Its funny how you can have something as universal as laundry be such a different experience from one country, or continent, to the next. You would think that clothes washing machines, like cars, would be basically the same. They are not.
I began my laundry experience in Germany cautiously. Twelve years ago, when visiting Norway, I had done a load of laundry at our friend's house and remember being appalled when my daughter's security blanket came out permanently warped. So, when I was ready to do our first load in Germany, I chose clothing I knew to be sturdy and easily replaced, if needed.
In our first rental home, the washing machine was located in the bathroom. I know that in some places it is located in the kitchen. The machine itself reminded me of my bread machine at home: a compact "box" about a quarter of the size of my American machine, with control panel on the side and a top that popped open with the push of a button. Looking down from the top, the drum opened from the rounded side, rather than from the flat, circular side. I had to push down on two spring-loaded doors, which released the latch and then opened outward.
I could only fit about 1/4 of what I would normally put in a load of laundry. For a family of 5, that's a lot of loads! The detergent is, fortunately, the same, although I later found that I couldn't find any bleach products and it was difficult to find anything unscented. The next conundrum was the operation of the machine. All the labels, of course, were in German and I had to decide the exact temperature of the water. In all the loads of laundry I have done in my life, I have never had to think of the water temperature in terms of degrees. Cold, warm, or hot: those are the choices. In fact, I really have little idea of what temperature would define "warm". Now I had to decide, in Celsius. Thankfully, various temperature levels were labeled with types of clothing/fabrics, so a little time with the dictionary helped me determine a safe range for most of my laundry.
When I finally pushed the start button, the digital read-out said 110. 110 what? Minutes! Yes, nearly two hours to do a single, one-quarter-of-what-I-normally-do-at-a-time load of laundry. This would be a laundry week, rather than a laundry day. I have no idea what, exactly was going on during those 110 long minutes, nor how that could be considered "energy efficient" to be running for that long, but the machine went through a series of noises from "chug-pause-chug-pause" to something like a jet plane taking off down the run-way, making me surprised that I didn't come to the bathroom to find the washing machine had made its way down the hall. Interestingly, in a conversation with a friend of ours living in France about the difference in washing machines (they have the same types as Germany in France) and washing times, she claimed, when she first came to live in America, that she had a hard time believing that American machines could really do a good job cleaning clothes in such a short time. She was never really convinced that they were truly clean.
The clothes appeared to be clean and, thankfully, nothing warped or damaged. Now for the next long step in the laundry: air-drying! We had a fold-out rack which held all of the load, plus a small rack built into the wall in the "Florida room" for things that needed more clearance from the floor. Since it was late winter during the time we lived in the first house, we hung everything in the Florida room. We soon learned, however, that, no matter the weather (as long as it was placed under an overhang) everything dries much more quickly outside. We had a couple of loads hung indoors that dried so slowly, they began to smell musty.
Perhaps having such a long process of cleaning clothes does, in fact, work out to be more energy efficient. After all, if you are faced with at least one day to complete a single "small" load of laundry from hamper to folded in the drawer, you are going to be more thoughtful about what you consider "dirty". I know of plenty of Americans, with the luxury of a two hour turn-around for a load of laundry, who throw in their jeans after one day of wear. They may not look or smell dirty, but have simply been worn.
When we moved to our second rental in early April, we bought a used washing machine. Our landlord was very helpful and went through the manual with me, translating. This machine was actually a combination washer and dryer. However, by now I was very used to hanging things to dry, we had two drying racks, and, if I used the drying feature, that meant the machine was not available for washing. I ended up using the dryer only a couple times when I needed a quick turn-around on a piece of clothing, but even then, it only got things "mostly dry".
Another feature of this machine was that it had a one-track mind. Once you started on a cycle, there was no going back. It was also very sensitive to the amount of clothes you could wash. Several times I would come down to the basement where it was set up to find that it had stopped during the wash cycle. I would have to take out a piece of clothing or two and then turn it back on (it had a door locking mechanism where you had to wait exactly 2 minutes after you pushed the pause button before the door would open). Since I wasn't sure if it had stopped before or after the wash cycle, I could never be sure if it had finished washing and it wouldn't let me restart until the whole cycle had ended. Ironically, this machine ended up dying, stuck on a never-ending rinse cycle on our very final load of laundry before we left - a bedsheet which we had to ring by hand before hanging to dry.
