Now THAT’S going to take some getting used to! Part 2

Our apartment:

To get in, we open the garage door under our building, and push the button for the car elevator.  We take the tiny car elevator down to our tiny garage, then take a tiny elevator up to the 5^th floor.  The elevator claims to fit five people, but I doubt that.  And you have to pull open the door to get in to or out of the elevator.

The refrigerator is also small.  Bigger than dorm-style, but not by much.  We are managing pretty well with it, because food doesn’t last as long, so you can’t really stock up.  And all of our spare milk is not in the refrigerator.  The freezer is on top and also small.  But again, we manage, because they eat more fresh foods here.  I think this picture actually makes it look big, but trust me, it's not.

The washer, another super-small appliance.  The one machine washes and then dries.  It’s located in the guest bathroom.  It is a front loader, but it will hold about one single arm-load of clothes.  It only hooks up to the cold, so it has to heat the water if you set it to hot.  There are dozens of settings for temperature, amount of water, amount of soiling, type of fabric, stains, etc.  And it takes about 2.5 hours to wash.  If you want to dry the whole load, it will take at least 3 hours, and it will come out with pressed-in wrinkles.  We usually stop it after the washing, take out shirts and pants, and just dry a few things.  This only takes another 1.5 hours.  It is not a vented, fluffing dryer.  To dry, it spins really fast to squeeze out the water, and gets really hot to dry it.  Hence the wrinkles, since everything is stuck to the sides the whole time.  If you can get in the habit of doing a load of laundry every day or every other, it’s not really a big deal.  It’s actually kind of nice that you never have a huge laundry basket of clothes staring at you, just a few pieces at a time.

 The washer

 

The dryer

The bidet.  Every bathroom in our apartment, in hotels, at work, and in restaurants has a bidet.  We haven’t used ours yet, but the cats seem to love it.

Heating.  There is a radiator in every room, each with a knob to turn high or low.  That’s all the control we have, because the one system heats the whole building.  And it shuts off at night.  Not a problem for us, but I wrap extra blankets around Ben (Babies in the States are not supposed to use blankets, but here they all do, and pillows, but I’ve not gone that far.)  The heat runs from October through April, so any strange weather patterns, and you are out of luck.

No air conditioning.  The window have no screens.  People say this isn’t really a problem, and it doesn’t get quite as hot here, but I’m not sure how this will work with the cats.  We still have a few months to worry it.  The great thing about the windows are the shades.  I don’t know why we don’t have these in the States.  Every window has its own shade that rolls down on the outside, controlled by a rope on the inside.  You can roll it completely down to block out all light, you can let it have slats for a little light, or you can put it partway or all the way up.  This makes it possible for Ben to sleep in till 10:00 on the weekends.