A room with a view of one's own

We stayed at a bizarre, ridiculously expensive little hotel in Orta San Giulio. We had the "penthouse suite," which meant riding the mirror-walled elevator from the mirror-walled breakfast nook up four flights to the attic (watch your head!). Unfortunately, the AC wasn't working, so it was mighty toasty, and with the windows open, we got to listen to the mad revelry on the street below until 3 a.m., when the bars finally closed.

Our suite was named "A Room of One's Own"--one of those literary allusions that demonstrate someone knew enough English to recognize the poetry of the phrase without understanding what the words meant. (My all-time favorite in this category was a Thai T-shirt my parents gave me that said, "? What are the No problem!")

The room had two futon mattresses and two shower heads, with two glass plates separating the stone-lined shower from the rest of the room. The shower heads were made out of geode halves, which was pretty sexy, and the glass partitions meant one's party of two or three or five or ten could watch each other shower--or all shower together, since the open spaces between the glass allowed water to spritz everywhere. I think perhaps the room was supposed to have been named "A Room with a View," or perhaps "A Room with a View of One's Own."

Speaking of views, the room did have a nice one out the window...

Back in Freiburg

Thanks to an odd twist of fate, as of this afternoon we're back in our old apartment in Freiburg for the next few weeks. We spent the past three nights staying with friends Wolfgang, Christina, and Terisa on the building's third floor (which would be the fourth floor in the U.S.--I want full credit for all those stairs) while the tenants who replaced us in December moved out. That was more than sufficient time for Terisa, age 3.5, to fall madly in love with Elias (actually, he was targeted before we even arrived). Elias in turn demonstrated he's a remarkably gracious and good-humored 9-year-old.

Elias is spending this week at a summer camp at the Weiherhof school, practically in our backyard. He attended the same camp last year, and we thought it would be a good way for him to meet up with kids again and hone his German. The teachers were delighted to see him this morning, and Elias was delighted to reconnect with three of his best school friends. After camp, Elias went across the street to trade soccer cards with his faithful pen-pal and fellow camper Johannes.

Love's Tempests

There's a certain sound that a door makes when it closes and locks behind you. When you are on the outside of your apartment door with your child, signing for a package from DHL at the building entrance, and you hear that click, and the DHL guy hears the click too and looks up wide-eyed from his electronic signature device and asks with concern whether you have your key with you, and you and your child are standing there, both in sock feet, and you say "um, no, but, um, we'll be OK"--that's when you're grateful for a neighbor like Frau Ht.

Our apartment building has one or two apartments on each floor. In the two months we've lived here, I've seen a grand total of six neighbors, four of them just once. Frau Ht. is our first-floor neighbor, so we see her somewhat regularly in the back yard. We invited her over for a glass of wine two nights ago, and because she is generous with foreigners, she insisted we abandon siezening right off the bat.

So today, after the door locked behind us, we paid Frau Ht. a visit, and she kindly took us in and kept us entertained for the next three hours. (Stefan had forgotten his cell phone, so my increasingly desperate phone calls to him at work were being received across the hall in our living room). Halfway through our pleasant, wide-ranging conversation, Frau Ht. paused and introduced us to (bestill my beating heart) "Glotze"--German soap operas.

