Breakthroughs / Durchbrüche

Today was a day of breakthroughs, one negative and two positive. We'll start with the negative...

It snowed yesterday, and Peter and Nikolas spent part of the afternoon building a wall using little storage boxes from Ikea to make bricks. They made the wall in the little grassy garden in front of our apartment building. We have two windows that overlook this area on Leitmeritzstraße - the toilet room and the shower room. Both have double-paned glass windows, with dappled glass inside that you can't see through. This has annoyed us since the day we have moved in. We've wanted a street-side view so we can see what's going on in the neighborhood, but the windows have made this impossible. Austrian windows are different than American windows. You have three options with a window: 1) closed; 2) open at the top, window leaning inwards; 3) open like a door, nothing between you and the outside. This morning the boys wanted to check on their wall and so went into the toilet room to have a look. Swinging the window open like a door, the window opened too far, hit the medicine cabinet on the wall (we had never noticed that you can't open the window all the way without hitting the medicine cabinet), and the dappled glass window came shattering down. Despite being shocking and making a disastrous mess, perhaps it's a blessing in disguise. We'll have the window replaced with clear glass and we'll have a street-side view at last. In the meantime, however, we have a stinky toilet room with a broken window. Very classy, indeed.

On to the positive. Nikolas loves to take a bath and hates to take a shower. It's always been the case, and it's one of the things he's missed the most in Salzburg as we only have a shower. We forced him through a couple showers when we first got here, but he quickly begged to take a bath in the shower basin (which is no more than four inches deep) and we conceded. Since then, he's happily had a pathetic 'bath' every night before bed. In Turkey, we had a lovely large bathtub in our hotel room. Nikolas didn't use it a single time. Instead, he got into have a 'hot shower' in one of the poolside shower cubicles after swimming. In fact, as the week went on, his hot showers got longer and longer and longer. On the last day, he'd washed his hair and was standing in the shower, not ready to go and not ready to go and not ready to go. Peter tried distracting him by telling him what crazy things there were to see out by the pool. Nikolas wasn't interested. "Papa," he said, "stop talkin'. I'm relaxin' in my hot shower."

Back in Salzburg, Nikolas went right back to his pathetic baths. At least he did until tonight. Tonight he'd come in from a quick sledding session after dinner, a reward for being so good at the Roggenbauers all afternoon. He was cold and tired. Randomly I asked if he'd like a bath or a shower. "I want a hot shower!" he said. And he took a hot shower, happily, washing his hair and standing in the warm water until it was time to get out. Quite a breakthrough for him!

My breakthrough was during our afternoon at Roggenbauers. We were there partly for cake and coffee and partly so that Peter could help Roggenbauer's grown daughter (who has grown children and has recently packed up her life in the US and moved to Salzburg) figure out university registration. As is always the case with a Roggenbauer visit, the conversation flows from German to English and back to German again in a strange flowing mixture of languages. Usually I get stuck in English, finding myself tongue-tied in German. But today it didn't happen. I found the words flowing out of my mouth, not getting all hung up on correct grammar and verb tenses (even though I was aware of mistakes I was making). I even told the story of a pair of Peter's incoming students and the unusual housing arrangements they've made (which includes a broken-down stove, people sleeping on couches in the kitchen, and unpaid electric bills) all in German and got everything out, more or less, with the exception of the word 'landlord' and everyone understood! My German finally seems to be coming together!