lunedì, ottobre 27, 2014

POP!

That is a POP! of relief. A POP! of all my fretting muscles suddenly relaxing, as though flooded by a wave of healing grappa.

A different forest kindergarten has said yes to Godzilla next year, starting from August, providing that we send him to their playgroup starting when we get there February, which we'd been planning on anyways. We didn't have a trial day there - the pricey neighbourhood forest kindergarten was the only one in the city proper we did a trial day in - but I did go visit it. Funnily enough, on a visit I was near to blowing off, since it was scheduled for the day after the kinder in the pricey neighbourhood built up our hopes and dreams only to dash them a week or two later. My taxi didn't show up so I was one bad decision away from just cancelling at the last minute.

I'm pretty damn pleased - the neighbourhood it's in, which is close to where we stayed on our visit, is a good one in the sense of safety, schools, parks and forests, hospitals and transport (S-bahn AND U-bahn). Better, in fact, than the pricey neighborhood, certainly in terms of public transport, which will be important to the F-word, who will be working in companies all over the region. But it's on the uncool side of the Rhine, so it's cheap enough for us to live in a pretty decent flat or house. And when your grand total (as mine) of Exciting Cultural Events for the last year has been one opera and one ballet, and you're planning a second child before very long, cool neighborhoods aren't too important.

Indeed, I rather fucking hate cool or fashionable neighborhoods. I just don't like the class of people who pay a premium to hang out with other people who pay a premium to hang out with a certain class of people, be that in the sense of gentrifying neighborhoods or just straight-out chichi neighborhoods. The pricey neighborhood with the cocktease forest kinder floods all the time, for god's sake, but is still twice the price of where we're going. I guess it's prettier, to be fair, but pretty isn't the point of Cologne. It's an ugly city. One of those Rotterdam-type places that got all knocked down and built up again more for utility than beauty. The point of Cologne is the green space and the attitude.

But mostly I'm pleased that there is one less thing to fret about, and as I've mentioned before, I was breaking all previous fretting records over this forest kinder thing. I mean, sleepless nights, the whole deal. No negative emotion has ever got in between me and my sleep before. Not heartbreak, not grief, not job stress, not school, fucking nothing. But this . . . well. POP!