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I am a genius.

Jill

I finally figured out how to work my German stove. I bought a lighter, but still couldn’t light the damn burner because lighters go out when you turn them sideways, and you must turn them sideways to light the burner. I also really hate using lighters as a general rule (they hurt my fingers, they make me extremely nervous, and I’ve never smoked so I’m just uncomfortable with them), and I don’t like having my hand close to the stove when I’m lighting gas and starting a flame that may be kind of big. So I scrounged around the kitchen and found some thin wooden skewer sticks. I lit the end of one of them and used it like an extra-long match. And presto, it worked, I did not burn down the apartment, and I’m now happily boiling water. A million thanks to Azundris who taught me the hold-the-button-in-for-five-seconds trick. I would not have guessed that.

Next up: Figuring out how to open the door to my porch.

Here’s to small victories.

19 thoughts on I am a genius.

  1. I use that trick too, for lighting my water heater (which goes out every now and then). Bought a bunch of the wooden skewers from the dollar store and they work like a charm…

    Now, what’s wrong with your porch door?

  2. I do that myself on our gas stove. But they apparently have long lighters in Germany like we have here for gas barbecue grills. The word you want is stabfeuerzeug.

  4. Today, the German Stove. Tomorrow, Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness.

    But, Jill, you will not be considered a genius until you figure out the German Toilet.

  5. German porch doors work in a variety of ways.
    The two most common ways are
    A) it is an L-shaped handle hand you can rotate 90 degrees to open the door completely or 180 degrees to make it tilt inward
    B) There is a door knob that does not turn but to the side somewhere there is a lever that you can move 90 degrees of 180 to open the door in different ways
    Enjoy Germany, it is a great country and a great place to be a feminist. Much more egalitarian than the US which is where I am now.

  6. Also, if you don’t have wooden skewers, you can light the end of a piece of raw spaghetti. Seriously, it works!

  7. The grill lighter is the way to go if the pilot won’t stay lit. Bonus points for creative use of random crap laying around.

    Oh, while you’re in that part of the world, take a weekend off sometime and run a few laps around the Ring.

  8. German toilets are moving to a Eurostandard, but the older ones are indeed designed with a shelf. For guidance, the late UC Berkeley folklorist Alan Dundes wrote a whole book explaining the Germans’ fascination with feces, from very early toilet training to their unique designed-for-inspection toilets, to the Misthaufen that stands proudly in the farmyard: Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore Great Lakes Books (Paperback)
    The answer to the riddle posed by the title: Shitty from top to bottom.

  9. Ah – stove lighting. Once I moved in with three guys in a house with a wonky stove, and none of them were to chicken to reach under the thing and light the pilot light. They were trying to use a lighter, but I came along and would use a rolled-up paper towel held at arm’s length. No more burned eyebrows or arm hair. Apparently I was some sort of savior genius.

    Similarly, their TV had a loose picture tube (or whatever it was) on the inside that you would have to occasionally reach inside and knock back into place. They were doing it with their bare hands and getting electrocuted each time, until I showed them that a non-conducting wooden spoon worked just as well.

    And then I wound up marrying one of them.

  10. German toilets are moving to a Eurostandard, but the older ones are indeed designed with a shelf. For guidance, the late UC Berkeley folklorist Alan Dundes wrote a whole book explaining the Germans’ fascination with feces, from very early toilet training to their unique designed-for-inspection toilets, to the Misthaufen that stands proudly in the farmyard: Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Study of German National Character Through Folklore Great Lakes Books (Paperback)
    The answer to the riddle posed by the title: Shitty from top to bottom.

    hector: you have the unique honor of being simultaneously a genius…and full of shit.

  12. I had a similar experience with my Japanese bathtub in my first apartment here–I took a very cold shower my first night after 17 hours of traveling. Not fun.

    My new apartment’s mostly Western-style furnishings though, so I just push a button to start the hot water. Much better.

  14. German doors, argh! I spent a couple weeks there last year, and was always getting confused in some manner about whether the door needed to be pushed or pulled. I don’t know what was throwing me off so badly – I think the frames, somehow, are built differently than what I’m used to. I thought I was trapped in an ATM vestibule at one point, because I couldn’t get the door open. “I got in, why can’t I get out? Do I have to swipe my card again?” Some random passerby saved me; all I had to do was push when I was trying to pull, or vice versa. (Yeah yeah, Midvale School for the Gifted, I know.)

    I didn’t run into any of those toilets-with-shelves, though.

  15. Zippos. they’re no longer than a regular lighter (in fact, they’re shorter), but you don’t need to keep pressing any silly little gas button for them to stay lit. you can light ’em, then shift your grip down to their very bottom and poke the flame around at zippo’s-length, which is still better than nothing.

    plus, zippos are just plain cool in their own right.

  16. Congratulations!

    When I think about how I’d get along in a country where I didn’t speak the language, it never occurs to me the 1,001 other little problems that can come up–like lighting a stove. Or opening a door. Or using a toilet. I’d probably have to subsist on Nutella right out of the jar because I couldn’t figure out how to light the stove to cook something. Either that, or I’d accidentally blow up the building.

    On the other hand, I’m not one of those stereotypical guys who is afraid to ask for help. I imagine my attempts to communicate with my neighbors in mangled German would either amuse them greatly (“I think he’s asking us if he could build a fire in our kitchen…?”) or set German-American relations back a few decades.

  17. @Harrison: You could try to talk to them in English. Most Germans would understand that, as long as they are born after WWII…

  18. Most [post-WW II] Germans would understand [English]

    That can be a problem, because they learn English and not American. Hopefully Harrison is bilingual in British and American, so he could tell them he wants to light the hob of his gas cooker.

  19. @Harrison: You could try to talk to them in English. Most Germans would understand that, as long as they are born after WWII…

    And they probably speak much better English than I do! My apologies if I sounded (read?) like the Ugly American. I was trying to be funny. Guess I shouldn’t quit my day job! 🙂

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