In Need of a Superhero!!!

 "By the way, do you have the (SLAM) keys?"  Jim was in England with Jared, my friend Barca and I were standing outside our apartment door and, of course, the keys were right where they belonged in the little drawer on the OTHER SIDE of the door!  We needed a superhero!  Who should we call but the Hausmeister?!?! 

When we moved into our apartment in February, we met our Hausmeister (caretaker), Paul.  He and his family live directly below us and we have struck up a friendship, starting with a plate of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies delivered to their door not long after we moved in.  Paul is always ready to lend a hand.  Now the question was, did he have a master key that could unlock our apartment?

I knocked on the door and Paul's wife answered.  No, they didn't have a key and Paul was out walking the dog.  Soon other neighbors gather outside the Hausmeister's door and many suggestions flew around, most of which I could not understand, being that they were all in German. 

Finally, Paul and Snoopy (yes, that is the name of their tiny shih tzu looking dog) came home.  We all trooped upstairs to try the door again.  No, still locked.  But...I had left the bathroom window that opens onto the balcony open.  Only problem, our balcony is two floors (third floor in the US) up.  No problem for Paul The Burgermeister!  He ran down to the basement and returned with a step ladder.  Rearranging everything on their balcony, he climbed up the ladder.  His hands barely reached the bottom of our balcony.  Now this is a slightly over-weight (although now I think all the extra weight is muscle), middle-aged man with two teenage children and a dog named "Snoopy"!  I watch him get his footing on a bolt on one of the metal supports and then he slowly pulled himself up and disappeared.  Meanwhile, his wife, clutching Snoopy, had retreated to a back room and closed the door because she couldn't bear to watch!  "Habe es!" (Got it!) he called down and we all clapped, his wife came out of the closed room and Snoopy yipped with excitement!

So now Paul and his family have a freshly baked strawberry/blackberry cream cake and I have my key carefully put away in the new "belonging" place, my purse! 

Paul's balcony is the one with the curtains and ours is the one above it!