Yesterday we furnished pretty much an entire kitchen for a total of 18 euros. This included buying a full set of Ikea pots and pans, never used, small and large plates, coffee cups, a frying set (but that seems made for pasta--easy draining!), a small marble cutting board for cheese, a wooden one for other things, and more. There is such an excellent used store here! We also hopefully found a fridge. Yes, we pretty much have to furnish a whole kitchen, although there is hope that we only have to find a fridge and not a stove as well. The stove may arrive early in the month. Our kitchen, while very stylish (stone floor!), is hardly... modern. Given that we now know that there are documents on the house our new apartment is in that go back 500 years, that is not, perhaps, difficult to explain. (Which also explains why the floor in one of the rooms tilts.) Tempting as it is to go crazy in the used store buying cute individual pieces, we need to get a sofa first so we can build things around it.

B is hoping to start playing lacrosse again soon, while I really want to be able to settle down and get to work. But while there is still so much undone, and we still take turns sleeping on the camping mattress, and space is still so tight, it´s hard. We measured our new place yesterday (some 50+ square meters, just over half the size of the old place), and took a measuring rod to the current one as well. No wonder we feel cramped! It is a beautiful total of 17 square meters (ca 180 square feet). I thought it looked rather like my high school room, where my best friend and I shared 12 square meters, but of course that did not include a kitchen area, bathroom, and shower--so no wonder there´s no room for two beds!

But no more complaining. In two weeks or less, we´ll be living in our charmingly inconvenient 15th or so century apartment.