Five European peculiarities

I have noticed quite a few striking differences about life in general here over the past few weeks (as compared to life in suburban North Carolina): 

1. Laundry consumes your life and requires much advanced planning, not because the washers are odd, but because you dry everything on a drying rack.  I have been told that this does make your clothing last longer since it is not continually shrunk and tumbled by a dryer, and I do believe that.  My jeans fit the same way before and after washing when they are air dried.  However, my all cotton shirts are entirely too big now.  I find myself avoiding my cotton clothing and preferring my quick-dry REI brand stuff.  I also lament the towel situation - if anyone has any advice on how to get towels to have that fluffy dryer feel via air-drying, please let me know!

2. Water.  I have been studying water resources and contamination for the past 2.5 years in grad school, harping about how precious freshwater is and how we need to manage its consumption. Our Charlotte water is great - I hardly think about when and where I would prefer to get it while at home.  I'm still a little wary about drinking the tap water in our apartment in Berlin since new places can be hard on new people (although I have been brushing my teeth and cooking with it).  Its not so expensive to just buy those giant bottled waters for 1 euro every day and keep them on the kitchen counter, fill my daily water bottle with it, etc... but out at a restaurant, "water", even when we say "ohne gas"(without gas) sometimes is still seltzer water and I only managed to get through about a cup of it, even though it cost me 3 euros (almost 5 dollars) and I was trying my darnedest to drink it all out of principle alone.  (This contest between me and my bubbly water was thwarted by a sudden sideways rainstorm, forcing all those eating outside to run for cover inside the restaurant). Paying for plain water at a restaurant just doesn't compute when you are used to the restaurants in America - its a way to cut costs when eating out - though here, you might as well buy a beer.  Its cheaper, tastes better, and if you don't finish it, well just walk home with it :)

3. History.  This essentially can be summed up with a quote from our Berlin bike tour guide, who, upon showing us a church built in the 1300s, told us, "now, that might be impressive to you Americans and Australians - but to you Italians, not so much".  America in the 1300s... the Mayflower landed in 1600 something...

Also, very recent tumultuous history occurred right here in Berlin and seems to be divided into two major events in the last 100 years, the first being anything Nazi related and the second anything Cold War or Berlin Wall related (I was 5 when the wall fell but don't remember anything firsthand).  Here's me emphasizing temporal variability in a single location - the 12 foot tall wall is now remembered in the brick paving pattern under my feet: 

Certain tourist locations like the "Topography of Terror" are mildly confusing since it contains relics of both major events.  The site is former Gestapo headquarters where Nazi forces planned many of their atrocities, yet it is also immediately adjacent to a 100m long section of the Berlin Wall.  The information panels run parallel to the entire length of the wall, but chronicle Nazi control over citizens of Berlin from 1933 to 1945. The history of downtown Charlotte used to be... uh... a forest??

4. Weather.  Now this is probably such a contrast due to relative urbanization and relative climate alone.  Charlotte probably has more than 300 sunny days a year - its blazing hot enough in the summer to the point of I don't understand how people used to live there before air conditioning and not melt, much less get anything done. Berlin's climate resembles more of where I grew up in Michigan, much more rainy days, summer tops out at 85 degrees, it still gets very cool at night, etc.  However, in the urban setting of Berlin (which I love so much) even though the weather is so much cooler, I find myself sweating so much more on a daily basis.  Since I can't use my car as a repository of all things useful for a day, I really have to think about what I bring with me when I leave the house, and whether it should include a raincoat or umbrella, since I will have to carry it all day (all the while wishing I had broader shoulders).  I think about how much walking vs. subway riding I will be doing, and whether or not I will be taking a bus (read: oven).  Despite the lack of air conditioning in general in Germany, at least our particular apartment seems to be about 15 degrees cooler than the outside temperature, probably due to the lack of direct sunlight since we are in the middle of a courtyard on the 2nd floor (of five). 

