my IKEA order

I have received the very exciting news that my shipment from IKEA will be arriving tomorrow (Friday) rather than next week sometime as previously estimated. This is fantastic, as it'll give me a bit of time to assemble it all and set the place up over the weekend. Then I'll have a better idea of what I still need, though I know that it definitely includes some bookshelves, a dining room table and chairs, kitchen shelves, dressers, a TV (only for learning German of course), and a coffee table (which in German is a couch table - ein Couchtisch). But I'm holding off on buying any more new things now that I've discovered the magic of Sperrmüll - but more about that in another posting.

And though I'm sure that this will be unspeakable boring to most of you, my mom has asked that I post what I've bought at IKEA. This doesn't include the dishes, glasses, and cutlery that I brought back when I was there with Valentina a couple of weeks ago, rather just the things that'll be delivered tomorrow. I'm apologizing in advance for the ridiculous difference in scales in these pictures I nabbed from the IKEA website. On the site they're not to scale, but they're at least consistent in filling the frame with the item. I was not so consistent in always saving from the same size jpeg. Such is life. So here we go:

Firstly, a couch. A lovely dark red corduroy couch in fact. I don't love the little flaps at the bottom, but I'm going to see what I can do about those. And for you IKEA junkies, I'll include the product names in brackets. (Ektorp 3-er)
And like a couch but different, the futon-like couch for the spare room, in orange. This is what happens when I'm allowed to choose the colour of furniture on my own. (Beddinge Murbo)
Since this futon doesn't have arms, I'm imagining it pushed against a wall on one side with lots of pillows so that it'll be more comfortable for sitting on when it's not a bed. And so I bought four of these big pillows, which are 80x8o cm. This is actually what they use here as pillows in regular beds too, which I haven't warmed up to. I'm glad we shipped a couple Canadian-sized pillows with us, but these giant ones will have to do for guests. Consider it a cultural experience. (Gosa Sött) (There is another bedding-related cultural experience I will not force upon guests - having two separate smaller-than-twin-size duvets for two people in a double bed. I guess the idea is that if one person is warmer or cooler they can cover and uncover themselves as desired without disturbing the other person, but it doesn't seem to encourage actual physical contact.)
And then our bed of course. I bought the cheapest frame I could find, but at least it's real wood. I'm not placing bets on it's long-term survival though. (Dalselv)
And the bed doesn't actually come with the mattress as is shown in the picture, so I bought one of those too. (Sultan Fängebo)
And it doesn't even come with anything for the bed to sit on, so I got a couple of these (rather flimsy-looking) wooden things. Again, all bets are off on the lifetime of this. At least it was inexpensive. (Sultan Lien)

Since there aren't any closets in the apartment, a wardrobe was needed for our room. Again, I took the cheapest one in wood, so I'm not expecting much. (Kirkenes)

We also need some more kitchen space and storage, so I bought the identical trolly to the one we had in Victoria, the one my mom and dad bought us when they were visiting the first time, and which Jeremi has since sold to Mike and Megan as part of The Great Unloading. (Förhöja)
And that leaves us with the lights. I splurged a bit on some (not all) of these, but I'm pretty tired of the current situation, which has a bare dangling bulb in the hall and the living room, and only wires in all of the other rooms. I have two little table lamps that I bought with Valentina that I move with me from the kitchen to wherever I'm sleeping. I don't have any light in the bathroom, and last night when I had guests over I realized that just leaving the door to the lit-up hall open isn't really a permanent solution. Anyhow, here are the lamps. (In order shown: Lock, Knappa, Hörby, Leding.)

Getting settled in over the weekend

This weekend I spent a lot of time buying things to get settled in my new apartment. I needed a washing machine, as do Calin and Susanne, so I hitched a ride on Saturday for a shopping excusion. They were more than patient as we went to several stores, and I looked at TVs, washing machines, microwaves, supplies for the cat, and various gardening things. In the end, I was quite successful!

