I think it’s locking yourself out of your house. Before living in Germany, that one never would have occurred to me. Because it sounds preposterous.
In the U.S., you have to manually lock your door from the outside when you leave your house (unless you live in small town Texas, where you don’t even do that). That means you don’t need to realize your keys are missing until you can’t start your car.
Doors in Germany are locked by default, and can’t be permanently unlocked. This demotes the humble doorknob to “thing you can use to pull a door open.” Job automation truly does hit close to home, these days.
To those of us used to those noblest of doorknobs who work doubles as locking mechanisms, this means we don’t realize we’re missing our keys until we’re homeless. I’ve been homeless three times since moving here.
The First Time
Melodrama aside, the first time occurred as Roxana and I moved into our apartment. We had just carried a load of things from our temporary place, and I was ready to start building some sweet Ikea furniture, cursing like a goddam sailor. Roxana wanted to make another trip to the temporary place, so off she went, leaving me to my LACK bookshelf and 5,000 pounds of cardboard.
I promptly set to prepping the cardboard for disposal. If there’s anything that makes me crazier than dirty dishes, it’s idle cardboard in the workplace. I bundled it, tucked it under my arm, and banished that useless evil to the garbage in the courtyard. Then, it hit me so suddenly I felt psychic.
Oh, dammit.
But no big deal, right? Roxana was just down the street. She’ll be back soon. She was back soon, but I sat on the stoop for 40 minutes that rainy day, jumping at every sound of footsteps along the sidewalk. Like a puppy whose family is on vacation.
The first time was kid’s stuff, I admit. 40 minutes is almost no time, but that didn’t stop my mind from wandering to places like “she’ll take a nap over there and it will be hours before I can get back in.” I didn’t have my phone, and neither did she, so that was a possibility. Anyway, the second and third times were meatier experiences.
The Second Time
This took place maybe a week after the first time. Maybe 4 days, so sue me.
We didn’t have any connection to the Internet, so I had been making daily trips to a nearby coffee shop to use theirs and spend a crapload of money on coffee. I can order the pants off a cup of coffee in German, now. Ich moechte bitte eine tasse kaffee. Kleine, und zum mitnehmen. I haven’t learned how to say “booyah” yet, however.
Anyway. This time, the “dammit’ hit me the second I closed the front door behind me. It’s 1pm, and Roxana won’t get home from work until 7pm, so that was one hell of a dammit. After I stopped hating myself, though, things weren’t bad. I was on my way to drink coffee and use the Internet, after all. And I always make sure I have a book and my iPod in a backpack when I leave the house (making it really stupid that I can’t say the same thing about my apartment key). So, if bored came to really bored, I would still have The Red Wedding and the sweet soothing arrangements of Christos Antoniou to occupy my thoughts.
Long story short, I read e-mails and the news at the coffee shop, and then got my Westeros on at Luitpold Park. No bigs.
The Third Time
This dammit led me to a small, albeit fruitless adventure around Munich about 5 days ago. That puts it about 2-3 weeks after the second time.
Remember my last post, when I said that my work to get my Student Application would begin “tomorrow?” What that meant was that I planned to apply for a health insurance policy. Documents in hand and book in back, I set out to stake my claim on a future in Germany. Boy, was I proud.
I was proud, that is, until the second my front door shut behind me. Dammit.
The time was 1pm, again (hey I just realized that that’s 13:00–that’s spooky, right?). Armed with only an account of Dorne’s vengeful spite and some minor errands, I had to make the best of 6-7 hours. Let’s get to those errands, huh?
For once in my life (and I would bet the life of the universe, as well), accomplishing something as mundane as taking out a health insurance policy required almost no time at all. I type that for you now without even a hint of exaggeration. It took me 5 minutes in that office to apply for a policy. Add the 15 minute walk/subway trip to Hauptbahnhof, and the whole thing drained 20 minutes.
The time was 1:20pm. Armed with only an account of some spoilers I can’t conscientiously put to text and maybe one more errand, I had to make the best of 5:40-6:40 hours.
“I’ve got it!” I enthusiastically proclaimed to myself. “I’ll sign up for more German classes! Get that out of the way!”
No luck. The language school was closed for the entire day, since the German weekend hasn’t been standardized, yet. About 20 minutes from Hauptbahnhof to Rosenheimerplatz was all it took. All of those mental exclamation points, wasted on a closed office.
The time was 1:40pm. To make the most of the rest of my day, I did what I think any warm-blooded Muenchner would do in my position on a sunny day like that one. I bought a beer and went to the Englischen Garten.