A week of culture and complications

Eventually I will return to writing about our Christmas trip! But first some more pressing items.

Last week was a busy week! [Side note: I have been so busy that it has taken me a couple of weeks to finish this blog post. So as I'm about to publish it on Jan. 31, I'm writing about things that happened the week of January 18.] Partly by choice, and partly by circumstance. On the one hand, there have been a lot of opportunities to enjoy the things that make living in Berlin special, and I have taken advantage of them. On the other hand, a number of the things for which I am responsible have run into problems in the last week or so, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to deal with them all.

In the vein of bad news first, I'll start by talking about the complications.

1. Pipes burst in Butte rental property - one of my jobs for the last 4 or 5 years has been to manage our rental properties. We technically have property managers for most of them, but I still have to manage the managers. So just after Christmas we had pipes burst and I have been working for the last few weeks with our property manager and our insurance company to try to get this sorted out. Unfortunately our deductible is rather high so we'll be paying out of pocket for a good bit of the damage. Task in progress.
2. Legal issues - another property headache. A former tenant owes us quite a bit of money. I hired a lawyer to pursue him, but the tenant skipped town. Since we don't know where he went, I have to give up and I have been asking the lawyer to give me back the remainder of our reserve money that we had to pay him up front, so I can use it to pay for the water damage bills in the other property. He had been unresponsive for a month and I was beginning to wonder if I would see that money again, but he finally responded late in the week after some stern pestering on my part. Looks like this one will be resolved soon.
3. My German gym has been taking money from my bank account! A fellow gym member told me last week to check my bank account because many members had unknowingly had money deducted from their accounts. (When I joined the gym I had to give them my bank account information so they could withdraw my monthly fees.) I checked my account and sure enough, the gym had made 3 unauthorized withdrawals from my account, in October, December, and January, for a total of €170! I have been emailing, calling and asking in person at my gym all week to no avail. Of course made all the more difficult because it has to be done in German. Finally I got the name of a man in the corporate office from a friend, and that man called me back, but we have played phone tag. I am trying to decide which is a worse outcome, not getting the money back, or having to call this man and discuss banking issues in German. Task in progress.
4. Kitchen problems - I think I have talked before about how our stove vent has been broken for nearly a year, and then recently the big burner on our stove went bad. My landlady will of course pay for replacements but she wants me to do the work of choosing something and getting it installed. I put it off forever because the task was daunting, but I finally buckled down and did a couple of days of research on German appliances and ordered both things last week. Unfortunately, when the deliveryman arrived with the new stove, he took one look at my old stove and told me the new one I ordered wouldn't fit in the space. To spare you a lot of the back and forth that I have been through since that day, suffice it to say that a) it seems that the old stove was very old, maybe more than 20 years (Why would the landlady build out a new kitchen prior to renting this house to us, but leave a 20+ year old stove in it??) b) The man who built out the kitchen swears that a standard size stove/oven will fit in the space; meanwhile, the deliveryman said otherwise and took the stove I ordered back to the shop. c) I have told my landlady that this is too complicated for me to handle and she needs to arrange it herself, but she seems to be in no hurry to accomplish this.
   
   The second appliance, the vent, was set to be delivered on Wednesday. DHL gives the ridiculous time window of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. I took a chance and spent the morning ice skating with Carter's class, but sat home from about 11:30 until 6:30 waiting for the delivery, which never came. It wasn't all bad because I used that enormous block of time to clean our bedroom, change the sheets, vacuum under the bed, dust all surfaces, put away piles of things. It looks great! And the story has a happy ending because the next day, as I was driving home from something a little after noon, the DHL man was in our cul de sac turning around to leave our street. I flagged him down and was able to get the delivery then. Once I figure out what to do with the stove, I will have an electrician install both appliances at the same time. Overall task still in progress.
5. Furniture buying - after totally tidying up our bedroom, I had a strong desire to completely finish the job. Which meant I really wanted to finally get a chair for our room, and a coat rack to hang things on to keep them off the floor. So I spent some time on the local classifieds, called ebay kleinenzeigen, where I have bought all my other used furniture. I couldn't find a good coat rack so I ordered one from Amazon, but I found a nice leather chair for €20! I also finally found something I thought would work as a Lego table for Carter. I feel a little crazy buying furniture at this stage, because we will be using it for such a short amount of time before we head back to the US already. But it's important to me to have our house feel like a home, if possible.
   
