Today was supposed to be a very exciting day for us. When Stefan called to have the trash container picked up on Monday, he happened to ask them if they knew of a place that would take away the compost pile (“misthauf”) in our courtyard. It’s all sitting in a hole off to the side and fenced off – not really causing us any real concern…but at some stage we knew we wanted that stuff out of there so we could level out the space and one day use it as patio space, to put a hot tub or who knows what.

Surprisingly, the container company said we should give a sewage company a try which is also based in Frankfurt and they might be able to help. So we called and they said, “No problem. We’ll be out on Thursday.” Talk about shocking. Stefan described the type of stuff that it was, told them how large the pile is and the woman on the phone said it should be a couple hours perhaps but no problem at all. Rock on!

So it’s Thursday and at 8:30 this morning, this huge truck showed up.

I thought, “Wow, excellent. They’re actually half an hour early!”

So the guys get out and I show them the pile. The lead guy looks a bit skeptical but he seems to think it could be ok. I start to get the feeling at this point that he was not really informed about what exactly his task would be for the day.

They got their little vacuum pipe out and laid it through the courtyard. And then they pulled out a second one which supplied water to the pile. Everything was relatively dried out on top so it was a bit of a challenge for them to get started. It actually took them a good 15 minutes just to inspect, re-park their truck and pull the cable. But it’s hot so ok.

And here they were. The guy on the left was pretty young and seemed to be a trainee of some sort. He got the fun job of standing down in the pile and shoveling while the big guy on the right controlled the hoses and the remote controls that started and stopped everything.

After about 20 minutes, they had made a very small dent in things. I wasn’t too impressed but everything was very dried out and I know it was taking a whole lot of water to get things moist enough to where they could flow.

Almost an hour after they started, things weren’t looking a whole lot better. I still can’t be certain where the bottom of the heap is and they had only managed to get about the same amount of junk out of the hole as when I took the photo above. On top of things, their machine just didn’t want to suck the stuff up. It would take some in, find something it didn’t like and then get plugged up. So they would have to reverse the machine, blow stuff out until they found the culprit and then start again. In the last 30 minutes I don’t think they actually managed to collect anything.

Unfortunately, the photo below is how they left things today. After an hour and a half (an hour of real sucking) they determined this just wasn’t going to work. There was too much straw mixed in with everything and they therefore felt the only real way to get rid of this stuff was to shovel it out. But they had no idea where one would be able to dispose of it SO they would have to get back to us later. Joy.

So now the thing smells and has gotten all riled up. We personally would have been fine leaving it the way it was for a while longer but this woman assured us they could get rid of the stuff. Unfortunately when we called later, she said we had falsely informed her of what was in the pile and told her it was human fecal matter (which would have been easier to suck up but clearly more disgusting). Quite honestly, there is not a chance in hell we said that because we know that is not the case and why would we get these people out there to start something they would never be able to finish? But since Stefan called them from his office, he had the phone conversation taped and knew exactly what he actually did say when the woman tried to call him a liar.

What happens now?? Well, the disposal company is still trying to find a way to dispose of the stuff and if they should, then they have offered to come out and shovel it out. This would be the ideal situation since we really don’t want to do it ourselves. Well, actually, I can’t since I’m pregnant and I know Stefan can think of more fun things to do. They did call us this afternoon to give us an update and tell us that they do not have an ultimate solution yet but are working on things. Then they will let us know more after they have talked to the guys that were here today. So we’ll see. They have a couple days to figure things out because we’ll be at a music festival over the weekend. But hopefully by Tuesday at the latest we will have a solution!