Here you can see Calin and Susanne's trunk, just full of my booty. I loved this picture because it looked so organized, like in a car commercial, when they have carefully placed items to show you the spacious trunk capacity. On the right is my 120 litres of soil for the balcony plants, with the windowboxes just to the left of that. On top is the litter box for the cat, and there's a microwave on the left in the back. After all of our hard work shopping, we deserved a treat. And so we went out to the Kartoffelhaus (potato house) for supper, which is a nice German restaurant on the market square. I'm sure I'll be taking guests there to taste the local fare. I had a nice Roullade with Thüringer Klößen. If you want to know more, you'll have to come and try it for yourself. And after that, we went to the wood festival, with lots of demonstrations and booths selling products advertising the forestry industry and wood products from the region. And of course like any festival here, there were booths selling bratwurst and wine and beer. Here I am with a couple of pints from the Papiermühle (paper mill), a brew pub near town. I haven't been for their food yet, but I hear it's quite good. I didn't really order two, but Susanne was still too full from lunch/supper, so I had to finish hers. Poor me. Look at the suffering on my face.
I also bought a washing machine, and it was delivered yesterday. Here it is, washing its first load. Either washing machines in Germany are way more high-tech than those I'm used to in Canada, or else I've just grown used to the type of old crappy machines supplied in rental places usually. Not only is it shiny and new, it washes clothes so well, and they come out almost dry after the space-age centifugal action. I promise to stop talking about it now, but I was pretty excited.
Also delivered yesterday was my shipment of boxes from Canada. Here they are, all 10 of them. I've unpacked most of the kitchen things now, and it seems that everything survived the journey intact. Is it ever nice to have pots and pans and knives again!
And while waiting for the delivery of the boxes and the washing machine and the guy to hook up the internet (who never came), I had some time to plant my window boxes. But I didn't have a container big enough to mix 120 litres of soil with water. But of course I did! The bathtub! Here it is holding a mere 60 litres.
And here are the fruits of my labours, the window boxes in their frames. You can see just a few little green seedlings at present, but I assure you that they'll be bigger and better soon. Don't worry, I'll post more pictures then.

the sign in my kitchen at work

This sign was just too funny not to share. The picture is funny enough, a sort of Bolshevik-Uncle Sam thing, and the German translates roughly to "You also keep the kitchen clean, Comrade". (Genosse translates to Comrade, and apparently in west German slang "Genossen" is still used to refer to east Germans.)But what's much funnier about this poster is the small text in green unerneath the picture, which you're unable to read in my terrible photo. This is actually in English, and says: "Do not be afraid to brake jags in your crown when you work with the dishwasher." I've asked around, and it seems that this is a very poor translation of a German idiom. "Brake" should be "break" of course, and the "jags" are the points on a crown. Figuratively it means that you shouldn't consider yourself above the quotidian task of emptying the dishwasher if you're going to put things in it. But I can't help but feel with the wording that "the dishwasher" refers to a frightful person with whom you work.

Our very own dungeon

The one part of the new apartment that I didn't show everyone was the dungeon cellar. It's basically a storage space, and it's where we're supposed to leave our bicycles. So far in ours there's only my bike and the door to the kitchen (soon to be joined by the door to the living room - Germans love their doors, as Jeremi's German teacher explained to him). As you can see, it's really quite a big room, with a little window to the outdoors even. What more could one ask in a guest bedroom? (Just kidding.) And below you can see the charming doorway, and the little alcove that gives it "character".
And now with the door closed, and the true dungeon-like characteristics are apparant.
And of course ours isn't the only little dungeon in the basement. Each unit has a private one, plus there are a few larger common spaces. It's really too bad that people don't celebrate Hallowe'en more here, because I can't think of a better place for throwing a huge Hallowe'en party. Of course the doorways are a little low for some people, but then you wouldn't need any fake blood to complete the costume!

my first Stammtisch

Last night I went with a friend from work to my first Stammtisch. This is a German word referring to a table at a bar or restaurant reserved for regulars, but it is also used to describe a conversation group for people who want to either practice or maintain a language. On Tuesday nights here there's a Stammtisch for people wanting to improve their German at a Cafe downtown, and yesterday I attended for the first time.

I was nervous about going because I wasn't sure that my German was good enough to actually carry on a conversation for a few hours, but I shouldn't have been. The group was led by a native German speaker, who is also a German teacher, and who does this out of the goodness of her heart from what I can tell, though perhaps also for the experience (she's pretty young). In addition to leading discussions and providing missing vocabulary and correcting grammar when requested, she also organized a game, something a bit Cranium-like, but homemade. We had to each make 5 or so cards with words on them, nouns, adjective, verbs, whatever, and then we had to roll a die to see how we had to get the others to guess the word on a card drawn at random. The methods of explication were: talking, drawing, drawing blindfolded, charades, or moulding out of clay. And since not all of these require actual speaking, you could participate even if your German wasn't so good.