   So the complication once I find things I want on ebay is going to pick them up. Furniture is heavy and it is often in apartments that are up many flights of stairs, and when I get it home I have to take it up two flights of stairs, one of which is a narrow spiral staircase. So there is a good deal of anxiety involved in these purchases, made greater by the fact that I have to communicate with the sellers in German, often by phone (I dread making phone calls in German). Dan has made it clear that he doesn't want to spend his time picking up furniture or assembling furniture, so it's up to me to handle it. Some sellers are very nice and will help carry it but others absolutely won't. So Thursday I called the lady who was selling the chair to try to arrange pickup, but she told me that I wouldn't be able to carry it alone (and by implication she was letting me know that she wouldn't help me). So I had no choice but to involve Dan. We went to pick it up today and he was NOT happy about it. It turns out the chair wasn't heavy at all compared to a lot of the furniture I have hauled by myself. It was heavy, but I could have done it. Oh well. Carter's Lego table I did go get by myself on Thursday. The wonderful seller carried the heavy tabletop down 5 flights of stairs and over to my car for me; I carried the legs and extra table leaves. Then when I got home I manhandled all the pieces all the way up to Carter's room by myself. All that's left is to wipe it all down and reassemble the legs. Task complete (mostly)!
6. Diablo's health - For about a year Diablo has been tripping when I walk him. I had the vet look at him over 6 months ago and she didn't see anything wrong, just that maybe his muscles were weakening from age. He has been on a pain medication every day for the last 4 or 5 months and it has seemed to help him some. But over the weekend Dan noticed that he has a large swelling around the top of his left front leg. It is so large that I have missed it all this time because it almost feels like muscle or something. So I took him to the vet on Tuesday and it is a tumor that needs to be removed. He will go this coming Tuesday for an ultrasound, and then we will schedule him for surgery. The vet speaks a little English but not much so it's not clear how worried I should be. Of course at his age any surgery is not good, but Diablo is otherwise in good health so I'm hoping for the best. Task in progress.
7. Church mission work - I am on the missions committee at our church, and have been pushing for our church to do some actual hands-on service work. Since we have been in Berlin the church has raised money for various causes but only a very few participate in any service work (a small dedicated group serves food to the poor and homeless every Friday night). A couple of weeks ago our committee chairperson arranged for a meeting with the refugee center in the neighborhood of the church, and asked me to join the meeting. Afterwards I volunteered to contact the center to propose a date that our committee could come visit the refugees. Suddenly I have become in charge of this event: making announcements in church, writing for the bulletin, managing the list of volunteers, making a flyer to advertise the event in the refugee center, planning the agenda, etc. I am glad to be doing something for the community, but the timing is a little poor given all the other things that are going on. I'm really excited though, at the response I have gotten. It seems there is a huge desire to do more than just donate money. Our visit is this coming Friday, so task in progress.
8. Job offer - just when I'm feeling pretty crazy busy with what is already happening in my life, my former supervisor at Nuance reached out to me this week about a contract job in the UK. This is highly appealing because a) I would love to keep my foot in the door, both from a networking/resume standpoint and also for keeping up my skills b) some extra money would ease the financial pressure of some of the extra expenses mentioned above c) I didn't really miss working until I was offered the chance to take a job. Hmmm....
   However, if I take a job here it will mean that, for the duration of the job, I won't be able to do any of the things that I enjoy in Berlin. I might as well be living anywhere, just taking the kids to school, working, picking them up, feeding everyone, sleeping, and doing it again. It is not lost on me that of course this is what Dan's life in Berlin is like, and I truly get it and feel for him. But at least one of us should be happy, right? I will find out the specifics of the offer but it's highly unlikely that I will accept it. Task in progress.
9. Extra cooking - Feeding people is something that I do a lot, and I enjoy. But it does add extra pressure to the week. Carter's class was going ice skating on Wednesday and he told me he would love to have double chocolate caramel brownies to take to school. He fantasized about them for a while and said it would really make his day, but I just said "uh-huh, would it make your month?" But Tuesday night I decided to surprise him by making them. He was so shocked and happy on Wednesday morning and he admitted that he was kind of kidding and never thought I would actually make them. I'm glad to be able to do something like this occasionally, beyond his expectations. It was funny though - the international kid crowd is so different from the American kid crowd. The brownies were very fudgy and kind of mushy, and Carter carried them in his backpack from ice skating to school. So when he opened up the tupperwares the brownies had squished all up on one side of the container. He said about half the class said it looked like poop and refused to eat it! I don't think American kids would ever pass up brownies, no matter what they looked like. The ones who did eat one loved them, but even their raving wasn't enough to convince the ones who didn't like the looks of them. Carter was excited though, because there would be some left over to bring home and eat. But he said he went to wash his hands and left the container unguarded and when he came back they were all gone! Two classmates asked for the recipe.
   
