214 Euros

I have been waiting and waiting to blog about Mom and Dad's visit, but since they haven't sent me the blog email I'm skipping the Fall Break and you'll hear (read) about it later.


Story background- I bought a new bike this weekend to replace the one that was stolen. Berlin is very dark most of the evening and it is hard to see how to lock my bike. The rain is coming down very hard.

So, tonight I got home around 7:30 from a long, but pleasant day at school to find a large white notice on the door of the house addressed to me. In German, I recognize that it is (apparently) uncool to lock my bike to a pole outside of the house. The reasoning seems to be that if a car hit my bike, the pole would also fall, possibly causing the collapse of my entire building. Note: Wouldn't my bike actually serve as a cushioning system to the pole? Ever the tenacious landlords, I found an identical note on the door to my apartment.

"Sheesh, " I thought, as I deposited my backpack on the aztec reading chair. I'll move the bike. However, as a multi-tasker, I saw an opportunity to get a load of laundry started for my trip to Copenhagen this weekend. I gathered a load of dark clothes, detergent, fabric softener, Bounce sheets, and the keys to my bike lock and headed downstairs. When I arrived on the main floor I realized I forgot my cellar keys and trudged back up the rattan carpet where I found my apartment door had shut and automatically locked. Scheisse. There I was, laden with laundry tools, no phone, no keys, no cash, no coat. I did the only reasonable thing and knocked on my neightbor's door.

When she opened the door, I introduced myself since we had never officially met. Then I told her I locked myself out of the apartment and asked if she could call the landlord.

About ten minutes later, the landlord arrived and again berated me for the bike zoning rules of our "complex." On his third tirade of my idiocy, I asked if he could stop kicking me when I was down and kick the door open instead. (Okay, just in my head. Instead I kicked into teenager mode and rolled my eyes at him. Not my best moment, but I'm honest.)

We walked up the stairs where he worked for ten more minutes without accomplishing anything except whining about my bike. Finally, he asked my neighbor to call the locksmith. The locksmith said he would be here in 15 minutes. The landlord grumbled all of the way out the door and my neightbor invited me in for a cupof coffee. I felt I have caused enough of an interruption in her evening and borrowed her cellar key so I could do laundry.

Thirty minutes later the locksmith showed up and tinkered with the door in the same way the landlord did. Thankfully, the locksmith had skillz and effectively broke into my apartment in three minutes. Don't worry, that wasn't his only skill. He was also a master at writing up billz. A lightning fast thirty seconds later I was presented with a bill for 214 Euros.

Good-bye Copenhagen shopping and dinners out for the rest of November.

(But I am thinking about parking my bike against the pole again for sheer spite of the repeated lectures. Maybe I could lock it to his car...)