Washing Woes

My pants don't fit anymore.

Never fear! This is not the first step toward a transition to a diet blog. In fact, my ill fitting pants are now so loose and baggy that I fear that without the helpful and necessary addition of a belt they may just tire of their modesty and fashion function altogether and fall right off. Turns out I'm suffering from a case of the stretch-outs. You know, the "I've been cycling through my jeans at such a pace that no one pair is particularly dirty, but no one pair fits like a glove either" problem. And it's all because of a good deal on a washing machine.

Have I explained the laundry situation yet? The thing I absolutely loved about my last apartment in the States was the undersized yet blissfully convenient washer and dryer right inside the unit, not in the creepy basement where bugs and dust and debris gather in the corner waiting to run out from their shadowy perch and positively coat your wet clothing in various and sundry detritus the minute you let a sock slip out of your grasp and hit the floor as you transfer your load from the washer to the dryer. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that here in beautiful Deustchland, apartment dwellers typically buy their own washer and dryer (yay!) but then they put them all in a common room in the basement of the building (boo!). After all, who DOESN'T want to lug piles of worn unmentionables through the common areas of your building while averting your eyes when you pass by the prudish neighbor upstairs who probably washes all her underwear in her sink to avoid this very situation. I for one, protest. But as my apartment does not have a washer or dryer hook up, and the creepy basement where bugs and dust and debris gather in the shadowy corners does, I guess I'm not left with many options.

So on we go with life and adjusting our expectations and whatnot- at least this is a social custom we are familiar with in the United States even if it is undesirable. On the positive site (that's right, glass is half full folks!) there is no need to lug 35 pounds of small change to the laundry room to make use of the machines as each person hooks their own appliances to their own water and electricity meters. And, I suppose, we won't ever have to plan vindictive yet passive revenge scenarios that will never come to fruition on the jerk who threw our dry clothes on the floor because we were a minute and a half late to retrieve our belongings from the only working dryer on the premises. So there is some merit to ownership in a common room...I guess.

In our particular situation, Husband, who can't sleep at night unless he feels he got a "good deal," found such a deal on an American-style washing machine some guy was trying to unload before he moved back to the U.S. Perfect! We purchased the appliance and marveled over its enormous washing capacity, familiar settings and top-loading magnificence. That is, until I pointed out that we now have nowhere to house our dryer as each tenant in the building is given 1 (one) spot to hook up their laundry machines, ergo to fit both a washer and a dryer both machines need to be stackable. And by stackable, I mean NOT a top-loading washer. Duh.

So that was Challenge Number One, which we quickly overcame by putting our dryer in our enormous storage unit just across the hall from the laundry room. Given the extra privacy for the leisurely folding of our garments, this turned out to be not such a bad idea after all, stackable washer or not. Challenge Number Two, we found out soon thereafter, had at its root the other major difference between German and American washers (the first difference being that most German washers ARE stackable)- the hot water situation. Perhaps intended to save the user money on the gas bill to heat hot water, German washers only have a cold-water input hose and then the unit itself has the mechanics to heat the water to the appropraite wash temperature. Brilliant, I'm sure. However, if you've ever taken a peek at the back of an American washer, you'll know there is both a hot AND cold water hook up that just proportionally dumps each temperature of water into the unit as needed. So....we don't have any hot water to wash our clothes.

Off it was, then, to the store for some Cold Water Tide! See- nothing is insurmountable. Well, nothing would have been insurmountable has we stopped at Challenge Number 2, and not moved on to Challenge Number 3. Sigh. It all started when we did our first gloriously enormous load of darks. As a side note, have I mentioned that German washers are not only front loading and internally heating, but they also hold only about half the capacity of a good-sized American washer? Hence the excitement over the size. Husband and I stood in the basement with the washer as it started doing its thing, you know, to make sure it knew it was supported in its new environment and to make sure it was feeling up to the task and all. Once we deemed the washer suitably well functioning, we retired to our apartment to continue with Sunday chores.

This was a bad idea.

Turns out, our little American washer has a bit of an incontinence problem, as 40 minutes later when I went to get our clothes, I found what had to be gallons and gallons of water on the floor. Super. So I did what any normal American woman would do- I got my husband. Together we stood there in the laundry room staring at the mess in utter disbelief, paralayzed with annoyance. And then the spell broke as we simotaneously realized we didn't want our German neighbors to walk into the common room to discover the new Americans just flooded the place. So I (thankfully!) found a squeegee and started frantically coaxing the water toward the drain while husband inspected the hook up to discover the flaw.

