Schreiber

...So the night before last we were attempting to watch Russian Ark (A rather bizarre film--it´s a tour of the Hermitage Palace in St. Petersburg´s history and art collections, all in one shot). I say attempting, because a) the various video programs on our computers have issues, and b) on Grace´s computer, it kept stalling at chapter 12. Hence, I tried it out on MY computer. And, after some trial and error, manage to get it to actually work. So I invited Grace over to our makeshift couch/daybed, and plugged it in.
A word about plugs. My computer has the standard power converter etc., but German plugs have a different shape than US ones; so while the computer is perfectly happy to run on European current, it needs a plug adaptor. For this purpose, I use an old thing that I think was actually designed for electric rasers.
So you can probably imagine what happened when I tried plugging this arrangement into the (rather old) multiple-plug extension cord under the day bed.
Yep. The lights went out. We managed to remain calm. Grace discovered that the lights over the kitchen sink and in the bathroom still worked; I went out into the front hall and located the fuse box for the building. Unfortunately, it WAS a fuse box...and I have never been initiated into the anceient art of Fuse Replacement. Nor were there any spare fuses, either there or (after some hurried searching) in the apartment.
I called the Hausverwaltung. No response. I looked up the word for "blew a fuse" (man sagt tatsächlich, "Die Sicherung ist durchgebrannt"), and called our landlord´s secretary.
"Herr Burson! How nice to hear from you! It´s been a long time! How are you?"
"Im moment nicht so gut...Die Sicherung ist durchgebrannt..."
We discussed this for a few minutes, discovering in the process that NEITHER of us actually knew the word for fuse. She said she would call her husband, who hopefully would.
Half an hour and a phone call to my landlord later, she was there, with husband, who examined the fuse box and revealed that there were in fact no fuses in the plugs for our apartment. We knocked on the door of our neighbor (whom we'd never met), in the hope of advice and/or spare fuses.
"Do you think it's too late?" flustered Frau Rabe. "I can hear him watching television..." I replied. He proved to be a somewhat irascible old man, but he gave us the vital information that HIS electricity was controlled by a separate panel. Armed with this information, we opened the closet by the front door, and discovered a row of Stromunterbrecher (Argh, what's that in English again?) Mission accomplished.
But I still don't know how to change a fuse.

Meantime, it's Saint Patrick's day. I feel like I ought to be out at an Irish pub drinking green beer, but I'm really not in the mood. Top o' the evening to ye, though!