Miele dishwasher repairs, hello? – Recap 20

May 2020 marked the slow return to normality. Life didn’t start being enjoyable, of course, but I started seeing some elements of city life in Berlin. The restaurants and cafes opened mid-May again, and at the same time, museums and cultural institutions began accepting visitors as well. Restrictions and limitations do apply everywhere, but at least it’s good to see the city rediscovering itself. “Alright,” you might think, “but why on earth this month’s recap is called “Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?” And you are right to wonder, so let me explain.

Usually, my monthly recaps are either visual diaries (i.e., photos that didn’t find their place in some posts) or opinion articles. However, after the unprecedented stress that we all went through the last couple of months, I thought of posting something more easy-going. I could post another visual diary (I have loads of photos from my journeys), but the truth is that I thought of posting something lighthearted. The “Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?” is a short story I wrote a few weeks ago. It’s based on a true story, and I thought it might be amusing for you to read.

Apart from the short story, you will find the usual section about what’s new on the blog at the end of this post. I posted five new articles in May, and all of them are travel-related. If you are still in the mood for traveling, make sure to check them out; if not, you can still save them (or pin them) for the future.

Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?

“Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?” said the woman on the other side of the line. Her voice was calm and unpretentious. Mine, not at all.

The night before the opening of the Berlinale, my dishwasher died. I bought it eighteen months ago from a second-hand shop at Wilmersdorferstrasse. I remember staring at dishwashers lined up on the pavement in front of the store on a cold Berlin morning. They all had a one-year warranty, and all I had to do was choose the right one. The guys running the shop offered a verbal guarantee, too: it will last for decades. Right. But I had no idea about dishwashers. All I wanted was a machine taking care of the dishes. Actually, I wanted what the 80s promised: robots dealing with the boring things for us.

“Um, yes, hello. I have a problem with my Miele dishwasher. I think it just died.”

It would have been more precise to say it was in a coma. I filled it with detergent, I set the program, and I hit the ON button. Unfortunately, nothing really happened. The dishwasher started making noises as if it was choking. I opened the door, and I saw that it spat water and soap on my glasses and plates. And, to be honest, I felt that it spat on me.

“I’m sure that we can fix that,” said the woman from the Miele customer service hotline. “Shall I send over a technician for a quick checkup? He will tell you more about the problem, and he will estimate a price.”

Services in Germany cost an arm and a leg. That’s why Germans prefer to do everything on their own. But I have two left hands when it comes to fixing things -and let alone the fact that I’m not German. The woman named a price for the appointment that gave me proper vertigo. The Miele technician would charge a three-digit number per hour for a visit. But what else could I do? I, therefore, agreed to an appointment two days later.

“Thank you and have a nice day,” the woman from the Miele dishwasher repairs said. I imagined her tall, blonde, and slender, working for the Miele customer service for a year or so. The building had to be white, like the Miele appliances.

*

The technician arrived two days later dressed in a uniform with the Miele logo close to the heart. He rang the bell and said: “Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?” This phrase is probably their trademark, I thought. He had a briefcase in his hand and entered my flat with comfort as if he was staying there, and I was just a visitor. Somehow, his visit made me optimistic. I drove him to the kitchen, and he kneeled in front of the dishwasher like a believer in front of a temple. Then, he opened his briefcase, and an attached laptop appeared. Afterward, he opened the dishwasher’s door and connected a cable to the machine’s so-called brain.

“Sooo,” he then said, “let’s run some tests now.”

It was impressive. This was a Miele dishwasher from the 90s -how could they have such technology? And then I thought of the triple digits that the woman from the Miele HQ mentioned. Why on earth did I buy such a dishwasher? Well, it was apparent: my subconscious did it for me. Back in the 80s, Greece’s sudden prosperity sent all the middle-class families to the nearest white appliances store. Everybody will buy Miele or Bosch washing machines and dishwashers. Every household would have at least one German white appliance. Greeks probably thought of them as everlasting, as well as proof of social status. My parents’ house was full of Miele appliances. So, it was determinism that made me buy this dishwasher, not free will.

“So the drainpipe is leaking due to a failure in the machine’s brain,” the Miele technician said after twenty minutes.

Even though I’m a writer, it seems that I know all the wrong words. I can very well imagine life on Mars, but I could never visualize how a leaking drainpipe looks like. But it somehow sounded fatal. It was as if we were talking about a sick human and not about a misbehaving dishwasher. Honestly, I never thought that the visit of a Miele dishwasher repairs technician would produce so many questions. But something else mattered even more now. Was there a solution, or this thing was dead?

“Well,” the technician said, “we can fix it. But as you know, all services in Germany cost an arm and a leg. To deal with the drain, the water, the brain, and all the other issues will not cost less than 250 euros. For an old dishwasher, it might not deserve to be fixed. Maybe it’s better to buy a new one, instead of paying for all these parts. For example, for approximately 1,000 euros, you can buy one that will last forever.”

Ah, those verbal warranties again. Everything lasts forever before you buy it, but after purchasing it, the countdown starts. That’s not about Miele; that’s for everything the middle class buys. All white appliances die in their infancy.

