Coincidence Again

It was a long, hot day in the office - my little themometer scooted over 30°C for the first time this year.  With open windows it was, however, a very pleasant 23°C inside.

After struggling with a lot of E-mail traffic I was very happy to decamp and head for home.  I'd planned it so that I would be in the city centre and could just bounce into my second bus and be home in 40 minutes.

Best laid plans and all that.

My bus into town was late.  10 minutes late arriving and the roads into town were mobbed.  We did a lot of waiting.  I knew that I would miss the bus I hoped to catch but hopefully I would make the next one....

Shouldn't get my hopes up.

It was more of a crawl than a drive into town.  It would have been quicker walking, so i got out and walked and enjoyed the sunshine as hugely irritated drivers got more and more irritated with the behaviour of other hugely irritated drivers. If you could turn seethe into energy, we'd have free power for everyone in Wiesbaden.

And then I came home, albeit much later than normal.  I was looking forward to chilling out after work.

But.  We've had people working at the house today....

If you've been reading my Blips for any length of time, you'll be aware that I do not have a great opinion of tradesmen here.  I think we can say that my experiences have not been terrific.  They haven't even been acceptable.

Surely this would be the time that everything went smoothly....

But what should have been a "simple one hour job" (not my description) has not been.

We wanted a couple of railings installed on the steps at the front of the house.  It is NOT a big job. On the face of it at least.  We'd had someone look at it, measure up and they gave us the 1 hour story.

Long story short.  Nothing was the right height and/or length and they'll have to come back on Monday and Tuesday (not tomorrow because that would be Good Service and they don't provide that..)  I expect to hear that the price has now gone up as "it's a lot more work".

And so my title, another "coincidence".  My back of a stamp list of reliable German tradespeople still awaits its first entry.