But there was no flaw! We ran the water through again and everything held. After an hour of so of inspection, husband determined that none of our pipes were leaking and the machine itself was also in fine condition. The culprit, we suspect, is the building's output pipe (does that have an actual name? I don't know...it's the pipe that all the washing machines feed into to take the used water away.). We suspect, but can not confirm, that the output pipe is simply not equipped to handle the much larger flow of water when the basin empties from our gigantic washer, and what couldn't go down, just came back up...and out. We will have to get a new washer.

But at least we got one load of clothes clean (see- glass is half full!), but unfortunately that load did not contain any of my baggy, sagging jeans. So I'll just let people think I'm losing weight.

Manly Man

Have I mentioned I'm married to the manliest man alive?

No? How strange I would have forgotten that. Hmm. Well, he's really quite good at doing things men should be able to do- like changing tires and talking sports and leaving dirty cereal bowls sitting on the coffee table. A little more estrogen on that last item there wouldn't be unwelcome, but I guess if I must sacrifice some elbow grease to get the spackled-on dredges of Frosted Flakes off the inside of the bowl after it's been sitting out for hours for an unending supply of tool wielding and computer fixing, then hand me the scrubber and some Dawn, because I'm sold. Yes, yes I will get in the kitchen for that.

We ordered a German refrigerator for our fridge-less apartment a few weeks ago, and when it arrived we were delighted to see it was just as big and beautiful as an American model. Oh, and the freezer is on the bottom, which I love, and instead of being a standard wide open frosty cavity,  it is made up of 3 bins in which to store your frozen goods. The bins were aptly named BIG BOX via static sticker that I think was intended to be removed, but I rather like the name and think it adds that little bit of spunk that other freezers seem to be lacking.

The lovely delivery people from our local German MediMax brought our fridge by and despite not speaking a lick of English managed to convey at least 6 times in perfectly fluent mother-tongue not to plug it in for 12 hours. Ok. No problem. I can wait to refrigerate. In the mean time, husband and I decided that if we were going to have a positive kitchen experience we would need to switch the doors so that instead of opening on the left and swinging immediately into our silverware drawer, it would really need to open on the right and violently hit the wood paneled window each time instead. At least the window has no real kitchen-essential purpose other than being an unobstructed view into the living room, but we may want to simultaneously open both the fridge and the silverware drawer at some point.

So the decision was made! We whipped out the easy-to-read instruction manual and took a look. Turns out, the instruction manual was easy to read because...there were no words! Just a minuscule diagram of the appliance and a series intersecting numbered arrows and what must have been hyroglphics. Ah. Right. So husband, with testosterone practically bubbling out through his nose, marches confidently to the spare room to retrieve an extensive set of tools, a pair of pince-nez and a magnifying glass, and we set to work concurrently dismantling our newest electronic good and destroying our eyesight deciphering the tiny diagram.

Husband immediately got to screwing and unscrewing and pulling this and josteling that and consulting the diagram and scratching his head and kind of violently shaking the door in a way I don't think the instructions were prompting, and ultimately got the whole thing off the hinge. Huzzah! I knew he could do it. I, on the other hand, stood there salivating over not only the man I love, but the man I love wielding TOOLS with SKILL and STRENGTH and (perhaps sexiest of all) FIXING MY KITCHEN! You can imagine what a state I was in. But then I had to help, and all that salivating kind of just dried up as I was pinned between the cooling grates and our wall with the bottom of the fridge balanced on my foot so I could tilt the whole thing at such an impossible angle that Husband could remove the bottom hinge, which convienetly enough, was screwed in about 5 inches under the unit. Who designed that?

But after my expert fridge-tilting, husband finished up the door replacement with a flourish of sweat and screws and then we stood back with our hands on our hips, nodding our heads approvingly, wishing there was a nice cold Diet Coke in the newly reassembled fridge. But there wasn't. Because we still had 3 hours to go until we could plug it in.

