Plug It In!

BERLIN
When we lived in Beijing in 2000 our house had outlets with five different plug-patterns.  In the kitchen, for example there were three outlets next to each other – one requiring a unique three-prong pattern, two of them positioned at oblique angles; one with three large British-style prongs; and a third with a European configuration of two round prongs.  Naturally the plug for the light, or mixer or toaster would not match any of the outlets.  This fact drove me crazy.  “Why can’t there be some standardization?”  I muttered under my breath week after week until I finally found a dusty electronic supply store that sold dozens of varieties of adapters converting every conceivable plug pattern to every conceivable outlet pattern.  As a bonus it sold converters that would (sort of) step up our 110 60 Hz electrical appliances to 220 50 Hz.  Needless to say, when all was in place our house was a Rube Goldberg contraption of converters, multiple adapters, and cords leading to and from each electrical device.

It was with this picture in mind that Lily and I found ourselves at the five story department store at Hermannplatz U-Bahn (subway) station on our second day in Berlin.  Back in our Berlin apartment we had US cords (for the computers, ipods and ipad) and UK cords (for phone chargers) and German recessed, grounded outlets.  Beth, with her usual long distance foresight had anticipated this problem from the US months ago and we had in our luggage an assortment of adapters including a US three-prong to two-prong one.  Unfortunately, plugging the US three to two prong adapter into Beth’s German adapter and into the wall outlet gave only a tantalizing burst of power, only to die.  My theory was the Beth's German adapter was missing the grounding required by the German outlet.  Bottom line…crisis! We couldn’t charge all of our treasured electrical equipment.

Lily and I found the right department store after visits to several less well endowed shops and with the helpful translation skills of our friend, Sasha.  We had even found the electrical department in the store and the shelf dedicated to adapters.  Our problem:  Every converter was designed to convert the German plug into other nations’ outlets – made for traveling Germans, not visiting Americans living in the UK.

After carefully and with dwindling hope inspecting each of the dozen or more adapters we resorted to asking for help.  With my college German and fluent hand motions and his adequate English the electronics sales person rummaged through a bin we had already inspected and, voila! He pulled out an adapter that had six-hole outlet pattern on one face and the coveted grounded German plug on the other!  Lily and I had not been so excited since our German multi layered cakes were served at the restaurant earlier in the day!  We bought two – the last two in the whole five story department store.

Back in our apartment we performed several incantations.  We inserted the adapter in the outlet.  We inserted a US three prong plug in the adapter.  The power light flickered on. It worked!  We then tried the UK phone charger cord.  It worked.  Phew!  We are back in business.

Now to figure out how to connect to the internet.  We agreed to leave that for tomorrow.


Peter