Furnishing our new apartment

Well, Lisa and I are almost completely moved into our new apartment now!
The house is on the third floor of a lovely building in Wedel, very near to the train station and the main shopping street (super convenient!). It has loads of windows so I won't turn into a mushroom, and a really big kitchen with room enough for a fridge, freezer, and dining table. My and Lisa's rooms are also quite large, with enough floor space for two more bodies! There is no living room or den or anything like that, but the house is certainly big enough for two!

When Donny and I got back from Berlin on Friday the 3rd, we were all too tired to move, so we did the bulk of the moving on Saturday the 4th. Lenny (Lisa's boyfriend), Donny, and Daniel (Lenny's friend) helped us move. Both Lisa and I had beds (mine was kindly lent by Heidi and Bernd) but other than that, our apartment was almost completely empty... other than the kitchen, which has practically everything! Donny and I unpacked the kitchen and did some grocery shopping while Lisa moved the rest of her clothes from Lenny's house to our new place. The evening was a fantastic girl's night, with lots of Glühwein (hot spiced red wine), Ratatouille, and gossiping! We even had a "sleepover" in Lisa's room.

Since everything is closed on Sunday, we weren't able to go to a furniture store and get all the house stuff we were missing that weekend. Donny went back to Tolousse in the afternoon, and Lisa and I hung around at Lenny's house and used the shower because we realized that without a shower curtain we couldn't shower at our new apartment! After dinner, Lenny's parents call him from their walk to say they'd found a huge nice wood dresser in the street! Turns out that Sunday was "alley exchange" day in Wedel, so Ahrend and Petra (Lenny's parents) carted this lovely wood dresser back to their house! It was a little bit broken but Ahrend said he could easily fix it. After that, Lisa, Lenny, and I set out to do a little alley exchange shopping. I found this awesome green velvet couch with embossed vines and wooden feet, but it was quite heavy. Lisa refused to help me with it, and Lenny didn't want to drive his car to back and forth like a mule, so I had to leave it. I felt like not only would this have been a ridiculously uglycool couch for my room, but that carrying it home and stopping to rest on it when we got tired would have been quite an adventure! I felt really disappointed that I was the only one who felt that way. Because I seemed so sad, though, Lenny offered me the two-seater white couch from his room, which he never uses. It was a nice gesture, and one I definitely didn't refuse, but it's no green velvet sofa! Closer to the apartment, we found a bookshelf and three chairs for the kitchen, which we carted home.

Because Lisa has a full-time job, we couldn't go shopping during the week... so we lived out of our bags, which I am majorly sick of doing. I want to feel like I have some sort of home! I was sick last week, too, so I didn't leave the house hardly at all, except to buy medicine and a shower curtain so we could bathe. I should have gotten my dresser too, but the weather gods decided to send snow... which meant it was too dangerous for Lenny to drive his car. So no dresser.

When Saturday the 10th finally rolled around, we got lots done! First we signed up for a phone and DSL connection for our home, but the package we got is very popular so it will randomly take two weeks before we have anything set up at all, which means I continue to visit the library every day. If I spoke better German, I bet I'd be best friends with the librarians by now!
In the afternoon, we got on the train for the 2 hour trek to Ikea. There, we bought as much as we could carry... which meant that on the way back we had a bag on each shoulder weighing about 26 lbs each! When we bought it all, Lisa didn't think we could even pack it into the giant blue plastic Ikea bags, much less carry it all the way home, but I made everything fit and somehow we made it! On one of the trains, we were like the elephant in the room that everyone was irritated by but nobody would talk about... until this very nice old man wearing one of those square fur hats (stereotypically Russian) took the garbage can I was holding out in front of me (it wouldn't fit in the bags) and started chatting with us. The whole train was watching and the mood really improved after that... he even helped us get everything off the train when it was our stop! By the time we got home, I was surprised we could even walk up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. We were so proud of ourselves!
Sunday, Lisa set up her room and I set up my night table and willed the snow to melt so that Lenny could bring over my dresser. On Monday evening, Ahrend and Lenny surprised me around 7.30 with my dresser! My room is starting to look much more like a room now, but there is still a lot that I need to get before it's organized and decorated (a mirror, the couch, some hooks for the wall, perhaps some shelves and a plant). I think sometime in March, after Lisa gets paid, we will have to make another trek to Ikea... but this time we will bring along my rolling suitcases! Once everything looks the way I want it to, I will post some pictures and give you a tour of our lovely yellow apartment.

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