Life Lessons from the Dorf

We've left Dusseldorf. The flat has been vacated, we're registered at the Burgeramt, and a new chapter of our lives in Berlin is beginning. But, after living in the Dorf for almost five years, it would be hard, even for me, not to have learned a few life lessons there.

 

 

Stay out of the bike lane

 

When I was in Dresden, my local friend kept on telling me to stay out of the bike lane. What bike lane? All I saw was the sidewalk and another sidewalk right beside it with the bricks laid differently. Then a bike shot past us on the other sidewalk. Oh.

 

It's so easy to poke fun at the German love for bureaucracy, rules, and regulations, along with the joy some Germans have for lecturing others to abide by those rules. But, one of the upsides of this strange respect for the rules is that things run very well here. There are line-ups at the government office, but everyone waits their turn. Bridges get built. Cars roll off the assembly line. Civic life and business chug on

 

In fact, things go smoother when you go a bit beyond their rules. When I was applying for my permanent residence, I brought two copies of all my required papers to the government office. The official's expression brightened when she saw my filing cabinet worth of documents, and I got my permanent residence without a hitch.

 

 

You don't have to love Dusseldorf to appreciate it

 

Before we arrived in Dusseldorf, we both lived in Budapest and Kata lived in Berlin, both are exciting, bustling capital cities. Our first impression of the Dorf was a small, dull rich person's village. Of course, first impressions are usually biased, not entirely correct, and never fair. Dusseldorf is a rich town, but it wasn't dull. It's an art city, with some fantastic galleries. Its Altstadt is a big, sloppy party place that a younger, more wild Marshall would've appreciated. It sits on the east side of the Rhine, which makes for some lovely sunsets. It's international, filled with people from all over the world and restaurants serving every type of cuisine to feed them. We didn't love the Dorf, but we liked living there.

None of that exciting stuff really matters

 

Sometimes we craved a solid outdoor drinking spot, like what we loved in Budapest. Sometimes we wanted a great weekend program, like what we had in Berlin. It's easy to look around at any new city, and think: Well, it doesn't have these things...

 

Yet, day to day life in the Dorf is fantastic. You could ride your bike anywhere in the city in a half hour. The transit was mostly reliable. Our son had a great Kita, or daycare, in a park right on a pond. There was always a park nearby. There were forests and hill nearby for hiking. You could walk along the Rhine on a warm summer evening and drink a cold beer. The city was so safe that the city's "bad" neighbourhood looked like a good neighbourhood in Toronto. "Exciting" can be overrated.

 

Never live in the Altstadt

 

Just don't do it. Drink there. Shop there. Don't live there.

 

Don't let the big things become small

 

The first time I saw the Cologne Dom, I gasped in awe. I never got tired of seeing it. When I saw it lit up at night, I snapped photos like a tourist, while a Cologne friend walked by without looking at it. It was something he had grown up with, something he had gotten used to.

 

When I started working at my firm's Cologne office, I would get off at the main station, which is right beside the Dom, and pause to take it in. I felt so fortunate to be able to work near this architectural wonder, and I think my positive disposition about commuting to Cologne came from never taking that exposure to a world wonder for granted.

The Cologne Dom, one dark and foggy night.

Most people appreciate the effort

 

The only people who will laugh at you for trying your piss poor beginner German are the assholes. And who cares what they think? Most people who endured my German were usually happy to see a foreigner make an honest effort and would answer slowly or switch to English if the topic was important. Many Germans understand their language isn't easy for foreigners to learn – something many native English speakers often forget about their own language.

Friends: Quality matters more than quantity

 

Expats in a faraway city are often drawn to each other. There's nothing wrong with this, but some of those friendships are defined by their time and place, so you drift apart when someone moves back home. It happens. Some expats float from one country to another without making meaningful friendships that last. We've managed to maintain some of our friendships from Budapest and Berlin. In our time in the Dorf, many people have come and gone, but we've been lucky to make some quality friends. We don't have many, but the friendships we've formed are strong and meaningful, and that's probably what made Dusseldorf so livable for us.

