And of course they called right when they were standing in front of the door again. I don't get it. Seriously. What is so hard about making an appointment a day or even a few hours before showing up? They cannot honestly expect people being or staying at home all day long in the hope the 'decoder' team would deign to show up. Or so I thought. Turns out, they can.

Fortunately my office is not far from the apartment, so I rushed home to let them in. I was fully expecting a platoon of technicians and was positively surprised to see only two of them on my porch. This does not necessarily mean, that there was enough work for two people (nowhere near that much work).

With my rudimentary Romanian and their non-existent English communication was a trifle challenging. So I was more than happy that a friend of ours could drop by on short notice and interpret for me (thanks again, Florin - much appreciated).

If you recall, the 'cable team' mentioned some fancy tool the 'decoder team' would have and of which only two units existed in Brasov. Well, I saw the device today and was utterly and totally unimpressed. Was kind of an anticlimax. What it seems to do (and not even by itself) is to fix plugs to fibre cables. Big deal.

Out of curiosity we asked for the price of this tool and it (allegedly) costs 15,000 Euro (yes, fifteen thousand - and Euro, not Lei). Now I am not an expert and far be it from me to dispute such statements. But for 15,000 Euro I would expect a freaking robot materializing in my living room, dispatching some fellow nanobots to do the work, while itself prepares lunch for me, does the laundry and cleans up the apartment. Needless to say, the device was not quites as sophisticated as that.

Anyway. The guys got to work, were fairly quick about it and - pop goes the weasle - I had a brand new decoder in the living room. Feeling like Christmas and Easter at the same time, I was going to express my deepest hopes and ask if I could now really enjoy the vast pleasures of cyberspace at home ... but stopped short, when one of the guys made a call. Turns out, he called another team (honestly, I am not making this up) for connecting the fiber cable from the apartment to the one behind the house. I did not even bother to ask, why the two guys on scene could not do it themselves. What's the point anyway?

I did ask, when the 'connecting team' would show up. Not entirely unexpected answer: 'imediat'. Now this does not exactly mean 'immediately' but more something like 'soon'. And - Einstein behold - not only time is relative. Also temporal descriptions like 'soon' can very obviously not be measured.

Let me summarize the core elements, so you can picture the scene better:

Got a call around noon, rushed home, two guys ('decoder team') start working, Florin shows up, decoder gets installed, 'connecting team' gets called in, four people sit and wait. And wait. And - guess what - wait a little longer.

About one and a half 'soon' hours later, the connecting team showed up. I would love to wrap this up by saying that they did what they had to do and this was it. Alas, it was not so easy.

Turns out, they had to smolder some wires and for that purpose were equipped with an electrical smoldering iron. I am not sure, who was more surprised: them about the fact that there are usually not too many power sockets in the garden - and in this specific garden not even one - or me about the fact that they could be surprised about this and would not bring some kind of extension cord.

Eventually we managed to borrow one from the neighbour downstairs. A woman of about 75 years - and better equipped than an installation team from RDS. What can one say?

This turned out to be the last obstacle to overcome. They smoldered (all four of the combined teams) what needed to be smoldered, tested the decoder, gave me some user and password and eventually left.

So here we are:

• 7 + 4 people
• 1.5 + 3 hours
• 1 hole
• 1 + 1 cables
• 1 decoder
• 2 smoldered wires

And, faster than you can say 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' a hundred times in a row without stumbling, we have Internet at home. I managed to setup the wireless router, too. Took me all of ten minutes - alone.

All this is somewhere between hilarious and ridiculous. But do you know what is the really, really weird thing? I will tell you: this is not the exception. There were no unexpected obstacles or challenges. This is considered to be the normal modus operandi for installing internet access in homes all across Romania (RDS has a de facto monopoly with only a couple of mostly minor competitors).

But now our homebase is online. And so we will surf happily ever after ... or so we hope.