To continue with the whole "Manly Husband" theme, we also had a slight hiccup with our vehicle inspection. Turns out, any amount of grease residue on the underside of the car is synonymous with a MAJOR OIL LEAK, resulting in an ENVIRONMENTAL MASSACRE, even when the technician unwaveringly admits it appears to actually be just the firmly crusted spillover from an oil change. Ugh. Husband was moderately hesitant (read: absolutely unwilling) to pay anyone to clean the underside of the car with a pressure washer, and thus decided we could clean the oil up on our own. So, on the coldest day of the year we find a high curb outside our apartment and park with two tires up so husband can lay smack-dab down on the road and shimmy underneath the car to get to the engine. Who needs a jack, right?  I bring out a leaking bucket of near-boiling soapy water and a sponge, and after the blisters on both our hands cool, Husband starts going to town scrubbing away the offending oil while I stood there salivating not only over the man I love, but the man I love on the GROUND under a CAR where he knows how to find all the PARTS, and, best of all, he's not making me do it. Ahem, not that he would. So you can imagine what kind of state I was in. But that was quickly dissipated when he emerged from under the car with a shiny patina of oil coating the entirety of his upper body, and dirty soapy water running down his face and clothes. He looked like a grease monster. Add to that, the skin on my fingers was still sloughing off due to the uncommonly hot tap water used to make the soapy mixture. So, that was that.

But the car passed inspection (!), and Husband reaffirmed his status as Manly Man. Not, of course, that it was ever in question.

Warm and Walkable

And it goes on and on and on and on.

I'm still waiting for the "champion" part. German life is still fun (!), but besides the ceaseless unpacking, nothing explicitly German has been happening, so I've been struggling to find something to share. Husband and I haven't taken any trips lately, so we are getting a little stir crazy thinking that it has been a whole month since we've stepped foot in a different country (Gasp! How does life go on?). I think we will head to France soon, as the boarder is a scant hour and a half drive away and there are some good restaurants right on the border to try.

The weather here has been wonderful. Oh, look at me, talking about the weather. But truly, it has! While my family in the U.S. is digging their way out of ice and snow storms, Husband and I took a delightful 3 hour walk this weekend while the sun shone brightly on our faces and the mid-50's temperature tempted our coats right off. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. I'm so glad we moved to Germany to escape the harsh U.S. winters.

By the way, our little town, Sindelfingen, is an absolute delight. We live right in the center, so we can easily walk to shops, restaurants, several grocery stores, the local Ikea and a decent sized mall. On Saturdays there is a large farmers market on the town square- about a three minute walk from our front door. I think we've got it made. Oh, not to mention the McDonnalds, Burger King and KFC are all walkable, which means very little to us as we would rather eat sodden cardboard cooked over a trash fire and seasoned with mold, but there you have it. If only we had a Starbucks to complete the American Set.

Tin Man Talking

Alright German apartment, you win. For now.

Hand me a white flag, I'm through fighting the closetless void. For now, I'm going to embrace her disorganized depths by refusing to unpack another box until there is a vessel or receptacle or container or drawer or shelf in which or on which to put all the STUFF and JUNK we have. The only other option is to take everything out of the boxes and then stack all of it against the wall...on the floor...in the spare room.

I did a little neighborhood exploration today with Good Friend Julia and her dog that can miraculously poop more than her body weight, and had a great time chatting and not picking up canine crap. Thank YOU Germany for having lots of wooded areas where dogs can unleash boundless amounts of excrement with abandon. It was truly wonderful to have someone to talk to (especially someone as interesting and thoughtful as GFJ), as I found that the last few days I barely made use of my vocal cords. I'm surprised I didn't need some kind of saltwater gargle or WD40 to get things going- I was that out of practice. Oil Can.

On a totally different topic (SUBTLE TRANSITION), I've been totally wifey lately with meal time, though we have a frusteratingly diverse but not so "fully stocked" pantry. Lots of chicken, but nothing to cook it with! Boxes and boxes of Mac N Cheese but no diverse protein! A thousand cans of cream of mushroom soup but not a potato in sight to make a savory winter soup! I can't wait (yes, life is exciting around here) to go to the American grocery store on base this weekend and stock up on Things That Make a Meal Complete, so I can dominate the whole "Get in the kitchen, woman" thing.

Relatedly, German grocery stores suck.

The Closetless Void

Well, that was fun.

Sorry for my blogging absence (as though a week of neglected posting on a sparsely read blog affects anyone's life but my own) but all my time has been consumed with the Great Move of 2011. We finally found a place to live in an area called Sindelfingen, home to one of the better sushi restaurants in the greater Stuttgart area, and are now cozily settling in with our new pets (read: cardboard boxes). Unpacking has been a challenge due to the widely held German belief that homes should never have closets of any kind, so we don't really have anywhere to put our massive quantities of Things and Stuff once we take them out of the box. This has spurred some frusteration and right now I'm at a vengeful stalemate with the apartment and our houshold goods. Since I have a brain and nervous system and motor skills, I'm sure I will eventually come out victorious, but for the moment the apartment and I are locked in mortal hand-to-hand combat.