 

 

Contemporary Art Snaps

Yesterday I was finishing up what was promising to be a fairly decent blog, and then Blogger decided to tell me I saved my draft and then didn't save the draft. An entire day's work was gone and I was left with the rough and raw first draft, which can feel worse than a blank page.

So, as I rewrite the post, hoping I will recreate yesterday's magic, I decided to post a more visual blog today.

Last month, I wrote about the contemporary collection at Düsseldorf's K21. This wasn't the first time I've seen contemporary art and I occasionally snap photos of stuff that I like, that tickles my funny bone, or that I just find peculiar.

Here's a selection of those snaps:

 

The basement of London's Tate Modern used to be
fuel tanks for the power plant. Now they store creations like
these little guys.   

The Vatican Museum is famous for its Renaissance collection, however its modern and contemporary collections also have some gems, like this one. 

An installation of cardboard boxes strewn across a courtyard in Venice
 during the city's international art festival.

I visited Kosice, Slovakia while it was an EU Cultural Capital, which meant lots of art exhibitions,
including this inflatable missile launcher.

Krakow"s MOCAK is next door to Oskar Schindler's factory. Naturally, those times loom large enough to parody them.

A disturbing rendering of Dozsa Gyorgy's execution in the Hungarian National Gallery.

  

Ghent is a real artsy town,
so SMAK (Flemish acronym for Museum of Contemporary Art) is worth a visit.  

A whale skeleton made from patio chairs in Ottawa's National Gallery.

Camels grazing in the National Gallery at Ottawa.

Omnibus Blog 4: That Canadian Visit

German bars getting into the spirit of the Tour de France.

I’ve fallen into that old trap of posting once a month. A bad habit, even if things have been busy on my end. But I’m making up for it with the Lazy Writer’s Round-Up Edition of the Omnibus Blog, a brief collection of short blurby blurbs.

The Tour de France comes to the Dorf

Düsseldorf has French fever. A touch of French has entered Düsseldorf's bakeries and bars recently – German institutions.

The bakeries are displaying fresh baguettes more prominently in the windows. The bars are decked out in the French tricolour (although I haven't seen French beer on tap). Oh, and those speed-bike-ring, short-short-wearing folks are racing down sidewalks a little more proudly. 

On my bike ride to the office, workers are busily erected barriers and beer tents. The Dorf's own Kraftwerk is playing a concert. They actually have a song called Tour de France and it's... well.. techno.

The start of the event are time trials, so 13km of race way is being cordoned off, most of it along the Rhine River. The next day, the Tour leaves Dusseldorf, riding through some pretty country in the Rhineland to Liege. Coincidentally, neither the beginning or the end of this stage is in France. 

We're planning on wandering around and checking it all out, but we've heard rumours the events are prohibitively expensive. If true, the extent of my instagram photos might be tiny blurs in the distance with a moody filter. 

Kraftwerk's concert stage goes up.

That French Election

Emmanuel Macron, the centrist, beat out the nationalists to win the French presidency and won a majority in the legislature. He'll cruise along with his agenda, which includes investing in skills and training, reforming the labour market (like that 35-hour work week), bringing free market reforms to the economy, among other things.

Smooth sailing, right? I don’t know... 

He's a youthful, refreshing politician, but voter turnout for the presidential and parliament elections hovered around 50 percent. There is something deeply wrong with civil society in Europe.

Some of this disengagement from politics might be total apathy of the elitist, and often corrupt, nature of French national politics. But some is likely because European government have been incapable of dealing with today's seismic shifts – a years-long recession, high unemployment, fear of free trade, the migrant crisis.

Macron's pragmatist agenda, which takes the best from the left and right wings of the political spectrum might be the shock France needs. Or it might not. Serious reform needs to come from Brussels too. 