After returning to the US, and back to my jumbo pair of washer and dryer (oh, those t-shirts had never felt so soft!), I am finding it hard to readjust to such a large capacity machine. Numerous times I have taken down a basketful of laundry, only to find I had only a half-load. I would like to be able to hang laundry again, but, unfortunately, our backyard is dominated by a messy walnut tree and I am sure there are city ordinances against hanging your unsightly laundry in the view of neighbors. I was telling a friend about our German laundry adventures and enjoying her sympathetic responses to how long it took to wash a load of laundry and then hang it dry. But I responded that I had gotten quite used to it and that it wasn't such a big deal. When you think about it, even though a wash cycle here might take only about 30 minutes, how long is it before you finally get down to switch it over to the dryer? Two hours wouldn't be unusual if I get involved in a project or run an errand or two. And then there have been plenty of times when I have left things in the dryer overnight before I got around to unloading and folding! The only time I had really wished for the shorter wash cycle and high-heat dryer is doing bedsheets. One of my kids has dust-mite allergy and we have to wash the sheets and all bed coverings every week. With the German machine, I could only wash one sheet and pillow case in a load and worried if the day would be warm/dry enough for them to dry by bedtime. Fresh air and sunshine are good for dust-mite control, but a cloudy day was not so effective. Needless to say, we were not so diligent about washing all of the bedding on a weekly basis. If we had been there longer, I would have invested in an entire second set of bedding.
Side note: most of Europe does not use the two bedsheet system we have in the US. There is a fitted sheet for the matress and then a comforter with a duvet cover that is changed/washed regularly. German pillows are also different - about the width of American pillow, but squared!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Time Warp
Those who read my last blog entry may have noticed that I am writing of events that happened over a month ago. We are now, indeed, back home in Ohio and I am taking advantage of my body still being on Germany time, which means I am waking very early in the morning and have a few hours to catch up on my blog before the demands of unpacking, settling in, and children begin. The rest of the family has settled back into their sleep schedules nicely, but I am going to bed and waking up earlier. I am getting enough sleep, so I don't mind the wee hours of the morning all to myself.
We arrived in Columbus about 2:30 am on Tuesday, 2 August after a long day of travel and near-misses on two of our three flights. Our first flight was from Hamburg to London, Heathrow. The airport taxi we ordered to pick us up in Luneburg arrived 45 minutes late (with no apologies or explanations) and we managed to run to our departing gate with just 5 minutes before boarding. We flew from London to New York JFK with no problems. In New York, however, thunderstorms created many delays and cancellations. We spent 4 hours in JFK unsure of whether or not our flight would be cancelled and wondering if we would have to spend the night in the airport (the airline reps, of course, were overburdened with rebooking flights and noone would tell us anything of what was going on). It turned out that the plane was delayed in Chicago, due to storms, but did manage to arrive in NY and continue on with us to Columbus. We were greeted in Columbus by our dear friend Rick and our very own van to escort us home. We were finally all in our own beds by 4:30am!
Three days later, the 20 pieces of luggage (including carry-ons) are unpacked, though the contents are still awaiting redistribution and assimilation. The lawn has been mowed and a branch of the walnut tree hanging over the power lines trimmed (and another significant branch fell, on its own, just minutes afterward), the play structured washed down, and the season of walnut pick-up begun. Friends have been called and playdates scheduled. Every single one of O's toys has been rediscovered and strew upon the floor. Groceries are beginning to fill the cabinets and refrigerator - and ice, glorious ice, is once again automatically filling the freezer and my glasses. O and R visited the library and returned with a pile of new books. A mountain of laundry is slowly making its way through the "system". And, last night, I gloried in a margarita, chips, salsa and guacamole before our yummy dinner of fish tacos!
Tonight, its delivery pizza, sodas, and Netflix!! Back to Friday pizza-movie night at the Koontz's!
We arrived in Columbus about 2:30 am on Tuesday, 2 August after a long day of travel and near-misses on two of our three flights. Our first flight was from Hamburg to London, Heathrow. The airport taxi we ordered to pick us up in Luneburg arrived 45 minutes late (with no apologies or explanations) and we managed to run to our departing gate with just 5 minutes before boarding. We flew from London to New York JFK with no problems. In New York, however, thunderstorms created many delays and cancellations. We spent 4 hours in JFK unsure of whether or not our flight would be cancelled and wondering if we would have to spend the night in the airport (the airline reps, of course, were overburdened with rebooking flights and noone would tell us anything of what was going on). It turned out that the plane was delayed in Chicago, due to storms, but did manage to arrive in NY and continue on with us to Columbus. We were greeted in Columbus by our dear friend Rick and our very own van to escort us home. We were finally all in our own beds by 4:30am!
Three days later, the 20 pieces of luggage (including carry-ons) are unpacked, though the contents are still awaiting redistribution and assimilation. The lawn has been mowed and a branch of the walnut tree hanging over the power lines trimmed (and another significant branch fell, on its own, just minutes afterward), the play structured washed down, and the season of walnut pick-up begun. Friends have been called and playdates scheduled. Every single one of O's toys has been rediscovered and strew upon the floor. Groceries are beginning to fill the cabinets and refrigerator - and ice, glorious ice, is once again automatically filling the freezer and my glasses. O and R visited the library and returned with a pile of new books. A mountain of laundry is slowly making its way through the "system". And, last night, I gloried in a margarita, chips, salsa and guacamole before our yummy dinner of fish tacos!