I love Deutschland in the...Winter?

Something feels off here. Delightfully off.

Two weeks ago Husband and I were battling the elements daily, hunkered down in our hotel room rubbing sticks together trying to start a fire to heat the chill off our poor old bones. That, or Husband is just fidgety and likes to play with sticks. Either way, it was COLD and WINDY and SNOWY two weeks ago. But now- oh glorious now!- it is as though Mother Nature caught a horrible winter flu and is funneling her fevered breeze straight through Stuttgart. The high today is 53. Yesterday was 55. I didn't even wear a coat on Friday. Ahhhhhhh.

It seems, though, Mz. Nature is planning to move on to the cold sweats stage of her disease by the end of the week and will in turn throw down snow and highs in the 30's. As long as she's not feeling nauseous I guess it will be ok.

Neuschwanstein: Not for the fainthearted!

Do I strike you as a hiker?

Last week, one of my bestest friends from college, Sara, and her equally delightful husband, John, came out to visit as part of their Euro2010 trip to Switzerland and Germany. As such, they were wont to do some of the touristy things that Husband and I have put off, knowing (or at least hoping) we would have plenty of stateside visitors come our way with whom we could share those wonderfully kitschy experiences. And Sara and John did not disappoint on the kitsch factor! Well, not them personally, per se, but rather the activities done with them. Ugh, what a horrible insult, to be called kitschy. Its sounds so condescending and false. I'll have to keep that mentally filed away for a rainy day or a particularly snarky argument.

After a day or two of activities centered mainly around consumption of food and drink, which just happen to be my favorite type of activities, we decided a trip to the famous Neuschwanstein castle, the one the Cinderella castle at Disneyworld was modeled after, was in order. After a predicatably late start, we managed to arrive in the charming town at the base of the mountain on which the castle sits just in time to buy an admission and tour ticket, but NOT in time to wait in the impossibly long line to take a horse drawn carriage up the aforementioned mountain to get to the castle enterance.

No problem, right!?! We are all young and of robust health! What is hiking up a mountain, if not just one foot after the other, yes? How better to appreciate the beautiful scenery and charm of nature than to thrust ourselves straight into it's woodsy depths? How much more enjoyable the tour itself would be should we have to labor to obtain it!

These are all lies.

Ugly, ugly lies.

After what felt like days trekking up an ice-slicked mountainside riddled with massive foul piles of horse...uh...relief, we reached the half way point. Yes, just halfway! So we bought three delicious freshly made fried dough balls from a well placed vendor (ok, they were donuts, but we couldn't ignore the huge sign for DOUGH BALLS and the crude jokes that followed as we savored said...balls. Too bad they didn't have any peanuts- eh, Sara), and swallowed as much fresh air as our lungs would allow, we continued our accent. Years later we reached the top, and the view was breathtaking!

Ok, actually we didn't have much breath left to take, so the castle could have been a dollhouse on an ant hill for all it was worth, and technically it could have still qualified as breathtaking.

But, then we caught our breath and still deemed the site lovely. In truth, the castle was amazing to behold. The detail and craftsmanship was superb and the sheer enormity of the thing was inspiring. How in the world could something so massive and remote be constructed so long ago?

Oh what? Who said that? You mean, the castle was actually built in the late 1800's to replicate older authentic castles of yore by an over-indulged Bavarian king who favored Wagner operas and swan motifs? Scandalous! Sounds a bit like a dandy to me. Well, so that bit of trivia was a little disappointing to learn, but if you just pushed those facts aside, the castle was still pretty glorious, and the bits of the tour I could hear were interesting.

So that was Neuschwanstein. I'm glad to have seen it, especially with such wonderful company, but sadly have no reason to visit again, despite almost assuredly having to go back when other guests arrive. Maybe by the end of our German stay I'll be able to give the tour myself!

Wow.

I've spent a lot of time writing and deleting this post.

So I'll just come right out and say it. I have a problem. There. There it is. My cry for help. Oh cruel world, why do you torture me so? I've developed a painful and perverse obsession- one that is robbing me of sleep at night, depriving my thoughts of sense and casting a clouded shroud around my evening activities. I'm so ashamed of myself, but when I sucuumb to this obsessive trap the hours melt away like seconds and I lose all sense of surroundings. It's like I'm in another world...and I am...the World of Warcraft.

