Coal for Christmas

A friend of a friend is unfortunate enough to have Ofenheizung – coal heating. Most people in the East had coal heating before the Wall came down, apparently, maybe in the West too. It basically meant you had to get up early in the winter, in the cold and dark, and fetch coal from the cellar to heat your apartment. This was a heavy, dirty chore, and then you’d have to wait hours for the room to heat up. Brr! This would be repeated at the end of the day, when the house was stone-cold again.

This may sound like an episode of Survivor, but no, some people still have this kind of heating – either because their apartment hasn’t been renovated yet, or simply because they voluntarily live in a flat with Ofenheizung, like my old German teacher. He liked the traditional aspect of it. I didn’t ask if he also hunted sheep for their wool or mammoths. That would have been rude. And he seemed content.

But this friend of a friend, who we’ll call Hans, definitely isn’t content. “One more winter,” he threatens, but never quite makes it. “I avoid him between October and March,” my friend admitted. “He’s grumpy between those months. And no one stays with him then, because it’s freezing inside, and then he gets grumpier and wants to know why no one’s visiting him.”

Hans is missing out on central heating, which most flats here now have, thank God, and inside is warm and toasty, way warmer than inside NZ houses, even though the winters there are milder. In fact, it’s so toasty in Berlin flats that the first time I lived here I forgot that it was winter outside and wandered out in a t-shirt. It was a short-lived excursion...