Das Fenster: A tale of woe

For the first six weeks or so of our Berlin adventure, we are staying in an apartment that is rented for us by Wooga. When David told them he was bringing his wife who would be working from home, they gave us a large apartment: it's the top floor (four stories of stairs) and has an attic bedroom (one more flight) plus office nook. Wonderful. Except it's 90 degrees out, and there's no AC.

That brings us to das Fenster (the window). Confronted with a setup like this:

I went for the switch that looks like this:

Sweet relief! Except the whole window swung powerfully out, and I noticed there was no handle to close it with. I tried for about a half hour to close it, but with no success. 

I started chatting David at work and he was able to get me good instructions on how to open it for real. That confirmed I had indeed opened the fire escape, and it was not closing. 

The Wooga relocation person called the building owner (he speaks English, much to my relief). He summoned me from from this balcony, which is part of his son's apartment:

To make an already long story slightly shorter, he came over and we eventually got it closed. It took the landlord, his wife, the super, and me a full hour and involved two extension cords. I broke the window shade at some point, but the window still opens and closes correctly. 

Some good may come from the episode. I chatted with the owner and his wife and they may have some apartments we can rent permanently. I told them we wanted closer to the s-bahn for when I start working, and they were impressed that neither of us is really a trailing spouse. I don't know if that an apartment from them will pan out, but it would be truly strange if we lined up an apartment all because I broke a window.