Guten Morgen!
I am here! In Berlin! In . . . a flat. My huge windows are flung wide, and the church bells are ringing again, clamoring around the courtyard my flat faces. Between the peals, I can hear other Sunday morning sounds—a man unlocking his bike, a gabbling child, an unseen neighbor puttering around doing chores. The sun is shining and the sky is blue blue blue. It’s a little chilly. I smelled autumn yesterday as I crunched a leaf, but it is supposed to warm up again next week.
In Germany, to access all kinds of services and benefits, you must get your Anmeldung—register where you live with the city. To do that, of course, one must have a place to live that’s a little more permanent than a hotel room. Thus, there’s a whole marketplace of furnished, short-term rentals, geared towards businesspeople, foreign students, and new arrivals. In addition to needing a place to live because I am a person, I needed a flat because, to settle into my life here, and, within the next 88 days, to get my residency permit (student visa), I need a place that will give me the Wohnungsgebergestätingung—the landlord’s affirmation that yes, I live here. In spite of its reputation, German bureaucracy is apparently rather a disaster of late; folks point to the Syrian refugee crisis as the start of the problems, exacerbated, of course, by the pandemic. So I was very pleased with myself when, a few weeks ago, I secured an Anmeldung appointment for this coming Tuesday morning, only days after my arrival! I have mastered the system! Ha!
To try to make a long and tortured story short, I was informed the day before I was to fly that the flat for which I had a signed lease (and the Wohnungsgebergestätingung) was no longer available. (I am almost certain this is illegal, and now that I am here, I will be finding out.) I scrambled and found a different, really lovely-looking place, just a block from the first, and secured it through a more reputable company.
When I landed in Amsterdam, I eagerly checked my email to find instructions for getting into the flat—I had two heavy carry-on bags, two giant rolling suitcases, and a bike in a box, so knowing where I was going and how to get there felt important—only to find that my booking instructions were for a flat all the way across town, in Charlottenburg. In between running across all of Schiphol looking for my gate and going through customs, I called and texted the booking agent I’d been working with. She apologized profusely and offered me the apartment that was actually at the address I’d thought I was booking. It’s not what I would have chosen—entirely too much tan, and no balcony—but in desperation, I said yes, I’d take it, and boarded my flight for Berlin.
When I landed in Berlin, I again eagerly checked my email looking for check-in instructions, but the only email I found was one cancelling my booking entirely. So, another phone call. I waited half an hour in the wifi of Brandenburg airport, staring out at oppressively grey skies, not panicked, but not exactly calm, and was finally sent my new instructions.
So here I am, in an objectively lovely flat that I did not choose, swimming in tan and with an accent wall the color of a band-aid, on pins and needles hoping that my Wohnungsgebergestätingung will arrive tomorrow so that I can keep my appointment on Tuesday morning.
Another of the challenges of this flat is that it, unlike the other two that I had reserved, is on the second floor. Astute readers will recall the bike in a box. My plan had been to carry it into the hallway of my flat and let it sit until I’d gotten situated and could, at my leisure, bring it to a bike shop to be reassembled. But it was not to be. I lugged a 50 pound bag up two flights of stairs. And a 60 pound bag. And my two less-heavy but still-quite-heavy carry-ons. But the bike I simply could not get up the stairs. It’s not that it was too heavy, it’s that it was too awkward. I tried twice, both times giving up halfway up the first flight of stairs when I realized that, if I got it up there, I would have to get it back down.
I eventually concluded that the only thing to do was get it to a bike store right away. As the rain began again, I walked to the nearest bike shop, just around the corner, only to see that it appeared no longer to be a bike shop (which would explain why they hadn’t answered their phone). So, I went back to the flat and called the next closest place, which told me it couldn’t take the bike until Tuesday. Then, I called the third closest place, and they agreed to take it, but they were closing in half an hour.
So, despite the rain, the frustration, the ache creeping into my muscles from a day of carrying a years’ worth of clothes on my shoulders, the sleep deprivation, and, most crucially, the indignity, I steeled myself to get my bike, some way or other, to the store . . . six blocks away.
First, I used the handles on the box to carry the bike—but they were so far apart that I had to put it down every six meters or so (I’m trying to assimilate!). After a block of this, as the rain splashed down and I realized that my fantasies of some kind-hearted neighbor stopping to help were not going to blossom into reality, I pulled out my new keys and laboriously sawed slits into the box closer together. This allowed me to carry the box farther in one go, but the cardboard cut into my fingers painfully. After another two blocks of this, with my fellow Berliners passing under their umbrellas with barely a second glance at me, I gave up that plan, too.
I dragged it. Through the wet streets, on first one rapidly deteriorating box-edge and then another, I got the bike to the store before it closed.
I am master of this city! Ha!