The end of that other saga

Since I know that each of you has a deep-seated interest in my acquisition of kitchen appliances, I thought I should helpfully provide you with this update: I have officially given up on the rice cooker ever arriving--although the company was competent enough to take the money out of my bank account, die bescheuerten Vollidioten who work there were apparently not competent enough to write my address on the box and take it to the post office. Sigh. So the rice cooker joins my last-year's Christmas package in German postal purgatory. (Apparently my purchase of indulgences was only sufficient to spring my luggage out of the fires.)

But! I have now replaced the phantom rice cooker with a flesh-and-blood (or plastic-metal-and-electrical-cord) rice cooker, the purchase of which I accomplished in just under 1 minute last night on my way home from work. The way many German stores work (at least the ones in Wittenberg) is that they don't carry everything all the time. Each week an advertisement comes out, and the items in that ad are not only the ones on sale that week, they are the only ones even in stock that week. That way the stores can offer a rotating stock in their limited storefront spaces. A fine system, I suppose, except when you are looking for one specific item. Then you just wait the several (or sometimes many) weeks until one of those stores decides to carry it. This week (drum roll please) Tschibo decided to answer my prayers and put a rice cooker up for sale (no comparison shopping here: compared to my non-existent rice cooker, this one is definitely better!). The clerk looked startled for a moment when a rousing elevator-music rendition of the Halleluia chorus accompanied my purchase.

Yes, Virginia, there is a rice cooker.