No matter how long you live in another country, how much you love it there, and how integrated you try to become, there will always be those moments in which something goes so differently than you expected. Because you don't totally understand the rules. And that can be really frustrating.
This is the Friday morning aftermath of that moment I faced on Thursday evening.
I unexpectedly received a letter that entirely complicates my plan to change apartments. I felt the most deeply stunned and culturally helpless that I have maybe in seven years. So of course I cried. For an hour.
Then as I rebounded a little, I suddenly decided I needed to channel this energy somewhere. I spied my overloaded bookcase, still stuffed with random books from the last decade. And I decided it was time to purge! Book-by-book, the rejects landed on the floor. Hard. Thump, thump-thump, slam!
Boy did I feel better.
On the floor: a good 1/3 dribble about relationships (kept just two classics, the rest gone!), 1/3 once-trendy, now forgotten business books (usually received from work - again I kept the classics like Drucker, Hamil & Prahalad, Collins) and 1/3 fiction that if I haven't read it in 10 years, my Kindle now ensures I never will.
I enjoyed my Friday morning coffee surveying the pile. Feeling deeply satisfied. Then later called in expertise to resolve the cultural crisis. It's all in the learning. By this morning, the aftermath was neatly bagged and ready to be hauled out. 
Next cultural crisis pending: What are the rules for recycling books here? I'm sure there are rules and this time I'll try to get ahead of them. Or maybe I'll just end up decluttering my kitchen...