“So, I worked for 35 minutes in total, and here’s the triple-digit amount of money that you owe me.”

*

Well, I was already more than a hundred euro down, and all I got was a diagnosis that my used Miele dishwasher was dead. But as a spoiled Xennial, I can’t even think of living without a dishwasher. I don’t mind cleaning the dirtiest toilet or cleaning the windows inside out. In fact, I can live without an oven or coffee machine. But don’t you dare to ask me to do the dishes. I’d probably throw them on the dustbin. So, what could I do now?

The reply was rather obvious, as it turned out: kill your budget. It’s panic that moves the market, not the banks. As soon as the Miele service technician left, I searched online for the nearest white appliances store. It was still open, and if I could leave within the next fifteen minutes, I’d have enough time to have a proper look and decide on one. A hundred seconds later, I closed the door behind me and rushed to the subway.

*

I walked down the hall of fame of dishwashers. Some of them were huge; others had an awesome design. Those proud appliances of prosperity were standing inside the hall and not out on the pavement like the second-hand ones. Two thousand euros, nineteen hundred euros, eighteen hundred: I walked among them like climbing down the chart of middle-class salaries. Six hundred, five hundred. There were no Miele dishwashers anymore. At the end of the corridor, I saw a small dishwasher made by a cheap Chinese brand. It looked sad and rather ugly. It was white, but it should’ve been grey. I bought it for three hundred euros.

It’s now two years later, and I still have that sad dishwasher. There are times that I considered writing a ballad for it, an idea born probably by The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers. But even without a proper tribute, the Chinese dishwasher functions properly. One day though, a red light started blinking ominously. I thought of calling customer service, but there was no contact number. I couldn’t reach the online chat either: they’d open the following morning. The “Miele dishwasher repairs, hello?” phrase came into my mind as if I was writing an e-mail. The answer came a couple of days later and looked like a telegram: “Hey, red light okay, just add salt powder.”

The impoverishment of the middle class in Europe affects its habits and its aesthetics. My parents still buy German white appliances, but most of my friends go for the ones made in China. A decline in services also comes with a change in manners, but at least I can save some money. I still imagine that tall blonde and slender woman working at Miele. She is not probably at Gütersloh, where Miele’s HQ is; she works in a call-center somewhere else. But if the trend of decreasing salaries, elevated costs, and cheap product invasion will carry on, every Western brand will have to fire employees. The woman might be among the first to go -and I might have to do the dishes in hand one day.

*** 

What’s new on the blog – Recap 20

I initially thought of slowing down a bit in May. For the past few months, I’ve been working day and night, even though I didn’t have the chance to travel due to the Coronavirus outbreak. On the other hand, I thought that writing and posting would keep me creative. So, instead of slowing down, I kept uploading a new blog post every Saturday, as I always do. Therefore, in May, I actually posted five new texts.

The first one was, of course, my monthly recap. I wrote an article about meaningful travel and how this should be our compass for future journeys. You can read it here.

Then, after a long time that I didn’t post any travelogue, it was time to present my Florence letter. I traveled to Florence several months ago, in June 2019. I initially had it scheduled for February 2020, but then the Coronavirus hit Italy severely. Out of respect, I thought that I should postpone the article. It didn’t make any sense to post a travelogue about an Italian city when people were dying there. Now that the situation is much better and the borders are about to open, I thought of uploading it. You can read my travelogue here from Florence.

In general, May was the month that I focused again exclusively on travel posts. In early May, I reached out to my mailing list and asked if we could still save the summer. Having that in mind and keeping an eye on the countries getting ready to accept tourists, I wrote a new post about Greece. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know how much I love the small island of Anafi. This time, instead of writing a travelogue, I focused on a very special place: the Kalamiotissa Monastery. That’s a church on the top of a monolith, and hiking to the top, it’s -in my opinion- one of the best things to do in the Greek islands. I wrote a post that has several photos -and you can read it here.

Now, the most ambitious post of May 2020 was definitely my Alentejo travel guide. Alentejo is one of the most authentic regions in Europe, and as such, it deserves a special tribute. If you are searching for your next road trip in Europe, that’s the one you should take. Alentejo is still a destination off the beaten path, and you should discover it before it gets crowded. In my guide to Alentejo, there are loads of tips and recommendations, plus an itinerary for your road trip. You can read the guide here.

Last but not least, I wrote an article about an art exhibition I visited. It was actually the first exhibition that I attended after the lockdown. The Polaroid Diaries by Linda McCartney took place at c/o Berlin, and it presented a selection of more than 250 polaroids. You can read my presentation and see several images from the exhibition here.

A final note

Last month, I promised to update all my Greek travel guides. It took me almost thirty days to achieve it, but I’m happy to tell you that every single post is now up-to-date. Instead of adding every post here (they are more than 25), I’m adding a link to my blog’s “Greece” category. You can access all my Greek posts here.

So, that’s it with my May 2020 recap. Stay safe and see you soon 🙂

You can access my previous recaps by clicking here.

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Last Updated on November 24, 2020 by George Pavlopoulos