We'll see how engaged people are when the next elections roll around.

Canada Trip

Oh, yeah. That happened. It had been a year and a half since our last visit to my homeland, so we were overdue for a visit.

The short version: we went to a wedding in Toronto, went to a baseball game, Kata got sick, we cancelled a trip to Montreal, went back to London, recuperated, then went to Ottawa, and back to London with a one-hour pitstop in Toronto, then back to Toronto to fly back.

I packed the schedule a little too much, yet no what matter it’s impossible to see everyone. That seems sad, but we ended up spending some quality time with the friends and family we were able to see.

It's a living-away-from-home compromise. You don't see people as often as you'd like, but you do have a good time with them when you do. It isn't a perfect arrangement, but the solid, strong, lifelong friendships are the ones that weather the distance and time apart.

So even as we all move forward and grow up and be more responsible, it's good to know that friends will still make the time for me that I will make for them.

Ottawa Paparazzi.

Art of the Dorf

Dusseldorf's K21

We’ve been planning a visit to K21, Düsseldorf’s top notch contemporary art gallery, for a while. The K20, its sister gallery, gets a lot of the attention for its collection of classic and modern German art, but K21 is an interesting visit for those ready to brave the occasional strangeness of contemporary art.

Full disclosure, I’m not a big contemporary art nut. 

Sometimes I'm impressed with it. Other times I wonder if a six-year-old could have done the same thing. I don't hide my ignorance about it. I try to appreciate the artist for coming out and doing something that wasn't done before, which is the barest minimum we can all do when looking at art.

K21 is big for a contemporary art space. And it's a gorgeous old building too. Usually you don't see that, but Düsseldorf was Joseph Beuys’ hometown, so there must be a civic bias for absurd, contemporary artsiness. 

Side note, Beuys is famous for a few things, like his tin cans, but after a visit to his exhibition at Ottawa's National Gallery, my favourite Beuys is a cross with a sausage hanging from it. 

Anyway, back to our K21 visit

We wandered into an exhibit with a light show in a mirrored box. In another, we approached what we thought was a red rectangular screen, only to reach out and discover it was an optical illusion. It was actually a room with a curved back wall lit by red LEDs. The curved wall, without corners, tricks your eyes into thinking your looking at something without depth, like a screen. Clever, tricky Contemporary Art!

K21's biggest draw is a creation by Tomas Saraceno: an elaborate web of steel cables suspended above the building’s atrium. Visitors put their belongings into a locker, don coveralls and hiking shoes, and walk or lounge on the steel cables, looking four floors down onto the atrium below.

It’s amusement park-esque, but there is a typical contemporary art explanation about how people’s actions affect other people. That's actually not bullshit. When you walk along, especially if you're a clumsy bag of bones like me, other people have to steady themselves as the web shakes and strains and shifts beneath them.

Walking along Saraceno's wire web at K21.

Wandering through a contemporary art exhibit sometimes leaves me wondering what I just saw, it's also nice to know that contemporary art can also surprise and delight me too.

Hockey Night in the Dorf

Good seats for the face-off

You experience a strange feeling of familiarity when you go to a hockey game in Europe. On one hand, you know this place, the hockey arena, with its smells, sounds, and light chill in the air is comforting for a Canadian.

On the other hand, you’re in Europe. Everything is in German. Fans sing soccer-esque chants you don't know. And there is mulled wine and several varieties of sausage served at the concession.

These two sensations competed with each other when we watched the Dusseldorf EG host the Iserlohn Roosters. 

The old school hockey fans in Canada might cry foul about the Europeans game and its lack of fights and blood and missing teeth. Do not be deterred, the game here is great to watch. 

While Canadians like to think that hockey is their game, and that they play it the best, there is good hockey elsewhere too. In Germany, it’s fast and exciting: The final score was 5-4 for the Dorf. 