The show we watched today (Sturm der Liebe, episode 923) had it all: the Dumped on Good Woman and the Evil Rich Woman with the Heart Defect (switched in the neo-natal unit as babies!); the Kind-Hearted Pretty Young Thing who was still attractive even when poutily miffed at her Sympathetic Boyfriend the Aspiring Hotelier; the Manic Depressive Who Wouldn't Take Her Pills; the Simple Bavarian Country Couple who served as a foil to all those nasty rich people and showed what it meant to be a loving family (who needs money and hotels anyway?); the Blossoming Bavarian Country Daughter, who, despite her simple attire, radiated with natural beauty; the Handsome but Geeky Blond Guy who had such an obvious fondness for the chaste Blossoming Bavarian Country Daughter that he happily spent an evening playing card games with her family next to the Kachelofen (tile oven) in the small wood-paneled living room with deer antlers and handmade regional pottery lining the walls and then (ha ha) spent the night on the sofa despite the Simple Bavarian Country Couple's hopeful insinuations that maybe tonight would be the night he would finally deflower the Blossoming Bavarian Country Daughter; the Ruggedly Handsome Doctor, who romantically danced in the woods without music with the Dumped on Good Woman (who resisted the temptation to answer her cell phone) but appears to be in cahoots somehow with her enemy the Evil Rich Woman with the Heart Defect (who is the mother of the Sympathetic Boyfriend the Aspiring Hotelier); two Power-Abusing Male Hotelier Elders, one of whom switched those innocent babies so many years ago (oh, how could he?) and the other of whom was once the lover of the Manic Depressive Who Wouldn't Take Her Pills.

Most educational for me was the iciness with which the Dumped on Good Woman and the Evil Rich Woman with the Heart Defect siezened. For his part, Elias learned that every time a phone rang, the music changed and you could expect the character answering the phone to dash out of the room without finishing his prosecco.

Ode to the dishwasher

Germany has a population density of about 230 people per square kilometer, compared to about 30 people/km² in the United States. Unoccupied space is precious. As a result, Germans are the world's masters at packing a maximum of stuff into a minimum of space.

Consider the kitchen, which has every modern appliance a person might need. I have already mentioned the three foot high refrigerator, an invention that encourages living for the moment rather than planning for the future. There's also the diminutive oven, into which grateful turkeys all over Europe will never fit, and the pull-out hood over the stove. But the appliance I like the most in our kitchen is the dishwasher. It is just the right size to clean a day's worth of dishes.

In particular, I am verliebt (enamored) with the top rack. Rather than unceremoniously dumping your silverware into a basket--a basket that occupies prime real estate that could otherwise be used for at least two bowls and maybe also a plate--you thoughtfully place each piece of silverware on the top rack. The utensils have to be placed sideways: lay them flat and they collect water. Loading the rack gives you an opportunity to greet and appreciate each delicate dessert fork, each silver dessert spoon. For the obsessive compulsive, there is a certain soothing quality to placing all the butter-covered knives neatly between the tray's plastic prongs, and to aligning all the dinner forks and soup spoons--never touching!--in the same direction. The sharp and serrated cutlery rest safely perpendicular to the other utensils--you will never cut yourself reaching blindly into an overfilled basket--and despite the rack's short stature, it always welcomes the odd ladle or lonely spatula. And then comes that special moment, after the dishwasher is done running, when you pull out the rack and all the silverware glistens quietly below your gaze, and you are at peace with the world.

Scoping out the 'hood

Today in a brochure about kids' summer camps, I read a word even longer than Hochsicherheitsgefangene: Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz. A whopping 27 letters to say "asylum seekers' monetary aid." I don't expect to have many opportunities to incorporate that into conversation (compared to the ever-practical Hochsicherheitsgefangene), but it's nice to have another specimen for the Museum of Impressively Long German Words--a phrase, incidentally, that Stefan says you can't effectively translate as a single word. Also in the museum is German's answer to "antidisestablishmentarianism": "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitaensgattin" ("Danube steamboat captain's wife").

We saw our future apartment for the first time today. Grungy from the outside, but quite nice from the inside. Special bonus: an upright piano! The apartment is furnished and, to our relief, fully equipped with towels, dishes, etc. There's enough room to accommodate visitors, so start booking those airplane tickets. We move in August 1.

Saying Elias' school is right around the corner makes the school sound farther away than it is. Elias will have to walk out the front door, head left a few meters, then turn left into the schoolyard behind our apartment building. In addition to the school, there are two bakeries, two pharmacies, a grocery store, a farmers' market, and a hardcore bicycle shop within two blocks of the apartment building, plus the Stadt Garten (I was corrected today for calling it the Stadt Park) less than a kilometer away. We've clearly lucked out.