A new sofa is a wonderful thing.

That starts with the selection.

While a new wardrobe always involves measuring, clearing and annoying, the search for a sofa is pure hedonism.

After all, the most important thing is to try it out: go to a furniture store, sit down on the object of your desire and listen to yourself to see whether the upholstery, seat height and depth are comfortable.

In contrast to building a closet, this almost passes as a mindfulness exercise.

And feeling different fabric qualities and pondering colors and fabric structure together is almost as good as shopping for a handbag.

Judith Lembke

Editor in the "Housing" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Unfortunately, the loveliest sofas, like the loveliest handbags, come from Italy.

And that's where the problem begins, or to be more precise, the delivery problem.

Anyone who has ever thought that a local furniture forwarding company is unreasonable when they give a time window of six hours for a furniture delivery has never had anything to do with an Italian company.

From the outset, she gives a time window of two full days for the delivery of the sofa.

The request for a certain limitation remains unanswered.

Blessed are those who can work from home and don't have to sacrifice two vacation days waiting for the furniture man to knock on the door.

How can the monster be safely maneuvered into the house?

When the bell finally rang, not on the first and not on the second, but on the third day, the hoped-for salvation didn't materialize.

The supplier refuses to drive his van to the front of the house and wants to park 500 kilograms of sofa modules in seven huge packages fifty meters away on the street corner.

The street is too narrow for him.

A reference to the northern Italian streets where he usually delivers his sofas is just as unconvincing as the reference to the contractually agreed “delivery to the curb”.

He is only convinced by the cash that the customer pulls out of her pocket in desperation so that he doesn't rush off back towards the Alps with the longed-for freight.

Half an hour and seventeen new gray hairs later, half a tonne of sofa is on the street in front of the Gründerzeit building.

Since the delivery came a day later than agreed, all the helpers flew out.

And then it starts to rain.

The “new sofa” project has thus finally turned from a mindfulness exercise into a horror trip.

Giving so much thought to the firmness of the upholstery and the shade of the fabric seems absurd when it comes to getting the monster inside the house in one piece.

But then rescue comes from an unexpected place.

A delivery service comes by, this time not furniture, but drinks.

And the two guys, who would immediately be deprived of membership in the Hells Angels, do not hesitate for long, but heave the boxes into the stairwell.

They don't want to accept a tip until they have asked three times.

When the new roommate stands in his place in the evening and convinces both eyes and buttocks, the gray hair is forgotten.

A new sofa is a wonderful thing.