New apartment!!!!

You guys. I told you I was bad at keeping up with blogs. I'd had a sort of culture shock/depression dip for the last week or so, adjusting to the realities of not working and being in a place where everything, including mundane things like going to the post office, is a challenge that I have to work up to. Not to say that good things haven't been happening-- we carved pumpkins for Halloween with friends, have eaten some delicious things, I've made a couple of new friends in my German class, etc. But I definitely had some days when I could barely bring myself to get off the couch, and some when I've sort of collapsed tearfully after running what one might expect to be normal errands. As with any culture shock, things are challenging in ways that I don't expect. But then, some things are amazing in ways I don't expect, either, and the last few days have left me feeling-- I don't know a way to articulate this feeling except to say "blessed." Things are just arranging themselves in ways that make me feel content and cared for and generally like I'm where I should be.


To start with, this apartment. I had started to get kind of bummed about leaving the nice, bigger, dishwasher-having temporary apartment we've been living in since I arrived. It was so well-located, with a nice little grocery store a block away, the Naschmarkt across the street, its spare bedroom for office space and visitors, its dishwasher, etc. We discovered last Friday, though, that it would be impossible to install an internet connection in it (long story, perhaps deserving of its own blog post), and spent our last weekend there relying on our phones for internet access. So I spent the last weekend there not being sad about leaving, but being anxious to get to the place that at least had internet access. But y'all. This apartment-- our new, real apartment-- is so good. The furniture is absurd, and looks like what someone in the 50s would have imagined a trendy 2015 apartment to look like (or at least like someone has been decorating it by going to IKEA every five years and picking one or two of the most trendy, funky things to put in it, regardless of whether they go with each other, which...is probably what has been happening). But even this funky, weird furniture that I would never in a million years buy for myself can't take away from how beautiful the actual apartment is. The building was built in 1911, and it has these beautiful wood floors, and tilework in the hallway, and lots of windows, including a crazy window that opens into the hallway, and these tall, amazing french doors everywhere. It's right across the street from an U-Bahn stop, which will become even more wonderful the colder it gets (it's already dropping below freezing some nights). Early on, I'd come to the neighborhood to see what kind of stuff was nearby, but somehow missed a big chunk of the main street, and so only discovered today that not only is there a lovely grocery store one block away, but that it's even lovelier than the one nearest the old place. The main shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, is only a very quick ride down the U-Bahn, and it's not so hard to get to the Naschmarkt. On the whole, so far a great place to live.

The building we live in (the white one), and the U-Bahn stop across the street. Unfortunately the trains do make the apartment rattle, but I am sure we will get used to the noise in time.

The view of the street from in front of our front door. Most of the city leaves have fallen by now, though there are still some clinging on! I'm going to go in search of more fall foliage this week if I can.

Going up the stairs! We are on the European second floor/US third floor of the building. There are lots of plants in the hallway and stairwell windows, which I guess belong to various tenants.

This is our front door inside the building!! "2. Stock" means 2nd Floor. I LOVE the double french doors. 

Our door!

As you come inside, this is the foyer. The kitchen is immediately to the right, the bathroom next on the right, living room straight ahead, and toilet and bedroom off to the left.

A view looking back at the front door from the foyer. 

 The kitchen! It will take a big of getting used to, as there is actually only one drawer,  and many of the cabinets are less usefully arranged than you'd think. That window opens onto the hallway, somewhat inexplicably! but you can put plants out on the windowsill, which is kind of cool.

The refrigerator and freezer are disguised to look just like all of the other cabinets. That big one just to the left of the sink is the fridge. Not so big, but quite reasonable! The freezer is the one just underneath.

The bathroom! Which does not, oddly enough (well, not odd for Europe, but certainly odd for America), contain the toilet.

 It does, however, contain the washing machine, hidden in a little corner cupboard behind the bathtub!

And there's the toilet, across the hall. I don't mind the separation of toilet and bathroom, but I would really rather there be a sink in the same room as the toilet. 

The living room! This is by far the weirdest furniture in the house, but not the worst. The couch and chair look like they were stolen from Liberace's beach house, and the chairs look like they belong on the set of a live-action Jetson's remake. The owners of the house are also extremely fond of glass furniture, especially tables. I do love the twinkle lights on the basket of sticks, though.

The bedroom! Inexplicably, it seems standard here for beds for two people  to come with two individual duvets, rather than one large one to share. 

There's a work desk in the bedroom which Travis has commandeered, partially because it's the best math-doing space in the house, and partially because it is one of the points in the apartment from which you do not have to look at the horrible zebra-striped chair. I tried my best to cover it with a scarf, but it is hard to obscure entirely. There are big, lovely, bright windows though!

The view from the bed looking into the living room. 

The lovely grocery store! I braved a German-language interaction there to buy two giant soft pretzels from the bakery counter (you can see them on the windowsill in the kitchen picture above).