Ugh! This stupid game certainly lives up to it's reputation. I can see why massive legions of nerdy adolescent males forgo social development to spend whole days of their lives glued to the computer. I, too, have slipped into such oblivion. Naught but a week ago I spent what I thought was an hour an a half avitar-ily traipsing through the beautiful countryside and gently rolling hills of the fantasy world, killing Murlocks, collecting Gortusk livers to feed my pet wolf, Puppy, and selling Small Eggs for 3 gold at the auction house, and low and behold I glanced up to check the clock and 6 HOURS had passed. SIX HOURS HAD PASSED. 

SIX HOURS HAD PASSED!

It is really just that good. The game is fantastic, and surprisingly easy to get the hang of, and the whole thing is just beautifully done. It relies less on fighting in the strictly video-game sense, and instead focuses on learning and developing the abilities and aptitudes of your character. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would try my hand at WOW, as Husband is quite a geek and has been dropping blatant hints that we should play together for the last 4 years, but I had no idea how much I would actually like it. I'm such a nerd. But you can call me a level 22 Human Hunter Nerd.

NYE: P&P: Part Zwei

Are you adequately suspensed?

So, New Years Eve...that's what we were taking about, right? We left off with Husband nodding off in the lounge of a fancy Amsterdam...y? Amsterdamish? Amsterdamed?...hotel, and after he wiped the drool from his chin and we all mustered up the energy to stand upright at the ungodly late hour of 11 pm, our little troupe of celebratory hopefuls marched over to a free party in the museum district. I wasn't sure what to expect from the festivities, but it certainly wasn't an American 80's cover concert held on  a patch of land toggling unstably between a sodden grassy field and an oversized ice rink with hundreds (maybe thousands? I'm no good at estimation. Could have been about 50, actually.) of revelers shooting off fireworks and throwing lighted spinners at each other. In an odd moment of serenity amongst the excitement someone set off a paper balloon powered by a candle at the base, which caught the attention of practically everyone there, creating the eiriest of pauses as we watched it float through the backdrop of fireworks.

And the fireworks! The FIREWORKS! They started as soon as the sun went down and did not end until well after we had boarded the train to head back to our hotel around 2 am. While there didn't seem to be one definitive set that was better than the rest, the constant cracking and booming followed by bursts of light in all directions was overwhelming. As was the cloud of smoke they produced, which eventually became so thick it was like walking through a cloud.

So that was NYE. And in the spirit of the 80's music playing, it was totally awesome. Dude.

NYE

How do you solve a problem like a NYE post?

After the lovely maintenance men at our hotel gracefully retrieved our car key from the bowels of the elevator shaft, husband and I (and shortly after, our good friend LiLo) officially commenced on NYE 2010: Pot and Prostitutes (aka Amsterdam). Now the problem is, how do I, a lowly and unpracticed blogger, even begin to scratch the surface on such a delightful trip? Perhaps the surface should include a disclaimer stating that neither I, nor Husband, nor Good Friend LiLo partook of any pot or prostitutes, nor did we engage in any salacious, lewd, lascivious, sordid or otherwise unsavory dealings of any kind in the notoriously sinful city.

But we did do a lot of touring! And eating! And had great deals of merriment! And writing about it is proving to be frustratingly difficult as there is just so much to say. We had an appropriately somber time touring the Anne Frank house (can you call that kind of event fun without...I don't know...committing half a sin or something? If so, then it was fun. If not, then forget I said anything.), and learned about Amsterdam's long history of "Don't ask don't tell" when it comes to illegal matters of all kinds. We celebrated New Years Eve with a few rounds of my travel Trivial Pursuit game and learned amazing facts, like the postal abbreviation MI stand for the state of Miami and if you touch your philtrum too much with dirty Amsterdam tourist fingers then you will surely break out, while sipping fancy hot chocolates at an equally fancy hotel where we warmed our frozen toes and had to jostle Husband out of near slumber several times.

Somewhat relatedly, when did we all turn 150 years old? Was it not just 5 1/2 years ago when midnight was but a halfway marker between dinner and bedtime, and admitting fatigue before 3:00 am was a sign of weakness? Oh how quickly things change.

And how time flies! I'm afraid this one will have to be a cliffhanger, but tune in next time for the trilling conclusion of NYE: P&P.