It could be bronzed and used as a doorstop

Jewish Memorial Berlin

It is amazing the amount of crap that collects in the short time a person is away. Of course most of it is not useful to me.

I am having a particularly busy period because at this time of the year Suzanne gets lots of mail from banks and finance companies. I have to take a sack down to clear our letterbox.

Suzanne is the person who used to live here – with her husband - now more than three years ago - and left without bothering to tell anyone about her new address. Perhaps she was in a hurry. 

I returned mail to the senders for about two years but then gave up because it was clear that neither she nor they cared much and I was still getting mail from the same people all the time – after sending back hundreds of letters.  Since then I have been throwing it all in the bin.

I opened a pile once. It included bank statements, dividend statements, cheques, bills – or sorts of stuff. She seems to manage without it. 

Some people can do this – not me – I need to be highly organised. The thought that I was missing mail – any mail – would send me into a panic. I would chase junk mail deliverers if they missed my letter box. But there may be a special I need this week!

Suzanne clearly does not have this problem. Her husband was better organised – we get no mail for him. Although I do know that he is a liar – he lied about the air conditioning. I hope they have a housekeeper and cook in Dubai – I suspect that she is not very tidy.

In another act of complete bastardry the Vienna Polizei have given me a speeding ticket while I was on a mercy mission.

I was at Shopping City Sud buying urgent supplies of wine at Wein and Co to replenish the cellar prior to the arrival of Liz and Darryl - and was caught doing 63 in a 50 zone. (All this is KPH)

But – and here’s the rub – the Polizei were standing less than 30 meters in front of the 70  sign. Now that is just ridiculous. This is just revenue raising nonsense. 63 – hardly a dangerous speed in a Mercedes Benz E 200 – which can stop on half a Euro - with a metal fence on one side and a shopping centre wall on the other – with no possibility of a pedestrian appearing – unless from the sky by parachute - or out of a person hole. 

I am of course totally pissed off because I now have more speeding tickets than Cate – who drives like Sebastian Vettel when she is out on the open road – and is never caught.

Except on one famous occasion when she was caught and passed on an autobahn by a Fiat Panda. Cate was – as usual – hammering along at about 140 – and being passed by gigantic Audis and BMWs – when we heard this terrible whining noise which got louder and louder. Is that Sarah Palin?

Thinking our gear box was overheating and readying itself to explode we started to panic - when this ancient Fiat Panda – circa 1982 - howling like a banshee – hauled itself up alongside us and – blowing massive amounts of blue smoke – dragged itself slowly and noisily off into the distance. Holy shit!

Clearly this man was on a mission and had no further use for his car after this trip. I am guessing he was delivering it for a friend who wanted it in a hurry. I am guessing that the only thing it would be good for on arrival would be to be bronzed and used for a doorstop. As a car it would be well and truly fucked up beyond all recognition as a going concern. 

Cate was so stunned by the audacity of this ancient beast she was unable to respond. In fact she became quite circumspect and hardly went over 150 all the way home. This is always a relief and enables me to unclench my knuckles and other delicate parts of my anatomy. 

But every time I exceed the speed limit by even a smidgeon I get nailed. It’s just not fair.

But I do like to ride the Autobahn train when I am boxed in by giants. I will tell you about this tomorrow. Shit it is scary!

  

Never forget the gummi bears

I had a brief encounter with Frau Katzenjammer today. She was back in the apartment doing those tidying up things and handing over keys and stuff like that and we said our good byes. We said we might see each other in America because she and Herr Katzenjammer are probably going to end up there as well after a brief sojourn in their home town of Hamburg. I said sure thing knowing that the chances of the Katzenjammers ending up in Peoria are somewhat remote - but whatever.

I sometimes in the past tried to speak German to Frau and Herr Katzenjammer but they just used to give me a little smirk – sort of a smirkette – gritted their ears - and ignored this.

They both spoke grammatically perfect English with almost no trace of an accent – as do almost all young professional people in Austria and Germany – and had no need to listen to people mangling their language – which is perfectly capable of being mangled by native German speakers –it being such a bastard of a language in the first place.

Incidentally – I have been waiting for the inestimable esbboston to comment on the origin of Katzenjammer – but he has not. It derives from the cartoons from my childhood ‘The Katzenjammer Kids’. This is course is not the name of my former neighbours but something that popped into my head when I started writing about them.

So now you think Cate and I are going to settle down and rest until our trip to Norway at Christmas don’t you? Wrong.

In two weeks Gwenyth arrives and then we are going on a two week cycling trip from Bruges to Amsterdam. The cycling takes only 7 days – you could do it in a day if you really tried – but we are taking a couple of days at either end to tour Bruges and Amsterdam.

It is one of those boat and barge things but this time we really are on a proper barge with air conditioning and good food and stuff like that.

I know you think that Cate is always on holidays but really she usually just takes very short breaks. This one is a bit longer than usual.

Her boss – Huggy Bear – complains whenever she goes on leave – but also complains whenever he sees how much leave she has accrued – but he does not really mind if she is on leave as long as she works while she is away and takes phone calls – which she does – on the basis that there is no one else to do it.

I think that when Rozalin tells him Cate is taking two weeks off he may pop a foofle valve but she will have an emergency supply of black gummi bears on hand as these work on him like adrenalin and these will bring him to his senses.  

Cate never goes into his office to discuss sensitive issues unless she has a supply of gummi bears with her.

Vienna is an expensive city

Tiergarten Berlin

We are home again.

We saw lots of new and exciting stuff in Berlin this time including some more buildings that escaped complete annihilation by Bomber Harris during 1944 and 1945.

He would have been most distressed to learn that anything at all remained tall enough for a Meerkat to see over without standing on a banana box  - but indeed some rather beautiful buildings have been lovingly restored – albeit with considerable amounts of bomb and battle damage – but this does add to their charm and character.

Our favourite place was called Einsteins. I don’t think it was related to Einstein Bros. in the USA because it did not sell bagels – but it had great coffee and croissants – and Cate had a jar of jam – because they always sell the croissants without butter or jam and they are a bit unsurprising without anything at all on them – but the jam caused a problem in security on the way out of Germany. She was allowed to keep it.

Our rather relaxed travel habits have finally rubbed off onto Liz and Darryl - who now roll out of bed at about 10:00 AM and approach the day in a decidedly haphazard manner.

It seems that they are now discovering the meaning of holidays (i.e. they are different from work – these are days where you get up at 6:00 AM and go to an office).  And it is not necessary when visiting a foreign city to visit every single point of interest – some of which are not interesting at all.

We arrived back to discover that the Katzenjammers have fled back to Germany. The last of their possessions were being loaded into a truck as we got home and their apartment is now in darkness. So we are alone on the top floor of our building and will have to wait to see if we get new neighbours.

I also got the bill for the new keys. This was €617.94. This converts to $849 at today’s exchange rate. Vienna is an expensive city.

Oh and I forgot to tell you when it happened. The new SIM card for the Handy/Cell/Mobile phone was Fedexed to Peoria by my son Lenny and arrived on time. As decreed by the Foo Fairy I burned  some chicken feathers and hog scrapings while singing the team song of the Peoria Indians (who at the time were playing Ohio across the road in Victory Field).

It worked and in the nick of time I was able to make my banking transaction and save the day – and my bacon.