Trashcan

On Sunday we put out our paper trashcan. The whole day we kept reminding each other to do it. I even wrote it on a post it and stuck it on the bathroom mirror. I grabbed the office trash and noticed an envelope with our names and addresses on it.

Me: You don't throw away trash with our names and addresses on it.

Z: Why not? It's sitting outside our house, so they already know where we live and our name is on the trashcan.

Me: I don't know. I'm just going to rip it up anyways.

Z: And who's going to dig through our trash?

As we wheeled it out to the curb we looked around a realized we were the only ones that remembered to put our trash out. Good for us. Oh wait, the next day was a holiday. No one was going to come on and pick it up till Tuesday. Not wanting to walk 100 feet back to the trash area, we decided to leave it there one extra day. I know shame on us.

Next day on our way out we noticed our trashcan was no where to be seen. Ok, Monday was a holiday, so yeah obviously our trash didn't get taken out, but our trashcan was missing! It took everything in me not to point out how right I was about ripping up personal info. I think I lasted about an hour before I pointed it out. Not bad, right? So I was a little freaked out over it. This is a city owned trashcan, so if it's lost not only would I have to pay for a new one, but I'd have to talk on the phone in German. On second thought, Z would have to talk on the phone in German.

Before we did any of that though, we thought we had better look around and see if anyone was just messing with us. By this time everyone else had started putting out their trashcans. So there were about 50 trashcans that all looked a like that we had to figure out if one of them was ours. Z. decided it would be best if he dressed like a homeless person while we did this. So he put on his holey jeans and t-shirt he's had since '94 and we started walking up to every trash can on our street and staring intensely at each one. "No, this one looks too dirty to be ours." or "No I think ours is smaller." Eventually we found our trashcan not too far from our house. The moral of the story is, when in Germany follow the rules, do not put your trash out a day early, or else drunk people will teach you a lesson.