Electricity, How We Miss You!

We woke this morning to a power outage. What to do? No idea. I know that e-on Bayern is our power company (and I know where their nearest offices are) but that does us little good. We could figure out how to tell them our power was out, but what then? If they answer with anything more complex than “We’re coming,” we wouldn’t be able to understand them. And one can’t use gestures and such over the phone.

So we wondered… Is the power out in our whole neighborhood? Whole town? Most places are closed on Sundays anyway, so it’s hard to tell. Would the fact that our hot water is controlled by an electric thermostat mean that once we’ve used what’s heated there is no more ‘til the power’s back? How long before all the food in our fridge goes bad? (This is the first time I’ve been glad we don’t have a big ol’ American-sized fridge!) How fast are they about getting problems like this fixed? I am in no way implying that this is a backwards country, but we are in a place where it’s typical to have to wait a month or more for a telephone line or Internet access. We figured it could possibly take a couple of days.

Went about our usual stuff… brunch at the mess hall, playtime at “the flat playground” to wear Wee Laddie out, a nap. Got up & had a snack and planned some foods to buy that don’t require refrigeration, just in case. Met Guitarman (who’d stayed on base to do laundry & see the Harry Potter movie) and bought some candles and flashlight batteries and had dinner at the bowling alley since all we could at home is grill… and it was already getting late.

After we got home, Guitarman spotted one of the neighbors (the one other American we know of on our block) outside and went to talk to him. Turns out they had power, as did our Turkish neighbors and the houses on the other side of the street. The guy suggested checking the breakers.

“But they couldn’t all have tripped, could they?” Guitarman asked me.

“I wouldn’t think so.”

Turns out there is a master breaker that had, in fact, tripped. At some random time early in the morning when hardly anything would’ve even been plugged in. (Power surge or something, I guess.) Who’da thunk it’d all ultimately be controlled by one switch? Anyway, we're happily back amongst the electrified.