   On Wednesday night I made some raspberry bars for my event on Thursday night, so I spent two evenings in a row baking. Tasks complete.

Lagano

Whew! And now the fun stuff - the culture. I am getting more and more involved with the American Women's Club of Berlin (AWC). They do so many interesting things and it's a nice group of women. Recently we went out for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, which I had never done before. You eat Ethiopian with your right hand (no utensils); there are small piles of food and you pinch off a piece of these sort of sourdough pancakes and scoop up some of the pile and eat it together. The food was really, really good - surprisingly good. And the company was nice too.

Enormous platter of a sampling of all different things,
served on top of the pancake things that you tear up and eat

Monday I started a new German endeavor. The AWC has started meeting for 2 hour blocks of German conversation on Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm trying to preserve my Wednesdays as my day with NO commitments or appointments, but I'm going to try to go to this conversation gathering on Mondays. It was nice to meet in a place where we could have a coffee (my other German class is just at the school, but this one is at a cafe), and it was nice to have a long two hour block. That is the largest single block of time that I have yet devoted to German, so I feel like my conversation skills can't help but improve.

Tuesday I went with the president of the AWC to lunch in Kreuzberg and then met up with another member to tour two photography exhibits at the Willy-Brandt Haus. The first one was called "The Indomitable - Four Women in Kabul" by Lela Ahmadzai.  This photographer profiled women who are playing unusual roles in Afghanistan: a baker whose husband doesn’t work because he is addicted to opium, a policewoman/crime film star, a politician, and a teenage singing star who regularly receives death threats because singing isn’t considered appropriate for a woman. The women who are filling traditionally male roles in society (the politician, the cop) must constantly assert their authority and defend their right to be in a position of power. Armed bodyguards protect them from people who disagree with their right to hold these roles. This exhibit was pretty infuriating. The limits on the rights of women in some parts of the world are intolerable.

The second exhibit, "Beloved Afghanistan", was by an award-winning German photographer, Anja Niedringhaus, who was killed while working in Afghanistan. She was really talented and some of her photographs were just amazing.

Wednesday was the day I went ice skating in the morning with Carter’s class. It is always fun to be with him and to watch his classmates interact. I was home by noon and spent the rest of the day cleaning the bedroom while I waited for the vent delivery.

Enjoying coffee and essential oils

Thursday I went to a “make and take” workshop on essential oils given through the AWC. I’m not a big believer in the power of essential oils, but I like the idea of using the oils to make products I can use in the house. They’ve been doing these workshops every Thursday in January where we use Linda’s supplies to make things to bring home. The first week it was cleaning products, then we made concoctions you can roll on with a little rollerball bottle, then bath and shower salts and scrubs, and this week we will make health ointments. I went to the first one just because I wanted to make a cleaning product, but I had such a nice time with the ladies there – drinking coffee, chatting, smelling yummy smells – that I have been back each week. 

Kara at the piano

Then Thursday evening was the AWC Scholar’s Salon. This is a bi-monthly event where we invite a speaker to come meet with us and share some insight into their field of work. I volunteered last spring to help with the planning for this event, so I manage the publicity and attendee list and coordinate the event. So it’s some work for me, but not too much since it’s only every other month. This month we invited Kara Johnstad, a singer-songwriter and voice coach, to come perform for us and speak with us. A member of the club hosted the event in her apartment and it was such a nice evening. Kara played the piano and sang while we all sat in Lissa’s beautiful high-ceilinged, hardwood-floored home filled with various art (Lissa is an artist). This was the third home concert I have been fortunate enough to attend in Berlin. There’s just something really special about hearing music in such an intimate setting. After the performance we all had dinner around a large table and asked Kara questions about her music and her life. It was a really nice evening.

Enjoying dinner and conversation after the performance

Friday I went to my morning run as usual. It was one of the coldest mornings we've had, -11! (about 13 degrees Fahrenheit) I never would have gone out in that weather if it hadn't been for my great Friday morning gals. We even ran both lakes that morning, which I hadn't done since last spring when I was training for a 10K.

