Never let it be said that
moving home is an easy assignment. There is death, divorce and then there is
moving house and I am not sure which is the most traumatic. For now, though, I
think moving house tops the list even as I am familiar with the other sources
of angst, I was never truly prepared for this latest adventure. Call it an
assignment or even a task but the reality is, it is never pleasant and it never
goes to plan. All the while Margo and I
have soldiered on keeping our business activities on course even as we keep on
supporting computer community events worldwide.
Perhaps the biggest aspect
of our most recent move is how we managed to think we could hold on to so much
stuff even as we knew our new place of abode would be much smaller. While I am
not going to dwell on the downsizing aspects, we have so many pretty things, as
Margo likes to call them, where will they fit? For me there’s a particular
aspect of the move that I would like to see completed and that is the hanging
of our artwork. My office has become the temporary home of 25+ framed pictures (there
are smaller pictures hiding alongside and behind what you see here) some of
which are originals. First, we have to develop a plan as to where each of our
pictures will hang. We will get there, but for now, sharing my office with that
many paintings is a reminder that downsizing has its challenges and I can’t
wait to see the final outcome.
If you recall the photos I
included in my previous post, the chaotic scenes I captured were a little
disheartening. How were we going to unpack 15 wardrobe boxes when all we had
were two small built-in wardrobes. But somehow and with a little compromise, we
managed. My office is now home not just to the paintings but has become the
backup wardrobe where our winter clothes hang. Then again, this shouldn’t
surprise anyone who has moved house as wherever you go and whatever you choose
as your new home nothing ever fits and compromises, work-arounds, another round
of trips to goodwill, eventually see you crossing the finish line.
For Margo and me it’s been
all about creating an almost hotel-room like residence. This condo / townhouse
represents our Colorado residence whenever we return to visit our daughter and
her family. The grandkids are a very important component in Margo’s life and we
couldn’t see any alternative to continuing to be nearby. Now that we are
settling in, the surprises kept on piling on so much so that there has been a
steady stream of tradies passing through. Installing new television sets and
making sure that they arrived with the right wall brackets (which happened last
month) proved to be just the starting point.
We replaced the washer / dryer and the plumbing and returns that supported them. Our water heater was new but almost immediately after we finished unpacking, our HVAC system failed. Control boards for the 24 years old equipment are no longer available, so new HVAC furnace and compressors for heating and cooling were purchased. Then came a failure with the faucet in the kitchen and right now, we are having twenty plus years of dust (and much more) cleared out of the ducting. We had our electrical panel checked out but fortunately, that received a clean bill of health. We have a new cocktail bar installed, there is a pair of wine coolers on their way and there is a new room screen partition / book shelf still to arrive.
While I wasn’t planning on dwelling on the subject but first, downsizing from 4,550 sq ft to 1,500 sq ft came only 7 years after we downsized from 10,000 sq ft. Enough said. But here’s the thing – being selective in what we kept has helped us create a “home feeling” where we aren’t missing all that much. Upsizing is easy but downsizing? Staying focused is all important and making sure passageways remain wide adds to the illusion that the floor is larger than it actually is; somehow, we managed to create that illusion.
Margo and I have always been
interested in interior design and we had so much fun furnishing our previous homes.
With each sale, the outcome was always a request (followed by a separate
purchase agreement) to retain the furniture in place. In many ways, the outcome
wasn’t as gut-wrenching as we initially thought and indeed on these occasions, ultimately
proved to be cleansing. There just wasn’t any way furniture sized for one home
would have fit in the new home. And that
continues to be the storyline as we adjust to this new home feeling.
We have much to look forward to. Hopefully over the summer (or perhaps next Christmas) we will see the garage returned to us. Parking in the visitor spot is getting tired and trekking twenty plus miles to our storage unit to change cars is well, equally as tiresome. As the plan is to move to the east coast somewhere between Carolinas and Florida, we are going to make sure we get a double garage as a minimum. With a lift? How knows; could happen.
When it comes to keeping up
our business activities, having only just returned from a week in Australia we
found ourselves in Germany. The city of Berlin was our conference destination
and not having been to this city in twenty plus years, the place was
unrecognizable from all those years ago. Yes, the wall had just come down then but
even so, there’s a new airport and the seat of power had been overhauled on
such a scale as to leave no doubt, this was a unified country functioning
without divisions. Whatever was left as a reminder of the communist division
post war has been removed and even the concrete block rows of flats seemed to
have been repurposed and refreshed.