5. Suburban vs. Urban:  Most people know that in general, America's public transit is doesn't even compare to anywhere in Europe.  Berlin is about the same size as Atlanta, and, ironically, Charlotte depending on what stats you compare.  Let me explain: (US data from 2010 US census via Wikipedia)...

• Berlin and Atlanta have similar urban populations (3.4 and 3.5 million people)
• Berlin and Charlotte have the same city area (344 and 300 square miles)
• Population density decreases dramatically: Berlin (10,000 people/sq mi), Atlanta (4,000 people/sq mi), Charlotte (2,400 people/sq mi)
• This means that if you doubled the population of Atlanta, squeezed it into the area of Charlotte, you would essentially have Berlin.

In order to do this, you would probably have to remove half of the cars that exist in Atlanta, shrink all the SUVs down to Corollas, and shrink all the Corollas to Smart Cars.  You'd also have to convert all the single family houses to mixed use buildings with daily commercial needs (like drugstores, groceries, restaurants, hardware stores, electronics stores, beer stores, etc.) on the first floor and 3-5 stories of residential apartments on top.  Then add a magical network of underground subways(U-bahns) and above ground subways (S-bahns), which I prefer since they smell nicer and have more airflow.  Also, add busses that are actually on time and have little signs that accurately predict their arrival (though any US bus in the southeast would REQUIRE climate control).  Also, you'd have to add bike lanes at the very least on major roads or on sidewalks to major roads (even though the hilly terrain and hot summers would be brutal).  Here is an electric charging station (which appeared to be free) and a smart car using it - my brother's comment was that in Philadelphia, a unsupervised cable would be stolen in an instant, even if it wasn't the least bit useful to the thief.

One of my goals of this trip is to physically measure and draw some street sections to see how exactly this environment is accomplished and to see which elements may be extrapolated to improve America's urban centers, and use my experience to help decide what elements are great and which elements just suck (like the absence of air conditioning part). Evidence of that project to come in future posts...

The part of this urban environment that is simply wonderful is the active street zone - and thus eating outside (this has become so quickly one of my favorite things about my life right now that I'm typically majorly disappointed when outside seats are full or it happens to be raining).  When you live in an apartment above a mixed use setting, you descend your stairs (lazy Americans could just install elevators), exit your building directly into this area.  You can usually walk less than a block to a coffee shop.  You can walk less than 5 minutes to a multitude of restaurants.  You can walk 5-10 minutes to your favorite restaurant.  We walked less than 2 minutes to the hotel where our guests have been staying.  We walk 5 minutes to the train to anywhere (two choices of stops) - which, when you know where you are going, the walking only accounts for 10% of your trip.  Even so, all this walking adds up - I have noticed that I eat less and exercise more here, simply because of the lifestyle.  This is the sad reality of my "fat happy American" upbringing, which I quote from graffiti a friend of mine saw in either Greece or Italy in 2004 (though some people counter that it should read "fat depressed Americans", citing our dependence on prozac and subsequent laziness:

 This lifestyle is very American and probably a product of our cheap food and our expansive country.  I won't eat as much because the food here is expensive and I know I have to walk/ride a train home - whereas if the food is cheap and I'm in a car I tend to overeat.  We may pay the same for a night out in America, but so much more is included: water is free, refills of many drinks are free, portions are huge, tortilla chips are bottomless...

I came across a forum post on Toytown Germany (Germany's english speaking crowd) and found this post about running road races in Spain... and what is "included":

• AmandaUSCS:  Also, I'm just saying this because in some countries it seems much more common to provide gels and/or electrolyte drinks for races over 10K. 
• AlohaBerlin: Sports drink along the course? Girl we're in Germany - They serve beer! 
• AmandaUSCS: Well, they even had sports drink at the races I've done in Spain... not at the finish though. Afterwards it was just espresso, wine, tapas and condoms. 

Its funny what countries define as normal... expected... and relevant :)
I love this quote (though I don't remember who said it): "The world is a book; people who do not travel only read one page"

First visitors!

