Thursday, January 29, 2009

29 January 2009 - Stressing on Strasses

Apologies for the delay in posting. The last few days have been pretty long and just a bit more crazy than usual. For starters, on Monday we had the apartment "handover," which I thought would last about 15 minutes and consist of the provision of keys, a quick tour of the basement area to show me my parking spot and the storage area and, um, maybe ringing the doorbell. Yeah, not so much. Birgit from the relocation company (who was so helpful in helping me find the apartment in the first place) was there as my wing person. I assumed that the the rental agent (who I don't think works for the rental company, but nevertheless is getting a good chunk of change for hooking me up with my place) would be there or, since her renter-finding was done, someone from the rental company. Not surprisingly, I underestimated the process and the number of people who would be participating in the process.

The rental agent was indeed there. AND someone from the rental company. And some other random person who didn't seem to do anything. And a few minutes later a woman representing the builder (based on her business card, though also supported by the drill bits that fell out of her German-version-of-a-Carhartt coat, she is an engineer and the site manager) also showed up. Um, the handover took over two hours. It involved going over every square millimeter of the apartment checking for marks on the floor, scratches on the glass, other potential damage, and general spotting of dirtiness. Birgit clearly had done this before and set to work filling out a detailed checklist that the landlord provided. Soooo glad she was there. Plus that gave me time to shoot the breeze with the site manager, asking a bunch of questions about the building structure (kind of a stucco-like fully insulated outside surface and then an inner wall made out of chalk concrete or something like that, with internal walls created from the type of framing I'm more familiar with), the electricity, the tile material, and a bunch of other random questions. (Hey, I'm not Sparky's little sister for nothing!) I also confirmed that the place was entirely without lighting except for on the balcony where external lighting fixtures were in place so that everything looked uniform on the outside. I was joking that if I ever needed light, now I'd know where to go. I should know by now not to joke....

Monday night I was supposed to meet two colleagues from the UK at the Sheraton Offenbach Hotel where we were all attending an anti-corruption conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. The conference materials listed it as being located in Frankfurt/Offenbach on Berlinerstrasse 111. I had been on that street last weekend and figured I knew where I was going, but typed the address into Bonnie's navigation system just to be sure. She easily found the street, but not lucky number 111. Odd. Well, how difficult could it be, right? So I headed out to Berlinerstrasse. About half an hour later I had seen no sign whatsoever of a Sheraton and the neighborhood seemed almost sketchy, so I turned around for a second run. My bag with the conference brochure was in the trunk, so I couldn't check for the hotel's number, so I tried calling the guys on my BlackBerry. Which promptly swore at me in German, saying something about "kosten," which I interpreted as it being unwilling to make international calls as I hadn't been approved for such costly things. Grrrr.....

So what to do? I couldn't find anywhere to pull over, but recognized the 'hood as being near my new apartment. Hmmm..... So I set a course for home and pulled into the garage, figuring I could find the number and make a call from there. No signal while underground. Grrrr.... So I grabbed my IKEA lamp out of the trunk and headed up to my unit. Where I realized that the light bulbs for said lamp were in a different bag in Bonnie's trunk. Grrrrr..... So, you guessed it, I used the BlackBerry light to find the conference information in my bag, then had to go out onto the well-lit balcony to actually read said conference information. Which included no number for the hotel. So I had to look it up on the BlackBerry browser, which of course I could have done without the aid of the balcony light, but it was what it was.

The person who picked up the phone at the hotel seemed confused when I was asking for the cross-street on Berlinerstrasse. Um, yeah, they're in Offenbach, not Frankfurt. Thanks for inferring on the conference materials with Frankfurt/Offenbach that you were in Frankfurt. Grrrr..... I made it there about 10 minutes later and, with dining service being meant to savor the experience, didn't make it home until midnight. It would be the first of several long days this week.

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