sometimes the worst months turn out to be the best months!

I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t have the very best relationship with my landlords.  While I don’t particularly want to re-visit all of the “incidents”, let’s say, that transpired under that roof {okay, nothing that bad happened…this is getting cryptic), I do want to say this:  I moved in mid-September and by November 1st, I was ready for a new place.  Despite my efforts to find a new home, housing is really hard to come by in this area of Bavaria (which is why my friend Matt had to spend his first 2 weeks here living in a church and almost had to sign up for a room at the homeless shelter…not even kidding!!!!).

Let it be known that I am generally a happy person.  But it is hard to be happy when the home you retreat to at the end of each day feels nothing at all like a home.  And by February, I had dealt with so many ridiculous conflicts that I was contemplating faking my own death so that I could break my lease without legal implications.  Every time I sent cries for help to my mother via email, she’d answer with the same reply, “Keep looking for a place.  I’m praying that God provides something for you.”

It was mid-February when I decided to myself, “This has got to be the worst month of my life”.  I was getting yelled at on a daily basis by my landlords (mostly landlady) for there being too much of my hair in the carpet (she even asked me if I needed to see a doctor for my “hair loss problem”!), turning on the lights in my bedroom when I should be using the window for sunlight (sometimes I like to not be naked in front of open curtains) and doing too many loads of laundry (3-4 loads per month is “unebelievable”, apparently).  Just when I thought she’d run out of reasons to scream at me, I was informed I owed 262 euro for “excessive electricity usage”.  Trust me, I fled that apartment at every available chance (I spent a total of 3 or 4 days per week there, being gone every weekend) and there’s no possible way I even used enough electricity to amount to the arm and leg I was already paying them per month, let alone 262 euro on top of that.

So, I sat on my bed and cried.  I wanted to move out (duh), I just didn’t have a place to go.   I’d been checking online sites every day for months and had had no luck.  I’d even viewed a couple of rooms but both had 30-40 other prospective renters viewing the same room (I wasn’t exaggerating when I said the housing here is competitive).  I was especially stressed that Caroline was arriving in 2 weeks and I’d told her she could stay with me; was I supposed to contact her now and retract my offer? I emailed my boss in hysterics and asked her what I should do.  As a German woman in her early 40s, she’s the closest thing to a mom I have here.  If only I had known while typing that email, with tears rolling down my face, that my “German mom” would pull through, that this nightmare of events which had just taken place would prove to be the much-needed catalyst in my escape and that all my problems would be solved in a matter of days, once Piotr came to my rescue.

So then I moved (as you know).  And then I went to Ikea to furnish my new place (as you know).  And then Caroline arrived and we went straight to Salzburg (as you know).

And suddenly, being a happy person again wasn’t so hard anymore.

 

p.s. look at that Krapfen!