Home and the Lights are On

There are several English speaking web sites for expats in Germany, I like Toytown Germany.
Poke around, and see what they offer.

When we arrived at our new home a few hours after dark, there were a couple of surprises.

The hallway lights and the kitchen lights worked. We had power. It appeared, the previous renter had forgotten to hand in a moving notice to the utility company.

The hallway and kitchen lights were the only light fixtures left in the house. In case you do not know, when Germans move, the light fixtures and a bunch of other items considered not movable in the US will move with them.

We knew of this, so we had flashlights, which we did need in the living room, where we slept that night.

The second surprise came later that night. It may have happened to some of you, but not for the same reason.

The feeling of smooth, cold porcelain when you sit your naked behind down on a toilet in the middle of the night is stark and strange. And wakes you up instantaneously.

The resulting piercing cry will ensure that everybody else in the house is jerked out of their sleep, too.

There was no toilet seat. The renter had taken the god***** toilet seat.

A couple of days later, we found out the real reason why we had power. German utility companies leave the lights on for you. Instead of spending the equivalent of one month of power use on sending a person out to turn off power and then make another trip to turn it back on, they leave it on and eat the few kilowatt hours of electricity - if any - used by an empty house or apartment.

This is such a win-win situation that no for-profit company would do this voluntarily, you are saying?

You may be right, there is competition and some not so bad regulation.