Since moving in 3 weeks ago, the dishwasher here at our temporary apartment has not been working. It turns on, sounds like it's working, and gets the dishes wet. But when the cycle is finished running, the dishes are still dirty and the soap is still sitting in clumps in the bottom. I've been negotiating with anyone who will listen to get out of doing the dishes by hand. When my mom was staying with us, I was the cook and she would wash the dishes afterwards. Now that she's gone, I've had to do it a few times, but my sweet husband has done it more often than not. Now that he's sick of doing the dishes, we've finally decided to call our relocation consultant and try to get it fixed. Sounds simple enough, right? That's what I thought....
The relocation consultant got in contact with the building maintenance man who arrived to check out the dishwasher as I was trying to get the kids out the door to school. After checking it out for 5 minutes, he motions for me to come over and starts explaining in German what he has found to be the problem. I indicate with an "I'm a moron" look on my face that I have NO idea what he's saying. This does not dissuade him from trying to explain to me in German what the problem is. Finally, he concedes that I am in fact a moron, and indicates that the relocation consultant will call me to explain.
Later in the day, the consultant emails Bryan with news on the dishwasher. She wrote:
The building attandant reported to me that the dishwasher does need some "Klarspüler" and some "Spülmaschinen Salz" in order to work well again. You will find these products in every supermarket.
Oooooohhhhhh! Klarspüler and Suplmaschinen Salz! Boy, don't I feel stupid. Why didn't I think of that? Of COURSE it needs Klarspuler and Spülmaschinen Salz! Everyone knows that...
At this point it is Sunday and the only market open is the one at the trainstation. So I walk to the train station and enter the small grocery store to find that 472 other people needed to shop on Sunday too. I find my way to the area right by the checkout where the cleaning products are and start scanning the shelves for the words Klarspüler and Spülmaschinen Salz. I scanned and scanned and scanned thinking surely I've missed it. I look around for a friendly face that might be able to help me. All I see are lots of German speaking people who are annoyed that they are waiting in a ridiculously long line for groceries. I cut my losses and head back to the apartment empty handed, hoping there are plenty of paper plates in the cupboard for dinner.
The next day, E and I set out for a much larger grocery store in the town where we will soon be living. I find the cleaning products aisle and again search for these 2 common dishwashing products. Again, these words are nowhere to be found. Seriously?!? At this point E starts getting noisy and crabby and is rewarded with a lollipop. I refuse to leave the grocery store without Klarspüler and Spülmaschinen Salz. I see a guy stocking the shelves and in my best cheerful Swiss voice I say, "Gruetzi! Sprechen zee English?". Without looking up, he says "no". Ummm, seeing as how "no" is an english word, I do not back down. He realizes I am still standing there and as soon as he makes eye contact I put my grocery list in front of his face and point to my 2 desired items. At this point, he becomes very friendly and walks over to the shelves and finds what he indicates with hand gestures and lots of German words to be Klarspüler and Spülmaschinen Salz. "Merci! Merci! Merci!" I said and considered hugging him out of gratitude. He didn't look like the hugging type so I headed to the checkout. As I was waiting in line, I looked at the 2 products he had given me and realized neither package had the words Spülmaschinen Salz or Klarspüler on them. E is now done with her lollipop and I'm late to pick Z up from school, so I hope for the best and pay for my groceries.
After Bryan arrived home that night I proudly showed him what I believed to be Klarspüler and Spulmaschinen Salz. I take out the manual for the dish washer to find it is written completely in German. No problem! That's what Google Translate is for. I spent the next 20 minutes typing in the directions for putting the products in the machine. When I hit the Translate button, this is a sample of what it came up with-
Bottom of the dish basket verscholubkappe machine and found the open salzbehalters
Ointment halter fill with water
Hmmm.... I certainly don't know where to find the ointment halter, so I show Bryan the compartments where I believe the Klarspüler and Spülmaschinen Salz go and I tell him to just dump the stuff in until it's full. Bryan started to object to my random wild guesses about how to fix the dishwasher but thought better of it when he heard me cursing at Google Translate under my breathe. Finally, he closed the door of the dishwasher and miraculously, the two lights that had been on indicating a problem, went off! Hallelujah! We high fived and congratulated ourselves on our perseverance. This was a major victory for team Mj.
We filled up the dishwasher with dirty dishes and listened to the sound of our dishes being cleaned. Like music to my ears! An hour later, I opened up the dishwasher to see the fruits of our labor. What do you suppose I found? A dishwasher full of wet but still dirty dishes.
I swore at the dishwasher, opened a bottle of Chardonnay, and reminded myself that tomorrow is a new day.
