While a lot of things about moving to Germany have been somewhat surprising, or curious, or even startling, I can’t say I’ve yet felt any ‘culture shock’. That all changed a few weeks ago when a large, construction-grade backhoe started scooping directly into the house behind ours, destroying it, at 7:00am in the morning.

Let me back up a minute. First, I need to tell you that Germans are fanatical about neighbor relations. The entire neighborhood observes ‘quiet hours’ from 1-3pm every day, between 10pm-7am at night, and all day on Sundays. This means no lawn mowing, no weed eating, no loud music, no parties, etc, and if we lived in an apartment building, it would mean no flushing the toilets or running the clothes washer, either. Kids are blessedly excluded from these requirements! On three different occasions, we have received handwritten notes in our mailbox warning us of a party in the neighborhood that ‘may get a little loud after 10pm’. Some of them were written by teenagers having their 18th birthday parties (none of the parties ended up at a noise level above Coffee Emporium in Hyde Park on a Sunday afternoon). It was a little hard to get used to, but now I appreciate it because there’s always a guarantee that the neighborhood will be ‘at rest’ for a time. It’s great for coffee, reading, napping, sleeping, whatever!!

Next, the house borders our yard directly with little space between – we had planted a sunflower border along the back fence, had a hammock set up next to their garage, and a full ‘victory garden’ finally starting to produce all kinds of veggies and herbs. Not to mention our amazing new ‘storable (puncture-able) pool’ (yes, it’s an inflatable above-ground pool – never should have said never on that one).

And finally, like all of you, we are in the middle of a virus crisis and our entire world has shrunk to include only our family, our house, and our yard – at times, it feels like those are all we’ve got, and the prospect of losing more has me admittedly on edge.

So when the bricks, glass, shingles, concrete, nails, and probably asbestos starting flying into our yard without any notice or warning, I may have turned a little pink in the process of starting to seek answers (i.e., maybe a heads-up, or some safety measures?). When the construction workers told me they didn’t speak German or English (they were Romanian), had no boss on site, and had no plans to do anything besides crush the house as quickly as possible, I may have turned a shade of red. When they told me there would be no fence protecting our kids and stuff from the debris raining down around us, or from what was soon to be a 20-foot straight drop-off into the foundation pit, steam may have been coming out of my ears. And when the backhoe started to tilt the garage onto our yard, with 400 softball-size decorative roof rocks raining on our garden, hammock, and almost our bodies, I may have threatened to call the police.

Not my finest moment.

But the real shock comes in finding out that this is all completely normal here. Houses are routinely completely destroyed to make way for new – in fact, the one behind us is one of two on that street, and now that I know what to look for, we can find them everywhere. Fences aren’t required, but I finally shed enough tears to our landlords so that they were able to convince the owners to put one up. (my eyes shining with gratitude once it was in place). Safety at the site is minimal, compared to what you’d find in the US, and the workers pee outside all day long. When the entire steel 45-ft fence blew over into our yard (sparing most things, thankfully), I wasn’t strong enough to stand it back up on my own, and the workers yelled at me that it was my fault there was a fence there in the first place. When I found out that this entire project belongs to neighbors that we can see from our house – catty-corner in the back, right next to the site, I couldn’t help but shake my head in wonder that no one had come over to mention this was happening – when we get warned about a few teenagers partying quite quietly in the next yard over?

I can’t figure it out.

On the plus side, the demo & digging only took about a month, and now they’ve moved on to the build stage, which is at least more interesting (and safer, and quieter) to watch. Here’s a view of the construction crane that we now enjoy from every room in the house (our windows all face out back):

I am really digging deep (no pun intended) to focus on all the great industry and wonder of a new home build – but of all the things I enjoy about living in Germany, this one doesn’t make the list. I know without a doubt that we are the luckiest people ever to be here and that there are soooo many worse problems to have. But I couldn’t resist sharing with you how I am losing my s*** over this.