Tonight, its delivery pizza, sodas, and Netflix!! Back to Friday pizza-movie night at the Koontz's!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Norway Comes to Us
June 27-29
The second set of visitors to our home in Luneburg arrived on the same day that the Bennett Family left to continue their family trip in Wales. Fortunately, we had the entire day to attempt a quick turn-around of our guest sheets (laundry takes 2 hours just to wash) and the day was fine for quickly drying the sheets in the sun.
Jan Oge and Randi are Norwegian friends we met in Bloomington, Indiana when Tom was a graduate student in 1996. Back then, we were still "newly weds" without children and they had arrived with their three children for a semester at Indiana University where Jan was a visiting scholar in the same department with Tom (sound familiar?). There have been many times these past months when I have reflected on their family's experiences in Indiana and have a new sense of what they went through! We stayed in touch over the years as their children grew up and our own family grew into five. When A was just 14 months old, we visited them in Narvik, just North of the Arctic circle.
Jan and Randi were only able to stay two nights, squeezed in-between our other sets of visitors. This was their first visit to Luneburg, but certainly not their first European vacation, so we didn't feel the need to help them see everything. It was enough to take a walk up the hill, Kalkburg, overlooking Luneburg and the surrounding area and then stroll through town where we met the girls arriving from school on the bus and enjoyed a treat at the "Eis Cafe".
Perhaps I already described this, but the Eis (German for icecream) Cafe is a unique German experience. I had been told by my German language instructor in Ohio that we would have to try one while we were in Germany. As she descibed it, it sounded much like an icecream parlor, which have largely faded from the American scene, but seemed not such big deal. However, they are a big deal in Germany and we have yet to find anything like them in any of our travels to other countries. I can think of three large cafes and two smaller cafes just here in town. Two of them are located across the street from each other on the main thoroughfare of the town center and are always busy. They always have tables set up outside with large umbrellas - at least a dozen at the larger ones- but you can also sit inside.
It was a month into our visit, for A's birthday in March, before we ventured into the Eise Cafe. It was too cold for us to think about eating icecream. Not so for the Germans. Many a chilly March aftrenoon I would see people sitting OUTSIDE at the tables, wrapped in the blankets provided, delighting in tall and colorful icecream concoctions!
The menus at the Eise Cafe are extensive. At one cafe, their are 3 menus - one "regular", one seasonal, and one featuring frozen yogurt. They have a variety of what, in America, we would call sundaes. The "sundaes" are adorned with a variety of syrups, liquors, fresh fruit, wafer cookies, and whipped cream. They come in fancy glass bowls or tall glasses. One of R's favorites is the "spagetti eis", made of icecream which has been squeezed through something like a ricer, to make it look like spagetti and topped with strawberry (or other flavored) syrup, sprinkles, and whipped cream. Some of the fruit-topped creations look like bouquets.
The icecream is Italian Eis, which is not like the gelato I think of as Italian Ice, but more like a premium soft-serve or custard-refreshing and satisfying, but not overly rich and sweet. Most of the sundaes are made with chocolate or vailla icecream, but the cafes have a case where you can choose from several flavors such as hazelnut, amaretto, Waldmeister, melon, banana, and berry flavors, eaten from a "waffle" (cone) or cup, either eat-in or take-out. One generous scoop in a waffle can cost only 60-80 cents - a deal hard to pass up when strolling through town! The other thing to note is that the whipped cream is unsweetened.
Besides the fact that the Germans are willing to sit outside in all weather and eat icecream, what strikes me as interesting is that here are grown people, sitting with a generous and fanciful tower of icecream, sometimes even before noon, with no shame in what we Americans would see as an indulgence. In the US, icecream sundaes are seen as a special, just-this-once, kind of treat, usually reserved for children's parties or special occasions, and certainly not something to eat sitting out where people are walking by, witness to your extravegance. Our health-consciousness society views icecream as something to be eaten sparingly, just a scoop or two please. Ironically, however, we have a craving for either super-rich premium icecream filled with nuts,chunks, and ripples of goo or fluffy towers of frozen dairy product dipped in chocolate flavored wax or swimming in caramel/fudge flavored syrup. Which is a healthier attitude towards food? Something to think about, certainly.
So, the Eis Cafe is something that we have agreed is a must-do experience for all our German visitors. We ate our fanciful icecream in good company on a sunny afternoon, watching the busy coming and going of Luneburg citizens.