Our lovely hostess with a sample steel
 lunchbox

After the run I spent the day with AWC. We met at a member's house to watch the movie "The Lunchbox". I learned about a system I had no idea even existed - the lunch delivery system in Mumbai. 
Every workday morning loyal wives prepare a hot meal of several different dishes and pack it in steel canisters. These lunchboxes are picked up from about 200,000 homes and delivered to husbands at work in time for lunch. After lunch they are picked up again from the workplaces and returned to the homes. Amazingly, only about 1 in 8 million lunchboxes is delivered to the wrong place. This movie is a story about that one errant lunchbox. While we were watching the movie, Robbie was busy in the kitchen cooking up a fabulous meal of typical Indian dishes that might be made for a lunchbox meal. So after the movie we feasted on super yummy Indian food. What a fun day!! 

Engrossed in the movie

The spread of fabulous Indian dishes

Saturday was our monthly family excursion in Berlin day, and it was my turn to choose an excursion. I picked the Allied Museum, a free museum on our side of town. They have some interesting stuff on post-World War II from the perspective of the victors who were stationed in Germany after the war to rebuild and revamp the country. For example, I learned that the major Berlin newspaper, Der Spiegel, was started by the Allies as a post-war newspaper. And there were wedding invitations and photos of American soldiers who fell in love with and married German women. I also learned that Berlin's main airport, Tegel, was built in just 3 months in 1948, just after the Soviets began the Berlin blockade. The Allies needed an airport in West Berlin in order to bring in food and supplies, so they quickly threw this one together.

This spoof on denazification shows black
sheep diving in to the Denazificating machine and
miraculously emerging as spotless white sheep
at the bottom

I thought the most interesting part of the museum, however, was a temporary exhibit called "Who was a Nazi? Denazification in Germany after 1945". This exhibit told all about the "denazification" process. There were some 8.5 million members of the Nazi party and only a couple of dozen top officials were ever put on trial. The rest were supplied with a very detailed questionnaire to try to gauge the extent of their loyalty and experience with the Nazi party. The idea was to identify the strongest supporters of the Nazi regime and remove them from positions of leadership so that a new Germany could be built on more democratic ideals. The magnitude of this effort in political cleansing was mind-boggling. In addition though, Germany had to be cleansed of all things Hitler and all things Nazi. I had never thought about this before. One of Hitler's strengths was in uniting the people of Germany in national pride and shared values, and he used the swastika to elicit these feelings of solidarity and power. So the swastika was EVERYWHERE. It had to be removed not just from items you would expect, like flags, uniforms, buildings, and official government documents but even from things like silverware! 

The spoon-looking thing is a Denazified gravy
ladle! Can you believe it???

I really liked this photo taken during the
occupation. I love the boots up on the desk!

Men take down the Adolf Hitler Street sign

Times were hard in post-war Germany and people had to make
do with what they had. Here an old steel helmet was made into
a cooking sieve, and a jug was made out of a 120mm mortar shell.  

This is an actual filing cabinet that used to be filled
with names of Nazi party members

The Buddy Bears are a symbol of Berlin. You see
painted bears as street art all over the city. This
Buddy Bear is painted with parachuting candy
canes to commemorate the "candy bomber"
during the Berlin airlift.

This statue, which sits next to the Allied Museum, is my
favorite statue in Berlin. It shows wild horses jumping
the remains of the fallen Berlin wall. I love the power
and freedom conveyed by the beautiful horses.

This week was kind of the poster child for why I am really loving life in Berlin. I have so thoroughly enjoyed getting to do all these amazing things and I am soaking them up like a sponge - history, art, culture, plus friendship with other like-minded women making their way in a foreign country. I realized that this is really the first time in my life that, for an extended time, I have both not been working AND not had to do full-time childcare. In the past I have taken a couple of summers off from work to spend with the kids but that wasn't free time; I was mom/nanny. I have also had a few months here and there between contracts while the kids were in school, but it was never an extended period where I was free to pursue my own interests. So when I combine that freedom with the variety of interesting things to do that a big city offers, it's a recipe for a totally different life! I am seriously starting to worry that I won’t be able to transition back to “normal” life after Berlin. Socializing several times a week, learning constantly, a calendar full of adventures - these things aren't part of everyday existence in my former life. There are many wonderful things about the US and many wonderful people I can't wait to get back to, but I'm afraid I will struggle when I return from this adventure. Of course I won't be the only one. There is a lot written about how "reentry" is even harder than the culture shock of moving to a foreign country in the first place. I will have to do some reading as the time approaches and see what I can do to facilitate a smooth transition back home. In the meantime, I'm planning to pack in as much fun as I can and try not to worry about what comes next!