Sperrmüll

As I mentioned in the last post, I discovered the wonders of Sperrmüll, which means something like bulky trash, I think. It's a special garbage collection for things like old furniture and the like, which wouldn't be picked up on a weekly basis. One neighbourhood at a time has these Sperrmüll collections, and they seem to happen every month or so somewhere in the city. A couple of my colleagues mentioned that they were sometimes good places to pick up furniture, but I wasn't expecting much. After all, this stuff is garbage, right?

Wrong! And I understand now why the second hand stores in Jena are so crappy - people just throw out perfectly good furniture! And so a couple of weeks ago, on a Tuesday night after a friends' birthday party, I headed over the river to Jena-Ost to see what I could find. The main prize of the evening was this beauty. Okay, maybe not so beautiful, but it's comfortable, clean, doesn't smell funny, and has no holes or anything. Not only that, but it´s on castors, which is a bit odd for an armchair, but it made it easier to push this monster back the 1.4 kilometers over cobblestones and streetcar tracks to my house. And then, I actually managed to bring it up the stairs all by myself, without making too much noise, as it was already 1:00 in the morning. I paid for this the next day with sore muscles, but no serious damage. And I didn't just get this chair - I also brought home a wicker chair (which has since broken - I guess it was there for a reason), an ironing board, a little sleeve-sized ironing board insert, not one but two laundry racks (one of which looks like it came directly from the store it's so nice), a grass mat for at the beach, an umbrella, and a couple of big plastic containers that will either be gargage cans or tomato planters, likely the latter. I really wanted to go back for more, but at this point it was 2:00, and I was really tired. It'll definitely be easier next time with Jeremi along. I can't wait!



(Again, I'm sorry this picture is sideways. I figured out how to fix it on my computer, but I'm writing this from Jenny and Leo's, and their computer is all in German, and I can't be bothered to figure it out right now.)

And this was not my only economical addition to the household of late. I also managed to pick up a used sewing machine, based on an ad I found on the internet. It's a bit like my old one in Canada, an older model that has some plastic but still a frame of cast iron, so it weighs a tonne, and works like a mule. It's actually a lot fancier than my old one, as it does much more than just straight stitch and zigzag, and it came with a bunch of special feet for things like blindstitch etc. It came with a manual too, but of course it's all in German, so it'll be an adventure figuring it all out. Actually, even buying it was an adventure. I was able to do all the correspondence over email, and my German is good enough for this now, even though I'm sure I make lots of mistakes. And the seller was in Erfurt, which is about 50 km away from Jena. There's this cheap rail ticket you can get for one day that lets you take any local trains within a 50 km radius of your starting point for only 6 euros, so that wasn't too expensive, and I thought that picking up the sewing machine was a good excuse to get to Erfurt and have a look around.

Because the seller's house was about 5 km from the train station I brought my bike with me on the train, and I figured that this would make it easier to explore the city as well. This is really easy to do here, which is awesome, and on the weekend lots of people will go with their bikes for the day to another city and then either ride around there and take the train home, or ride home from the other city so they don't have to ride back along the same route.

I sort of wanted to explore the city first, but I started late, so I had to go to get the machine first thing. The couple selling it were really nice, but they didn't speak a word of English (which they apologized for, which is silly), and my basic German does not extend to sewing vocabulary. And so when I tried it out and something was funny with the tension knob, we had some trouble communicating. But in the end I think I got the gist of it, and it's an old enough machine that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. It's also a super-retro East German sewing machine, with a brand name of Veritas, and it was built in this famous sewing machine factory in Wittenberg, which was shut down in the 90's after reunification. Here's a picture of the funky carrying case:



And here's a peek inside at the actual machine.



The thing weighed a tonne, and definitely didn't fit in my backpack, but if I looped the handles over one of my handlebars I could sort of ride. Enough to coast down the hill to the train station at least. The nice man who sold it to me (for 25 €) offered to help me carry it to the car, but I declined, as I was afraid he'd insist on driving me back to the train if he found out that I was going to try and bring it on my bicycle. But with the heavy machine I couldn't explore the city much, so I locked my bike and the bag together at the train station, afraid that someone would think it was a bomb, and I left to explore the city by foot.

It was a gorgeous sunny Sunday, and there was a huge pottery festival going on in the city centre, with at least 100 presenters. The pottery was lovely, though quite pricy, more than I'm used to seeing in Canada for sure. Mom, it would have been the perfect day for you. I took a couple pictures of the pottery, but they're on my computer in Jena, and not with me here in Frankfurt. I'll try to post them later.