All of a sudden, it became December. The weather finally tuned into our November mood and it is becoming rainier, windier and colder. In the course of the last month, I finally settled in. Partly that was also due to the fact that I had ranted in public; but either way I realized that after that rant, I was done complaining (obviously more in a metaphorical than actual way). Long story short: It's December now and who would've guessed, the holidays are approaching. 

Tomorrow in exactly two weeks, I'll sit in a train home to my sister's house. I get the feeling that these two weeks will pass in a blink. Thanks to generous donations of friends and family (thanks for the calendar, Claudia! At least for one month now I'll know which day it is) my room is filling up and feeling much more like the holidays. And believe it or not, this is actually a post about paperclips. 

Because although it's not Sinterclaas-day yet, I opened a suspicious package my sister sent me. It already smelled so good when I ripped open the envelop! Pepernoten, a chocolate letter, drawings and collages from my nephews and nieces AND a bag of funky shaped paperclips came out of it! I had to laugh, because just that morning, I was puzzling what I could possibly write about. Thank you Tanja! You absolutely know how to get a smile on my face every time!

So in two weeks, the first semester of my MA program will be over. In two weeks, I'll go down south (where, oddly enough, it seems to be colder than here). In two weeks, the real deal Christmas is going to set in (almost). I hope I won't get a pack of paperclips as a present...

Today, I received a huge Christmas package from my parents. It was stuffed with treats and goodies and warm socks for the cold winter days. The timing could not be better: Tonight is our house Christmas dinner. Partly because I didn't feel like it the last few days, I kept myself out of the planning of the night, but the more I learn to more I'm amazed. Tonight could challenge the real Christmas in scope, meal diversity and with Danish Julebryg. Many of my housemates are preparing a part of their families' traditional dishes, so I decided to make Plätzchen. The only English translation for the word is cookie, but I guess German Christmas cookies is as close as I can bring you. I loved helping my mum make these pre-Christmas every year. She loved making them too, I guess, which is why we had Plätzchen until February. I down-sized my Christmas bakery a little and sticked to one sheet of Angel Eye Cookies and two sheets of coconut macaroons. 

I'm getting really excited about tonight, in fact. It's been a while since we all came together and I haven't spoken to some of my housemates in a long time. They are creating Christmas music playlists on facebook while I'm writing this.

Is it weird that today feels like Christmas? One month in advance, and there's no snow? But then again, how often is there snow on Christmas? And how often does Christmas feel like Christmas (last year it didn't...)? So I'll enjoy the Christmas anticipation for tonight as if it was the real thing. 

Speaking of the basement before, here’s one to clarify. Our house in Retirementhomestreet is hyggelig (cozy. well, call it that, but it's more). We spoke today of cultural conceptions that differ in specific countries, and Germany was mentioned in the context of homeliness. But the Danes certainly take this to the top. When I lived with my mentor for the first few days of being in Aarhus, fresh buns or bread or cakes were always in the oven, and Luane was just busy making jam from some fruits she collected on her way home. On TV and Game nights, there were candles lit all over, at 4pm, even in the bathroom.  So when Sergio from Italy spoke of the Germans as a heimelige (see hyggelig) society, I had to smile.

In our house, 13 people share their lives to a greater or lesser extent. Add numerous bugs and spiders in our basement apartment. A few days ago, right after I revivified this blog, my housemate Sanna sent me a text message: “I just found a paperclip!”

Without implying any hierarchical relations here, this was funny. How many emails has my mum sent me about finding paperclips? So house equals home sooner or later. House becomes home because that’s all we have, because we throw our stuff around and store our food and our memories at this place, even though it’s in a limited time frame. House becomes home because you share stories with people you didn’t choose but chose to spend time with anyways. House becomes home because with 13 people, there will be people you instantly connect with, and others you get along with, and so on. 

There are candles lit in my room, my room is a mess (it’s home, after all) and I’m recovering from a hyggelig Pölser-Dinner with the basement roomies.

Next to hyggelig and candles, pölser is the thing to do in Denmark, or so it seems. Wikipedia says the Danish Hot Dog is the most known hot dog in Europe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_dog_variations#Denmark_.26_Iceland

House became home. Hot dogs in the basement turned into a boys vs girls evening: when Kieran and Stephan began playing fifa on Stephan’s playstation just one wall away, Liselott (who almost lives in the basement) and I drank cheap sparkling wine and watched Sex and the City. Kieran is off to a trip round Europe. Sanna’s back in Norway for the weekend to recover from Aarhus and visit her real family. And the replacement will be waiting for them here.  

