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.