So, we have finally moved in, unpacked, and settled into our apartment. Chase has started daycare and I started my post-doc this past week, so we're almost all situated (except for the fact that we still don't have a bank account because it takes nearly forever for American citizens and we're still waiting for our living permit because that comes only after the working permit -- so much paperwork!). Either way, I wanted to share pictures of our apartment and a few things about living here that are very different (and annoying) as compared to the US.
This is the layout of our apartment:
If anybody has been keeping up with the Mindy Project, Nate just quoted "It's very dangerous for a stranger to know the layout of your house!"
The apartment is bigger than our apartment in Cambridge, mostly because the bedrooms are larger and there is a real kitchen and hallway. We had a few boxes (a "few": 13 from Cambridge, 4 from Gretna, and 3 from San Diego -- although many of them were fairly small) shipped over with our clothes, accessories, and some Chase stuff (high chair and crib). Thankfully, there is IKEA very close to the apartment (only a 7 minute train ride), so we were able to get all our furniture there. In planning for it, I went a bit crazy and made a few inspiration/color boards:
After a few too many trips to IKEA (I think we went 4 times total, but the time I was actually getting all the furniture for delivery, I was alone with Chase and quickly running out of time so it was quite stressful!!), we got everything to the apartment and then actually built everything. Since Nate was at work most of the time, I ended up building everything myself -- except for the bed, which was Nate's project. It took us only about a week to get everything done, but then some more time to clean up all the boxes and unpack everything.
Last week, we got the name plate for our mailbox and our door, which makes me feel super official:
We're on the 4th floor -- which is actually the 5th floor because the ground floor is usually floor 0. Our apartment has one of those elevators where you have to open and close the door yourself at the different floors. These seem to be pretty popular in European (small) apartment buildings but I've never seen them in the US.
Without further ado,
The kitchen:
The fridge is to the left of the stove (where the luncbox is hanging). It seems to be pretty common to have fridges concealed in cabinets like that. The stove is electric -- much to Nate's delight, although I have to say, I enjoy how much easier clean-up is on an electric stove!
The bathroom:
It's not super large, but larger than our bathroom in Cambridge.
The dining room:
The pictures look like it's wood overkill, but really, in person it's not so bad. These pictures show the hallway back to the front door with the doorways for the kitchen and bathroom. The left picture has an inset for our router, Time Machine, Ooma, and phone. Ooma is a service where you can set up any phone number to call through wi-fi so we have it set up for Nate's US phone number (my US phone number goes through Google voice now). So, if you want to give us a call, you can call Nate's number and that handset seen on the left will ring. Obviously, don't call us in the middle of the night or anything (time zones are hard!).
The living room:
There are glass doors that separate the dining room from the living room, but we have them always open. The living room has a balcony that goes out to the street. The red MM that you can see in the picture is the grocery store. It is so close!!
Chase's Room:
Since we never set up a nursery for Chase in our old apartment, I had extra fun setting this up for him. He has these gymnastic mats to hang out on which work well since he is now sitting up, but sometimes trying to move and then falling over. He has a table with books on it, a soft chest thing for his toys, and his changing pad on top of an organizer that has clothes, diapers, books, blankets, and extra toys. We were debating getting him an actual crib but for now, the pack and play is working ok and we'd rather get him a toddler bed and/or mattress on the floor when he is a little bit older.
Our room:
Our room also has a balcony -- facing a few small lawns/parks. It's really nice and quiet on that side. The only issues with both balconies are the birds! So many birds around. We need to hang some wind chimes or something to discourage them from hanging out on/above our balconies and pooping everywhere! In just the last almost three weeks, the balcony outside our bedroom is already a mess!
Now for some fun surprising (and annoying) things we've learned from our first few weeks living here:
1. Apartments do not come with light fixtures. When we walked in, there was a light in the bathroom medicine cabinet and one in the fan above the stove. That is all. Thank goodness I had grabbed a light from IKEA or we wouldn't have had any lighting in any of the other rooms the first night. We have installed some lights (dining room and our room as you can see above), but not in others (you can see the wires hanging free in the first picture of the living room) because only some rooms have the hooks that you can hang lights from. The other rooms you have to nail/screw in the light fixtures and we haven't had much luck with that -- the one in our kitchen is half up. Hopefully we'll fix it soon!
2. The freezers are tiny! As you can see from the picture above, the fridge itself is not that large, but as seen below, the freezer is inside that small fridge! And as you can see, it's completely filled with frozen breast milk for Chase. Here, people go to the store much more often (at least every few days -- sometimes everyday!). And they don't use as many frozen items as we do the US -- if any at all!
3. The laundry! There is one washer and one dryer for the building (16 apartments total). Every apartment has ONE 4-6 hour spot once a week (!!) when you can go and do laundry. There is a card that you need to get through a specific company that has value stored on it. You swipe it to start the washer or dryer and it deducts some large amount (like 5000 credits) and then swipe after it's done so that it refunds part of the credits (like 4000 of them). That way, you have incentive to come back and get your clothes right away and don't go out of turn. The door also shuts at 10pm and you can't use it on Sunday.
4. Recycling is a full-time job. We have boxes for glass, plastic, cardboard, and aluminum. Oh, and compost -- which has special bags. They all have to be sorted and put in the appropriate shoots out on the street. Trash itself is really regulated -- you have to buy special bags that cost 2 Francs per 35 L bag! It definitely makes sense to recycle, but it's really time consuming!
5. Most of the stores are closed by 7pm most weekdays, even earlier on Saturday, but sometimes stay open later on Fridays (although only by about an hour). And pretty much everything is closed Sunday! It's crazy! Many places also take an hour or two for lunch so it's hard to get anything done between noon and 2pm (like city offices, post offices, banks, etc.). It's so different than the 24/7 hours of many places in the US. Or at least, like midnight for the grocery stores.
These are just the main things that we've noticed so far as the largest differences. I'm sure there will be many more to come!