The league’s players are career players – some have played in the NHL or one of the other minor leagues, so they bring just enough skill to make the game look good but are able to make the odd error that can turn around a play and make your pulse race. 

It’s also not as nearly as physical as the North American game – even if both teams have a healthy contingent of Canadian players on their rosters. The game is fast, focusing on skating and passing, with few stoppages and plenty of back and forth hockey.

Germany might be a soccer country, but a country of 80 million people also has its niche sports, like hockey, whose fans will not sit silently in its niche. 

And this is the beauty of going to niche sporting event: the fans. There are not a lot of German hockey fans, but the ones that show up are serious. They’re wrapped in their team scarves, wearing jerseys and toques, and bejewelled with countless pins. 

We had seats just a row over from the Roosters’ booster section, which was full of blue-and-white-clad fans who made the drive to the Dorf from Iserlohn. They were on their feet most of the game, singing, chanting, and cheering. 

Those rowdy Rooster fans.

The hockey fandom in Germany seems to be at the grassroots. Most of the boxes in the arena were empty. Hockey here is truly relies on the fans, and not big money or cTV contract dollars or corporate sponsorships. Soccer teams in Dortmund or Cologne attract the big money here, but of course with that comes the casual fans. 

In this way a German hockey game feels more like a minor league game. 

The NHL hockey game is great, awe-inspiring, featuring the best players in the world. It's also remote, distant, and, in cities like Toronto, dispassionate. The cost is also high, so most fans like me watch it from the couch at home.

The minor league hockey game is different. Sure, it doesn't have the monumentality of a pro game, but it's intimate and accessible. This was the hockey I grew up watching live  like my hometown's London Knights and later my university's team, and later, in Toronto, the Marlies. 

These smaller arenas were full of families, students, fans, and people who don’t leave at the second intermission to beat traffic. And while the passion that draws Canadians to watch every level of competitive hockey seems unique to us, it's not – that hockey passion is in other places as well (for example, I worked with a Hungarian hockey fan in Budapest).

In Germany, you go to a Dusseldorf EG because you love the team or the sport, so the enthusiasm is electric in a place like this. That passion is also likely more powerful because you're a hockey fan in a soccer country, so you might as be passionate and a little eccentric.

There’s not a lot of things I miss from home, mostly stuff that can't be bought: Family, friends, the comfort of familiar surroundings. But there are some small comforts that help assuage the homesickness for a little while. Hockey, as niche as it might be in Germany or Hungary or anywhere, is one of those things.

Mulled wine and hockey. Mmmmmmm....

The month that was November

I haven't published since October so, feeling guilty, I poked around my Drafts folder and found nothing even barely blog-worthy.

Blame the job stuff: meetings, commercial writing, tweaking, revisions, ,more writing, more tweaking throwing everything out, starting again, presenting again, trying to find the stuff that was thrown out and presenting it again. On and on went the Sisyphean roller coaster that is advertising.

But! Other things happened outside of the advertising bubble (thank goodness!) and so here is a roundup of the month that was November, or, as they say in German, November.


The Underwear Situation

Until now I have visited Canada with enough frequency that my underwear drawer has remained well stocked with good Canadian underpants, like the good ol' Canadian boy I try to be. I am currently in the longest stretch between visits to Canada (18 months) and have stretched my underwear drawer thin. 

Instead of turning yesterday's underpants inside out and donning them for a second day, I went underpants shopping in Germany for the first time. It lasted five minutes, cost little, and I was proud until I tried on a pair. 

For starters, a German medium is like a Canadian small. The tight elastic bands around my waist were so tight they gave me a muffin top. They also wedgied me and generally constricted everything in uncomfortable ways. 

Arguing over the return policy for underpants it didn't seem like a fun way to practice my German, so I went to a fancier store and paid a premium for quality underwear for the German larges. I threw in a pair of loose boxers, just in case.


Voting with hearts, not minds

One thing you learn in advertising is that successful brands don't make a rational argument to get you to buy their product – they make an emotional argument.

