Must…resist…your…power...
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The other day we began our search for a place to live. THE Corp finds that it is best to go to them, have them use their translators and set up time for us to see places. I have no problem with that; the problems arise when they have a set of houses they want you to look at and not to use a German Immobilien (a rental service that finds places they think you might like). A limited number of places with an exponentially growing amount of people that need to be placed. No problem at all. Breathe deep, out with the bad in with the cleansing breathe. Onward.
Choosing three numbers –the addresses of the places aren’t known until you go to the clerk -- we had two places that were in areas that we thought we would like. Notice the word thought in there. We walked by the first place and can’t wait to see it, but that is later in the week. The second place, well it was much, much, much further than we thought. A fifteen-minute walk we were told. It was a hike. We should have brought a Sherpa and a change of underwear. When we got to the place a half an hour later, Turtle was exhausted, and I was already thinking no way in hell, its too far from where we want to be. Then the Germans hit us with their secret weapon.
The caretaker of the place was this little old woman who spoke broken English. She waited for us up the fourth floor of this row house, standing no taller than five nothing, if that, holding the keys in one hand and an German/English dictionary in the other. After introductions she slowly marched up another two stories to the open apartment. Her hands were shaking so violently from the exhaustion of the climb, that she beckoned for me to open the door. As we were let in, the clouds parted and filled the vacant space with majestic light. A small aura of mysticism surrounded our guide as she proceeded to tell us, in a voice so soft you had to bend your ear close, all about the neighborhood, the people living in the building, the history of the area, how the place is quiet, how to make quark, everything. You could not help but smile and smell homemade pies being cooked when she was in the room.
With our tour at its end, Turtle and I walked our guide back to her apartment where she shook our hands and said to us “I will very much love when you move in. Please do soon.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her, that we weren’t going to take it. The apartment was plain, and too far away, the only thing that would of kept us was her and the thought of listening to her tell stories. I would very much love that.
posted by Don Taylor @ 5:54 PM,
2 Comments:
-
At 7:26 PM,
said...
-
You big softee... You asked her to move in with you, didn't you?
-
At 3:53 PM,
said...
-
Dude gross! What was that an excerpt from Mitch Albom's new book?!? I'm gonna go punch kittens in the face right now just so I can feel manly again.
