A Bavarian Farmhouse

All Power to the Soviets! Massed Plumbers on Home Front! Mario Brothers arrive in a full offensive line-up! Power tools to the fore! Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Koopa and Tom of Finland arrived early in the morning with a complete set of pipes, elbow joints, radiators and huge power tools. Tom and Luigi proceeded to cut giant mouse holes in the walls and Mario and Yoshi manhandled copper piping, soldering elbow joints as they went. Tool-Handling Luigi and Yoshi power-bored holes in the wall for the radiator mounts and Dagobert Toadsworth himself appeared and agreed, after a sound ear-bashing with a large acorn from The Squirrel, to demands that the living-room radiator should be sensibly fitted beneath the west window. Tom of Finland demonstrated his superb-tool handling with a direct bore chisel through solid concrete with double (post 1947 German Economic Miracle) R-bar steel. By the end of the working day (6 pm and it was a Friday!) they had completed almost 40% of the required work! R

Power on - Power - off - Power On Sonic to the rescue! Today the electricians quietly turned off the power and said it was only going to be off for half an hour. 5 hours later having zapped all the circuit breakers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dagobert's genius 12 year-old electrician turned up at the apartment and helpfully pointed out that the circuit breakers had clicked. Then his mum shouted on him for his tea. There is of course no point in expecting a report of further activity here today because normally things get f*@ked up in the afternoon, just before the 'workmen' leave. So MS Project entry for today would be 2:30 Activity: Screw everything up. Resources: Sparkies - 2 Screwdriver - 1 Time: couple minutes So in the absence of anything happening here's a picture of the Combined Heating and Power Unit in the cellar - and no, it's not working yet either. The Cult of King Rolf On an entirely different subject - we were in Hugendubel (a famous bookshop chain) and I spo

Saturday : Ikeaday already Almost a hive of activity. Workers have entered the building! The electricians are in the old cellar (diagonally opposite the blue paper bin in the photograph) doing whatever Sparkies do with Combined Heating & Power systems. The are probably making sure the grid credit meter is working first. After that they will think about providing us with heating. Dagobert appeared with the man who does either the painting or the woodwork (or possibly both) and I had to politely ask him to talk quietly as The Squirrel was hibernating (night-shift). The next time I looked out, the kitchen and bathroom doors were gone - to be stripped, honed, sanded, repainted and possibly have working handles fitted. A complex project so I hope the company own either Microsoft Project , an open source alternative or a laddie with a pencil and notepad. Yesterday was so quiet that The Squirrel suggested that I should take some photographs of the decant apartment's kitchen. We

Friday Nothing is happening . We are now almost professionally qualified microwave-combi cooks. Basmati Rice Recipe: 1 standard cup Basmati rice. 2 cups of water just off the boil. pinch of salt. couple of strips of bacon (optional). place rice in a microwave bowl with a lid that allows steam to vent. Add the water, salt and bacon. Microwave on full power for three minutes leave to stand for five minutes Strain Serve. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder. Thursday Mrs Toadsworth called to say they were having difficulty procuring craftsmen and that the architect had run off to America to get married. The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder Wednesday Nothing happened. Tom was downstairs all night hammering his head against the wall. Dagobert left a tiny fan heater at the door on Tuesday night. Available from MediaMarkt for 9.95 euros The back lawn is tidy. It is getting colder.

Tuesday. Nothing is happening today. Nothing at all. No Dagobert No Mario No Luigi No Tom of Finland and no Yoshi So here is a picture of the "Office". It is presently serving as base camp and galley. Note the essential coffee machine and Microwave Combi.

Saturday (ikeaday) I'm sure it was barely more than 7 °C last night and as usual it was warmer outside. Today the thermometer reads 15 °C but it feels pretty cold in the living room. 7:30 Dagobert timidly buzzed the doorbell, but so lightly and for such a short time that I decided to ignore it. About ten minutes later he re-appeared with Tom of Finland, the concrete man and someone else. One of them obviously had sufficient strength to press the doorbell to the acceptable civilised human standard. I answered everyone with a "Guten Morgen," to which Herr Toadsworth almost managed a cheerful (for him) grunt. They retrieved the Hilti Power Chisel and subsequently dissappeared downstairs conducting an ad hoc works conference on the way. Tom came back about fifteen minutes later and resume chiselling parts of the kitchen and bathroom into chunks that would have whetted the appetite of that Frenchman who used to eat entire bicycles. The Lions daughter (who is a sort of project