Think you're aware of what they're doing and all your purchase decisions are based on rational thought? Wrong! Studies show people are great at rationalizing their emotions in order to validate their purchase decisions.

The same can be applied to voting. My favourite example is Barack Obama, who ran on hope and won. Canada's new PM ran on "Sunny Ways" against a grumpy, cynical rival and also won.

This year we saw the other, darker side of emotional positioning in politics. 

Voters in Britain were told their country no longer belongs to them and were invited to take it back, despite the political and economic consequences. The Donald in America, appealed to a fearful, frustrated white working class with nostalgia, bigotry, sexism, and vague promises of prosperity to win the presidency. 

Of course, great advertising can't save a lousy product, so both of those emotional propositions were buttressed with lies, half-truths, and obfuscations.

Next month, Italy holds a referendum on constitutional reforms that could decide the fate of the current centrist government. Austria has the run-off vote for its presidency this Sunday. French presidential elections are next spring. German federal elections are in the autumn. 

Emotional messages around the nation work, especially when supported with falsehoods. 

If the current Powers That Be wish to remain in power, they will have to find similarly strong emotional messaging for voters – dismissing anyone outside the centre as racist or radical doesn't count. And they shouldn't feel like they have to lie, they're selling a great product: Democracy.


iPhone ergo iMarshall


I have joined the 2010s! I still type like one thumb, I haven't joined the Snapchat, and I still miss the simplicity of a flip phone or my old Blackberry's keypad, but I'm adjusting. 

My last phone for the last two years was a Windows phone, which had a nice interface and was easy to use by Luddite standards. Now, I am easing myself into a new operating system, with new swipes and taps and icons and actions, and a daunting new world of apps.

It also comes with a cool camera, so as I adjust to the 2010s, I will take some pretty pictures along the way.

The era of the iPhone Photos in Strange Places has begun!

Throwing Out People's Stuff

Packing light is easy for a weekender trip; it's difficult when you're settling for a year or two or less.

Take my old shared flat. 

A few guys took out the original lease, then transferred the lease – and furniture – to others when they moved on. Then those guys passed on their lease, and on it went until I came along.

At least eleven tenants – including, who I know of, a Canadian (me), a Brit, a Portuguese, an Argentinian, a Venezuelan, a Brazilian, a couple of French – have lived in my old shared apartment. 

When it was time for me to move on, the landlord company decided they had enough of changing people's name on the lease – and keeping the rent at the same price. It was time to move out, not just move on.

I spent the better part of August clearing it out those tenants' accumulated possessions they left behind. There was a kitchen full of stuff, a bedroom that served as a storage room, and actual storage room in the basement. All filled with stuff from people who came to the Dorf and then moved on elsewhere. 

There were beds, tables, and wardrobes to be sold or given away. Deep in the basement storage room, I discovered another desk, a bed, and two coffee tables among boxes and bags of odds and ends that belonged to tenants long moved out. It was like roommate archeology. 

The furniture could have been sold, but I figured it was was better to give it away to the million refugees in Germany. It seemed like the proper, and admittedly easier, thing to do. 

No charity would pick up furniture, despite being on the ground floor. One simply told its facebook friends about it. Another told me I must bring my furniture to them. All that was picked up was some kitchen stuff, a table, and some wardrobes.

I had helped a few refugees, but as many as I had hoped, and I faced the prospect of putting perfectly fine furniture to the curb. 

You cannot just put your stuff out on garbage day. There are specific days and, if you can't wait for those specific days, you have to fill out a form (because it's Germany) for Sperrmüll, or the bulk garbage pick-up.

It's still not that easy. You can only put out maximum five items, otherwise you must pay. I had a flat of items, well over the five limit.

I booked the free pick-up anyway and I put out over a dozen items a few days before. I hoped thrifty Germans would whittle the pile down before the garbage guys would come.

