When Your Garbage Disposal System Turns Out To Be Your Worst Enemy...

Do you remember that I started uncluttering my CD/DVD collection last weekend?

Well, seems like I've found the flaw in Marie Kondo's book. 

Sure enough, I had no problem to decide which ones to keep and which ones had to go. I even found a good home for some of them in my parents' and in my in-laws' homes.

My problems started after I had divided the discs into three different piles: To keep, to give away, and to toss. You just don't want to give self-burnt CDs to a charity.

Problem No. 1: Not all the CDs were in their appropriate jewel cases. So to find the ones I wanted to keep and those to donate, I had to go through all the jewel cases. Argh! It all comes back to you at some point...

Problem Nr. 2: If you haven't lived in Germany for a while, you guys have no idea how complicated to German garbage disposal system is... just throw everything into one single bag and put it into the trash can? No way! Most packaging materials (except paper) go into the yellow trash can, plastic for example. But guess what? The jewel cases are considered packaging materials, but the discs aren't. Which means I had to take all the discs I wanted to get rid of out of their cases. So you could think that the discs can go into the "general" trash can, which is grey over here. No, they shouldn't, because the material as such is considered recycable. So some of the towns here have set up extra CD and DVD collection stations, for example in schools or in the city hall. And guess what? I'm not going to school any more, I don't have kids who go to school, and I need to go to city hall maybe once a year. Do I really want to waste some time and gas to go on a trip to the city hall just to get rid of a bag of CDs?!

The answer was: No...!!!

So I'm still thinking about smuggling that bag into the trash can for packaging materials...

Just the thought of that complicated process of getting rid of the stuff made me stop for a while. A few days, actually. Two piles of jewel cases were sitting on our living room floor until I finally brought myself to tackle them today. It took a while, but finally, the "to toss" jewel cases went to the appropriate trash can, the discs I want to donate are in my "to give away" bag, and the keepers are stored safely as well. Just that relatively small bag with the "to trash" discs is sitting in a corner and grinning at me, waiting impatiently for me to make a decision...

Bottom line: I don't have any problems to decide what to keep and what to throw away. I can discard things I no longer need pretty easily. It's just overwhelmingly difficult to find the right way to get rid of the trash...!  

I guess Marie Kondo hadn't thought of that...

Plan With Me: Christmas in a Shoe Box

Every year for the past eight years or so, my mom & I have packed a christmas parcel for a child we don't know and probably will never meet. 

Why is that?

There's a campaign called "Weihnachten im Schuhkarton" ("Christmas in a Shoe Box") in the German version, their international name is "Operation Christmas Child". People in industrialized countries pack Christmas boxes that are transported to children in need in not-so-rich-countries by volunteers. The German parcels usually go to kids in Eastern Europe. You pack your box, wrap it in christmas wrapping paper and bring it to one of the local collection points, and from there, Operation Christmas Child takes over and organizes the rest.

So what do you include in those boxes? For example small toys, school supplies, clothing or toiletries. And of course - chocolate!

Just to give you a few figures: This year, there are about 5.000 collection points in Germany alone, and in 2014, Germans packed about 512.000 boxes. This has become really huge!

For my mom and me, packing the parcel has become kind of the starting signal for the holiday season. It doesn't mean that we start decorating our houses immediately, but it's the beginning of allowing ourselves to get into a bit of christmas mood... and it's something we do together. We share the "work", if you can call it work at all. 

I have a page in my Filofax for "Weihnachten im Schuhkarton". I decided to make a new one this year and plan to use it for the next few years as well. Here's what it looks like:

As you can see: I didn't want to overdecorate it to keep it functional. This year we packed a box for a girl aged between 5 and 9, and my mom did the fiddly task of glueing the christmas wrapping paper to the box. Next year, we'll take turns and I'll decorate a box for a boy. This page will help me to remind myself...

Rabimmel-Rabammel-RaBUMM

 November 10. One of my favorite days of the year when I was a child!

On this very special day, German kids gather in groups, and go from door to door singing songs. They carry lanterns, often homemade, and maybe one or two of them will bring a recorder and try not play out of tune. And why do they do this? For sweets, of course! Lots and lots of them!

All this happens in honor of the two Martins. Either St. Martin who divided his warm coat with a sword and shared it with a homeless man on a cold winter night, or alternatively Martin Luther. It depends on which region you live in, but I don't think the kids actually care. For them, it's about the sweets. About lots of sweets!

As an adult, it's not exactly as much fun, as either you need to take extra care when you're driving your car after dark, or you're the one accompanying the kids and suddenly you find that you've been degraded to a mere packmule because they have gathered so many sweets they need help to carry them! Or you're the one who stays at home and opens the door. You may need to listen to the same song 20 times or more.

I remember that in the good old days, we knew exactly where we needed to go in order to get the best stuff. Who would be generous and who wouldn't. Where you would only get "healthy" things - opposed to the small snack bar where you would get a portion of french fries. Of course you'd prefer densely populated areas anyway. This was basically my first lesson in learning how to work effectively...

Do you know what my favorite song was? Here's the English translation:

I'm going with my lantern, 

and my lantern goes with me. 

Up there the stars are shining, 

down here it's us who are. 

My light's gone out, I'm going home 

Rabimmel-Rabammel-RaBUMM! 

Don't ask what "Rabimmel-Rabammel-Rabumm" means. It doesn't have any real meaning. But imagine kids shouting it out fervently, and it makes perfect sense!

You're a Kite, Mr. Bond, flying into a Hurricane...

We went to see "Spectre"  last night. We had no choice but to go yesterday evening, because we wanted to see the original version, not the dubbed one, and this was the only time they showed it.

Have you ever wondered why most Germans speak a really horrible English? It's because all we get is dubbed. Movies, TV shows... I remember I was really thankful when I got my first DVD player so I could watch my favorite movies with the English sound. The German translation is often crap; most puns get simply lost.

There's another reason why I prefer to go to the movies in the US. You drive to the cinema, leave your car in the parking lot (usually for free), get yourself some coke and popcorn and watch two or three trailers and then the movie begins.

Over here in Germany it's a little different. It's way more complicated. At least that's how I feel. And it's expensive.

You drive to the cinema and try to find a parking space nearby. Usually, you need to pay for it (we spent 4,50 EUR last night). We got the tickets online (12,00 EUR each, plus 1,20 EUR for doing the job ourselves). It always takes a while till you get your coke and popcorn just because they never open up all the counters they have even when the place is crammed. Medium coke and medium popcorn (shared, not each) - say goodbye to another 9,99 EUR. Sum it up.39,69 EUR. That's the equivalent of 45 bucks.

When they say a movie starts at 8, it usually doesn't. Take your time. They'll show you some trailers and ads anyway. Last night, they took it too far. The movie finally started at 8.46! I was mad. Seriously. I didn't feel treated like a customer. I felt treated like a consumer.

So why are there still people wondering that there are people who prefer to download movies from the internet? 

Oh, the movie. Yes, I liked it in general though Daniel Craig falls into the Pierce-Brosnan-syndrome (he shows only one expression. All the time.) and I really missed Judi Dench as M, but I really loved the elegance of the very first scene - it seems to take forever until the first cut. People who like fluffy white cats will have their moment, and overall... it's Bond! What else do you need to know?

Maybe that I liked "Skyfall" better...