Doctors and Dentists and Pharmacies, Oh My!

I would do several things differently if I were to move abroad again, but one thing I got right this time was to fill my prescriptions in the US for as many months ahead as they would allow me to, so that I wouldn't have to figure out the German medical system right away after I got here. There are two prescriptions that I take every day, and now that we are going on our 4th month in Germany I have run out and it is time to get them refilled.

I started asking people a couple of months ago for the name of a doctor, but it hasn't been as easy as I had hoped. Some people had seen a doctor a time or two but wouldn't recommend them. One person gave me the name of someone in our old neighborhood, which is farther than I'd like to go. Some people speak both English and German and didn't know if their doctor spoke English. The kids' school gave me the name of an English-speaking doctor, and Dan made an appointment and went to see her, but he had a lukewarm reaction to her. She was stereotypical German: no-nonsense, terse, no friendly bedside manner. He told her he had several things to talk to her about and she said "You can ask me 3, then you need to make another appointment." So, I'd rather find someone else if I can. Supposedly our insurance company has an English concierge service, and I tried calling them a couple of weeks ago to get help in finding an English speaking doctor. They did mail me a list of doctors in my neighborhood, but it's not clear whether the list is all doctors or just the English speaking doctors.

Since I'm getting down to the wire on medication, this has gone to the top of my priority list and yesterday I did some research. I googled every doctor on the list the insurance company sent to see if they had a website or if maybe there were online reviews or any other information about them. I have found that some businesses advertise "English spoken here" or have the flag of Great Britain on their website to indicate that they speak English. However, I didn't find much. So I took Diablo out for a walk and we went by two of the doctors on the list to scope them out. Both were in humble buildings with signs outside in all German. From what I can tell, doctors here seem to mostly practice alone, not in big medical office buildings like in the US. They just rent a small space in any random building that looks like a house and they hang their sign outside.

Both doctors were closed (note the irregular hours on the sign; many places seem to be open in the morning and closed in the afternoon, or else to take a break at noon or so and return in the late afternoon) so I wasn't able to go inside, but I resolved to make a decision the following day.

So my plan for today was to choose one of the doctors, drop in, and make an appointment. I prefer a female doctor to a male, so that gave the edge to Dr. Spieck, but Dr. Lehl had a small website where he stated that he spoke English, so that was a point for him. I decided to ask in person if Dr. Spieck spoke English and go with her if the answer was yes. But, alas! Her office is closed on Wednesdays. So I headed to Dr. Lehl's place.

There was a musty smell inside and several people were standing around the front desk. While I waited my turn I could hear someone coughing down the hall. No bright lights, no nurses with little clipboards. It was like standing in someone's parlor and having an examination going on in the living room. There was a complete lack of privacy as we each in turn talked to the receptionist. I couldn't understand most of the German, but a lady needed an appointment and described her symptoms for all to hear. One man had an angry conversation, saying that he had been waiting too long. The clientele was mostly elderly and I was wondering if I had made a bad choice, although there was a young girl who walked out as I was walking in but maybe she just lives in the building. At some point a man in white pants had come to the desk to sit down next to the receptionist and when it was my turn, after I spoke in halting phrases to try to explain that I wanted to refill my prescriptions in Germany, he looked up and spoke to me in English, "Let's take a look at what you have." So apparently this was the doctor. I had brought the medicines, so again without any privacy I handed them over and the three of us discussed them right there in the parlor. I thought at first that he was going to just hand me over a prescription, but I realized that he just wanted to see what they were and then I would need to make an appointment to get the actual prescriptions. One of them he didn't know if I could get in Germany! He sent me down to the apotheke (pharmacy) a block away and told me to have them try to find something similar.

At the pharmacy, I handed my pill pack to the lady and tried to explain in German what the doctor told me. She sighed and looked mildly annoyed and proceeded to pull out the paperwork that goes with the medicine and pored over it for a while, periodically emitting sighs and puffs of air. Another pharmacist joined her and the two of them worked to discover the chemistry of the drug. After 20 minutes or so they informed me that Germany doesn't have the same medication, only a higher dosage. I'm not sure what my options are, so I guess the only thing to do is try it and hope it doesn't make me sick (I'm on the low dose because of nausea with higher doses). The second pharmacist spoke some English and told me that if I'm not happy with the medication I need to see "a lady doctor". Sigh, it was so easy in the US where I could see my same GP for any and all needs.

