Okay, so where were we last time? The week before we moved into the house, I believe: Tom managed to locate and buy a vehicle that would seat all of us, at the same time, in the form of a 2000 Honda Shuttle. It’s pretty much a minivan, only without the sliding doors and with some climbing over of seats. (I would have liked to provide a visual here, but our internet connection is currently via Tom’s phone and uploading pictures takes more patience than I have.) Now, in just a couple of sentences I made that process sound pretty simple, but just like everything else Tom has had to do since we arrived, it was a serious process to find and buy a car, get the car, buy insurance, etc. It did involve Tom’s first German train ride, to Weisbaden. I, as usual, got to stay at the apartment with the kids. For two days there was enough snow for them to go out and have fun. After the first day of me shivering on a bench, I decided that Jacob and Brynn were old enough to play on the playground by themselves and the second day I only had to stay outside for as long as Norah and Wyatt lasted in the cold (about 25 minutes). This was a small yet glorious step towards my distant goal of “autonomous children”.
The kids’ Christmas break started on the 16th. At that point, we were pretty sure that we were going to sign on the house here in Höheinöd—which meant that after only a week and a half, they were going to have to switch schools because we’d be located in a different zoning district. I felt terrible. Jacob, in particular, was really upset. Evidently a good buddy from his kindergarten class at Saegert was in his second grade class at Ramstein. What are the odds of that?? If they hadn’t already missed so much school (the entire month of November), I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to enroll them when we got here. But they had, and we also had no way of knowing how long it would take to find a house to rent. Some people said it had taken them months to find a place! So unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to keep all the unpleasantness of this move on my and Tom’s shoulders, the kids took a hit when we had to yank them out of their new classes. Hopefully they will not have to change schools again during the time we are in Germany.
School had the effect of getting the kids all revved up for the holidays with projects and gingerbread houses and tons of candy (ugh) and homemade ornaments. This was good, because in our apartment with our no-decorations and Charlie Brown tree, plus the stress of moving, the Christmas spirit was feeling pretty non-existent among us grown-ups.
Friday the 23rd was the big day; the day our furniture and household goods would be delivered to our new house. Yay! Since there was no scheduled time, exactly, we got there around 7am and sat in the freezing cold house (we didn’t turn on the heat until that morning) until 9am when the movers arrived. About five hours, one-hundred and eighty-nine boxes, and lots of furniture later, our stuff was all in our house. Sort of. When we moved out of Killeen, the movers took apart every piece of furniture they could. Everything. This included things that really were not meant to be disassembled, as well as our many of pieces of Ikea furniture. In my mind, a clever person would take all the pieces of hardware from the disassembled furniture, label it, and put it in an extremely safe place. This (of course) is not what the movers did. They stuck it in little cloth bags with labels they didn’t fill out, and tied it with little fragile strings to some of the furniture. Or stuffed it wherever else they could find a spot, even if it was nowhere near the furniture itself. So… our furniture and 189 boxes of crap made it to Germany. The hardware? We still haven’t found it all. In one massively frustrating instance, they took the hardware to a bunk bed that I personally had taped to the bed frame, removed it, and lost it. Why did they do this? I did a better job of it than they did! So one top bunk, our coffee table, an end table, a chair, a footstool, and a bookshelf are all sitting here in pieces. Well, the bookshelf sides and back are sitting here—we haven’t located the top, bottom, or shelves. And although the movers are tasked with the job of reassembling all the furniture, obviously they couldn’t do it because it took us days to find the hidden hardware. But based on the way they put our bed together (the lone assembled item in our house at the end of that day), I’m not entirely sure I’m sorry we had to put everything back together ourselves. All of this is in addition to the usual nicks, gouges, tears, and scratches that come with movers throwing your stuff around.
But wait! You say. Cheer up! You had all your stuff back! Yes indeed, I did, and I wasted zero seconds locating my beloved Cuisinart coffeemaker and firing it up. I remembered moving to Killeen, when I had the entire house unpacked and livable in three days, and was happy to know there was an end in sight.
*Sound of screeching brakes*
Whoa there, cowboy. This was an overseas move. They packed things a little differently this time around—in order to fit everything we owned into as little space as possible, they shoved everything they could into whatever box happened to be the nearest. And then labeled it as containing only what was visible from the top. So that box in my kitchen, labeled “Spices/plasticware/rice cooker” was likely to also contain three random bathroom hand towels in a wicker basket with a box of bandaids. A box labeled “books” did indeed contain books, but also had pillowcases, power cords, and a random roll of toilet paper. Instead of the orderly and organized packing I have come to appreciate in exchange for letting strangers touch my belongings, I got 189 boxes of things packed pretty much the way I would have done it—badly. Tom and I got to spend Christmas opening dozens and dozens of boxes, searching for unguessably packed miscellaneous-ness.
So once we had our stuff, more or less, and could start settling in, albeit at a turtle’s pace, you’d think things would start looking up. But wait—we’ve forgotten about the German Factor! There are no closets in German houses, and, coming from a house with many closets, we were unprepared. Just imagine all the stuff currently in your closets—old junk, holiday decorations, hanging clothes, board games, blankets, storage totes… now imagine that you have nowhere to hide it. We currently have hundreds of hangers and no rails on which to hang them. Second German Factor: plugging things in. We only have two transformers right now, and we’ve been warned they use a lot of electricity and shouldn’t be left on all the time. Plus they’re noisy and smell kind of funky. Lamps can be plugged into the wall with adapters, if you have the right kind of bulbs (no incandescents here!) We seem to have located more lampshades than lamps at the moment, however. Computers also can be plugged in directly if one has an adapter. Everything else will need to either be replaced by a 220 volt version or plugged into a transformer. Again, take a second and think about everything you have plugged in right now… kitchen appliances, hair dryer, alarm clock, phone charger… every 110 volt appliance you own, sitting sadly in a box. Surrounded by dozens and dozens of homeless hangers. We've already made one 400 euro trip to Ikea, and there's another one in our near future. Thank goodness for Ikea and their wacky European storage.
Stay tuned for the next installment of “Moving In: Are We Having Fun Yet?”, which will include such glories as “shopping with Germans”, “who lived here before?”, “utilities the German way” and “dryer vent out the window”.
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