Post-It Note Couture

Okay, so I was without internet for 4 days, but now I more or less have it back, although the signal is rather spotty in my bedroom....while I was away I was still blogging, I'll post the entries over the next couple of days.

I’ve now more or less moved into my new flat and FINALLY unpacked my suitcases more than a month after arriving in Berlin.  It’s a great feeling.  The moving process was relatively painless except that both of my suitcases are around 75 pounds and my temporary living situation was a 7^th floor walk up.  

Henrik, who is on a fast track to German sainthood, helped me with renting a moving van and then took me to his parents’ house to pick up his old bedroom furniture.  Fortunately for me, and out of great generosity from his parents, they just recently turned Henrik’s old bedroom into an office which left them with some rustic furniture that was no longer of use to them.   

Cue Brian, the helpless American who moved to a foreign land with nearly nothing and wallah, I have a furnished bedroom.  Now I get to begin the fun part decorating and making my new bedroom my home.  It’s sort of like being back in college.   I’m even going to ask my mom to mail my old egg crate mattress top to me.  It will go swell on my new twin bed J.

In addition to my imminent trip to IKEA, I have begun decorating my room with post-it notes.  I’ve attached a post-it to every object in my room (hoping to expand into the living areas once I get approval from Meryum) with the word of the object that it is stuck to.   Since the Germans have THREE genders (gender benders) in their lovely, romantical language, I’ve color coded each noun as to reinforce the different genders.   If any of you have ever studied Deutsch, then you know that unlike Italian and Spanish there are no rules or even helpful ways to remember what gender a word is.  This leaves one forced to learn the article for every noun in the universe.  Anyway, lots of jokes I want to make here about Bob Bell and Sarah Spears but I’ll refrain.  I think mentioning their name after a sentence about gender benders will suffice.  ;)

UPDATE:  Yesterday I went to IKEA.  What a nightmare...I'll be blogging about that later and providing pictures of my new room.

P.S. Henrik’s childhood home looked exactly like every German home I’ve ever thought in my imagination.  It almost reminded me of a gingerbread house.  I’ve provided a picture to give you some reference…think Hansel and Gretel.  This picture is not really of his house, but it illustrates my point.  

Just kidding...that's Neuschwanstein in the south.  More like this...but brick...