I woke up this morning to an email from my landlord's representative. Seeing her emails always make me nervous. There's a million rules, laws and customs in Germany and we try to stay abreast of them and not be ignorant Americans living in another country but sometimes we fall short. Today was no different.
Germany has very strict and mandatory rules about garbage. Almost everything can be recycled or composted. I LOVE this rule. I think it's great. I embrace it willingly. The problem comes in when I have too much restmüll, or residual waste. Residual waste is what's left over once you separate out the compostable items, as well as the recyclables. It happens alot since diapers fall into this category and I used to have two boys in them. Thankfully, I'm down to one boy in diapers, but that still produces a lot of waste. Consequently, our garbage can at the curb is always too full.
We thought we solved this problem by throwing our extra bag (it's about one bag per week) into a neighbor's bin. There's just two of them and their bin is never full. We only put the bag in at the end of the week, on the day that trash is scheduled to be picked up. We didn't think we were imposing since it was space that they themselves weren't using, and it's not like our bags were ripped or leaking. We were wrong.
Apparently our neighbors resent our intrusion into their trash bin. I didn't realize it was such a big deal until we got an email from our landlady about certain complaints. It didn't cost them extra, it didn't leak into their bins and create a mess, and it didn't infringe on their rights. But apparently it's a big deal. Big enough to complain to the landlady behind our backs, rather than just asking us not to do it. I understand (sort of) that they don't want someone else's trash in their bins; that's fine. We should have asked them first if they minded. We won't do it again.
But is it really that big of a deal? Am I missing something here? I'm actually pretty upset about this. We've been doing it for awhile, and they just now mentioned something. Have they been sitting in their house (we live in a small complex of five townhomes) quietly begrudging us our trash? We had no idea. I feel like such a bad neighbor. Maybe the reason they don't come over and visit is because of it. I wish I had known sooner. I honestly didn't know that this sort of thing would upset anyone. I'm already lonely over here in Germany since I don't know anyone and this just makes it worse. Someone I don't even really know (but should) apparently really dislikes me. I'm too shy to just go to their door and ring the bell and chitchat. Maybe I should have. So my question is: do you think what we did was so bad? Should I apologize? Maybe write them an "I'm sorry" letter?
Oh no! That stinks. (pun intended) :) I lived in Japan for a couple of years and they had the same crazy garbage rules. I was always too full even after separating it out into the 7 categories. Each category had to be in a specific bag purchased at the store and all had to go out on a different day (some had to go out on the same day)! I never got it right and was always in trouble with the garbage police! I was always mad about it too. It ticked me off when I would get the notices on my door.
ReplyDeleteIf I were you I would write a letter for sure. An apology is always better than not. Especially if you have to live next to them for a while. What could it hurt? Especially if you explain why you did it. :) Glad to find your cool blog.
I would bake some cookies and bring it over to them and apologize in person. That way they can't be too mad and you might even make a friend in the process!
ReplyDeleteAlso think it's cool that they make people compost. We should be doing things like that here.