I went back to the doctor's office with the name of the medicine, and succeeded in making an appointment for next Monday. I'm sure that will be an adventure!

This was my third visit to the apotheke. Twice I have gone to the little one by our bus stop. The lady there is very nice but doesn't really speak English. The first time I went I needed syringes for Rhythm's insulin. At home I bought these in a box of 100 from the Walmart pharmacy for $12.97. The pharmacist here studied the syringe I had brought and the bag with the measurements on it and finally said that she didn't have anything but could order some. I was surprised to hear her say that I should come back at 2:00 to pick them up, how fast! When I returned, she had two different boxes of syringes that she showed me, but neither one had a small enough delineation. She said she could only get syringes for people, and I should try to get syringes for the cat from my vet. I took the animals to the vet last week and was able to buy syringes and more insulin directly from the vet (in the US I had to take my insulin prescription to a pharmacy). The insulin here is WAY WAY cheaper, only about 16 euros for a 1 month supply, vs. $220 for a 4 month supply at home. But, go figure, the syringes were about 35 euros here for 100 needles. Oh well, still cheaper overall than in the US.

My second visit to the apotheke was Monday. Carter came home from school with a bad headache and a super stuffy nose. I had given him tylenol for his headache that morning but it didn't seem to help him, so I figured the congestion was the problem and we didn't have anything for that. I was able to convey what I needed to the pharmacist, thanks to my German class I attend weekly at the kids' school where we have learned the words for body parts and symptoms of a cold! She told me to give him ibuprofen instead of acetaminophen, and she recommended some nasal spray that cost less than 4 Euros. So cheap! That was my most successful apotheke visit.

And finally for the dentists. A few weeks ago I wrote that I had found a dentist on our route to school and made appointments for myself and the kids. I was so proud to have accomplished that, but I went to my appointment and unfortunately decided not to return. The dentist was nice enough and I got a good cleaning for my teeth. They do it differently here. Instead of scrape scrape scraping your teeth to death with metal instruments like they do at my dentist in Missoula, she used like a sandblaster on my teeth! It was a high pressure blasting of some kind, with only minimal scraping. It seemed to be a thorough cleaning, and it wasn't an unpleasant experience. However, my problem came with what the dentist told me. She said that I need to replace all the fillings in my mouth, and at the end of the visit she quoted a price of about 2000 Euros!! I definitely got the feeling that she was trying to sell me her services, not that she was telling me this because of a problem with the current fillings. She kind of tag-teamed with the lady who did my cleaning, so they were both coming at it from different angles. The hygienist also tried to sell me tooth whitening. I have added a task to my to-do list to call my dentist in Missoula, because I'm pretty sure they sealed all my fillings with clear sealant recently because the fillings were getting old and they wanted to prevent cracking. So I'm pretty sure I don't actually need to do anything to my teeth, which means that I just don't think I can trust this dentist. The kids are getting to the age where orthodontics may come into play and I need to make sure we are going someplace where the dentist will only recommend expensive treatments if we actually need them!

So this morning right after I dropped the kids to school my first task was to check out a dentist near school that someone recommended to me (I found lots more people who would recommend their dentist than would recommend their doctor.) This place was walking distance from the school and we can catch the bus nearby to get home again. The lady at the front desk was very nice and I successfully got the kids signed up for February 16, the first day of their winter break. Not the most fun thing to do on vacation, but if I had waited for an after-school appointment I would have had to wait until March. Hopefully I will like this dental practice better, and we can all start going there.

Whew, I feel like I've done a full day's work! Now I need to summon my courage and call the first dentist to cancel the kids' appointments.