 Our first week long visitors were my brother, Jason, and my new future sister in law, Sara.  We took them to all the Berlin sights including a very old sight, the Brandenburg gate, which was one of the gates to the Prussian city in 1791 and then later part of the old Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin in 1961-1989:

 

Other newer Berlin sights like the Holocaust memorial, built in 2005 to commemorate specifically the murdered Jews of Europe by the Nazis in the 1940s (there are other memorials planned for other targeted groups of the Nazi regime): 

 

And, of course, the oldest beergarden in Berlin, the Cafe am Neuen See:

  

And the beergarden that sells "one meter beer": 

 

And, most importantly, the Potsdam Abenteuerpark. 

Hidden Jewels

Beyond the basics of Berlin: we are settled in pretty well, I have figure out all the tricks to our apartment, where to get food, etc.  So I decided that it was time to make an appointment with the Freie University sedimentology professor, Dr. Heubeck, to see if I can occupy my time with something relevant to the degree I just finished.  

The university is a train ride, a train ride, and a bus from our apartment, which didn't take so long (maybe 40 minutes) assuming that you don't do what I did - get distracted by a store at the end of the second bus called Globetrekker.  For those of you who go outside in America (other than just from your house to your car), its like an REI on steroids.  I had to include this photo of their indoor canoe/kayak testing area.  Yup, you can test out any floating device that they have around the edge. 

They also have cool things like a cold room, where you can test out winter stuff and gear, a treadmill that inclines to 45 degrees to test out shoes, and various types of "terrain" for more shoe testing.  Just in case you get sucked in, there's a coffee and snack bar and an extensive travel book section to keep you occupied for hours.

Another hidden gem which has quickly been a part of my life are these Organic ("Bio-" then insert whatever food is being sold) - in this case, juices.  The regular apple juice and thicker, almost milkshake-like mango juice is probably about 75% of my liquid diet right now (the remainder being 10% coffee and 15% water), and I'm going through a half a bottle of each per day.  They are so good!!!  

The last hidden gem I'd like to mention is Germany's attitude towards open containers.  You can walk around ANYWHERE with a beer - people on the train casually drink beers and have asked Brian for a bottle opener (which he has on his keychain).  It seems that the only overtly "drunk" people are those coming or going from sporting events - easy to spot due to their brightly colored clothing and audible singing.  The brown, green, and white containers shown in the photo are all over the place and are for recycling your empties.  What a novel idea!  PS.  The "snow" on the ground is really cotton from the cottonwood trees - and has a personal vendetta for my sinuses!

Despite all these distractions....  I did manage to make it to the University after almost missing the bus twice, and had a great chat with Dr. Heubeck.  I'm going to sit in on his Sedimentary Petrology class on Mondays, and help advance the SandWiki as I have time.  I'm quite excited - and it looks like I'll get a lot of practice with a petrographic microscope!

Investigating the basics

The first weekend was continued investigation of the basics. 

Food: We have figured out where to get basic grocery and paper products(paper towels, toilet paper, etc) and even have a natural foods store, Bio-Company, very close to our apartment where I can get soymilk, some amazing mango juice and apple juice, a dairy free dark chocolate nutella substitute, and high quality bratwurst. I also found a great grocery in the Karstadt store that sells baking stuff like baking soda(Natron) and baking powder(backpulver) that come in little packets, and with which I managed to make Zucchini bread this weekend.  We don’t actually have an oven in our apartment (just two burners on a range top), but Friedegund (our apartment is an extension of the landlady’s apartment) lets us borrow hers whenever we want. 

Soap/Shampoo/Laundry: The water here has been fine once we figured out the rules – the shower drain only requires plunging right before the shower so that the water will drain efficiently.  The water is excessively hard, and I had quite a hard time getting my hair clean until I bought my Aveda shampoo at the Berlin Aveda store.  It seems like the same stuff, just less viscous, and it does a much better job of getting my hair clean than the same brand I bought in Charlotte.  It seems that most soaps and detergents are more runny; possibly for this reason.  We have a separate water heater for the bathroom, and probably two for the kitchen; one for the sink, and I’m assuming there is another one for the washing machine.  Yes, the washing machine is in the kitchen – and we dry our clothes on a big rack – and those have been reliably dry after about 36-48 hours.  My REI and Prana brand clothing has been the best because it dries in about half that time. 

