I reckon the last two posts qualify me to attend the Whiny Ex-Pat Bloggers German Meet Up, but now I have a confession to make: I like Germany. I like (some) Germans. I eat Maultaschen and Zwiebelkuchen with Neuer Wein, I like Käsespätzle and Krautschupfnudeln and Flädlesuppe and when I visit Britain I’m shocked at the poor quality of bread there and wonder why I can’t buy a crate of 24 bottles of beer for six pounds. Or three pounds, if I was prepared to drink Oettinger .
I also share a house (Germans would call it a villa, well okay, eine Villa, but for me, the term “Villa” implies warm weather and as it was –25°C almost every single night in February – as far as I’m concerned, it’s a largish house. A badly insulated largish house) with two German couples who are very, very nice. And laid back. Easy-going. In summer we sit outside in the garden and barbecue, or have brunch together and ignore the list that the house owner has hung up in the cellar explaining which week is Kehrwoche week for each household. It’s not that we don’t do it; as a general rule I mow the lawn and clear the snow in winter, but I’ve never mopped the communal stairwell or swept the path in front of the house – someone does it, when it needs to be done. I live in a house with non-anally-retentive Germans (yes they do exist). Okay, the couple that sleep directly beneath my bedroom did once ask me if I could keep the noise down as it was 3 a.m. and they needed to work the next day, but I now know to either use more lubricant or tie the gag tighter. But all in all I live with “good” Germans.
The house is on the outskirts of Stuttgart, in a quiet residential street, in a well, a well-off area (at least judging by the cars parked outside – I recently hired a Porsche Cayenne Turbo* for the weekend and nobody batted an eyelid. I wanted a large car to purchase disposable furniture from IKEA, and if one has to purchase furniture from Ikea, then you want to be able to get it back to your house very quickly. I took my foot off the gas on the Autobahn when the needle touched 250kmh (155 mph), not because I was worried at the way I was passing scenery and other cars in a blur, you understand, but because the flat-pack box of Skrötumhår was vibrating and I didn’t want it to get chipped).
So to sum up, I live in a nice house in a nice area with nice Mitbewohner. My landlady lives on Lake Constance – a fair distance away. Almost perfect.
Two weeks ago I received a phone call from my landlady that she “just happened to be driving past the house” (it’s a dead-end street 150 miles away from her home) and had noticed that the curtains that she had kindly provided had been altered and would like to have a quick look at the apartment, just to check everything was okay.
Damned right I’d changed the curtains, they were horrible, nasty net curtains and I’d replaced them with layered chiffon in orange and royal blue, with a thick, cream-coloured curtain behind them. Looks gorgeous, dahling.
And then I heard nothing from her. I had a guest who not only was happy that the people who sleep beneath my bedroom were on holiday, but also scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom until they shined. So when the landlady appeared on my doorstep a few hours after I’d taken said guest to the airport, I thought to myself “Bollocks, the flat will never be this clean again, let her see it in this condition and it will keep her quiet forever”. In retrospect a mistake. The apartment was in fact a disgrace. I am apparently a Schwein, a Sau, and “es siehst so aus als ob Türken hier wohnen”. Not only that but the flowerpots on the inside of the windowsill should be removed and she didn’t like the way I’d put bookshelves around the flat.
Despite being able to speak German reasonably well and being generally very polite it took me over ten minutes to translate “well you can shove the apartment up your arse, bitch”.
*I actually hired an Astra Estate, but a Porsche Cayenne Turbo was all they had left and they gave it to me for the same price.
German Phrase For Today: “Ist im Mietvertrag vereinbart, dass der Mieter bei seinem Auszug die Wohnung immer renovieren muss, ist das unwirksam. Die Unwirksamkeit erfasst auch eine eventuelle zweite Absprache im Mietvertrag, die die laufenden Renovierungsarbeiten betrifft (BGH VIII ZR 335/02).” - Think I’m decorating before I move out?
Song playing as this was published: Heather Nova - “I Miss My Sky”
Being German myself I think, some german ladies usually just need to get laid desperately. Germans need more sex. they would be much friendlier in general. I think, I should go into politics and safe my country.
yuk. I hope you don’t have to move. I hate to move. Or are have you already decided?
I don’t whine all that much about Germany either. Personally, I find Germans rather friendly (at least in my region) and I really love the lifestyle here as compared to the one I had when I lived in Texas. Talk about culture shock.
The good thing about living in a place where the old people outnumber the under 35s 10-1 is that apartments become free quite often.
I feel bad saying that now lol
but at least she was happy with kitchen you re-designed, oder?
There’s a flat availiable above where i used to live.
that girl: ” I think, some german ladies usually just need to get laid desperately” - listen, it’s not as if I haven’t been trying to help the situation in general, but I can only do so much…
ryan: Hi! Already decided I’m afraid - and actually, it’s given me a deadline to get my act together and decide what I really want to do and live. There are loads more reasons why I’m not happy here, but the post was getting a trifle long. We (the people who live in the house) have realised that the retired guy in the house on the other side of the street is a good friend of the landlady, has a copy of the list of who should sweep the street and watches us. The binoculars aren’t for birdwatching after all - he’s looking into our homes - you can’t, in fact, see the colour of my curtains from the street. This is not a good thing to do in a country with strict privacy laws, especially when the people who live beneath me are both lawyers.
