AnarchE in Germany: Oh, Happy Day!

Today is a good day. Why? Because today, I finally have a couch in my apartment. When I moved over, I sold/gave away my older furniture with the plan of purchasing new furniture in Germany. Once I found my apartment, and knew the measurements, I promptly went - in June - to buy a couch and a spare bed. In America, I would have had both of them within 2 weeks at the latest.

This being Germany, I was told 10-12 weeks was the absolute fastest anything could show up. So I marked my calendar and about 9 weeks in, began following up. At this point I was told 12-14 weeks due to "summer holidays". Thank goodness I had kept all my email conversations and a copy of my contract- both of which stated 10-12 weeks being guaranteed. And thank goodness I have such a nice co-worker who took the time to call the furniture store and negotiate a delivery for when I was in town, and for when before my first guests arrived.

And so today, I now have my guest bed and my couch all set up and ready. While the deliverymen came almost 1/2 hour early, they were by far the nicest deliverymen I've had so far. They even tried to pull a couple jokes - and yes, they were German! When I let the first guy in, I explained that I was sorry, but that I only spoke a bit of German. I was proud of myself for saying this correctly in German. He then said no problem, and wanted to confirm that he was here to bring me my refrigerator, wardrobe and sink. When he saw my look of utter confusion, he then started laughing uproariously - and then explained, he was just kidding and that he had my bed and couch.

While he was bringing in the bed, enter my landlady. I'd just like to say I hit the landlady lottery. She lives on the 1st floor and saw the delivery truck. Remembering all my drama with boxes and boxes and boxes, she had come up to ensure that the deliverymen did their job this time, and actually took away all the packaging materials. She had quite a firm discussion with them about this - and I could tell that even the deliverymen were appalled that the boxes had been left with me before. My landlady then explained about various meter readings and maintenance events coming up, and wanted to make sure I was okay as she never sees me. I told her that I travel quite a bit, and I tend to leave early in the morning for work. She then had a look around my flat and complimented me on my furniture and was sure to let me know it was fine to hang pictures. Otherwise, my house would be naked (direct quote). And no one is wanting a naked house!

The couch is here! And it has a drawer and it also folds into a bed.. and yes, I need pictures on the wall, I know.

One of the delivery men also felt the need to show me several YouTube clips, which were of German public figures trying to speak English and not doing the greatest job. To be fair, their English was better than my German, but this guy thought it was the funniest thing ever and seemed a bit crestfallen that I didn't share in his extreme enjoyment.

The jokes continued when they tried to tell me that the second part of my couch was not gray, as ordered, but actually red. They were able to keep a straight face for about 3 seconds until my landlady actually smacked one of them on the arm with a piece of paper and told him to be nice. I ended up tipping them 20 Euro - for timeliness, cleanliness and also for overall entertainment value.
__

I think I've referenced my desire to try to take a more positive outlook on life. I'm generally a positive person but I suffer a bit from getting overly frustrated and angry. As part of an overall overhaul of many things (diet, exercise, stress level, etc), I've been trying to see the positive of every situation and not get bent out of shape by stupid things.

This morning, I went to the bank to take out the money for my delivery. I was told by the furniture company that cash was preferred as not every delivery driver would accept card. As a side note, I find the whole cash on delivery model pretty odd - especially considering a driver could end up with a healthy amount of cash in a given day - but apparently this is totally normal.

So I walked to my local Deutsche Bank. As the banks here keep super (in)convenient hours of 09:00 - 12:00 and then 13:00 - 16:00, I needed to go on a day when I was working from home. The walk to the bank is about 6 minutes and it is through leafy streets in my neighborhood. I got to the bank, and when I walked in, I was immediately greeted by this young German man and given a sunflower. He then proceeded to rattle off about 3 minutes of German not seeming to notice my completely confused face. I finally interjected to explain my limited language skills and to tell him that I was pretty sure he was trying to get me to fill out a survey about my account but that I had no idea why I had a sunflower. He switched to English and did confirm that they were trying to better their branch, and wanted feedback on customer experience. At no time, however, did he explain why he was handing out sunflowers. So now I have a sunflower.

I went to the counter, and in my best Germlish, explained that I needed to make a withdrawal from my account and here is my account number. All was well until I was asked for my passport. I pulled out my license only to be told that a driver's license is not considered proper ID in Germany and that they absolutely needed my passport.

I share this story because at this point I had two choices.

Choice A would have been to argue, be frustrated, let off a bit of passive aggressive snarkiness and stomp back to my flat, complaining to myself (and others) the entire way.

Choice B would have been to smile, thank the cashier for her help, and enjoy the walk back to my flat to get the passport - appreciating that it happens to be a beautiful day and that I'm seeing an area near where I live that I haven't seen before.

Choice A has been my default for a very, very long time. So today, I deliberately went with Choice B.

And I know this sounds really, really silly to a lot of you reading this, but Choice B was SO EASY!!! Yes, it was extra time. Yes, I had to hustle a bit to make it back in time for the delivery. And yes, it is a bit annoying that Germany doesn't take driver's license as a suitable form of ID. But I can't solve that, and getting upset was going to do me no good.

So I walked back and forth, kept a smile on my face and ended up making a nice contact at the local bank. And getting not 1, but 2 sunflowers! AND, I got a good look at the ubiquitous cigarette machines and gumball (?) machines which seem to be on every other corner.