The Apartment

Well, I think that it is high time I take a moment to talk about the apartment I am living in this summer. Like I've mentioned before, it's an older place, an interesting joining of two buildings, actually, around a common courtyard. The individual apartments have no numbers, you just have to know where you are going and the post office identifies postboxes by names (I was sure to add my name to the one for my room). With that said, I was thankful that my PhD host student had met with the owner of the apartment before I arrived to pick up the keys, and so she knew where she was going. My first thought when I arrived last Sunday and had my first look of the place very much followed the line of ". . . Well this is quaint".

I should have been expecting about as much as I found really, considering that this IS Europe. You see, the apartment isn't really what North Americans (slash just Americans) would consider an apartment. It's really just a hallway. In fact, that's really all it is indeed. One opens the door and they step into a twelve foot hallway, at the end of which is the bathroom. Immediately on the right is the small kitchen/laundry room, having a clothes washer, oven top, mini-fridge, dishwasher, and clothes dryer all in a row along the western wall. On the left of the main entrance is the room I am staying in, and further down the hall are two more bedrooms, one on each side of the bathroom.

My room is rather spacious, being about the size of the hallway and kitchen put together, and furnished with a small desk, a nicely sized bed, wardrobe, and a giant orange bean-bag chair. My room has a window that overlooks the courtyard, which consequently provides an excellent view into the rooms in the other building (and vice-verse no doubt). Thankfully the building is equipped with the solid metal shutters that Germans seem to so enjoy, allowing one to cut out all light from the outside, as well as the looks of those sitting on the balcony just ten feet off my window.

In my room I also found a note from the person in who's place I was living in. It was a nice note, filled with advice on where to go shopping and where to avoid, the access keys for the Internet, as well as a little note about the shower. Apparently the boiler (also in the kitchen) acts up sometimes and turns off, leaving one without hot water. At least that's what was written. What he really meant was something more along the lines of "We don't actually own a boiler, and to be honest, we have no idea what warm water even feels like". Yes, the boiler does act up and turn off. Frequently.

The first two days, I was completely unable to coax the shower into giving up any warm water at all. Since then I have taken to giving up with the tub after a couple of minutes and just sponge-bathing out of the sink. That way at least I don't have to freeze to death as I rinse the shampoo from my hair. Actually, it's not all bad, the last couple of mornings I was able to get hot water, but this in turn allowed me to identify another issue with the shower situation. There is no temperature medium. One gets either hot or cold, not both, not a mixture, but rather boiling or freezing. But fear not, I have developed a solution to this problem as well. You see what I do is I run the hot water for a while, and just as the outer layer of my skin begins to peal off, the pipes are warm enough that as I throw the switch to cold, I can get about two minutes of nice showering time. Then, as I begin to enter the early stages of hypothermia, I throw the switch the other way and repeat. The good news is there's only nine weeks left of this yin-yang left. There must be some trick that I am missing, I will have to ask my roommates about it.

Ah, the roommates. I met one of them a couple hours after I arrived. She was in a hurry, but speaks a bit of English, so that was nice. I met the other one on Tuesday. He speaks no English and we stood staring at each other awkwardly once the pleasantries had been conducted until he gave a little chuckle and walked off emitting the German equivalent of "ooookkkaaaayyy". I haven't seen either of them since. I'm not even sure that they live here, to be honest. I'm not sure when they come home or when they leave, or if they do at all. So much for building community. I might need to check the other rooms for bodies at some point. THAT would be just my luck.

Ah well, I think it's about time for me to get out of bed. I need to go shopping today, I ran out of Leberwurst last night. ;-) It's the weekend, so I think I will go explore for a place to eat later today. In the mean time, I need to go wrestle with the shower again. Oh, I posted more photos for those of you who didn't see. I re-arranged some of the albums, too. I will let you know when I get more up.

So with that said, "Death by fire, or ice?".