Belinda: Ho, Ho! Best thing about this place is that everyone who lives here is around about the same age and we understand each other well, we get on. The people who live in the house next door are the same. It’s the only reason I’ve stayed here so long.
Devonboy: The kitchen isn’t installed, all I have at the moment is three wall cupboards and the worksurfaces - and they’re still in boxes. The rest of the order has been cancelled. Money well saved, methinks. As for your old apartment, what about the people that live downstairs? Actually if I remember correctly weren’t the people on either side of you two a bit odd (as well)?
Well sure, if you’re going to judge a country by its Mehlspeisen and beer (even Oettinger) then Germany is OK, I suppose.
Most people are nice enough, though it just takes one bad apple to mess things up. Too bad that old bat has to make your life miserable.
Did she really say all that to you? Did she really call you a schwein and Turk comment?
I’d be livid. I might have “helped” her down the stairs after that one.
“I’d replaced them with layered chiffon in orange and royal blue, with a thick, cream-coloured curtain behind them” …….I think we need to revisit the much earlier post about leaving your masculinity at the border. Maybe we should go shoot something and grill it up on the barbeque to get the old testosterone back to proper levels.
jen: Yep, that’s what she said, well screamed really. Loud enough that other people in the house could hear what she was saying and they’ll back me up. I can’t decide whether I want to make life difficult for the woman (as the other people in the house think I should - the lawyers downstairs have already formulated several letters for me that got sent today “bearing in mind your frankly racist comments about people of Turkish ethnicity, we presume you are not actively seeking an Anatollian Nachmieter“), or whether I just can’t be bothered - I’ve had enough hassle this year and just want to get out a.s.a.p. You’re right, I should have “helped” her down the stairs, but I was still doing my open-mouthed, did that just happen? thing. It took me a couple of minutes before I went down after her and we had a quiet, polite “I don’t appreciate being spoken to in that manner” conversation. Sort of.
820: Well when I say orange, it’s more ochre - I find the gold accentuates the light so much more - it’s completely fabulous!
Actually, I kicked a cat today, does that count? Okay, it was accidentally, but surely that’s worth a couple of masculinity points?
Ok, kicking the cat counts as long as you didn’t feel TOO guilty about it. BTW, WTF is ochre???? Oh well, since you can’t use them for curtains anymore perhaps you could fashion a nice dress (I mean suit) out of them?
WTF is ochre? You’re right, it is a bit Spring 2005 collection.
And it wasn’t just a cat it was a kitten, so extra bonus points. And I don’t feel guilty for kicking an animal that was stupid enough to walk out in front of me exactly as I was passing. If I’d been driving (or wearing heavy boots) it would have been natural selection in action.
And in other news I got a paper accepted only four years after the results were completed….
Sorry, not that impressed. I’ve got crap sitting around that woulda been, coulda been, shoulda been published years ago. It’s all been proven wrong in the interim so what’s the point in publishing now? Oh well, perhaps I’ll take my cue from you and submit it anyway just so I can frame the reviews. I would like a reprint (who does those anymore?) if you don’t mind.
If she literally called you a “Schwein” or a “Sau” and if she said something like “es sieht so aus, als ob Tuerken hier wohnen”, then you you’ve got every right under the sun to sue the living daylight out of her. I am being serious here.
820: I don’t even have a pdf example yet, and I’m only second author, the point was that my former boss submitted it without even telling me - I just got an e-mail from him saying “that paper you wrote was accepted, let’s send the other data to Cell” - he has a long history of being ever-so-slightly overoptimistic. The data is still relevant and there’s so much of it that there could be two, say, Development papers in there, but no, he wants to merge it together and send it to Cell. I have plenty of useless crap data lying around too (doesn’t everyone), but this should have been published years ago - I wrote the papers, he was just never quite happy. God, that man annoyed me.
Konstantin: I know. That’s all I’m saying here - and that she’s also pissed off the guy downstairs - a man who starts (and ends) conversations with phrases like “Laut Entscheidung 93/623/EWG der Europäischen Union vom 22.12.1999, am 18.04.2000 im § 24 der Viehverkehrsverordnung in nationales Recht umgesetzt, …” and well, we’ll see….
Overoptimistic?? Every paper we produce goes to Nature Medicine first and works it’s way down to Cancer Research. Every week my PI opens his door and screams “There has been a paradigm shift and all other researchers are losers”. He’s a surgeon without a clue. To hear him talk, he personally is responsible for curing cancer. There are a couple of nice stories there but you know who I am so I’m not telling them.