Movies: There is a large theater showing both German (voiceover) and regular English movies at the new Sony Center adjacent to the Potsdamer Platz transit station.  This building is new since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1990, and its location used to be part of the “death strip” along the border of East and West Berlin.  We saw the Pirates 4 movie, which, of course, had a confusing plot but was riddled with jokes and action – it was great!  German theaters have ASSIGNED seating just like US sporting events, concerts, or airline tickets – and you can pay €2 extra on an €8 ticket to get a better seat.  You can also order beer and wine at the concession stand.  There’s about a half an hour of previews and right before the movie starts, the curtains close and guys with ice cream (Eis) wander around.  There is an intermission – where they literally stop mid-sentence and have a 15 minute break. 

Local transportation: Two of Brian’s coworkers were kind enough to lend us each a bike for the summer, which makes shopping (and carrying a bunch of purchased items) a heck of a lot easier and faster.  We also have been riding bikes to restaurants that answer the transportation for those places that are in the weird zone between “its almost too close to take the S- or U- bahn but I’m not thrilled about walking”.  For example, it’s a little over a mile to a good pizza place (the 12 Apostles) where we had dinner on Sunday night, and the bikes and the active urban storefronts make that bike ride easy and entertaining.  We found a Greek restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and a few other interesting storefronts along the way.

Regional Transportation: Our S-bahn stop is about a 5 minute walk and is on the main line to everywhere.  You can pay €2,30 (about $3 dollars) and travel anywhere in the AB section of Berlin metro or pay €3,00 (about $4.50) and go anywhere in ABC section – which is what we took to neighboring city of Potsdam on Sunday (one way is about 30 minutes).  Potsdam is known for its Sansoucci Castle(though not as impressive as those castles near Munich), the Schloss Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference was negotiated by Truman, Stalin, and Churchill, for the terms of the Japanese surrender.  We did go there last year on the Potsdam bike tour (with Fat Tire bike tours), so this time of course, we went to the Kletterwald Potsdam instead – a high ropes/zipline adventurepark up in the trees.  We had been there before, but its such a good workout for the two hours you spend climbing though each obstacle – sometimes as much as 30 feet off the ground. 

 We got kind of detained on this one - there's a harder obstacle ahead and people were being really slow.  I sat on this saddle obstacle for about 10 minutes, while Brian pulled me back and forth.  Its about 30 feet in the air. 

 Brian just saw the first half of Gone With the Wind a month or so ago, and here he is pretending to be Scarlett waiting for Ashley to come back, "Just like a Spider!!" (to quote Mammy)

Internet: Ok, I know this “basic” is specific to our generation – but despite the fact that our apartment comes with slow and about 75% reliable DSL, Google maps has made my life so much easier.  I can figure out what stores might have what I need without getting lost, plan my grocery or errands running around where things are located relative to each other, check out what restaurants might be good, excellent, or horrible based on Google reviews; and this knowledge has made our transition to living here much simpler and much less hectic.  I have also used Google translate quite a lot to figure out what is written on the labels of the stuff I buy.   

Language: here is just a short list of the important phrases I use a lot.

Danke/bitte: thank you/your welcome or please

wasser ohne gas: water without gas (Europeans like carbonated water - gross!)

Zum mit nehemen: to take away (at a restaurant when you want a box)

Reichnung/Zahlen bitte: bill/pay please (you don't actually get it until you ask)

Genau: exactly/correct/agreement with something

Enschuldigen: excuse me (people do NOT notice that they are standing in the middle of anything)

Sprechen Sie Englisch:  Do you speak english? 

