The Great Surprise - And Disappointment

This is just cruel.

When you are living as an expat in another country, you are sure to miss some things from your home country. For me one of those things are pick & mix candies. You cannot find them here in Germany!

Last Saturday we visited Ikea in Wallau. We were actually heading to the Toys R Us, but stopped by for some meatballs.

On our way out we noticed something great: pick & mix candies!

And I was delighted to see a wide assortment of liqourice and some Dajm look-alike chocolates. Yum!

But no, it wasn't yummy at all. Both the liqourice and the chocolates tasted like cheap copies of the originals. Yuk.

How cruel of Ikea to give me first a great surprise and then such a huge disappointment!

I guess I need to add pick & mix candies to the shopping list, which I am preparing for my mother. She will visit us next week!

*****
Piipahdimme viime lauantaina Ikeassa lihapullalounaalla. Samalla huomasimme iloksemme, että Wallaun Ikeaan oli tullut myyntiin irtokarkkeja! Niitä ei yleensä löydä täältä Saksasta.

Valikoimassa näytti olevan erilaisia lakritseja ja Dajmin näköisiä suklaapaloja. Nam! Mutta ei, karkit olivat suorastaan kammottavan makuisia. Mitä iloa on pahanmakuisista karkeista? Mikä valtava pettymys irtsarien ystävälle!

The Return Of the Energetic Guest

We were very lucky last week and got my mother to visit us for a few days! As I have told you before, she is a very energetic guest!

Herr Welle and I have been thinking about changing our study / guest room into a room for Fräulein for a while now. However, during the end of last spring I didn't have any extra energy to make that happen, so Fräulein's bed is still in our bedroom.

But as there must be something for my mum to do while Fräulein is in daycare and taking her nap, I thought we could move our desk and bookcase from the study to the corner of our living room.

But we ended up doing a lot more than that! We even visited Ikea and bought some new furniture for Fräulein's new room. And as you saw in yesterday's Silent Sunday picture, we had some help in assembling them.

Helping grandma

Testing (no, this is not her new bed)

Moving books to the new room

I don't have any nice before and after pictures,
but here you can see some of the new things we got for Fräulein's room

But the visit was not just hard work. After many days of rain and autumnal weather, we were able to visit our favorite playground, too.

*****
Äitini oli meillä loppuviikon kylässä. Kuten olen kertonut ennenkin, hän on kovin puuhakas ihminen. Tällä kertaa olin ajatellut hyödyntää äitini paikallaoloa siihen, että siirtäisimme kirjoituspöydän ja kirjahyllyn pois vierashuoneestamme. Tarkoituksenamme on nimittäin ollut tehdä huoneesta Fräuleinin oma huone. Huonekalujen siirrot oli kuitenkin niin ripeästi tehty, että ehdimme vielä Ikeaan ostamaan uusia huonekaluja ja saimme jopa koottua ne valmiiksi!

Odd German Way No. 2 - Pack Up Your Kitchen!

When we were looking for an apartment in Wiesbaden, we browsed the Immobilienscout web page. In the search criteria, one of the options is 'Einbauküche'. I had heard rumors about it, but now I really understood: Germans take the kitchens with them when they move house!

In most of the apartments, also those to be rented, there is nothing in the kitchen. Well, 'nothing' might be an overstatement, as there are electric wires and pipes coming out of the walls and floor and there might even be a row of tiles on the walls. But there are no cabinets, no sink and certainly no household appliances.

As we didn't have the time or the possibility to start building a kitchen, we had to check the 'Einbauküche' option in Immobilienscout. This really narrows down the possibilities of apartments, as only about 40% has the 'Einbauküche'. We were going to rent a place and fortunately found one, in which the previous tenant was willing to sell us her kitchen. So, we bought the Ikea kitchen cabinets and dishwasher from her with reasonable price and had to go shopping only for fridge and stove.

Just like the kitchen cabinets, the Germans take all other cabinets with them as well. So, in an empty apartment there are usually no cabinets in the hall or in the bedrooms either. Some even take the parquet from the floors with them...

I can see the point, that this way you can get exactly the type of kitchen and storage space you need. But I cannot understand, how this can work in practice. If you are moving, you most probably are changing to different kind of apartment. How can the old kitchen fit into the new one? I cannot believe, that the kitchens are so similar, than you can just easily fit the old cabinets with a bit of fine-tuning. And if your new kitchen is bigger than the old one, do you just go shopping for extra cabinets? Doesn't it look weird, if most of the cabinets are ten years old and on the corner there is one new and shiny?

The odd German ways...

Energetic Guest

My mum is the kind of person who does not like to just sit down and relax. When my daughter is taking her nap, there must be something for my mother to do or she gets bored. Her favorite housework is cleaning the windows, but unfortunately it has been too cold for that. Therefore it is good that there is Ikea quite close here, and we can always use some extra space for storage.

Inspection of the finished product