Making progress

I just stopped to look at the date and discovered that we have been in Berlin almost 3 months! That’s a quarter of a year, hard to believe. I am starting to acclimate to life here. While I am nowhere near able to have conversations in German, I know quite a few words and can often construct simple sentences and get my meaning across if I have to. I can conduct simple transactions at the grocery store, coffee shop, etc. without breaking into a cold sweat. I can navigate public transit with only occasional hiccups. I’m becoming a little more comfortable in the car and am no longer terrified to take it out on the road, although I can’t get complacent because occasionally I make a mistake and am so thankful that it hasn’t led to an accident. I have taken up cappuccino drinking. J I never used to be able to handle the caffeine in coffee; it made me jittery and uncomfortable, but it’s pretty hard to find caffeine-free coffee here, so I’ve gotten used to the leaded stuff. And I’ve discovered, like the rest of the world, that it helps me get through the day when I’m going on 6 hours sleep, which is most days.

I do check Facebook regularly so I can feel connected to my friends, and when I see pictures of snowy Montana it makes me simultaneously homesick for Montana’s natural beauty and also glad for the opportunity to try something different and live a different life for a while. I think loving mountains and snow and trees and lakes in a way made me afraid to leave them, and I also felt a strange pressure to get out and enjoy them by skiing and hiking and boating and camping. We did plenty of that and always had fun, but still there was a pressure like a strange nature version of keeping up with the Joneses. Maybe it’s just me and my own psychoses, but in a way it’s nice to be free from that pressure and have the freedom to do things differently for a while. The mountains and rivers will still be there for us when we get back.

But I digress. Right now I’m one of those people you envy when you walk down the street and see someone sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of the morning quietly sipping their drink and you think, “Don’t those people have to go to work?” I just had a cappuccino and a Rosinenbrotchen (raisin bun) and am working on a blog post while I wait for the start time of my next event. This is so pleasant, I hope life will settle down soon so I can spend time on my blog and my cappuccino habit on at least a weekly or semi-weekly basis!

Today I’m taking a day off from house organization and I’m attending a Berlin’s Best event. A couple of parents at the kids’ school created this group, whose purpose is to socialize while discovering the best museums, restaurants and things to do around Berlin. Last month we toured the Konzert Haus, which was very interesting, followed by a visit to the famous Gendarmenmarkt Christmas market and a lunch at a traditional German restaurant. Today we are going to the Gipsformerai, which means nothing to me but I’ll find out what it’s all about!

I titled this post “Making progress” because I intended to talk about the house and how it’s progressing. I’m pretty much out of time to do that in detail, but I’ll mention a few things and post some pictures.

Okay, a couple of days have passed now. I’d better stay on track so I can at least get something posted! So here goes.

First things first, we got a car right before Christmas. We had originally thought we could get by without a car, and we had planned to use public transit during our entire stay in Berlin. But we discovered that, unfortunately, those who can afford a car do buy one. Pretty much everyone we knew had a car, and they dismissed the notion that we didn’t need a car. Of course it’s possible to manage without one,  and I have since met one person who doesn’t own a car, but driving can often cut transit time in half so for busy people on the go it makes life easier to have the option to drive. Plus it allows us to carry loads in the car. Plus it will allow us to take weekend trips by car to places outside Berlin that can’t be reached by train or bus. If we want to we can even drive places much farther away, like to visit Dan’s family in Austria. So, we have a Volkswagen Touran and I love it.

 

The Touran in front of our house, where we get to park
it about half the time (the other half the spot is taken and
we park much farther down the street or, once, on a different
street)

 It's comfortable to drive, modern, has a GPS system, heated seats, a back-up camera and beeping noise when I get close to backing into something, and it's highly configurable. All seats but the driver fold completely down flat, and you can do it in any combination you need. Here's how I've been using it:

