OK.

The scaffolding building company is a right winner! Most of the days, when they’re due to come – they don’t come at all.
If – surprisingly – they do arrive, the keep building scaffolding which affords everyone to fly the remaining 2 – 3 meters up to the roof! It’s really amazing! I wonder what they think they’re doing?! I’m usually very tempted to interrupted them in their work and tell them how to do things correctly, but after all I’m supposed to be the alien to scaffolding and they’re supposed to be the professionals – am I right?

Whatever…
My three favourite Handy-Andys – Turkish Abdulla, Polish Wit and German Mr. Sievert – got the brains as well as the muscles to manage to get up to the roof no matter what!

They’ve almost completed demolishing the roof and some amazing options have come up for me:
Not only did everyone at last Monday’s “Eigentümerversammlung” (nice long German word, meaning annual meeting of all the people owning places in this building) agree to let me annex the former attic (adding about 40 square feet to the room), they even allowed me to add a second balcony to my flat which basically is the roof of the oriel of my two downstairs-rooms. All I need to do is get a window that opens as a door fitted into the roof and have them put a railing around the platform, et voilà: New balcony! (Sun: all day!)
Apart from that the work man realised that there are two chimneys in my upper room, which are no longer in use and thus have decided to simply knock them down, giving me yet an extra 15 square feet! Cool!
So, eventually, this room is going to be really big and sunny!

Next week the new beams for the roof will arrive, along with an architect to discuss all the plans in detail and then we’re already approaching the re-building of my place.
Did I just say “already”?!?
True to the fact, it’s already more than a month, since the fire and I’ve already become totally used to life without a kitchen (and a few other miss-haps). Milk supplies are reduced to powdered consistency, sugar can be found at work and the electric’s kettle is doing a great job, too. What else does one need? Tea-bags? Right! Well I usually have to search for them for a while but usually find them somewhere…

Keep smiling!
;)
Corinna