And it was so much fun! There were 9 of us, three from France, one from Italy (my friend from work, Valentina), one from the Czech Republic, one from China, one from Kyrghystan, the German teacher, and me, from Canada of course. And I could surprisingly hold my own. It turns out that I'm able to understand German as spoken by not only German teachers, but also other foreigners. (Perhaps eventually I'll be able to understand actual Germans in normal speech, but I'm not quite there yet.) And I'm doing all right with the talking side of things, even if I don't always get the grammar right, and if my vocabulary is rather small. But it was really encouraging, and the teacher couldn't believe that I'd only been here since February. Hooray!

(I'm sorry that there aren't any pictures to go with this wordy post, but it was my first time with this group, and I didn't really want to start photographing them to post on the internet the first time that I'd met them, and become "that creepy Canadian girl with the camera".)

Our new apartment!

I'm sorry that I haven't been posting more often, but I've been pretty busy moving over the past week. I don't have internet at home yet either, so the only time I can do it is at work, and sometimes I like to actually do work there instead.

But now, the moment you've all been waiting for, pictures of our beautiful and incredibly empty new apartment! These are some pictures I took on Sunday when Calin and Susanne were over with a table and chairs and some bedding that they're lending me until I'm a bit more settled. Here's the view from the door to the stairwell. The rooms are (from left to right) our bedroom, the living room (with Calin's head), the spare room/TV room, the bathroom (with Susanne's head) and the kitchen. The bedroom and living room face east, the other rooms have windows facing west.
To be orderly, I'll show all the rooms in the same order given above. So starting with the bedroom, here you can see it furnished only with herbs and seedlings of tomatoes, nasturtiums, and marigolds. I've transplanted about half of my tomato seedlings into yogurt containers, as can be seen here, lined up in the box in which my fiddle was shipped.
Next comes the living room, which is really where I'm living for now. Pretty well everything here is on loan for the next couple of weeks from Calin and Susanne until their apartment is ready (hopefully by May 1st for their sake!).
My bed is a foam mat that they had, and the crate that can be seen in the corner is filled with towels and sheets. It's actually a pretty comfortable bed, but I'm not exactly a fussy sleeper.
The balcony is also off the living room, and it's a pretty good size. Here you can see Susanne and Calin taking a break in the partial shade. The past 5 days or so have been like summer here, more than 25 degrees and really sunny. The magnolias are dropping off and the lilacs are about to burst (for those of you who tell time with flowers). And speaking of flowers, if you look carefully you can see built-in flower box holders along the railing of the balcony. I can't wait to find boxes to fit there.
Next is the spare room, which is a bit long and skinny. I'm thinking of turning it into a TV room when we don't have guests. If you want to see more of this room, you should come and visit! (But please give me a couple weeks notice if you're actually expecting a bed when you arrive.)
And next up is our huge luxury bathroom. I'm sure it won't look so huge once there's a washing machine in it, but for now I feel like I'm at a posh hotel (without curtains) every time I go in there. So far everything works well, though the toilet is a bit lower than usual.
And it has not only a bathtub with shower head, but also a stall shower too, which is what I've been using thus far. This way the bath is really just for baths, and I don't need to worry about shower curtains or anything.
And finally this leaves the kitchen. Firstly I'll show the built in part, which has the (incredibly small) fridge and oven and stovetop, along with the small dishwasher that I didn't notice the first time I was here (hooray!). The window would be just to the right, but it didn't make it into this picture. Also, on the counter you can see the housewarming gifts from Calin and Susanne - a pyrex baking dish and a bamboo cutting board (on top of the box of dishes from IKEA), and an empty bottle of Freixinet on the stove.
I was trying to take a picture that would show the rough shape of the kitchen, and give an idea of the amount of room there, which looks to be enough for an eating table, but it was a bit tricky. This picture is taken to the right of the aforementioned window, and shows a little the L-shaped part of the room. I think I might put extra cupboards or a trolly or something on the part by the window, and then try to put the dining room table in the other little nook. It'll definitely seat 4-6 comfortably, but for larger groups (assuming that I have and expandable table) we might have to relocate to the living room, which wouldn't be too bad. But this is all really speculation, as it depends greatly on the table that I find... But more on that in another post!
And for those of you who want to send us fabulous letters and presents, our new address is:

Sophienstr. 27
07743 Jena

I've already put both our names on the mailbox, so things should be able to find us now. (And our names are on the buzzer now too, so people should be able to find us as well.)