Taking the recycling to the recycling center

Latest IKEA run

Picking up Haley's bed that I bought on ebay,
Berlin's version of Craigslist

My biggest achievement so far is getting our closet in the master bedroom. Most houses here, unless they are very new and built in western style, don't have built-in closets so everyone buys their "closet" - external pieces of furniture in some combination of wardrobe, drawers, shelves, etc. You can go to a fancy furniture store and have someone personally help you design your space, but number 1 it's expensive and #2 you have to order it, which means it takes months for delivery. So, this is what you do if you have the money and want to have your closet for many years. If you just want a place to hang your clothes for a few years you go to IKEA. But the problem there is that the closet needs to be designed and assembled piece by piece. What size closet cabinet? How many shelves? What kind of doors? How many hinges? Drawers, and what size? What about hanging bars? Shoe cabinets? Oh yeah, and it's all in German. I have used the Container Store in the past and been so grateful for the knowledgeable staff who sits with you to draw out the closet and tells you how many shelves or drawers will fit in the allotted space and what kind of hardware you need to be able to put together the things you are buying. Not so with IKEA. They have a do-it-yourself computer program (in German) and a series of sample closets and pieces of paper with indecipherable parts and codes on them. Twice I have gone to IKEA and spent a lot of time in the closet section, once just to browse and once intending to buy, and both times I went away confused and frustrated and empty-handed. But, my savior arrived in the form of Dan's boss' wife. They invited us over for tea a few weeks ago and the topic of settling in the house came up, and I mentioned my trouble navigating IKEA and she offered to take me there. So a couple of weeks ago we met there and she spent the whole day with me and was an expert at deciphering the IKEA system and listing out all the pieces and parts that I would need. She also gave me advice on style and features. I am forever indebted to her, thank you thank you Stephanie!! I was so excited that day to have accomplished that enormous task. Dan has spent the last 10 days or so putting it together, and here it is:

You would never know how much work was necessary to
achieve this!

So now we are able to get our clothes out of the boxes and up off the floor. What an improvement! This was our "closet room" before:

I had bought two cheap hanging racks from IKEA and we tried to organize by putting things in boxes and stacking them, but the boxes were hard to get to and they would sag and collapse. Our stuff is cleaner and we feel much more civilized now that we have a real closet. Plus, now our stuff is mostly out of the other room and now I can turn that room into my office/the guest bedroom. I have already bought the day bed/guest bed as well as a desk/scrapbooking table, so those are on the list of things that need assembly and then that room will start to take shape.

The closet room

What a mess

You see that we are sleeping on our mattresses on the floor. Yesterday I ordered our bed! That is the last major thing we are lacking, because a week ago I ordered the couch and a chair for the living room. Of course we still need bookshelves, a dresser or two, maybe another chair here and there. But I'm pretty sure I can get many of the remaining things on the second hand market, which means we can pick them up immediately and start using them. The bed will be here in 5-6 weeks. Our couch and chair will take 8-9. So, our things will arrive in time for us to use them for a couple of months before our first year in Germany is over and we go back to the US for a month! Crazy.

Here is our dining table and chairs, which was our very first piece of furniture. It only had a 10 day delivery period, so it arrived in time for us to have a table for Christmas dinner. I also bought the standing lamp before Christmas, since there's not even a bare lightbulb in the dining room for light. The brown cabinet on the left is a large filing cabinet that I bought used earlier this week so I can start getting all our papers organized and up off the floor. It weighs a TON (it's made of real wood) and Dan and I struggled to load it into our car to get it home. But, what a bargain - it is a beautiful piece and it came with four drawers full of empty file folders and filing binders like they use here in Germany. Those can be 3 or 4 euros a piece and I paid 30 Euros for the whole lot of it, so it was an exceptionally good deal. Now we just need to heave it up the stairs to Dan's office!  

A quick digression: being in a huge city like Berlin has really made me feel deeply our environmental footprint. There are SOOOO many people here and we are all eating and driving and wearing clothes. When you ride a bus through the city and you see block after block of stores, all selling things in plastic or paper packaging, and you see a cluster of 3 or 4 grocery store choices every 5 or 6 blocks, each chock full of goods. When you see house after house and apartment after apartment, all of which are furnished with wood and leather and plastic furniture, and everyone has a closet full of clothes and shoes and each year they buy new stuff. When you go to IKEA and buy a carful of items, each packed in a large cardboard box, with hardware wrapped in plastic bags and manual after paper manual packed inside, and you know you are one of thousands of people who pass through the store every day buying a carful of stuff. When I do all these things, I feel a little overwhelmed at the resources it takes to keep us all fed and clothed and satisfy our desire for nice homes and nice clothes. Yes, Berlin has a good recycling program, but the best use of resources is to not consume them in the first place. It's very easy to get caught up in new, new new, and finding the exact right thing, plus it's often easier to just go to a store to get something rather than continue to daily browse the for sale ads to see if an item I am looking for shows up. But I am more committed now than ever to try to get as many things second hand as I can. Not only is it way cheaper, but there's no packaging. An added bonus is that many things are either already assembled or at least partially assembled, just disassembled enough so that they fit in the car. I feel good about reusing, and I probably should have done even more of it. [By the way, in case you were wondering, I didn't buy the couch and chair I went to look at a week or so ago. It wasn't in great shape and I didn't really have room for that big puffy furniture.]