TGI Friday 7:30 am. The man that does the concrete turned up as bright as a button and finished off all the holes with their second coat of R-Bar and concrete. Almost as soon as he was finished and another member of the Dagobert Demolition team appeared with a Hilti Power Chisel that was worthy of Tom of Finland (NSF!) and he proceeded to cut the bath and the bathroom doorway to very small chunks. By the afternoon the bath was gone, the door was gone and so was the false ceiling. Not only that but the new door frame (or ceiling frame possibly, we shall have to see!) was already waiting to be fitted. Clearly Toadsworth is at the top of his game now, cos that pace of development has accelerated - perhaps it is a neurological process similar to that of the Brontosaurus powering up the second brain in it's ass. Even the painters were back downstairs in the Lions Den, slapping up wallpaper like a team of Heinzelmännschen on crystal meth. A skip even appeared outside the apartment bu

Builders working like Trojans this evening 17:33 and some of the builders are still here. There repairing the holes cut during the last few days with reinforced concrete now that the drains and pipes have been installed. The base for the shower and the heating pipes are already in the offices waited with baited breath for their installation. 4:30 am Dagobert knocks on the living room door and when I answer, he says he thought he was downstairs(?) Good Riddance to old Rubbish 13:20 pm Mario appeared and quickly removed the old gas heater. Seeing the back of this piece of junk is a joy to behold. We now have a great deal more room in both the office (Buro) and the living room (Wohnzimmer). We should be able to get a bookcase in the space. The place was built in 1907 and managed to survive the Allied bombing (possibly with the exception off the roof which looks post-war) so one suspects the gas heating system has been here since at least 1947. The speed of refurbishment appears to be gat

Dagobert Cometh . Temperature 15°C 8:25 am A delivery man rings the door buzzer looking for Mario. I suggest he might be upstairs in the old Lion's Den. 8:30 Dagobert Toadsworth appears, rings the door bell and runs away. This children's game is known as " Rap, Tap, Ginger " ( though goodness knows why) or " Monkey come down the close " (which is more informative) in Scotland . It has a Bavarian analogue but I shall have to enquire of this from The Squirrel when she finishes work. I call "Guten Morgen" as his polished antique dome disappears down the stair well. He mutters a sentence possibly containing the word 'Stadt' and Leiht but this would make no sense at all unless 'City Lends' is a new show on BWR for the confused elderly. The temperature this morning is 15 C in the front room with the main pc on. Perhaps I should fire up the server later this evening to keep the room habitable. 10: 00 am. I take the dirty dishes downstair

We've had the builders in. Well we are in the middle of having the builders in. That's in the middle (possibly) of the whole project and at the start of having the builders in. The builders were supposed to begin at the start of August- at exactly the moment we were off on holiday. However, contrary to the popular stereo-type project management is more often observed in South Germany by it's absence. I am not sure why this is, I suspect it is the side affect of another anthropological phenomenon I have commented on before - the reluctance of any individual to take responsibility and to make an independent decision. Any way by the time the workers arrived at our apartment chaos had reigned for over three weeks. Currently we are encamped in the living room with only the bedroom as the one other room that is habitable by humans and cats. The office is stripped and we are using it as a temporary food station with the microwave, the coffee machine and the kettle. The fridge is i

Snowboarding on the Nebelhorn We were on the Nebelhorn at the weekend and quite an impressive sight it is. Since you have to pay 31 Euros for the day ticket it meant it was a great opportunity to practice riding the stupid tow system. I have been reluctant to practice on the tow, because everytime you fall off you waste a credit. However since the Nebelhorn ticket covers all the chairlifts, gondolas and tows, this was the perfect opportunity to practice. It was also the perfect opportunity to watch worse tow riders than me fall off! I went up with Suse and managed to achieve seven tow rides without incident! Look Ma! No Hands More Pix

Leaning on a lampost at the centre of the universe Well it would be reasonably difficult to resist the temptation especially in a place like Brandenburg Gate ( Brandenburger Tor) where the Berliners, on November 9th 1989, seemed to follow Ronald Reagan's advice and tore down the wall. It has changed immensely since I watched those events live on televison and leaves one with the sensation that you have seen the Forum of present day Rome - the parliament building is just around the corner behind me in this photograph.( It is almost directly behind our dear friend Peter, who can be seen smoking possibly his 20th cigarette that morning in order to counter the high doses of vitamin C he swears keep him chipper. ) Well done Günter Schabowski who surely deserves some sort of award from The School of The Cock-Up Theory of History- he was the DDR minister who having just arrived back from a long holiday, lacked sufficient information about what the party line was on the checkpoints and