To balance on a wire
Always ask what's in the box
Package delivery is, at the best of times, chaotic in Berlin.
I could write an entire book about the measures I’ve taken to order, track, and successfully collect the things I order here — it really is that different from other places.
One of the particularly odd aspects of the process is that delivery companies will never ever leave a package outside your door, but they will give it to any of your neighbors and, in fact, any location that will take it within about a 5km radius.
Since I work from home most of the time, the delivery people have learned I almost always answer the doorbell. If they’re willing to lug packages up to me on the fourth floor (fifth floor to the Americans), then I’m willing to hold on to boxes until my neighbors collect them.
This box was rather large,
but not extraordinarily so. Just more on the cat-food-delivery end of the spectrum than the single-t-shirt end. So when my downstairs neighbor came to collect it that evening, I did something I’d never done before. I asked about it.
“What’s in the box?”