I am being long-winded. This is so much more fun than anything else I am supposed to be doing. But I should wrap it up. Here are some more photos of our progress:

Haley's room is the farthest along. She's the only one with a bed, and she was the first to have a closet. I bought them both used over Christmas break. That was quite an adventure! We had just gotten the car and I was terrified to drive it, but with the kids home from school it was a lot harder for me to go somewhere to shop, plus I knew I could save money buying things used. So I went crazy browsing ads, responding in German thanks to Google Translate, coordinating a price and a pick-up time, navigating around Berlin within a 15 km radius from our house, knocking on someone's door, paying in cash, lugging things to the car (often down several flights of stairs), and making my way, white-knuckled, back home again. Haley's pink wardrobe was the first thing I bought and I really had to wonder if I wasn't a little crazy. I went alone, at about 8:30 at night. I went without help or tools. I knew almost no German. I was very lucky that the nice man who was selling the cabinet got his tools out and disassembled the cabinet for me, then helped me carry it all down to my car. I drove way too far to get it, so I have since shortened my search radius to 10k!

Here is our homework station that has just begun to get used. It's a really nice Moll adjustable desk, bought used for a good price, and a new chair ordered from Amazon (sorry). We are still holding all the boxes from our move here in the Wintergarten. Now that we have unpacked the boxes that were holding our clothes in the "closet room", I have contacted the movers to come back and carry away all our packing material and so that room will get cleared out on Monday!










The TV was one of our first purchases. We have watched a couple of movies and played some Rock Band and wii. The kids across the street of course are attracted to the video games. I haven't yet even turned on German TV! One of these days I will, because it will actually be a good way to help learn the language. The TV table was a coup for me - the same one I liked from IKEA but purchased used, in good condition, and assembled, for about half price.

Carter has a closet we are almost finished putting together. I look for one used but couldn't find one that fit his unique space requirements in his room. His bed is on the floor and he claims he likes it that way, but every morning I find him on the floor, having rolled off his mattress in the night. So I'll buy him a used bed frame one of these days.

 Just last night Dan finished putting together this under-sink cabinet in our bathroom.

Now we can get some things off the window sill!

There are lots of desks for sale on ebay. This one was reasonably priced and came with a rolling cart of drawers. Once again I drove way too far to get it and showed up unprepared. An exceptionally nice man who spoke very good English once again disassembled it for me and helped carry it down several flights of stairs. Then, it wouldn't all fit in my car so he actually put some of it in his car and followed me on the 20 minute drive to our house! He was so so kind. I didn't pay him nearly enough for the desk to get that kind of service. And, unbelievably, a couple of days later there was an envelope in my mailbox with a note attached: he had forgotten to give me a small piece of the desk, and had driven over to our house to deliver it. Truly, above and beyond! Many people I meet are surprised when I say that I have met some really nice people in Berlin, because it is certainly not known for being a friendly place. And I definitely wouldn't call it a friendly place, but I have met some incredibly friendly and helpful individuals. They stand out even more since so many people are not that way. This man was a gem.

View of the kitchen from the hall

 As I mentioned in a previous post, the kitchen needs some help. The dish cabinets are up too high, the pantry doesn't have enough shelves, and the counter is too small. As a result, the kids can't reach the dishes, it's hard to prepare food on the small countertop, and we have a bunch of stuff sitting around taking up space that should be put away. Tuesday I went back to IKEA to try to remedy that (it's an IKEA kitchen so I wanted to match). It took all day, but I learned how to construct an IKEA kitchen and discovered which components are available that will help us with the kitchen space. I came away with a whole new cabinet/shelving unit that can sit next to the existing ones and house the microwave and the dishes. And I also got a freestanding "countertop" that we will need to take to a home improvement store and cut to fit our space. I bought legs for it, and it will go in front of the window on the left and double as extra countertop space as well as a dining counter. I will buy a couple of barstools that can scoot under when I'm cooking and pull out when someone wants to eat there. I'm pretty pleased with how the design turned out; now we need to build it all and see if it actually looks okay and works for us!