Our stay in Berlin was at the Steigenberger Hotel, adjacent to the Hauptbahnhof main railway station. In front of us was the Spree River that meandering peacefully through the city. With turn after turn, it provided us with a particularly good way to pass late afternoons and there were many riverside restaurants that became a favorite haunt of the conference participants. Much like every major city with a waterway passing through it, there were numerous river barges transporting tourists past the many sights. Given how warm Berlin was the week we were there, with temperatures climbing into the 80s F, there had to be many badly burnt bodies disembarking these vessels at the end of their journey. So much so it lead to one conference participant referring to these barges as just one more shipment of bacon.
At night, the riparian entertainment afforded those who walked the river banks and stopped by the many bars and restaurants were a reminder of what it must have been like back in the late 1920s and on through the period when art deco was in vogue. We passed many nightspots and could only image the performers singing in cabarets, dancing in reviews and much more. Images of Marlene Dietrich seemed hard to ignore whether your interests lie in her time on stage in the 1930s and into the 1940s. Paris may always have Édith Piaf but for Germany, it was always about Marlene.
Somehow, simply being on one side of the river and being aware that in years’ past, there was a constant parade of patrol boats, together with watch towers, ever eager to terminate any attempts to cross from one side to the other. Harsh times and there were many today who were readily recalled those times. Looking at the buildings we walked by it was hard to ignore the patchwork of filled pockets where gunfire had raked the premises at some point. There were the occasional carparks where the open space previously had been occupied by premises destroyed or simply removed the better to stop adventurous types jumping from windows. But now, the party lights twinkle and the light chatter of happy diners masks the past so effectively then after a short time seated by the river, even the most recently acquired memories quickly fade away.
As mentioned earlier in this post, there were a couple of restaurants we stopped in to dine, and later revisited more than once, one of which was in front of the Berliner Ensemble. Now a theater that held many memories: Seated outside, in full view of the building’s façade, only helped sustain thoughts of the past. Streetlights; shadows; people whispering; distant laughter; an edge to the night. Who performed in this building? What was performed? While the theater company was founded 75 years ago, the move to this premise in 1954 (it was built in 1892 to become a theater only in 1928), meant that it became an East German’s landmark.
To be seated beside such a building – and yes, taxi drivers were only too happy to fill in as many details as they could recall – was yet another historical reference that went some ways to reinforce the division that separated one side of Berlin from the other. And yet, here we were, dining and conversing in ways unimaginable just a few decades ago. We may be caught up in the relatively easy move from one home to another but to think that back in the time, so many individuals fought so desperately so as to feel safe. Yes, unimaginable as the laughter around us continued to reverberate along the riverbank.
While you continue reading this post Margo and I will be on the road, yet again. First it was Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, then Berlin, Germany, and now, our journey will take us through the southern states before winding its way to Dallas Texas. Yet one more conference after which we will get an almost two-month break. No more planes and trains, simply automobiles. We will be taking our first long road trip by car in almost a year and we have been looking forward to the escape this represents for quite some time. There is nothing quite like the open road, or so I recall Toad saying in Wind in the Willows (one of my all-time favorite stories).
There is much Margo and I
want to observe on this trip about which I will be posting next month. Suffice
to say, a trip across America in these times is a trip into the unexpected. We
just aren’t sure what we will encounter and while we will be sticking to the
Interstate system, mostly, it will still provide us with insight into the
general sentiment of the country in the leadup to potentially one of the most
controversial presidential elections of all times. Never in all the time I have
lived in America have I witnessed a country as deeply divided as it is now.
Hopefully, as we cross the country, these divisions mostly live in the media
but then again, we are looking to observe the sentiments, as expressed in the
political billboards and posters, for ourselves.
Margo and I love to travel and this year, we have already racked up the miles. We ended last year with a sail through the Caribbean but almost immediately hit the skies as one trip morphed into another. We still have trips scheduled that will take us to Las Vegas, Nevada, followed by yet another conference in Monterey, California. There may even be one more trip back to Europe before we end the year, once again, sailing the Caribbean. Through it all, the move, the travel, the people, the country Margo and I consider it all to be educational as we never truly stop observing our surroundings. There’s just so much to see outside our door. And with a certainty, we can admit that no, we will never be there but rather, just one trip away from whatever comes next.
Remember us as the months
continue to be packed with activities as, with the passing of each month, the
each seem to be getting shorter and shorter! Enjoy the summer wherever you
happen to be.
Strangers
waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlights, people
Living just to find emotion
Hiding somewhere in the night
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