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I was busy the last few days orchestrating my move back to the United States. I'm writing these lines on board of my Lufthansa flight to SFO, so everything went alright in the end.
This, however, is not the impression I got when the big moving day started. When showing up at my old apartment, I had to realize that the parking space reserved for my 20 foot container was fully occupied by cars---whose owners had simply decided to ignore the registered sign posts telling them they should not park here. I had the right now to have them towed away. So I called the police to get this going. It took more than five minutes for the policeman to explain to me the details of how this process worked, and at the end he simply told me he thought it would be easier if I simply had the container parked in second row.
Confusing forest of signs, to some...
... and so you get this.
So much for the value of officially registering your move. (And I paid €70 for this service!)
Anyway, it turned out this was the minor problem. About twenty minutes later, the driver of the truck with the container for my stuff rang the door bell and informed me that he could not pull up in front of the house, because all access roads were blocked. The primary culprit was a construction site blocking the entrance crossing somewhere up my road. When I saw his truck, I understood why. The 20ft container was on a truck made to transport 40ft containers. Oh well.
With some nudging he eventually gave it a try. About a quarter of an hour into the try, he was thoroughly stuck in the crossing. At least, he was now able to identify the main problem: A badly parked station wagon. I called the packers and we tried to move the station wagon out of the way, to no avail. (It looks so easy on TV!) Fortunately, I saw a group of five young turks (or Germans of Turkish descent, or something else). The important thing was they were young, healthy, and not at all busy. So I asked for help and offered them €10 for it.
With a whooping total of eight people we were able to rotate the station wagon by about 20 degrees and then push it a foot further onto the curbside. This created enough additional space for the truck driver to pull the truck straight and make it through the crossing.
Phew, this saved the move. After that even the cars blocking the truck's designated parking space were a minor nuisance and we concluded the packing and move in time.
California, here I come! (For the second time; it's time to spin up Red Hot Chili Pepper's Californication once more.)
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