I have just one square of countertop to work on; the microwave
and compost bin take up a lot of space

A trashcan, dishes with no place to go, bags of recycling, and
containers of fruit are currently just sitting around

And, finally, here is Carter's haircut, in case you were wondering. I think it turned out pretty good! They called it a "basic surfer haircut". :)

Just do it!

After a rather bleak previous post, I thought I would share some more positive experiences that have happened in the last couple of days. I'll start by saying the sun is shining right now! We have had such a wet rainy winter here. For the last I don't know how many days it has alternated between pouring rain, misting rain, and looking like it's going to rain. The forecast today called for partial sun, so imagine our disappointment when we walked outside to head to the bus in drizzling rain. (It's dark still when we leave, so we hadn't noticed the rain out the windows until we left the house.) But the sun came out about an hour ago and it's still shining! I raced outside with Diablo so we could both soak up a little vitamin D.

I'm also feeling a bit healthier because I'm on day 2 of at least some physical activity. Yesterday I tried all day to get some sort of workout but wasn't able to finish my work in time. So finally at about 6 p.m. I loaded up the new Fitocracy app Dan put on my iPhone and did their "7 minute body weight workout". I figured I HAD to be able to spare 7 minutes! And how sad is it that I was actually a little sore this morning?? Then, this morning I went to a nearby gym with a free trial pass Dan had gotten for me. I swam, which felt great, although the pool leaves a lot to be desired. There are only 2 lap lanes which I gather from Dan's and my experience seem to be crowded at all times of the day and night. One lane is labeled for "fast swimmers", which seems to mean anyone who is moving perceptibly towards the other side of the pool. I'm the slowest person in our Masters program in Missoula, but I was by far the fastest in this pool. When I started my swim there were 5 people in the lane, including me, so it was a little stop and go. But I figured out how to space myself in order to get a decent workout, and it felt really good to swim for the first time since coming to Berlin! A funny German interaction: I wanted to do just a single length of butterfly, so I waited until the other swimmers were near the other end and then swam the length. There was a slow older man resting at the other end of the pool, and when I surfaced to turn around he made some sort of noise, which sounded to me like approval. A little while later we both were getting out of the pool together and he said something to me in German. I told him I only speak a little German, but he persisted in trying to tell me something about the butterfly. At first I thought he was complementing me, but then I decided maybe he was trying to coach me. In the end, I'm not sure if maybe he was trying to tell me that I shouldn't do butterfly??? I have no idea, and he eventually walked away without smiling. Ha!

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself because I have a dentist appointment on Thursday and Carter has an appointment for a haircut tomorrow! We have spent a decent amount of time sitting at a new bus stop waiting for the bus since school started last week and we have a new route to school. We take a bus from our house to an U-bahn station, and from there we can take a 2nd bus to school or if we miss the bus (which we have done every day because the first bus runs a little behind) we can take the U-bahn near the school and walk the rest of the way. While sitting at the stop waiting for the 2nd bus I have noticed what looks like a dental chair in a window on the top floor. So yesterday when I got to the transfer point I decided I was just going to summon my courage and go up there and see if by chance the dentist speaks English. I made my way up to the 3rd floor and then almost turned around and left when I saw that the door was locked and I had to press the buzzer and announce myself. But, I pressed on and gained entry. I started out speaking German to the person at the reception desk, but it turns out that she spoke pretty good English, and she told me that the dentist also speaks English, and the dental hygienist is from New York! Score! I made appointments for myself and the kids. Hopefully we will like it and I can check "find a dentist" off of my list.

I have been hoping to get recommendations for doctors and dentists and other service providers, but it has proven to be challenging because the other English speakers at our school live scattered throughout Berlin, and given our busy lives I think it is better to find someone near our house. But I haven't met any native English speakers near our house, and the German speakers don't know if the doctor/dentist speaks English or not. So, since I was successful with finding a dentist by just picking one that looks nice and walking in, I decided to try the same thing for a haircut. Everywhere I go I am trying to memorize the landscape so I can see where to go for this or for that. Yesterday from the bus I saw a hair place that specifically advertised "men, women and children". So today after my workout I walked through the center of town, then took a deep breath and entered the shop. "I am new to Berlin. My son needs a...." Here I faltered, because I couldn't remember the word for haircut, but thankfully the nice lady supplied it. And what do you know, they could book us for tomorrow! Explaining what kind of cut I want tomorrow may be a little problematic, but I can Google Translate some phrases before I go and hopefully we can manage the rest by making scissor motions on his hair!

