August is Construction Month

We are back in Germany after a wonderful summer of visits here from friends and family and visits to Indy to see friends and family (more on that soon). We arrived last year at almost exactly this same time of year. Last year, it was jackhammers and construction workers downstairs in the house. This year, it is dump trucks, steam shovels and construction crews stationed three feet outside the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom windows as well as the front door. In terms of noise, smells (diesel fuel from idling dump trucks as well as smoke from the ever-present workers' cigarettes) and intrusion on privacy, they all may as well be inside the house with me!

I think, but cannot be sure until it happens, that they are tearing up the road to re-surface it. Time will tell. In the meantime, my pantomimed "conversation" (my German construction terms vocabulary is not up to snuff!) with the dump truck driver convinced me, correctly, as today has proven, to park my car up the road a ways. Of course, everyone else is doing the same. And, all of the neighborhood streets are so narrow that most of the usual parking availability is temporarily "verboten" as the construction workers try to insure that their equipment can pass through. So, we will be hiking with the grocery crate to and from the car for several blocks for a while. Good thing I have a young, strapping teenage boy at my disposal!

The photos give some idea of the activty. What is lost is just how much it feels they are actually IN the house. And, of course, the sound effects of large asphalt chunks being dropped into the dump truck, the scent of diesel fuel from idling dump trucks wafting into the kitchen (no, closing the windows when it is 90 degrees and no air conditioning to be had, is not an option!), the faces peering into your windows simply because there is little place else to look when your standing two feet from the house, and the honking horn to signal the dump truck to move a few feet forward will all have to be conjured up in your imagination. I'm thinking of starting a breakfast drive-thru... perhaps I can make a few Euros!

It remains to be seen how the weekly trash pick up (already a mean feat for the trash truck to fit down the street - and I feel I should offer him a cup of coffee out the kitchen window, too!) and the bi-weekly "yellow sack" pick up will work.

Yellow sack pick up, for the uninitiated, is the pick up of most (sorting which is which requires a 3-month apprecenticeship!) recyclable packing materials that is all accumulated first in a recycle bin in the utility room and then, bi-weekly, is ever so carefully transferred to a very large and thin plastic sack (yes, it is a distinctive yellow color) to be taken to the curb. The yellow sacks are government-issued from the city hall. The plastic is so thin that despite careful transferring, some errant yogurt container, tin can lid or other packaging item slices through the side of the bag causing yet another transfer process - even more carefully this time - to a fresh yellow sack!

Some time, when there is nothing else of much interest to write about, I will write my dissertation on recycling in Germany for all of you -- I have done the research for the Ph.D. required to be successfully environmentally conscious here - I just haven't written the dissertation yet! Gads do I miss the four foot tall recycle bin on wheels and the mixed recycling policy in Zionsville... virtually all non-food waste all went in the bin and every two weeks we wheeled it to the curb for pick-up...

And, lest I get lonely once the street work is done, I am assured of a fresh round of workers to be scheduled to repair the roof in the sun room. Yesterday, we had a 15-minute thunderstorm and downpour. I thought the sound of running water was a bit too loud, even for a torrential rainstorm. Sure enough, a walk by the sunroom cleared up the mystery. The new leak in the previously water-tight roof was pouring water in at a rate to fill a bucket in less than five minutes! Fortunately, it was splashing in about a foot away from the uphostered furniture.


At least the sun is shining today.