The weather continued to be fine the rest of the day and the next. Our Norwegian friends, who were on a true vacation from an intense last few months of work and graduate studies - Randi had just finished her final doctoral dissertation defense- took advantage of the opportunity to soak up the sun in the garden and we enjoyed catching up on family news and remembering the days together in Bloomington.
The second set of visitors to our home in Luneburg arrived on the same day that the Bennett Family left to continue their family trip in Wales. Fortunately, we had the entire day to attempt a quick turn-around of our guest sheets (laundry takes 2 hours just to wash) and the day was fine for quickly drying the sheets in the sun.
Jan Oge and Randi are Norwegian friends we met in Bloomington, Indiana when Tom was a graduate student in 1996. Back then, we were still "newly weds" without children and they had arrived with their three children for a semester at Indiana University where Jan was a visiting scholar in the same department with Tom (sound familiar?). There have been many times these past months when I have reflected on their family's experiences in Indiana and have a new sense of what they went through! We stayed in touch over the years as their children grew up and our own family grew into five. When A was just 14 months old, we visited them in Narvik, just North of the Arctic circle.
Jan and Randi were only able to stay two nights, squeezed in-between our other sets of visitors. This was their first visit to Luneburg, but certainly not their first European vacation, so we didn't feel the need to help them see everything. It was enough to take a walk up the hill, Kalkburg, overlooking Luneburg and the surrounding area and then stroll through town where we met the girls arriving from school on the bus and enjoyed a treat at the "Eis Cafe".
Perhaps I already described this, but the Eis (German for icecream) Cafe is a unique German experience. I had been told by my German language instructor in Ohio that we would have to try one while we were in Germany. As she descibed it, it sounded much like an icecream parlor, which have largely faded from the American scene, but seemed not such big deal. However, they are a big deal in Germany and we have yet to find anything like them in any of our travels to other countries. I can think of three large cafes and two smaller cafes just here in town. Two of them are located across the street from each other on the main thoroughfare of the town center and are always busy. They always have tables set up outside with large umbrellas - at least a dozen at the larger ones- but you can also sit inside.
It was a month into our visit, for A's birthday in March, before we ventured into the Eise Cafe. It was too cold for us to think about eating icecream. Not so for the Germans. Many a chilly March aftrenoon I would see people sitting OUTSIDE at the tables, wrapped in the blankets provided, delighting in tall and colorful icecream concoctions!
The menus at the Eise Cafe are extensive. At one cafe, their are 3 menus - one "regular", one seasonal, and one featuring frozen yogurt. They have a variety of what, in America, we would call sundaes. The "sundaes" are adorned with a variety of syrups, liquors, fresh fruit, wafer cookies, and whipped cream. They come in fancy glass bowls or tall glasses. One of R's favorites is the "spagetti eis", made of icecream which has been squeezed through something like a ricer, to make it look like spagetti and topped with strawberry (or other flavored) syrup, sprinkles, and whipped cream. Some of the fruit-topped creations look like bouquets.
The icecream is Italian Eis, which is not like the gelato I think of as Italian Ice, but more like a premium soft-serve or custard-refreshing and satisfying, but not overly rich and sweet. Most of the sundaes are made with chocolate or vailla icecream, but the cafes have a case where you can choose from several flavors such as hazelnut, amaretto, Waldmeister, melon, banana, and berry flavors, eaten from a "waffle" (cone) or cup, either eat-in or take-out. One generous scoop in a waffle can cost only 60-80 cents - a deal hard to pass up when strolling through town! The other thing to note is that the whipped cream is unsweetened.
Besides the fact that the Germans are willing to sit outside in all weather and eat icecream, what strikes me as interesting is that here are grown people, sitting with a generous and fanciful tower of icecream, sometimes even before noon, with no shame in what we Americans would see as an indulgence. In the US, icecream sundaes are seen as a special, just-this-once, kind of treat, usually reserved for children's parties or special occasions, and certainly not something to eat sitting out where people are walking by, witness to your extravegance. Our health-consciousness society views icecream as something to be eaten sparingly, just a scoop or two please. Ironically, however, we have a craving for either super-rich premium icecream filled with nuts,chunks, and ripples of goo or fluffy towers of frozen dairy product dipped in chocolate flavored wax or swimming in caramel/fudge flavored syrup. Which is a healthier attitude towards food? Something to think about, certainly.
So, the Eis Cafe is something that we have agreed is a must-do experience for all our German visitors. We ate our fanciful icecream in good company on a sunny afternoon, watching the busy coming and going of Luneburg citizens.
The weather continued to be fine the rest of the day and the next. Our Norwegian friends, who were on a true vacation from an intense last few months of work and graduate studies - Randi had just finished her final doctoral dissertation defense- took advantage of the opportunity to soak up the sun in the garden and we enjoyed catching up on family news and remembering the days together in Bloomington.
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