Morgen/Heute/Abend: morning/today/evening

May 20, Tribute to Emile Berliner and a discussion of "People and their Poop"

After a night of sleeping like a log for an indeterminate amount of time, I woke up from the deepest sleep imaginable, forced myself out of bed, made coffee, opened my laptop to Google's homepage and saw one of those decorative Google logos with a gramaphone for the G and records for the two Os.  Cool, what what this about, I thought, only to hover over the image to find the Alt tag said "160. Geburstag von Emil Berliner" (160th birthday for Emil Berliner).  Seeing as that is my self-declared "nickname" for this blog, I figured I had better read about the person!

 

Clearly I assumed this Emil Berliner(hereafter referred to as "EB") person had invented the gramaphone, which is, in fact, true.  A wikipedia article about him links to a Library of Congress website which has this biographical notes: EB is from Germany, immigrated to Washington DC in 1870 (soon after the Civil War), became a citizen in 1881, and worked a bunch of crappy jobs until he was inspired as a "cleanup-man at a  laboratory of Constantine Fahlberg, the discoverer of saccharine".  So inspired, he self-taught himself electricity and physics to file for a patent for an improved microphone, catching the eye of Thomas Watson and the American Bell Telephone Company, who bought his patent and employed him as a research assistant for the next seven years. After his employment at ABT Co, he became a private consultant and continued to sell his inventions to ABT.  This was the beginning of what would be a long career of steps towards improving sound recording, loom/weaving mass production, and in later years, early versions of helicopters.  His patents are all for microphones, gramaphones, telephones, and sound recording methods using electroplating.

How is Emile Berliner similar to BerlinerEm(me)?  Well not so much from the above text, but later in life, he became a philanthropist focused on sanitation, especially for children, when one of his own daughters became incredibly ill after eating some ill-prepared food or drink.  He was a proponent of milk pasteurization and general public health improvements, writing a book titled Muddy Jim, which was a collection of his own drawings and rhymes, distributed to Wash DC area schools. I can't say I'm a philanthropist since you have to have money to do so, but if you think of the time around the 1900s and their current public health predicament, it largely involved cities being dirty- streets made of dirt, horses pooping everywhere, tenement buildings 4 to 6 stories high with too many people in each one, and no indoor plumbing.  People threw their trash in the street (oh, wait, people STILL do that).

This eyewitness account reference in the above link then says that scientists and reformers stopped all that with sanitation laws - welcome people like Emile Berliner, and 100 years later BerlinerEm to be a part of the movement that tackles the public health problems of today!  Seems like all our infrastructure we DO have today solves the problem of (to quote my MS advisor Diemer*) "People and their Poop" collecting in cities in the 1900s and making everyone sick, yet our "solution" to pipe it all away has finally caught up with us and is now destroying our sources of water elsewhere.

Taking a step back and looking at the 150 year timeline of sanitation clearly shows the baby steps necessary to ameliorate our impact on the earth, and the pace at which public consensus and drastic improvements move.  Round one, early 1900s, people live in their poop in cities. Sanitation laws move in to pipe it all away.  Public health in cities improves.  People live longer and continue to breed in higher numbers.  Round 2, circa early 2000s, all this poop finally adds up in our streams and natural areas.  Responsible engineers and scientists are currently working to understand biological and physical processes that digest this sludge and we need the support of activists, reformers, and YOU as the public to get it into laws, because, the history of everyone's goal of "getting rich" dictates that few people are going to bother with innovations that are not required by law.  Keep in mind too, that sanitation in the United States and much of the European Union is leaps ahead of sanitation in developing countries, where people walk miles per day just to get clean water, and often in war-torn areas.

