It’s hard to believe we’ll have been here three weeks on Tuesday, and\n while we’re talking about things that are hard to believe – Tuesday \nreally can’t be Christmas, can it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve started writing this at least once every couple days, and each time I’ve abandoned what meager progress I’ve made. Maybe this time I’ll figure out how to summarize the couple weeks that have passed since my last update….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When last we left our heroes they were generally awash in a sea of \nFrench, and had managed to negotiate the purchase and delivery of a \nclothes washer and dryer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washing clothes, it turns out, makes a huge difference in our ability\n to feel settled in a place. Never mind that loads take two hours to \nwash. And another ninety minutes to dry. Or that the dryer is a \ncondenser, so you have to empty two lint screens and a water collection \nvessel after every load. We have clean clothes, damnit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since buying the washer\/dryer – we’ve purchased pretty much an entire\n apartments worth of furniture from Ikea, learned that for 40\u20ac they’ll \ndeliver up to 500kg to the curb outside our (4th floor) apartment, and \nlearned that moving 500kg of flat pack furniture up to the fourth floor \nis serious freaking work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Especially hoisting the 160cm mattress up five flights of stairs when we discoverd it wouldn’t fit into the lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Never mind getting a bunch of that 500kg up the spiral stairs in the apartment. Or putting it all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of now, the bedroom (bed, including mattress and linens, our \nnightstands and reading lamps, our dressers, an Nise’s armoir), the \ndining room (table and six chairs), the lounge room (a couple \nsideboards, coffee table, and sofas that’ll be delivered on the 5th), \nour dishes, glassware, silverware, dish towels, and nearly everything \nelse non-consumable is Ikea sourced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And somewhat to my surprise, the place doesn’t feel particularly \ngeneric. Ikea has figured out how to provide enough variation in each \ncategory that you can mix and match, and feel like you’re putting “your”\n collection together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I have to say Ikea’s designers are nothing short of amazing. Not\n only coming up with finished pieces that can be assembled with a hex \nkey, a phillips screwdriver, and a mallet, but optimally packaging, and \nproducing nearly idiot-proof assembly instructions without a single word\n of any language. Seriously impressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ve seen a movie (Wreck it Ralph), bought a TV, ordered cheese in \nfrench from the cheese monger and got what we wanted and managed to sign\n up for the various hypermarche loyalty cards (ok, those are really \nDawnise’s victories, but I’m sharing it vicariously). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’re getting down to the last few major items we know we need – \nwhich is mostly rugs, ’cause every surface in the apartment is hard, and\n it’s a giant echo chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that’s good, ’cause were both totally sick of shopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps most impressively, we’ve managed to feed ourselves, which – \nif you know us – is no mean feat. We realized that we hadn’t seen \nprepared chicken stock in any of the shops we’d been at – and chicken \nstock is something of a staple of our diets. Dawnise makes great \nrisotto, starting with chicken stock. And fantastic split-pea and \nlentil soups – starting with – you guessed it – chicken stock. Turns \nout the closest we could get was either bullion or fond – so we decided \nto do what any self-respecting cook would do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roast a chicken and make stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At which point we learned that the chickens we could find are quite \nsmall compared to what we’re used to, but were actually quite tasty as \nwell. (And the roast chicken and veggie stock was a great base for the \nlardon and mushroom risotto, which we’re totally making again.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ve enjoyed the baked goods, the cured meats, the cheeses, and I’ve quite enjoyed the wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we’ve both managed to lose weight since arriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that’s pretty nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’re keeping our eyes out for a suitable quiche pan. I fear the weight loss won’t last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and we’ve gone to Germany. Specifically, we spent our anniversary wandering around Tier and seeing their Christmas market<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Including Belgium (Ikea is just across the border) that’s three countries in as many weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four for me if you count the day business trip to Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that’s<\/strong> what I’m taking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s hard to believe we’ll have been here three weeks on Tuesday, and while we’re talking about things that are hard to believe – Tuesday really can’t be Christmas, can it? I’ve started writing this at least once every couple days, and each time I’ve abandoned what meager progress I’ve made. Maybe this time I’ll … Continue reading “Time Flies When You’re in a Foreign Country”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-luxembourg","category-selected-back-issues"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}