Ahhh….our things are finally here! I think moving companies should be placed in the same category as natural disasters: you never know when they are going to show up, they are totally out of your control, and all you can do is manage the damage after the incident has passed!

Moving out of New Jersey was easy, thanks to my amazing husband. I went to work one day, came home 13 hours later, and everything was in boxes. I left the next day for work, came home 13 hours later, everything was gone. Moving into Freiburg – not so easy.

All the backwards planning Joe and I have been doing since March 8^th, basically went down der Toilette! The original plan was to arrive in Germany on September 1^st, in-process until September 7^th, and then gladly accept our goods shipment. Things were scheduled to arrive “no later than” September 8^th. The idea was to have everything set and ready prior to the start of language training. Again, der Toilette!

We were told on August 10^th that the shipment (which was picked up in Jersey on July 20^th) was still sitting in Baltimore Harbor and wouldn’t leave until August 18^th-ish for a “no later than” September 18^th arrival in Germany. Ok, fine. I could have spent thirty less days living out of a suitcase, but what can we do? Then, once in Germany, we were told that Hurricane Irene had delayed all the shipments. After September 18^th we were told that the shipment was in-country, but held up in Bremen for customs. It was looking more like a “no later than” September 22^nd /23^rd arrival. Great! Who needs a chiropractor when you have solid wood floors and an air mattress? Finally, on the 25^th of September we got a call that everything would arrive “no later than” the next day. YEAH!! The phone rings again….oh….just kidding….we forgot about the street/parking closure that has to happen…what we really meant to tell you was “no later than” 10am on September 28^th. “No later than” 10am on the 28^th also turned into 12:30pm. 

Basically, “ein bisschen” and “no later than” should be placed in the following category: total fallacies.

When the trucks finally did come it was a whirlwind. Usually, we have the movers drop off the boxes as quickly as possible and then get them out of our house. Then, we unpack at our own speed and leave the boxes on the curb for recycling. Not the case this time. There are a dozen facets of recycling here and no curb to put your trash on…so the name of this PCS (Permanent Change of Station) game was to open the boxes as fast as possible, throw our stuff anywhere, and get the boxes back in the moving truck. We were pretty successful at this.

There were three guys, only one of which spoke English. This wasn’t really a problem, because there were bigger fish to fry. Like how to get our gigantic American furniture up the stairs, down the hallway, and turn the corners into the rooms. Challenge #1: The Brown Couch. Basically, the couch was too long to turn into the room and too wide to slide through the door. The movers tried and tried, using gestures and grunts to communicate while I fretted and concocted a new plan for arranging the furniture. After damaging the walls and door frame with the couch, we determined that it had to go down the hall, onto the balcony, turn around, back into the dining room, out the next balcony, and finally into the living room. Fingers crossed. It worked! Thank goodness for multiple balconies!

Challenge #2: The Rojo. Ahhh…my most favorite piece. One solid mass of furniture- heavy, tall, and red in all its glory! I really love the Rojo cabinet. It took all three movers and Joe to get it up to the third floor (really the fourth, because German floors start with 0). Then, how to get it to stand upright? It was seemingly way too tall! Panic set in. Did we bring this 1-ton piece of wood to Germany just to have it sit in the stairwell? A tape measure told us that it really would fit, it was just a matter of how!

So, off they went, just like the couch – down the hall, out to the balcony, turn around, and then back into the dining room. Except it had to be laid flat (like a bed) and then pushed vertical to actually fit. Tipping it diagonally was impossible. Rojo has been fondly re-named “bitch” by the Turkish/German/Romanian movers.

Ok – minimal damage there. After the dresser scraped the floor up, the next question we posed to the only English speaker was: Why are there so many screws left over after you assembled the bar chairs? Whatever, just leave it. Joe took the chairs apart later and put them back together with all the pieces. Don’t worry, they are safe to sit (and drink) in now.

Here are some of my favorite discoveries within the boxes. Unwrapping the salt and pepper shakers (from paper) to find salt EVERYWHERE! Lesson learned. Unwrapping the vanilla extract to find brown sticky goo EVERYWHERE! Lesson learned. Unwrapping the bathroom supplies to find my formal/dress-up purses! Not quite sure what the lesson there was.

So far there is only one item that is still unaccounted for: one half of a pair of “shoes”. For all my equine friends, I am actually missing one half-chap. How it got separated from the other, I do not know. Maybe some Romanian (or American, for that matter) mover is getting a kick out of running around town with one leather leg-warmer.

Things are just things, they are replaceable. However, it feels really good to have my “things” back and get excited about using them all over again. By the way, Liv spent three solid days on the couch, nested in blankets. You couldn’t get her near a dog bed to save her life!