If you happen to be one of those mentally exhausted people feeling supremely guilty about overpopulation, and the human race's impact on earth (and its affinity to resembling ants devouring an abandoned picnic), I urge you to take a more optimistic view every once an a while.  Thanks to one of my thesis committee members, Dr. Allan, who impresses upon his students the importance of "mass balance" equations, think of a mass balance of "clean" vs. "poop", while considering the existence of the earth as a closed system.  You will realize that whatever amount of matter that exists on the earth now, or existed in the 1400s, in the year 0, or 5000 BC is essentially the same, save a few meteor impacts.  We have just moved that matter around, broken apart compounds, combined certain elements, raised matter like fossil fuels to the surface, and generally re-arranged the stuff of earth to the point at which it is spatially organized now.  It seems to me that science has the ability to re-organize the matter on earth to how we see fit, and can accommodate the production of "poop" by the spatial organization of those that produce it (us!). 

My optimistic side tells me that we NEED lots of people if we are ever going to populate the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and we NEED this future lot of people to understand, support, and improve scientific advances, otherwise the ants devouring a picnic paradigm will be the more likely scenario, and civilization will extinguish itself yet again (I of course cite the many civilizations that have collapsed internally thanks to their own greediness).  I have also held the opinion that those people who have more than two kids are just greedy... but that assumes the goal for humans to stay on the earth forever, and I know I read somewhere that the earth will only have a breathable atmosphere for another 500 million years.  Of course, if humans leave earth in large numbers then the whole "closed system" notion of earth has a slow leak of spaceships, carbon based life forms, oxygen tanks, and rocket fuel. 

Gosh, what I come up with when I ponder "sanitation"... I was hoping to gain some perspective while here in Berlin, where I have three months to reflect since most of what I'm doing here is entirely optional - and I don't have the ability to seriously apply for a job until we get back.  I think this post was the first larger thinking I've done in a while.  Success!  This is the second time this has happened to me; I think the first time I've had some time to reflect on myself and my long term goals was during a more depressing time in my life, during the time that I was unemployed (a few years ago).  I'm happy to say that this time, my reflective time is much more upbeat, optimistic, and exciting. 

If you are still reading, and feel so inclined to comment, I would ask you, what do YOU care about when the necessities of life don't get in the way? Have you ever HAD time to reflect, or have you been nonstop go-go-go like many americans?  Do you ever wish you could take some time to reflect?  How would you do it?

*Diemer's joke, like most of his jokes, are unintended byproducts of a love of rare geological features and a dry sense of humor. This particular comment stems from an Sedimentology field trip in which we were at the one of the largest Carolina Bays, a curious spattering of similarly aligned, ellipsoid depressions in the southeastern United States.  This particular Carolina Bay, Lake Waccamaw, was particularly large and filled in with water and, clearly, attracted waterfront development. Diemer was explaining typical characteristics of Carolina Bays to the class "before people and their poop moved in" to which my fellow grad student buddy Jen and I (who were volunteering to assist with crowd control on this trip) were struck with a funny stick by this comment and completely lost it, laughing for at least 10 minutes while Diemer continued his description, uninterrupted, but with a grin on his face.

Indian lunch

I spent the day with my friend Krupa - she is the wife of one of Brian's coworkers, Jaysim.  I met her last year when we were here for 2 weeks.  She cooked us lunch, a Indian spiced rice noodle dish that was very tasty but "not spicy" - but was really about at my limit for spicy food.  We watched some Big Bang Theory on a website that has lots of TV show series for free, and for those of you who know that show, we watched the one with the napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy (one of my favorites!). 

We also went to the Freundlich Backerei ("Friendly Bakery") near her apartment that had coffee (since that's my new solution for not taking a nap at 5pm) and this really yummy apple strudel cake thing.  We drew sketches of our countries and noted where mountains, deserts, forests, major cities, etc were located.  I had no idea of anything about India except its near the Himalayas and its pointy at the bottom, and she wanted to see how far Charlotte is from California, and where Niagara Falls is located. 

I took the train back around 5pm to our cool little Wilmersdorfer Arcaden shopping area, and got more groceries including: Mango Juice, Apple Juice, more sausage, water without gas, bread without milk, and chocolate spread without milk (kind of like nutella, but dark chocolate flavored and vegan, which is mildly addicting).  We made beer sauteed sausage, garlic and chili pepper grilled zucchini/carrots, and penne pasta (which we didn't eat much of because I put too much salt in it - oops!) Brian has been ogling over a website for this video game history museum here in Berlin, in which most of the games are playable and date back to Pong from the early 1970s.  I think its a definite for this weekend...

