Shit Happens

I know it's been a while and I have a very good post coming after this on about my adventures at the beginning of November but first I must tell you what happened last friday.

I went out with most family on the 21st of November to go to a movie and shopping for groceries. There were no good movies out, so we decided to just go shopping. Believe it or not grocery shopping isn't much different here than in the states. The buggies are a bit smaller and the food looks better (there's a lot more fresh meat, fruit, and veggies). We left the house around 4:30, just as it was starting to get dark. It gets dark so early here. By 5pm it already feels like 7 or 8 pm just because it's so dark. It really messes with your head.

Anyhow, when we came home we took the groceries into the kitchen. We put away the food while making a simple dinner at the same time. Salad with bread and cheese and some fresh meat. We got home around 7:15. We ate our dinner and talked about what we were going to do the next day. We were going to go to a concert and go to their Cabin which is about an hour away in Brandenburg. After we ate my host mom (Andrea) and I started clearing the table, my host dad (Tommy) went somewhere and my host brother (Johannes) went to look something up on his computer.

A few minutes later my host mom and I were still cleaning in the kitchen when Johannes come down asking where his computer was. I made joke with him about it because he tends to lose things. But he said he left it on his bed and he said that I should remember because we were looking at something together on it when he last used it. My host mom went upstairs with him to help find it while I finished the kitchen.

A second later Andrea says that her computer (which was sitting on her desk in the office) was gone. That is when I felt the odd panic set in. "What is going on" I thought. It kind of reminded me of Christmas for a split second. When I was little my mom would take the gingerbread men and woman (and children and any other living gingerbread thing) and hide them in my doll house or somewhere similar. The reason was because on Christmas eve while we're sleeping and when Santa was coming they would come to live because of the magic of Christmas. I loved it.

I ran up to my room and opened the door and turned on the light. I had left my laptop on my bed, plugged in. It wasn't there. That is when my heart sank.

Someone had broken into our house while we were gone for 3 hours and took all of our laptops, half of my jewelry, all of Andrea's jewelry, and my host parents 50 kilo (140 pound) safe. The creepy thing is that besides the fact that all of our possessions were gone, there was no trace of anyone being in the house or how they got in. Later we discovered they broke the door handle of the back door and that's how they got in. The police came, dusted for prints and told us there was probably no likely hood of them finding our things. Which I expected.

Now we all have new laptops, new locks, and a little case of paranoia. We leave light on in the house when we leave and my Andrea almost always has here laptop with her. I hid the important jewelry I have left (I got lucky because some of my jewelry was already kind of hidden, not on purpose) and I kind of hide my computer when I leave. But I refuse to live in fear. That's no way to live.

Things will get better. They already are better. The insurance should cover most everything. Even my computer.