Wednesday, October 19, 2005

The Learning Curve


Remember the trouble we had figuring out our European windows last spring? Talk about feeling dumb! Well, this time it's the radiators. It didn't matter how I finagled the knobs or thermostat when I arrived on Monday, no water started gurgling through the pipes.

After nearly freezing to death that night, yesterday morning I finally broke down and went to our landlord's apartment below ours to ask. Both Uschi and Wolfgang came upstairs to show me what to do. Still no heat. So I took a nice hour's walk and warmed up a bit, which definitely helped. Maybe I didn't need the heat after all, I thought, even though it is in the 40's at night and high 50's during the day.

But by last night I decided "This is ridiculous!" So down I went again with all my apologies to disturb them yet again (though Uschi always tells me she wants to help whenever!) and GUESS WHAT! Wolfgang, obviously mystified, went to the landing closet and flipped a switch. Voila! The water started gurgling immediately.

I wasn't that dumb after all! Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW, I grew up on big, fat steam radiators in Michigan. These are the slimline version, I guess, and since there's no steam, I'm guessing they're simply called radiators. The ever-s0-often gurgles remind me they're working, which is quite calming, to say the least.

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