Friday, September 4, 2009

Ready or Not.... !

Well, more adventures! And, no German lessons yet… the “consultants” in London are arranging a tutor through their local resources.. In the meantime I also signed up for a beginning German class for parents at the kids’ school. It starts the week of Sept 7 but is only once a week. Not that one or two lessons would have helped me with my first "solo encounter" without my husband-translator:

On Thursday, I was leaving the house with the kids to drive them to school (they take the bus home) at 7:45a and a man shows up in the driveway with papers speaking in German. The only word I can understand, because it is the same in English and German, is “container.” He is a big burly guy and I figured out – a truck driver. He has papers instructing him to deliver our sea container full of furniture to our address.

Well, this was supposed to be scheduled for about 5 days after arriving in port so that the rental furniture company could schedule removal of the rental furniture, dishes, linens, etc. and so we would be prepared for the whole thing. Nope! I walked up to the corner and sure enough, there was his truck with the huge cargo sea container on it! Our street is way too narrow for the truck.

Gary was already at the airport for a business trip to Berlin. I desperately tried to reach the moving “consultant” who is in London but he was on “annual holiday” until Sept 7. Then, I tried to reach the few people I know here who speak both English and German to see if they could at least learn more info from the guy so I could figure out what to do. I could reach NO ONE and the guy was getting exasperated and the kids were already late for school.

So, I had to call Gary. Luckily, he wasn’t already on the plane or I think he would have lost his mind not being able to get off. He was still in the gate area. In fact, he had just bought breakfast -- a beautiful croissant and a latte from "Perfect Day Cafe." I'm not making that up!

He spoke with the driver on the phone and turns out, the driver spoke only basic German (he was Polish – as are a lot of the workers here – all the handymen that have come to work on the house are also Polish). The driver informed Gary that "no, you can't refuse the delivery, I have no where to take the container." So… long story short – we got our furniture. Gary left the airport gate and scrapped his trip. Here is the "Perfect Day" latte that travelled back to the house with him and fueled a good part of the day as lunch was long-forgotten:



Just for added excitement and activity for the day, the rental furniture company was able to pull a crew off another job to come get the stuff so there was room for our real furniture. Now we have our work cut out for us unpacking! And, we picked up the last of the lights yesterday so hopefully this week someone can install them and we can SEE at night! It’s like we’ve been living in the stone age… go to bed when it gets dark (thank goodness its not winter when it gets dark at 5p!!!)

Hopefully, by the time our first of two sets of visitors in Septmeber (yeah!) arrive, the dust will be settled… oh, and, of course, during all this, they are still pouring cement in the house and making a general racket fixing Ethan’s floor! His bedroom furniture is sitting outside his room making it very difficult to get around down there with boxes, furniture, etc. The floor guy told me yesterday that he will come Monday or Tuesday to lay the hardwood back down. I’ll believe it when I see it!

3 comments:

  1. You know that the joke in our house is that nothing every goes easy with Gary's family. I am starting to think that is true!

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  2. I don't know how you all survived this. Are you alcoholics yet? (Carrie O'Connor)

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  3. See, yah the kids whole problem with this was being late to school, uhhuh, not cool at all!
    I am still orginizing my things and getting rd of clutter.. what amazes me is that when I got home, most of the furniture was in place.

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