News this week

I'm sorry this post is a bit scattered, but I'm mixing together a bunch of little things into one. In roughly chronological order of events, I'll start with a picture of Calin and Susanne from a hike that we went on the weekend before last. We were a bit north of Jena and on top of a hill which gave a nice view of the city below. (This hike was definitely necessary after the enormous bacon and egg and hash brown and roasted tomato breakfast that I'd prepared that morning - they were suprised that people would have potatoes with breakfast, so I had to make them a complete hangover brunch to demonstrate.)

Now, jumping ahead to this week, I was finally successful in attaining my residence/working visa. Here it is, in all its colourful glory. Not only did the woman at the foreigner's office compliment me on my German, but I even met an American guy there who gave me his email address. I'm sorry that the picture's sideways, I've rotated the images both in iPhoto and in another folder, but when they load into blogger they end up on their sides again. This didn't happen back when I was using linux or windows, and I haven't figured out the mac fix for this yet. (I also only discovered this problem now.) I'll try to fix it, but for now just tilt your head.

And now you have to indulge me and pretend to care about my tomato plants. Last October when my parents and grandmother were visiting we went to the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival, at which we bought several varieties of heirloom cherry tomato seeds. Six kinds in fact. Our friend Brandy also went, and she bought two different kinds. We swapped, so I actually have 8 different varieties which I was really excited about. I planted them a few weeks ago, and they just took off. I planted two little jiffy pots of each kind, and put about 3 seeds in each in case they didn't all germinate, but they did. And so now I have over 50 little tomato seedlings with roots already overtaking their tiny little jiffy pots, as well as some nasturtiums and marigolds that I also planted. I'm going to repot at least some of them into old yogurt containers and milk cartons that I've been saving, but I'm afraid that I might have to save only 2 per variety or so, or else my room will soon be overtaken by tomato plants. I'm tempted to save a few more though, and see if any of my colleagues want some interesting tomato plants grown from seeds smuggled in from Salt Spring. They really are interesting varieties - different shapes and sizes and colours, including red, orange, yellow, ivory, and purple. Don't worry, you'll hear more about the tomatoes as the season goes on. I'm sure you can't wait.

This week I had a big surprise, with the delivery of a large box to my office. Inside was a huge Easter basket filled with chocolates and cookies from my parents and Baba. Thank-you so much! Here's what it looked like:

And finally, the biggest news this week is that I've signed a lease, and I should be getting the keys a week from today. Hooray!!! Of course the things that we shipped haven't arrived yet, and won't be delivered before I move, but in some ways this is nice so that I don't have to move the boxes myself. On the down side, this means that I won't have anything at all when I move in, except for my clothes and a few books. We didn't ship furniture anyhow, but at least the boxes have pots and pans and blankets and towels. Some of my colleagues have said that they can lend me some things until I get a bit more settled though, so I shouldn't be roughing it too much. I did take some pictures when I went to see the apartment, but for now I'm only posting the picture of the exterior. Ours is the lower balcony on the left. The other pictures that I took are full of the other people's things, so I'd rather wait until I can get pictures of it either empty or with our new things. Then I promise to post some more!But in the meantime you can still see where it is in the city here.

Rishad's Birthday(2007)

I was lucky enough to be in the maritimes during Rishad's birthday, although it was for sad reasons (see next post). After a long day of getting drunk and being led around blindfolded to do stupid things on St. Paddy's (yes, Rishad's B-Day is on the same day), he was brought to Neil's place for the eventual party. Shortly after, Rishad was blindfolded again for my arival. That's right, he had to guess who I was since he didn't know that I was coming or that even that I was around. Of course as soon as he grabbed hold of my beard firmly with both hands he guessed it was me.

We played a lot of Wii and drank a lot of beer. The next day I had wiicked wiinjuries ( I was very stiff from playing on the Wii). For those of you that don't know what the Wii is, it is the latest gaming console by Nintendo. It uses very interactive controllers that you have to physically move to play games. It's tiring but lot's of fun and with games like boxing and racing. There was also crazy dancing and some awe inspiring Kareoke. Unfortunately I didn't have the mic enabled on the camera so there isn't any sound.

I also brought Marlene and James. They had lots of fun.

















Here is Holly playing darts on the Wii.

















And here is most of the guys that were there with Rishad doing god knows what. Front row - Ian, Rishad and Neil wearing the stylish green shower curtain toga; back row - me and Nick.

















Finally here are Rishad and Collin blowing out the candels on their birthday cake. Plus I wanted to embed cause I've never done it before.