, so we would share walls with others, and we were worried about the kids’ noise b) it had a very small and not private yard, not big enough for a trampoline, which the kids really wanted c) It had thin, ugly carpet, not the nice hardwood that is in our house d) the neighborhood wasn’t very appealing e) there was no dedicated parking place and parking looked to be scarce. We are now having major regrets and wishing we had chosen this house. In retrospect, the parking was the only true problem (and it is a big problem, but we probably would have traded all of our current problems for that one.) We are worried that we made the wrong choice and that it will affect our whole experience here. Sigh, there is no rest from the mental second-guessing.

Finally, I’ll say a word about Christmas. It sure doesn’t feel like Christmas. The area of town around our apartment was beautifully decorated with grand light sculptures. Every tree was decked out from top to bottom and the streets literally glow at night. But in the suburbs there are very few decorations. Moreover, there’s no snow. And no carols. People are shopping but it doesn’t feel like Christmas is coming. People don’t decorate the outside of their houses or apartments here; some people will hang a paper star in their window or have candles, but I miss Christmas lights and Pink Grizzly wreaths on everyone’s door, and Nicole Court’s candy canes. We are trying to honor Advent, but we mostly think about it on Sundays and have had no time for Advent practices or quiet reflection aside from that. We have visited some of Berlin’s Christmas markets but not to relax and soak up the atmosphere and enjoy some Gluhwein; mostly we have been “on a mission”. We don’t have a tree. I have NEVER not had a Christmas tree. When we get back from Copenhagen priority 1 is to get a small tree for our new house and some shiny glass balls to go on it. I think that will go a long way towards making us feel a little at home. We bought a speaker system a few days ago so we can pipe Christmas carols through our iphones and play music out loud, because typically this time of year I play Christmas music ad nauseum (except I never get sick of it. J) I love Pandora for Christmas music, but it doesn’t work in Germany, so I need to get on iTunes and buy some of the music I love and listen to every year from Third Day and Bebo Norman. I really miss eggnog. I got excited the first time we went to a Christmas market because they had “Eierpunsch” (egg punch), but it wasn’t the thick creamy yum that comes in a carton at home. It was a thin, hot, heavily alcohol-infused drink. And I haven’t bought gifts for Dan and the kids and when will I do that??? I miss my book club and our cookie exchange and our tree hunt with the Cravys and Dunnings and the Hahns’ Christmas party and Chris’ wonderful carols on the piano and the warmth of being in people’s homes and inviting friends to our home. All of this really helps me to realize how important traditions are to me, and I hope that next year, while it won’t be the same as being in the US, that we’ll be able to practice at least some of our traditions here.

Those of you reading this may pick up on sense that I’m feeling kind of lost here. I feel like I’m drifting from one day to the next and one task to the next without a real anchor. Some experiences have been good and some have been bad and I hope to share some of those eventually, but I’m suffering from a general feeling of unsettledness. I am weary from the last 6 months of high stress and ready to stop making decisions and just “be” for a while. I need to find a way to exercise. I had just begun to make a couple of friends who live in our old neighborhood, and now we have moved away from them I really need something to ground me to a community. Thankfully it seems that maybe our church is beginning to take on that role, but I would love to find people from the kids’ school who live nearby. Unfortunately, due to all the issues we are finding with our new home we are thinking now that maybe we shouldn’t buy any big furniture, just some small cheap crates and cabinets so that if we decide in a few months that we’ve made a big mistake and we have to start over that it won’t cost a fortune to move our belongings. Sadly this greatly delays our settling down and feeling like we actually have a home. I would appreciate prayers for wise decision making, mental strength, and for the ingredients that would come together and make Berlin feel like a home. Also for patience with Carter and Haley, who are also under the same stress caused by lack of stability. Traveling and seeing the world is one of the main things that excited us about the opportunity to live in Berlin, so I am excited to be visiting Denmark this weekend with no agenda other than to explore and enjoy ourselves, even if it is supposed to rain the entire time we’re there.