Checked out.
The packers are gone. Our junk is out of the apartment. There's a Rewe shopping cart downstairs in our storage filled with garbage bags that are, in turn, filled with stuff that will be going into a donation bin down the street. The kids are extra clingy. The pantry, the fridge, and the freezer are populated with the odds and ends of our remaining food stores. Everything that's coming with us on home leave is either in a suitcase, or can easily be chucked into a suitcase.
We are almost done with our time in Berlin. I have now reached the hurry up and wait stage of our departure.
When we left out of Ashgabat a little over 2 years ago, it was a giddy and desperate affair. We were giddy that the tour was over, and desperate to shed as much weight as possible so as to make our pack-out and departure that much faster. Our predawn exit from that country was as surreal as our arrival.
I wish I could say that these past two weeks in Berlin have been the exact opposite of that pack-out in Turkmenistan. In some ways it has. Unlike our prior post, we have the creature comforts of decent internet, and streaming television here. If, after tossing/bagging/boxing things all day you decide not to cook your dinner, there are easy options for eating out. Accidentally packing something you needed for the baby or toddler (like cutlery) isn't the end of the world, it's just a walk (or short metro trip) away to rectify. However, we're still giddy to be leaving, mainly because there is a laundry list of things of places to go, things to do, people to see, and places to eat!
So, for this pack-out everything that could be packed, was. All our belongings going HHE were bagged or boxed and stacked into our apartment living room/dining room. The night before the packers arrived to box away our belongings, we photographed all the carpets we had purchased in Turkmenistan for insurance purposes. Each carpet has a story, so when you start pulling out carpets (for whatever reason), you begin to remember the story that goes with the carpet.
In the Oguzkent Hotel, there is a carpet shop run by a woman named Kumush. While we were in Ashgabat, we purchased a number of carpets from her. The carpet above was one of them- it is one of three carpets we refer to as our 'Embargo' carpets. All three are Iranian, and the one shown above was the first of the three to be purchased. When I first saw it, it was laying out on the marble hotel floor filled with sand and who knows what else, but I could still see most of the pattern and color. It was unlike anything I had seen before for sale in the carpet shops, and even though it was dirty and clearly non-traditional I like it. I think she was genuinely surprised when we asked her in our crappy Russian how much she wanted for it. We ended up getting it for under $200 that day (along with a few other carpets) and brought it home to our apartment where we proceed to hang it over the stairwell rails and beat the crap out of it with brooms for what seemed like forever. So much sand came out it was as if the Gara-gum desert had been contained within the carpet. When we finally gave up, the end result was a much brighter, slightly cleaner carpet. We decided that it could be our entryway carpet since (even after the beating) it really couldn't get any dirtier than it already was. Over the rest of our tour Dorian (as the carpet came to be fondly referred as) became cleaner, brighter, and amazingly soft thanks to regular vacuuming by our housekeeper. I firmly believe that somewhere there is a carpet getting uglier and uglier every time Dorian gets vacuumed. I love this carpet. It is one of my favorite carpets, and I think its beautiful. But it still has sand in it, and I have come to accept that it will always have sand in it.
That, my friends, is how I have come to accept my current life as a trailing spouse in the Foreign Service. I may love aspects of it, and have a partial fondness for the host countries we stay in, but the sand will always be there.
We are almost done with our time in Berlin. I have now reached the hurry up and wait stage of our departure.
When we left out of Ashgabat a little over 2 years ago, it was a giddy and desperate affair. We were giddy that the tour was over, and desperate to shed as much weight as possible so as to make our pack-out and departure that much faster. Our predawn exit from that country was as surreal as our arrival.
I wish I could say that these past two weeks in Berlin have been the exact opposite of that pack-out in Turkmenistan. In some ways it has. Unlike our prior post, we have the creature comforts of decent internet, and streaming television here. If, after tossing/bagging/boxing things all day you decide not to cook your dinner, there are easy options for eating out. Accidentally packing something you needed for the baby or toddler (like cutlery) isn't the end of the world, it's just a walk (or short metro trip) away to rectify. However, we're still giddy to be leaving, mainly because there is a laundry list of things of places to go, things to do, people to see, and places to eat!
So, for this pack-out everything that could be packed, was. All our belongings going HHE were bagged or boxed and stacked into our apartment living room/dining room. The night before the packers arrived to box away our belongings, we photographed all the carpets we had purchased in Turkmenistan for insurance purposes. Each carpet has a story, so when you start pulling out carpets (for whatever reason), you begin to remember the story that goes with the carpet.
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| Hello Dorian! |
In the Oguzkent Hotel, there is a carpet shop run by a woman named Kumush. While we were in Ashgabat, we purchased a number of carpets from her. The carpet above was one of them- it is one of three carpets we refer to as our 'Embargo' carpets. All three are Iranian, and the one shown above was the first of the three to be purchased. When I first saw it, it was laying out on the marble hotel floor filled with sand and who knows what else, but I could still see most of the pattern and color. It was unlike anything I had seen before for sale in the carpet shops, and even though it was dirty and clearly non-traditional I like it. I think she was genuinely surprised when we asked her in our crappy Russian how much she wanted for it. We ended up getting it for under $200 that day (along with a few other carpets) and brought it home to our apartment where we proceed to hang it over the stairwell rails and beat the crap out of it with brooms for what seemed like forever. So much sand came out it was as if the Gara-gum desert had been contained within the carpet. When we finally gave up, the end result was a much brighter, slightly cleaner carpet. We decided that it could be our entryway carpet since (even after the beating) it really couldn't get any dirtier than it already was. Over the rest of our tour Dorian (as the carpet came to be fondly referred as) became cleaner, brighter, and amazingly soft thanks to regular vacuuming by our housekeeper. I firmly believe that somewhere there is a carpet getting uglier and uglier every time Dorian gets vacuumed. I love this carpet. It is one of my favorite carpets, and I think its beautiful. But it still has sand in it, and I have come to accept that it will always have sand in it.
That, my friends, is how I have come to accept my current life as a trailing spouse in the Foreign Service. I may love aspects of it, and have a partial fondness for the host countries we stay in, but the sand will always be there.
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