Anja in Bonn, Kein Strom in Hannover

Hannover, Germany

On Sunday Anja went to work in Bonn for 2 weeks taking care of little rich kids from Mexico. They"re supposed to be learning German put there is loads of Spanish going around.

Now that Anja"s gone I have to cook my own meals and clean the house, two things I"m crap at. Things got worse when I got home on Wednesday evening. I tried to turn on my PC but it wouldn"t start, so I looked at the power bar and the light wasn"t on. I them tried to work the switch but it wouldn"t light up. I went to the kitchen and saw the clock on the microwave was off and realized that there was a power outage. It was then I realized all the food in the fridge and freezer had gone bad.

I was about to just sit and wait for the power to come back on when I looked out my window and saw the neighbors had power going. I rang my next door neighbor to ask if theirs was working but they weren"t home. I them went to the old woman whom is in charge of the building. She told me to check my switch box and to reset the switches. I did so and came back and nothing happened. Then the woman decided that she wanted to see me reset the switches with her watching. Now, this woman must be at least 100 years old and she only speaks in German, which is fine, I know enough to handle myself in this situation but she only mumbles in German to herself (probably about the fall in world domination or something). It took 20 minutes for her to walk 35 Meters from her apartment to mine. I reset the switches in front of her and demonstrated the power didn"t work. She then decided to walk all the way back to her apartment to call the land lord.

The land lord arrived 20 minutes later to see what was going on in his little cash cow. I reset the switches in front of him, no power. So he went and got the key for the cellar. For anyone who doesn"t know, my building pre-dates Allied Bombing Campaigns that eventually ousted the Nazi Regime here in Germany during the second world war. My apartment was never renovated since. The key used to open the cellar was really old, like 400 years old. It actually snapped in 2 at one point. With the key broken we couldn"t get into the cellar. I didn"t know where Anja had put our key.

The land lord said he would talk to Enercity, whom I won"t say anything about since they are a customer of the company I work for, and try to get this sorted the next day. I was really pissed off that I was the only one without power.

The next day I got a call from the land lord saying that I never registered with enercity. I said that I don"t pay any of my utilities, it"s included in my rent and that normally the land lord in that instance would take care of that mess. He said that he doesn"t do that which translates to:

"I just want to make shit loads of money off of young people whom I believe are ignorant because if they weren"t they would own as many pieces of real estate as I do and I"m too fucking lazy to worry about anything that could cause serious issues for the tenants in my buildings whom I exercise the absolute maximum legal limits when it comes to things such as notice for moving out, amount of deposit that can be legally asked for, ect..."

He said that he registered me though so that my power should be turned back on. I got home that night and there still wasn"t any power. I went to the old lady to get the land lords number so I could tare him a new ass hole over the phone. As I walked to her apartment her sister was in the hallway blocking my way. She said "don"t talk to my sister about not having power, you have to register!!!", I said that I am registered and that I should have power and I need the land lords number. She repeated the registered sentence to me a few more times thinking I don"t understand German before I began to freak out and yell and curse in English. She finally got out of my way.

I then talked to the old lady. I immediately demanded the number for the land lord. She asked me where my flatmate was and that I should register. I told her I"m not here to take any questions from her nor am I asking her any other questions other than what the number for the land lord was. She them repeated that I should register or get my flatmate to help me since I"m obviously a asylum seeker whom can"t speak a single fucking word of the language. I freaked out and pointed my mobile phone right at her pressing numbers and saying in slowly "Give me the old man"s telephone number". She eventually gave me the number.

I called the old man and asked him why I don"t have power. He said that they must not have come yet and perhaps they will come later. He as well told me that maybe I wasn"t registered. I asked him for the number to enercity, he gave it to me and told me that he got the run around when he called.

I then called enercity. This entire process was really pressing on my nerves and German capabilities. I got nothing but wrong numbers and answering machines when I called the power company. I remembered all the Iraqi"s when they lost their power, they went bazerk and I felt like doing the same. Then I decided to rip my house apart looking for the key to the cellar. I found it and went to the cellar. It"s about 5 feet tall, dark, wet, creepy, full of cobwebs and bugs are crawling everywhere. after looking around for a while I found the power box. There was a note from enercity saying it had been cut off but I couldn"t read the reasons why. I looked at the box and compared the switch configuration with the other houses. I decided not to mess with it and wait until the next day for the company to deal with it.

I called Anja about 10 times before I got ahold of her. By the end of the conversation I realised that I would have to go register and wait for them to switch it back on. I know the office was only open until 3pm on Friday and that they might not turn the power on until next week. On top of that I have a more-than-full-time job to go to and deadlines that I MUST meet.

I was really pissed off, I felt abandoned and that there was nothing anyone could do. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders with all the stress from work right now (I had worked 40 hours from Monday - Thursday), trying to make something of my self in life and having issues after issues with German democracy. It was only 2 weeks ago that I sorted out all of my immigration work and I had been working on that for 10 months. Now this. If anything in the world I wish I could do nothing again like when I first moved to England. I only had to show up for work. Then I could spend the rest of my time partying and doing what I wanted to do. Now I have to constantly work, learn German in my own free time, there is no party atmosphere here for me, all that is left is that I can go home, watch some English TV, play on the PC in the evenings and go for a walk around Hannover. To paint the picture really clearly, it"s better than Calgary but this is a really SHIT place to live if you have ever spent any long period of time in Sydney, London or Paris. It"s sick how I can go to Paris and know 20 people in 1 day and within hours of arriving be out partying like I"ve lived there my entire life yet that has never happened once here in Germany. My situation isn"t unique. A lot of ex pat"s go through this when they move to not-so-exciting countries to take up high paying jobs. Most don"t last more than 2 or 3 years but I"m trying to beat that so I can have enough money to run my own company and live somewhere that I choose to live. Any not "OK, I choose to live in Germany because there is a job there" the choice of "If I could live and be happy anywhere in the world, where would that be?".

This morning I sat on the sofa trying to calm my self before I had to go to work. I suddenly heard the printer turn on and some of the lights turned on. The landlord emerged from the cellar, he had switched my power back on for me.

I"m flying back to London soon so hopefully that will help clear up my head a bit and give me a chance to enjoy some of the money I"ve made here. I was going to start training myself in Oracle"s product line on Wednesday evening but because of the down time I"ll have to start it this weekend. It"s not like there is anything else to do here until I want to get on a plane and leave.

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