All That for Two Keys!

Today, I was on a mission!  I had to complete a task that I had been putting off for 2 or 3 weeks.  I had to go get copies made of our Relief Society closet key.  In the States, this would be a tiny errand, one that you could take care of at Home Depot, Lowe's, even WalMart and it would be no big deal.  Not so here.  Well, if I have to do it again, it will be easy but it was a huge hassle the first time!

First off, I thought I would see if Hornbach's cut keys, after all they are the closest thing to a Home Depot that we have here.  They even sell door knobs and mail boxes with keys so at first I thought I might just get lucky.  Not the case.  One of the sales associates told me to go down the road to a German store called Hit.  Well, before I ventured out to find this store, since we were close to the US military base that has the only food anymore that doesn't taste like cardboard to me, and Toby was getting hungry, I thought we'd make a detour and get some lunch.  While I was there, I thought I might as well go into our little garden store/home repair store and see if they just happened to cut keys.  The guy working there told me that they do not, but there may be a place on that base that did, he had heard that one of the concession shops above the Power Zone cut keys and he also told me that there used to be a German store close by that did it, but they went out of business, of course, this would be the store called Hit.

So, Toby and I walked to the building that has the Power Zone and all the concession shops above it.  Just my luck, all those shops are closed on Monday.  When we were eating lunch I ran into a friend and asked him if he had ever made keys on-the-economy.  He told me that he had not, but his wife had, at the Real (which is close to a WalMart) that is closest to our church house.  Great--I don't know exactly how to get to this Real because it's not the one that is closest to my house.  I tried punching it into my GPS but couldn't find it.  I was starting to get discouraged.  Well, I was trying to decide if I should just go and try to find it, since I had a general idea of where it was and didn't need to pick up Thomas from school for another two hours, I still had some "wiggle time".  But, first, I needed to go to the air base and check my mail.  Then I thought about the really nice Asian guy at the window where you pick up your packages--I bet he would know where to go or all the guys in the post office, every one of those guys is nice.  But really nice Asian guy must have had the day off, so I walked into the post office where my favorite of all postal workers was working, but without a single customer.  I told him of my problem and then he told me to go to the Real in Nordenstadt (praise the heavens, this is the Real that I know how to get to) and that there was a little store outside of Real that could do it.

I found the store easily.  This store makes keys, fixes shoes and engraves trophies!  Germany is weird.  They have all these crazy licensing rules and sometimes this is what you find, three very different "specialties" grouped together.  The guy working there didn't speak great English but we got by.  I showed him the key that I had and asked him if he could make me a duplicate.  With his best charades, he explained to me that I needed some little rectangular box that was the mold to the key.  And then he started saying something about "security, security" and I'm thinking, "Gr-reat, I've  gone through all of this and now he's going to tell me he can't make the blasted key!" But, all of the sudden he told me he could make the copy from the key that I have and he quotes me a price: 13,60 euro a piece (that's about $18 a key).  I was originally going to make four, but I only really needed two, so I went with two.  Five minutes later I walked out the door with two keys!

This is one thing I know, and all my American friends have found, too.  ABSOLUTELY nothing is easy to do in Germany!  I started this quest at 10:30 AM and ended it at 2:00 PM.

Until later,

Emily