I have a post planned all about our weekend adventure, but I've misplaced the camera cable and refuse to post it without pictures. Here's to posting things out of order: you'll get today's adventures instead.
We have a giant basement in our flat. At least, by 'giant' I mean it's literally half the size of our apartment, which I think is pretty cool. It's rather open plan, with the other half belonging to Herr and Frau Musician, and I'm afraid it became a bit of a dumping ground for empty boxes, Ikea Styrofoam, the toys that didn't fit into the house, and half of the boxes we didn't feel like unpacking. (The other half of those boxes ended up in the corner of our bedroom where the desk should have gone. I unpacked them about a week and a half ago and found, much to my chagrin, the towels I'd been fretting about having lost.)
Today was another cold and dreary day. Not quite the seven degrees of yesterday--isn't it nearly summer here?--but cold and rainy. Maddyn has been stir crazy because I won't let him rollerblade up and down the hallway, and even Jill was fretting at the idea of another rainy afternoon at home. I gathered a bottle of water and two pocketfuls of die-cast Thomas engines and took Maddyn down to the basement for some serious cleaning. Two hours later our two-room basement is completely transformed! I carpeted the smaller room with the carpet scraps kindly left by the previous tenants, and set up the Little People in one corner and a Thomas track in the middle. The two fairly large gaps in the carpet have been filled in with the kids' bean bags, and I think it's quite a nifty second play room. There's also a giant table in there, also from the previous tenants who didn't want to move it, which I'm thinking about setting up as a sewing table once we can get an electrician to put in a power point or five and a bit more light.
Happy as I am with the little room I'm even happier with the main area. I collapsed most of the empty boxes, and stacked the ones that are stuffed with packing paper. I've got the dead computer towers, the Australian microwave, and the other miscellaneous crap against the wall (please don't ask me why we transported three dead computers fifteen thousand kilometres across the world), which has left a huge amount of floor space for, dun dun duuuun, a skating rink! Take that, all you naysayers who thought I was a meanie for banning toys from my living room: my kids have a skating rink in their basement. It's quite miniature, of course, but we tried it out this afternoon and it's well and truly big enough for two kids to skate and just big enough for both of them to ride their bikes provided Maddyn doesn't ride too close to Jill and make her fall off her bike and land on top of him. The floor is concrete and I'm not very interested in scrubbing it when we move out, but I'm thinking I might either put down tape or draw a track with chalk. I may or may not get around to that, but right now I feel like I may just be the coolest mother in the world.
Whilst cleaning my basement I encountered another German oddity: the UPS guy. I realise UPS isn't just a German service, but the UPS guys here are great. They have giant, black trucks that they can park and leave blocking entire streets, and every one I've encountered so far has had at least one facial piercing. I love it! They also have what seemed at first to a foreigner to be a very casual sense of duty, until I was presented with my handy 'guide to Berlin' which noted that neighbours here sign for each other's parcels and that's just how it is. Craziness! My neighbour in Australia once collected our dog from the street and shut our gate after we were burgled, and I thought that was delightfully neighbourly, but Germany takes things to a whole new level. Apparently I was the only Berliner home today so, despite my lack of German, the UPS guy delivered the neighbourhood's parcels to my hallway. I fretted a little about all the unfamiliar surnames--this might be a good time to mention that none of the parcels actually belonged to the neighbours who live in my building--and I had no idea how I was going to keep Maddyn from running away as I trolled the neighbourhood with armfuls of Amazon boxes, peering at names on doorbells and trying to explain my purpose in German. Bless the UPS guy (two facial piercings today), he left little notes for everybody else letting them know I had their books and CDs and I had a veritable stream of visitors ringing my doorbell this evening to collect their goodies. I have no idea what any of them said, but they all seemed pleased. I didn't think to put the kettle on, but I rather felt like Santa.
After that I prepared a meal that Jill hailed as, 'My favourite meal to eat... for dinner.' Apparently my pasta is trumped by chocolate for dessert, but I can't argue with that. The kids went to bed and since the rain can't seem to beat this very strange late-night sunshine business I went for a quick ride through the forest. I'm still a tad nervous on my bike, having not been on a bike between age 17 and about a month ago when I had the crazy idea to tell my husband I'd like a bike for mothers day so I could go riding with the kid, but I managed to ride about 7km in half an hour. I'm not going to be winning races (unless they're downhill--I rock at going downhill), but I'm really enjoying this almost compulsory fitness requirement of living here. The jeans I bought at the start of April fall down without a belt, and the jeans I brought from Australia are in a pile awaiting their move to the basement. I really love Berlin.
No comments:
Post a Comment