Saturday 19 January 2013

moving day (part the first) or needful things

The day is approaching, and although it has been on the horizon for some time I felt like there was more time always, or my new job to start that will have me migrating during the work week.

I will still get to come home on the weekends, but this arrangement is going to be intolerably strange I think in the beginning. I am, however, pleased with the little apartment we found near enough to everything to make driving unnecessary—I was never suited to driving in larger German cities in the first place and it would take some time to build up confidence and courage to not leave the car on the outskirts somewhere—which H and I started delivering some effects to recently. It came fully furnished, which is a bonus in itself—being able to avoid duplications for a temporary arrangement, and done so with a nice and personal touch.
As I spent a few hours alone in the room, however, thinking “hello, walls” my mind raced over a hundred artefacts that could it in this or that nook and corner. One can never think of everything, but it’s amazing how quickly one can build up and visualize the missing inventory, like when returning home after an extended vacation and the dimensions and relations of familiar things seem somehow exaggerated and being out-of-place is easier to spot. In any case, despite whatever was left out (that I could bring on my next trip), I had a rather large world globe from the early 1950s, a peripatetic library of books to read, and an antique butter-churn in a jar, which I consider far superior than any trifling convenience left out.
One item overlooked, probably more by my own carelessness than anything else, was the key to my postbox, which was also not labeled. Searching for the likely slot, I saw that I had a quite special fellow-occupant (Whom I hope to never meet and spoil the illusion) and that He does not have time for junk mail either. It will be a change, certainly, and although I walk already quite a bit, I could detect the difference in culture along urban streets already, like one is transported a bit more when accompanied by stately homes and enterprise, but I think everything will be OK.