One final "just do it" story - yesterday I was in Edeka (a grocery store) with the kids, a store I hadn't been to yet but it's right by the dentist, so it will be convenient to stop in and get a few things after school if we need them. Anyway, on the way in I noticed a bulletin board covered with handwritten ads for things, and I saw an ad for a couch and chair that might be an affordable and nice addition to our house. I have bought some other things used (I need to post about that), but I've done all my communication via text or email - I've never had to pick up the phone and call someone. But this ad only had a phone number. So this morning I wrote myself a script using google translate, took another deep breath, and dialed the number. The probably with this approach is that I might be able to make the person on the other end of the line understand me, but if they don't speak English then they reply in a whole bunch of German that I don't understand. This is what happened to me on this phone call. But, the man realized I didn't understand and was able to use very simple words and I was actually able to catch what he was trying to say - that his wife was selling the furniture and that I should call back at 3 because she would be home then. It was thrilling to actual understand his German! Now it is 3 and I need to call back, and my pulse is already quickening. What if she's not home yet? If he answers the phone, how should I ask for her? Wish me luck.

Out of Gas

Today my tank ran dry. I have been going, going, going for so many days, weeks and months. But today I am empty. It's funny how quickly a mood can change. Yesterday I was feeling pretty good about where I stand. I had been to IKEA the day before and, with the help of a friend, got our closets ordered, and purchased a bathroom cabinet, and a guest bed. Then yesterday my plan was to get our couch ordered and then our house was going to be in pretty good shape! I even felt free enough to start looking at some of the details at the furniture store, like lighting choices. But then I got home and set out boxes and papers in the shape of the couch I want on our floor, and I decided that it was too big for the space. I was back to square one. That was incredibly deflating. And I decided I was just tired–tired of never ending to-do lists, tired of task after task after task, tired of paperwork, tired of e-mails, tired of taking care of so many details that come with starting life over in a new place. I'm even too tired to do things that should be fun like plan our next vacation.

Today after I got home from dropping the kids at school I went to sleep and slept for three hours. I couldn't bring myself to do anything else. I forced myself to get up at noon and eat lunch and do paperwork and manage properties but it's taking all my effort. Of course being exhausted and tired of tasks isn't particular to Berlin; life often seemed like a never ending series of to-dos in Missoula as well. But it just seems more intense here because even the simple tasks aren't simple. Driving across town like I have to do today (to pick up Diablo's crate which we accidentally left at our old apartment) was time-consuming in Missoula but not something to make me nervous like it is here. Calling to make a dentist appointment was a quick two-minute task in Missoula, but here I have been putting it off for weeks because I am nervous to try to speak German and don't really understand what services are offered and how the insurance works here. Both of my animals need to go to the vet, but I don't know if I should drag them all the way across town to the vet by our old apartment or if I need to find a new vet here in this part of town, and I also have the same problem of calling to make an appointment in German. I spent an hour and a half rooting through our garbage on Tuesday night because we have missed the garbage pick up for the last two weeks because it came on a different day because of the holidays. We had so much trash and recycling that I absolutely had to put it out this week but I have come to realize that I was doing the recycling wrong. I went to the next-door neighbor to ask for sure and she actually called the trash people for me and confirmed that the paper recycling cannot go in with the plastic. So I put on my gloves and dumped four bags of trash onto the kitchen floor and put it in the right bags so that I could set it out on Wednesday. See, even the simple tasks are not easy here.

There are so many positive things I could write about. I am halfway through a post about our interesting New Year's Eve which I haven't had time to finish. I often compose blogs in my head when I'm out shopping or riding on the bus but I never have time to go home and write them down. I guess it's therapeutic to write down when I'm struggling which is why I did take the time to write these few paragraphs today (that and I'm avoiding any other work). Of course I should count my blessings, and probably a good workout would help too. I know these things, but knowing them isn't really enough to take the blues away.