Benedetta and Carlotta, two dear friends who were studying here in Vienna on Erasmus and went back to Italy(Benedetta to Rome and Carlotta to Bologna) in June
And also more help from Liz who came over to help me scour and wash the doors and windows after the painting was finished.
we really were in need of a new floor....but it works fine for now and we have just covered the worst parts with cabinets :)
this is how I cooked (well actually there was no cooking involved for a month. I ate mozarella and tomatoes for about a month. but here I was preparing the breakfast for Alina's arrival back to Vienna. I invited some friends over for a breakfast because Alina's train arrived at 8:30am!
There is a wonderful friend of ours, Anton, who is the husband of Krista and who has been coming over to install the kitchen and make it fit our space. On the first day he was over, the three of us worked together and then Alina had to leave so Anton and I worked mostly together. It was a lot like spending a Saturday at home with my dad doing work around the yard, garden, house, boat like we always did growing up. Saturday was always project day and George and I were always included as my father’s helpers. I learned so much—how to use a tablesaw when making our first birdhouse, how to use a level when hanging pictures in our stairway, how to avoid stripping screws, and how to effectively strip paint when remodeling an old 1960’s Cruiser’s Inc. wooden boat. The afternoon with Anton involved more lessens like how to plaster holes in walls, how to put a kitchen together, how to properly connect a stove and stove-top, custom cut and install a countertop, and how to have patience when you think things are simpler and will be finished faster than they are in reality. And of course, I learned some new German vocabulary like “Winkel” and “Blatt”, oh, and Anton took me along on my first experience of an Austrian Home Depot. Anton is a trained electrician, but he might as well have a degree for everything involved in home repair—he is a true ‘handyman’. I have yet to discover something he cannot do. and how meticulously…it is incredible. That is something I particularly admire about the majority of Austrians and Germans. They never do anything half way—they always spend the extra time or expend the extra energy to make sure it gets as close to perfect as possible.
As we were cutting and installing the counter top (the old countertop didn’t fit in how we had to arrange the kitchen and Anton and Krista donated us a new countertop!), Anton finally said, “Ok, Passt! Nicht perfekt aber ein Handwerker ist kein Kunstwerker so es kann nicht perfekt sein.” (Oh. Good. Not perfect, but a handman is not an artist so it can’t be perfect) His statement struck me because I stepped back and looked at all the work he had already done in the kitchen. How meticulously he had done it and how he had aimed continuously at perfection. His patience, his lack of tension and stress in getting the job done, and his ability to teach me how to best help him were all things that I noted! He had worked so patiently with such a peaceful, joy-filled and caring temperment and character that he never said a harsh word or lost his temper when frustrated (which I do automatically it seems). He cannot say he is no artist in his work because therein lies his art! To come over not expecting what to find when two young women call you for help in installing a kitchen—to work in the chaos of a kitchen cabinet and appliance mishmash requiring a lot of customization—to take the chaos and disorder of what you are given and to make something beautiful and functional. Who would say that isn’t a most exceptional art. In fact, it is the art of living, not only a handyman’s work. It is the way in which every human engaged in today, everyday, in this life, is an artist. He or she lives, taking whatever he or she is given no matter how crazy, or mishmashed, frustrating, or incohesive it may be or seem, and with the utmost patience, clarity, and grace…make something beautiful, welcoming, and most functional. It takes more skill than picking what you want and buying, or creating based on the idea you already have. It is taking what you are given with a positive outlook, patience, and openness to the possibilities. Only with these can you be the artist. Both in the kitchen and in life.
So as I have rambled…Anton does exceptional work, and “almost-pefection” is his aim, as he says, so with the little time he has aside from his regular job and his wife and four children, he has been over three times to work on it—each time doing beautiful work and helping us get one step closer to being finished—but taking his time and making little steps….so the kitchen is still not finished.
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| Day #1: when we realized it was going to take longer than a Saturday afternoon |
Celal sent some of his installateurs to come and re-route the kitchen sink water to the way we needed it for the new sink, and in order to do this they had to cut a huge new whole in the newly resurfaced wall :) so after it was all finished Alina fixed the hole with something between quick cement and gibbs, and then I sanded it and painted it. As of the second day of Anton's work, the second half of the kitchen with the sink was half-installed, but still needs some customization work and thus cannot be fully installed. So for about 3 weeks we were doing the dishes like this....
And on the third day, he installed the upper cabinets on the stove side of the kitchen, which by a miracle fit perfectly into our space—with 1cm to spare. Due to the slow pace, we still have a lot of furniture and kitchen things stored in the chapel. Praying before our little altar next to stacks of pots and pans is funny, but we don’t do it often, because we in fact have access to the Church now!!
We have been having daily adoration in the Church for the past month and we have celebrated many community masses there, and Fr. Jacques has said a couple masses for the parish as well. We are so blessed for the opportunity to be praying everyday in this beautiful Church. Sometimes friends even come for adoration and the mass! Our friendship with Sr. Fritzi (the woman responsible for the Church) has blossomed and she really has become a dear friend. So has our relationship with the parish grown, especially since Fr. Jacques has been saying the parish mass every once in a while. It is really beautiful to see how a handful of people have responded with such openness and interest to our presence here. Some of them even came to the first cultural “open-door” event we hosted during Renee’s visit.
Something Renee helped me see through a conversation we had one afternoon was that the building of the kitchen, or, in fact, all the renovations are like building a puzzle. The process, the putting in place of every piece is what is to be enjoyed—no matter how long it takes to complete it. The joy is not in enjoying the goal or the finished project, it is the process—the people who helped, the moments shared, the little victories, the thanksgiving for help and company. You don’t put a puzzle together to enjoy the finished project—you put it together to take it APART and put it back in the box!! What is achieved cannot be enjoyed as much as every moment in between.
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