Running, sleeping, shopping...

I went for a run today - there's a little lake near our apartment so I went on a mission to find it.  I haven't actually been running in a while, so I made sure to bring my heart rate monitor so I didn't overdo myself.  I kept it in the 150-160s and did my whole 2.8 miles in about 35 minutes. (don't laugh! I've always been a slow runner!)  There were quite a few runners out there, but certainly no Southern smiles or "heys" like I generally have gotten in Charlotte.  These German runners are on a mission - though I did manage to pass the old ladies walking their dogs - but they weren't friendly today either.

 I got back and had an angry shouting match with the shower drain.  It was the worst so far - up until now, it was only making me take a short shower, but this time it took a good 3 minutes with the water off to drain.  Mission #1 today: find drain-o.  I did find some for €3, though it was pretty heavy carrying around in my bag all day.  Also on the list today, laundry baskets and contact lens solution - the latter I managed to find at the Pharmacy, of all places.  They don't sell it in grocery stores here.. go figure.

Upon returning, I thought I'd play with my new Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign CS5 (I had CS2 before) and draw a floorplan of our apartment.  Getting in the front door is quite an adventure complete with three keys: (1) to get in the main door at the street, (2) to unlock the deadbolt on our door, shown in bottom right of the drawing, and (3) a gigantic Alice in Wonderland looking key to actually turn the handle/open the door.  The apartment has a long hallway off which the rooms are found: bedroom with two twin beds, an armoire stuffed with our six suitcases, and a shelf, stuffed with our clothes.   The kitchen has a small table with two chairs, a microwave, a tiny refrigerator below two range top burners, and a washing machine.  The living room has a really nice coffee table, a sofa, a desk by the window(top of the floorplan), a lounge chair, really tall cabinets(on the right side in the floorplan), and another desk/cabinet with a TV on top.  The bathroom is pretty normal - though I have had to alter my face washing habits to avoid spilling water all over the floor. You can see the door to the landlady's (Friedegund's) apartment on the bottom left, which she pretty much leaves unlocked so we can use her oven or reset the wireless router or whatever. (Ps. You can just click on images in the blog to see them larger in a new window.) 

I took a nap again - had a headache from carrying all the stuff around this afternoon- so I took a nap for an hour or so until Brian came back from work at 7pm with a bike!!  His boss, Christian, had just gotten a new bike, so he brought his old one for us to use this summer.  Angela is supposed to bring me an old one of hers later this week.  We ate at a sushi place for dinner that is just down the street - Miso soup, california rolls, avocado rolls, chicken teryaki kebabs and rice.  Brian is obsessed with orange Fanta and I had some really tasty apple juice.

We returned to the apartment and set up Skype calling to the US on an unlimited plan to landlines and mobile phones for $8/month. I called my dad at work, and he gave some advice about the shower situation.  I also called my mom, who sounded surprised to be hearing from me on her cell phone when we weren't sure exactly how and if we could do that.  She was in Pennsylvania with her cousin Sue just finishing a late lunch.  I was a little jealous since I know that she's going to get to see my kitty this weekend.  Dante is staying with [my new future sister-in-law!!!] Sara in Pittsburgh while we are gone this summer, and from the awesome photos Sara has sent me and what she's told me on the phone, it seems that he is loving their new townhome, with its two flights of stairs and window perches.  He is even getting along well with Sydney, Jason's cat - one will chase the other up the stairs, then pause, and the other will chase the first back down again.  I'm so happy they are getting along and thankful that Sara and Jason were willing to be Dante's summer home.

We are running the washer for the first time with Brian's clothes at the moment.  We don't have a dryer (my German friend Alena tells me dryers are not common in Germany) so we have a metal thing-y to hang stuff on.  Hopefully there will be no issues or user-errors with this appliance!