As I painted – remember, it's a ground floor apartment – I could see passers-by poking through the boxes, flipping through the romance novels, eyeing the kitchen bric-a-brac, appraising the coffee tables. The thrifty Germans came through, and stuff disappeared.

Our very own spring cleaning...
in the late summer. 

Purging Stuff in Budapest

On the right day, take a walk in a Budapest district and witness a sight: Furniture, old newspapers, books, lamps, electronics, punching bags, knick knacks and schnick schnack all piled on the sidewalks and curbs. 

You will see people hovering over their prizes, claiming them before their ride comes to pick it up, glaring at passers-by who linger to long over their claimed pile.

This is Lomtalanítás, Budapest's bulk garbage day that makes it rounds district by district through Budapest.

Kata and I had only a few days while we were visiting a few weeks ago to clear out her apartment for a renovation, so there would be no Lomtalanítás for us. There was also no time to put things on the internet and wait for someone to come along and buy them. Kata's stuff had to go fast.

Once again it was archeology. Everything was dug out, sorted, and its fate was decided as quickly as possible. There were eight years of habitation to go through. The stuff that was to be kept – books, art, mementos – went into boxes and was set aside. The stuff that was nice – more clothes, some books, kitchen stuff – but for keeping were bagged or boxed and walked down the street around the corner to a second-hand store, where these items were happily received by the proprietor.

The rest was bagged or boxed or simply set just outside the apartment and was picked up by a junk man, who undoubtedly sold the stuff worth selling later. It was like our own little Lomtalanítás for this one guy.

Me and My Stuff

You might have noticed all this stuff belonged to others. I am also guilty of some mild hoarding.

I came over to Europe four years ago with a backpack, a rolly-wheely duffle, and a hockey bag. I have added another bag, but got rid of the hockey bag due to airline size restrictions, while still trying to limit my possessions to what I can fit into my bags. I failed.

Over time, despite my minimalist tendencies, I have still managed to accumulate stuff over the years, clothes, mementos, books, have all been picked up and kept. And that's just here in Europe. I have furniture and kitchen stuff spread across a couple of basements in London, Ontario that await a verdict on their fate.

Despite the urge to limit my possession, there seems to still be a tendency to put down roots, spread out my stuff, and get comfortable. 

The Eternal Struggle for Kitchen Appliances and Internet in Germany

Last week, Kata and I were living out of suitcases in her old flat, because there's no internet or fridge at our new flat. It's not for lack of effort. Appointments were made. Orders were filled. Money was exchanged. For some reason, German businesses behave in much the same way that German bureaucracies behave: slowly.

Our life has been forced to adjust to this glacial pace as we await a few necessities of modern life, like our fridge.

Things are a little different in North America, where appliances come with your apartment. In Germany, there is no kitchen: no counters, no fridge, no sink. Just a few pipes sticking out of the walls and floor.

Many would consider us lucky to have a new, furnished kitchen with our newly renovated apartment, but we still had to search for a fridge that fit in the cozy space that is our kitchen.

We found one the right size and price online, but had to wait 10 to 11 business days for its arrival. Life without food refrigeration sets back your food options a century, so we held off moving into the new flat.

The 11 days elapsed with no fridge. I called Saturn (a European equivalent of Future Shop) to find out what is going on. "Don't worry Herr Marshall," I was told, "the fridge was not in their warehouse but it will arrive this week."

The week goes by and I'm a little impatient. I'm thinking about demanding a refund. "Well Herr Marshall, we have a special team awaiting its arrival at our distribution centre and it will arrive this week." If a special team is going to take care of things,I think to myself, then I won't demand a refund.

Friday comes around and no special team has appeared on the doorstep of the flat we haven't moved into. I call again. "Herr Marshall," they say, "we will not be able to deliver this fridge, but you can choose another one and it will come early next week."

By this time, I am weighing my options. We can demand a refund and go to a competitor, but we won't receive a fridge for a few days because most stores only stock the display models. We are also moving into the flat that weekend and leaving for vacation the week after, so timing is crucial.

