17 Marzo

I just hit play on iTiunes and it’s odd to finish the song I started “yesterday” morning as I was packing in San Francisco. The trip was relatively quick and painless actually. It took 27 hours door to door, which, taking out the time change, is only 18 hours. I even got an hour or two of sleep and they played a Woody Allen flick. The Würste I was able to liberate from the Frankfurt airport into my belly were not as good as the ones my father and I found last year, but it was good to be back in Germany, even for only a couple hours. Unlike my dad, I couldn’t down even a great hefeweizen at 10am even if it felt like 1am.

It’s bizarre to travel so far from my home and trespass through three countries, languages and cultures to wind up back home again. Everything has changed but yet I am home again.

Hannes picked me up at the airport and we had a nice chat driving home. We started discussing progress on La Perla but, by the time we hit the mountains, we had abstracted via the hypocrisies of recycling (he claimed that in his hometown near Hamburg they just threw all the recycling in the same incinerator), to the failings of the US, world economy, Angela Merkel, and Switzerland. On one hand, Swiss protectionism annoys him because they levied €1.40 in duties on him last week for picking up cement near his house in Italy and then taking it across the lake to La Perla. They made him fill out four forms only to give him the money back when he drove home that night! On the other hand, he’s sure the economic crisis will put most of our world into the hands of the Chinese. But he thinks Obama is the next Kennedy. I wasn’t able to solve these problems for him but I was glad I was able to keep up after my lack of sleep and not having spoken German in many months.

We drove up to La Perla and were greeted by Signor Rocca, painting the balconies. He was as jolly as I recalled him. He showed me how he painted each beam under the eaves and how they were difficult to paint as they went under the roof. This was en route to telling me he should get paid 2000 CHF extra for all his extra and high-quality work. I’m not sure how much he was kidding. It’s sort of like negotiating with Santa Claus.

Through this interaction I found my Italian where I left it. I still can’t really speak it, but somehow I am able to carry complete and complex conversations. I really wish I knew how it worked. Generally when I am this unsure in a language, I like to plan out sentences in advance. But here I don’t have time so I don’t even try. I called Signor Berri later in the evening to see if we could meet about the tree and the same thing happened.

Berri cut about five or six branches near the top and maybe took out 15% of the tree. It will be the same size mid-summer as it was last, and, unless you stand on the top balcony, you won’t notice a difference at all. Marianne’s dissatisfaction with the work encouraged me to hassle Berri – a task I’ll be enjoying at about 11am Wednesday (if you’d like to take part in spirit, set your alarm!) Otherwise Marianne is fine and she invited me to lunch. She also offered her car to go get my license plates.

Hannes and I combed every centimeter of the house. He really has done great work. Opening the kitchen to the living room was a move of utter genius, by which I mean it was completely plagiarized from Marianne and Wälle. (That was an inside joke to those who have read Paul’s book). Unfortunately, yet predictably, for every improvement, there are now two to four much smaller problems. My work now will be to take an inventory of these bits and generate a to do list for the next month. I’m already feeling my dad’s absence when I think of all the things I know he would handle if he were here. But I should be able to tie most of it up before Easter.

After a few hours of this micro examination of all the fabulous developments, Hannes drove me down the hill to pick up a few groceries. After he left I spent the evening unpacking all the things my father and I packed in October. They seem to have withstood the winter perfectly well in the wine cellar. It’s really amazing how much stuff I have here and I felt my ridiculously light packing in my suitcases was vindicated. I capped the evening with some sausage, pasta, beer, and a Borussia Dortmund game on TV. It’s good to be home!