Delays and Disappointments…

We have returned from our really great holiday in England, very excited to see the progress made on our little Laube house whilst we were away.  However, as you can tell from the title of this post, things were not as we expected.

We have employed, (on recommendation), a guy called Thomas.  Who assured us that he would begin work on the 6th of June and that the new floor and roof would be completed in three weeks….  We gave him a very large amount of money to pay for materials he needed to work on the Laube whilst we were away.  We arranged to meet Thomas at Fichtewiese today, he assured us that he would be there from 9.00 am.

Well, we arrived at about 10.30 am.  No Thomas.  No floor in the Laube and still the old roof.  Lots of wood and other materials, stored around the Laube area.  But we both reckoned that Thomas had spent no more than 3 days working there….  So, we decided to do some work on the surrounding garden area and wait for Thomas to arrive.

At around 12 noon, there was still no Thomas.  Robert tried his mobile phone, but he didn’t answer it.  At around 1pm, Thomas rang Robert to say that he wouldn’t be coming today!  Robert asked why Thomas hadn’t done the work he had promised to do by now.  He was given a load of poor excuses.

I am very worried and upset.  Thomas has now also told us that he won’t be able to continue with the work on the Laube until the 4th of July, as he is scheduled to work somewhere else first!

Robert and I are not happy.

Here’s a nice picture from our English holiday to cheer this post up a bit…

Lymington Harbour at Sunset

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Waiting….

I moved to Berlin in Germany, back in June 2010 from London.  This last year has been a big learning curve for me.  New home, new language, new culture, new country!  I’ve learnt, and continue to learn, many things about Germany and German culture.  Something I came across fairly early on, was the Laube communities.

These are usually fairly small areas of plots of land, which you can rent and use to cultivate fruit, vegetables, flowers, etc.  The plot always includes a Garden House, which you can turn into a mini home from home.

As I had moved from a house with a large garden, to a 2nd floor flat in Central Berlin, I missed my lovely English garden.  Whilst we have a fantastic south-facing balcony, it’s not the same – I miss being able to run barefoot in grass…..

Last summer, some friends of ours, Olivia and Christian, managed to apply for and get a Laube.  The Laube community they joined was one with a difference though.  Fichteweise Community is within a nature reserve next to The Havel River, west of Central Berlin.  Here, you are not encouraged to grow things.  They want to leave the area to be natural.  So, no gardening, just enjoying the environment and nature.  I loved the sound of this.  We visited Olivia and Christian and we both loved it even more.  Very rural location, peaceful (the day we visited, you could hear woodpeckers in the trees), right next to the River Havel with a big sandy beach and a restaurant 5 minutes walk from the community.  No electricity, no water supply.  Christian very kindly showed us around the community area, which turned out to be really big.  He even showed us Garden Houses which he knew to be available.  I picked one out and……

We decided to apply.  I wrote our application letter to the Community’s Committee and my partner Robert, translated it into German.  I then spent a whole afternoon looking through pictures of us, to try and find one to send with the application which didn’t show Robert’s tattoos or showed us holding booze, or tipsy!  That was tricky….  Anyway, we sent our application off and the next thing we knew, we were invited to attend an interview!

On the day of the interview, I was calm, but Robert not so….  We were invited to a lovely house in the outskirts of south Berlin.  We had to sit infront of the whole committee and explain why we wanted to have a Laube at Fichtewiese.  You think that would be easy, but it was all in German…..  So I did lots of smiling and nodding and Robert did lots of talking!

Well, we got accepted!  They also approved of the little Garden House we had chosen.  It needs HUGE amounts of work.  I’ll be posting pics soon.

 

But this gives you an idea of what it looks like at the moment!

 

So now we are waiting.  This Saturday we get the keys and meet the rest of the community.  I’ve decided to write a little speech in German to read out to them, just to say hello and explain how rubbish my Deutsch is!

So, more to come soon…..!

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