Tower of Babel

Day two of the attempt at spontaneity. This is hard.

I almost forgot that I had a blogging appointment with myself this morning. Daily writing is hard until you fall (back) into the habit. I miss the days when I could spend hours a day just writing, just screwing around with one word, one expression, twisting and shaping it until it became a new creature. Now, I'm lucky if I squeeze out a sentence from my constipated brain once every two months.

But enough of my meta-bitching.

It is a disturbing 36 degrees outside, disturbing because it is supposed to get colder, disturbing because I don't find it "that bad." I'm sure I'll be squawking a different tune altogether soon enough. The office is warm, the park across the street is losing its frosty sheen, a man plays with his dog, tugging at the soft Frisbee, giving the dog a run for his money. It is another bucolic day in Weimar. And me with no automatic weapon. Pity, that.

The urge to stop and come back to this later, when I can "really" write, is overwhelming. My brain is sluggish, I feel like I have nothing to say. Anyone who knows me knows I must be ill if I have nothing to say, or someone cut out my tongue. Fine.

So I finally moved into my own apartment last Thursday in Erfurt, thank the heavens above.  And, true to form, I had everything arranged with clockwork precision before the day of mobilization. I had sorted out what to do about electricity, had ordered my furniture from Ikea for delivery on the same day, had the appointment for telephone and internet set up for the same day. The only thing I failed to do was take measurements in order to create my typical scaled rendition of the apartment and the furniture to go into it so I could plan where everything went ahead of time.  But I thought I should loosen up. I was proud of myself for letting that one go.

And then, the day before mobilization, I get a phone call from the cable company, or what I thought was the cable company, telling me that they had come by earlier that day and no one was home, so I would have to reschedule my appointment.

--What? I clearly said I needed an appointment for the 15th, not the 14th.

--Well, here it says you wanted the 14th.

--There's no way that's true.

And then I realize, his "14" and "15" sound exactly the same. I probably agreed to the date because of the confusion. Why don't these people speak more clearly? What is up with this Thüringen accent, which sounds a lot like a combination of Austrian and Platt Deutsch spoken by someone with a speech impediment?

So I ask what time they will come tomorrow, since there's obviously a mix-up. And the man on the other end of the phone, who is obviously Satan's bastard third cousin twice removed, tells me that the next available appointment is Wednesday of the next week. After the blinding red before my eyes faded away, I told him that he must be joking.  No, no.  It's next Wednesday, some time between 8 a.m. and noon. Until then, smoke signals and semaphore.

Oh, and by the way, they have to go into the cellar of the store below me before they can do what's necessary in my apartment. Someone obviously needs to be dug up, ritually reburied, and danced over before civilization can bless my abode.

Fine.

Then, I realize there is no point in the cable guy coming before 10:00, since the store, and the cellar underneath it, do not open until 10. So I had to call the cable company and let them know. And thus began the odyssey. Two hours over two days and an ability to recite all the messages played while you're on hold later, I finally reach a human being who knows what she's doing. She informs me that I need to contact the contractor to inform them of my problem. She gives me a phone number, I instead dial another one in my phone, try again, and reach the contractor. He gives me the number of the sub-contractor that he's passed the work onto. And the subcontractor, once I tell him about the installation, tells me that it is impossible to change the appointment, because the cable guy has someone scheduled after me. (And Germania forbid that they might actually switch the appointments around, since we are all obviously in the same time window--Oh God, that would be, like, logical.) So I will have to wait until the next Wednesday.

I did not wait for the red to fade this time, and by the time the conversation was over, a long, protracted sigh of frustration preceded the sentence, " Fine, I will tell him to be at your place at 10."

Now, was that so hard?

The day after I was graced with 110,000 bits per second, I went to work, bought coffee and a pastry at the train station before cramming myself into the rolling sardine tin. The woman said 5 Euro. That's bloody expensive. Then I looked at the register to see the total. It read 4 Euro.

And I realized I'm screwed.