Co-op-eration Makes It Happen

Just a little something.

German handiwork may be nice, but someone around here forgot to tell people how to get things done efficiently. Maybe I'm just used to the "House Makeover" view where you send in two thousand people to build a house in 24 hours or whatever, but the fact is that all these dudes walking around with their orange jumpsuit thingies and blue overalls (that's what streetworkers and buidlers wear, respectively).

The fact is, Leipzig is under construction. Uni Leipzig has no real campus, just buildings in random places (I'm not complaining, they're close enough to walk to and you get to see cool buildings all along the way). The old main building was torn down this summer and something is going up to replace it. It's in the center circle of the city and loud. That's not all, though. There are weird sections of streets blocked off, tons of apartment buildings with bricks and other debris crashing down through buckets, hammering going on, drills drilling loud enough to make us choose to swelter in the classroom instead of opening a window. Each day I have to guess where the street in front of my department's building is open so that I can walk through, carefully avoiding trucks and drills and piles of dirt and rope. Today I noticed that they have finished hammering in the cobblestones in the section directly between the library and my building. The whole road should be done soon so there will be more room for the smokers to spread out. (I'm not sure if that's a good thing. On the one hand maybe the smoke will be more aired out, on the other hand, that's more area for me to walk in with the smoke smell. Currently I just breathe before I get to the mass waiting at the door.) Anyway, my question is, "Why don't all these guys just get together and focus on one project at a time until they're all done?"