820: Reminds me of a cartoon I had about the 12 different kinds of researchers at the NIH, one was the optimist, his quote was “these results have important implications for the cure of cancer within our lifetime”. I’ve used that quote in every single grant application I ever made.
Cell won’t take it - they won’t! Genes and Development might. But it’s basically two reasonable papers that I could have as 1st and last author, that wouldn’t hurt right now, even if it is in the journal of research that was done 5 years ago…..
Oh well, a paper is a paper and if your name is on it…it counts. Good luck with Cell, I’ll be checking.
Yo baby,
Just to make sure that I am not going to come across anti-Germany or steroetyping them all as anal (as I was married to one of them.. and most of my best friends are German). Nonetheless, as we know it, not many landlords would say such a thing as “It looks like I have had a Turkish living in my flat”…
We have to call a spade a spade and here obviously, you don’t have the luck…
Hmmm, redecorating? That one you cannot avoid… Forget about our student days,,,.. those days are long gone, welcome to Deutschland:-))
155 mph?
Mark: The specs say that the speed limiter kicks in at 165mph and there’s a stretch of the A81 between Stuttgart and Heilbronn where it’s flat, and dead straight for about 3 miles, with no speed limit.
The car is rdiculous though - Porsche just shouldn’t make sports cars that weigh two and a half tonnes and are almost six feet high - and it does 13 miles to the gallon….
Specs are here
http://www11.porsche.com/uk/models/cayenne/cayenne-turbo/featuresandspecs/
Nina: Decorating? Read the phrase of the day….. Hope you’re doing well, e-mail address the same?
We, well people, have them over here. I think I overtook Jordan in her’s back along.
155 is a staggering speed. Work it out in m/s that’d be scary. What was your previous PB? Or was it higher than 155 already anyway?
It puts my 120 along the M25 past Chertsey last night into the shade. But then the Porsche has got 2.82 times as many CCs beneath the bonnet.
Saw a Porsche Carerra yesterday with a Stuttgart plate as it happens. A neat one too. Something like S:67Z
Mark: 120 on the M25, you’re a very naughty boy. And If you’re going to get into physical maths, think about how much momentum that thing has at that speed.
Easily a land-speed PB, although I’m not sure how fast a plane is going at the moment its wheels touch down.
Scary wasn’t the speed - it was how it felt disturbingly comfortable, previous highest was about 130 and that felt like the front of the car was going to lift off the road. Going so fast shouldn’t feel so slow.
Scariest of all, of course, was filling the petrol tank before giving it back to the nice people at Avis. Never again. If I can ever afford a Boxster, I’d have one - even if Clarkson thinks they’re hairdresser’s cars. Porsche shouldn’t make SUVs - it’s not what they do, it’s as if British Leyland had made cars that people wanted to buy or something - totally against the ethos of the company.
Honestly, not wanting to take the landlady’s side…
but HOW EXACTLY DID your apartment look like?
I’m a little touchy with renters destroying other people’s property willy-nilly. And lawyers “who start senteces with…” can stcik it up theirs. If they were any good, they’d own their own villa.
Saprky: In former days when I was a Vermieter (in a much less expensive part of Germany) we had someone who painted over our ca. 1900 hand-carved oak panels in the entrance hall with white gloss paint. We were not amused. I’m aware of what it’s like to trust someone else with your property, even if they are paying for the priviledge.
In this case though, I’d been entertaining someone whom I wanted to impress for the previous week - the flat was spotless and (thanks to a dropping a bowl of moussakka on the kitchen floor related incident) the kitchen had been thoroughly scrubbed less than 24 hours previously. She seemed to take offence at the fact that I had changed the curtains she’d thoughtfully provided (they’ve been dry-cleaned, sealed in a bag and will be re-hung when I move out) had flowers on the window sill and the positioning of my bookshelves. I, of course, immediately got a neighbour to look at it as someone independent who can attest too its tidiness.
I suspect that something else had annoyed her, before she saw my flat. I pay regularly (and I was shocked to learn the number of people who don’t), I’m neat, tidy, quiet, get on with the other people who I live with, understand what it’s like to be a Vermieter, and like everyone else in the house is young in a we’re making money and renting here until we can afford to buy, kind of way.
The thing that convinced me she’d lost it was when she accused me of smoking in the flat - I’ve had asthma since I was one year old and smoking in my flat (by anyone) just isn’t going to happen, my lungs are too sensitive to it, she was, however, adamant.
I’m a little touchy with renters destroying other people’s property willy-nilly as well, but it has crossed my mind in the past few days…..
Aye,
Alright, you got even this skeptic convinced: The lady IS insane.
Sparky: As I’ve pointed out to some other commenters, there are some legal points and actions I could take that I’m not pubishing on an open blog.
Yes, this blog generally goes for the over-exaggerated absurd, but I’ve reached the “don’t fuck with me” point on this one…
Ein bisschen off-topic, ok, aber da ich keinen E-Mail-Button finde: Haben Sie vielleicht Lust, im Stuttgart Blog mitzuschreiben? Das wäre schön.