Sleeping on a blowup mattress when you’re a guest at someone’s house is all right.  Sleeping on a blowup mattress in your own home when you’re trying to fight eight hours of jet lag and tear down solid walls?  Well that gets a little rough.  The bed we ordered while still in the US wouldn’t be coming for several weeks.  So we went searching for a sofa bed.

In the first store that we walked into, the salesman was quick to show us all of the styles.  I would say that everything was very slick and clean-cut.  It kinda felt ridged and formal, like I could actually feel my posture improving every time I sat down.  German sofa beds also come in two sizes: large and really, really large.  We chose large.

“So, can we get this delivered today?” we asked of one style, drooling at the thought of sleeping on a bed.  

I’m pretty sure the salesman was rolling his eyes and thinking, “What is it with Americans?  They always want things right now.”  He flatly told us, “No.”

“How about in a week?” we asked hopefully.

“No.”

It would take at least a month for us to get a couch, just like with our bed.  Hmmm.

“But you are really amazing people, so there is hope!” he said happily.  Or at least I imagine that’s what he said.  Everything happened in German, so I’m only guessing how the communication went.  My job was just to test the comfort levels and styles while Martin talked and the salesman looked through his computer database.  He smiled.  Martin smiled.  So what the heck, you know I smiled, too.  It turned out they had one couch in their Berlin warehouse.  We could get it by Monday.  Were we interested?  

“What color?”  They had about fifty colors to chose from.  He turned back to his computer.  Sometimes I wonder about men and color–that was THE top priority for me.

“Yellow.”

We said YES.  A few days later, we folded up our air mattress and slid this beauty against the brown living room wall:

My what a yellow fellow

What do you think?  It’s in the corner right now so we have room to work on the kitchen. See the sad plastic tarp we had to divide the room with?  Construction zone on one side.  Living zone on the other.  It’s sad.  I think I’ll try to focus on the next part:  what accent colors work with all this brown and yellow?  And:  why do I feel so shocked to be buying such bold things?