Today, I found a paperclip, and one that was truly rewarding. The fantastic thing about this paperclip is, and this distinguishes it from all those useless other paperclips laying around town, that it was in my room. Yes. It was here all along, and in my imagination, it was one of the paperclips that I used in my first year of University to bundle the exams and essay before handing them in. In the meantime, I stopped using paperclips and just stapled the stacks (don’t ask me why we used paperclips at first), I went abroad and had a sub-renter in my room, I came back, and now I am procrastinating heavily from writing that Bachelor’s thesis (as you might be able to tell, procrastination unfortunately is a big part of my life)

So I cleaned my desk, because I was sure that once it’s clean and tidy, I would be able to work so much more efficient. I threw away some stuff and sorted some papers and realized I also had to sell this desk at some point. This seemed the perfect time to empty and photograph it.

And when I was done doing that, I decided to throw away some pens that aren’t working any more, as to eventually end up with one can filled with pens instead of two. At the bottom of that one can, with all the ink spots and sharpening-dust, there was this one paperclip.

As if it had been a sign, a riddle in my head was solved, I sorted out all my issues with moving out, moving in somewhere else, moving out there again and then sort of not living anywhere but having to be somewhere, and now it all makes sense, and there is a plan and it’s on a piece of paper and that’s (almost) the only piece of paper on my desk right now, too.

Now that I’ve posted this and put that desk online to sell it and cleaned everything and ate (because cleaning made me hungry), I can finally continue working. 

Today has been the warmest day of the year so far. It’s April 2, 2011, and spring has finally heard our cries. Also, it is exam period. Ultimately, this is a call out for procrastination of the finest sorts. We had an extensive breakfast on the balcony, which was on the verge of turning into a brunch, but we averted that last minute. Instead of heading to our rooms to study, we decided to fulfill our weekly duties of bringing away paper, cans and bottles to the recycling station. Since the bins are next to our local Aldi, we decided to go in real quick, just to buy some fruits and snacks. On our way home, Caro, who has her exam on Monday, had the great idea to defrost our fridge. Since we’ve been planning to do that (by now one third of the fridge was completely iced) for quite a while, today with its 24°C seemed to be THE day. We emptied the fridge, put it out on the balcony, where by now Alexandra was sitting to study, cleaned the top of the lower fridge (we have two standing on top of each other), got rid of all the spider webs etc…when we finally decided there was nothing really left that we could do without feeling stupid because we’re not studying.

So we tried that for about an hour and then had lunch, barefoot, with tank tops, sunglasses and bright sunshine, the fridge thawing away next to us. Since the thawing took longer than we found reasonable, Caro went to get a hammer and screwdriver, and began pecking away chunks of ice. When I got my camera to film the scene, I saw a paperclip lying between the miniature ice floes. It got covered entirely by the chunks, but it was there, and this is already the end of the story. The bad part is, that now we have to clean the fridge and put it back up on top of the other fridge and sort stuff back in…and for some reason now it doesn’t seem to be as much fun anymore as this morning. So instead of doing that, I’m writing this.

 This was a story of procrastination.

 

The actual topic I had in mind when I found the last paper clip was of much greater concern than the various mice and critters living in our house (funny story: the day I wrote that post, a mouse came out of a trash bag I was just carrying downstairs, and I accidentally stepped on it, without shoes; it’s living somewhere in our walls now).

At a random breakfast morning, a few of us debated on the recent change of Germany’s position on nuclear energy. Why this relates to our house? We came to a fast conclusion that in order to “save the planet” as one might say, we simply have to cut down on our energy consumption. We figured the same counts for alternative sources of energy. Thus, if we want energy that does neither stem from nuclear plants or coal power stations, we need to start saving energy. By now, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung has written a report on Germany’s balance on energy production and – hey! – the country could switch to green energy without taking cold showers or reading a book by candle-light. Nevertheless, to change the world, we’d still need to cut down. In our house, though, we pay all inclusive rents, a flat rate for gas, water and electricity. So what we do when our renting agency doesn’t fix the shower, the mold on the wall or the broken sink/oven/lighting, is consume. And that’s awful, and we know it. The worst part is: our agency doesn’t care. They actually want us to leave on the lights in the hallways, and I have so far failed to find a light switch for the entrance area. (I am, by the way exaggerating. We do care not to waste energy as much as we can most of the time.)

So here is me, in a seldom moment of peace-willingness towards the agency and a tad of goodwill, I unplugged the cable of my laptop, put on some candles and switched off the light. The other day someone turned off the light in the kitchen during the daytime, and to our surprise, there was still light (we DO have windows). In our house, I am obviously not the only one with environmental concerns (otherwise the discussion wouldn’t probably have started), and yet there is this gigantic invisible threshold to simply use less energy.

But now there was this realization, there are the candles and spring is coming up, so I’m keeping my hopes high. Maybe the agency will be nicer to us, too...