Whether we like them or not, we have to stick with Saturn. We choose an alternative and wait. 

Monday arrives and with it an email saying our replacement fridge is not in stock, but they suggest another fridge, which is available.

Up until this point, I made every attempt at not yelling at the customer service people. They didn't cause this problem. They don't manage Saturn's supply chain. 

They are just a cog in this soul-less machine that makes every effort to avoid supplying a product that I paid for. I was in the right: I was told it would arrive and it never did, so there was no need to yell.  It was a miscarriage of capitalism. Every time I called, I laid out my situation rationally..

But a month waiting for a fridge frays one's nerves. I started yelling, in English and in Shitty German. Then I yelled at their manager. When I was told the fridge that I didn't even want wouldn't arrive that week – so no fridge before we left for vacation – I yelled some more: What about that "Special Team?!?"

In my haste and anger, I accepted the third fridge they offered after only checking its dimensions so it would fit into our kitchen.

The next day I received an email stating the fridge would arrive the day before our vacation between 10am-2pm. I worked from home and waited. Noon came, then 2pm came, no fridge. I called the delivery company and they said, "It's coming at 3pm, Herr Marshall."

The fridge arrived, bundled up in cardboard and wrapping and plastic. I hastily signed the forms the deliverymen handed to me and began tearing the packaging away so I could plug it in and get to the office.

The packaging came off and revealed a built-in fridge: A metal box with screw holes and sharp corners, made to be put into a cabinet. Every fridge we had asked for was a smooth-surfaced, free-standing fridge.

Faced with a vacation to next day and the prospect of fighting a bureaucratic business for another month, we accepted industrial-styled fridge and moved on to solving the internet...

Our fridge, while we waited for our fridge.

Sitting atop styrofoam
with its screw holes and  jagged edges,
I think we're beginning a fridge trend.

The Damned German Internet

Before all of this Kata had nice things to say about Vodafone in Germany. Now? Not anymore. As I write this, there is no internet in our new apartment. 

An appointment was made weeks ago for the internet guy to visit and install the internet. He arrived punctually and went about checking every outlet for a signal with his internet tricorder thing. He went to the cellar to jiggle a few cords, then returned to stare blankly at the outlets. He told us to call an electrician to fix the wires and departed.

The electricians arrived and said it's up to the internet guy to actually do something. Their instructions – yes, there had to be two electricians to arrive at this conclusion – was to get the cable company to come by again and do whatever they're supposed to do and then call the electricians to do whatever they're supposed to do.

One electrician returned anyway to drill a hole in the wall and bring a cord down from the attic to get us onto the grid. This gives us the potential for internet, but we still needed an internet provider to provide us with internet.

Vodafone was the internet provider in Kata's last apartment and the plan was to shut off the internet in her old flat and have it activated in the new flat. She visited a store, which led to the previous visit with the internet guy staring blankly at the outlets. 

Of course, having no internet at the new flat didn't stop Vodafone from shutting off the internet in her old flat, which is the one thing they technically did correctly in this whole mess.

We are now using mobile internet while we correct this miscarriage of capitalism.

 Last week, Kata again dropped by a store, which is easier than calling a customer service line manned by robots and German speakers. The store people looked at their computer for about 15 minutes and declared we have internet because the computer says so. Kata, being the internet whisperer insisted we do not have the internet. The store person typed something else and told Kata she would get an email confirming an installation appointment.

As I write this, Kata has not received an email about getting the internet that she is paying for from the internet provider that is not providing the internet.

Germany claims to be the economic engine of the European Union. A capitalist success story. In practice, Germany is feeling more like a centrally-planned communist state. 

How businesses providing internet or kitchen appliances behave so unbusiness-like and avoid providing the products and services they are meant to provide is a question for the ages. In the mean time, Kata has nothing nice to say about Vodafone anymore.