Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Official Tour of the Flat

As Dad kindly pointed out, I have yet to post pictures of the flat that has become our home in the last few months. Embracing the procrastination of a homework assignment, I thought I would take the opportunity to give everyone a grand tour.


This first view is from the front door. We have a nice little kitchen table as you can see, with the kitchen there on the left. This picture is from very early on, and we have since bought a charming little red table runner that brightens up the space considerably. The room in the back is our living room, separated by two doors that we always keep open, although you can see one slightly ajar on the right. Our bathroom is through the white door on the left between the kitchen and the living room entrance, and our two bedrooms are on the left and right side of the living room. The third bedroom which was originally the maid's chambers is to the immediate left-- out of view-- but nicely holds our vacuum cleaner and the three extra beds that are being stored in the flat.




This would be our kitchen, and from what I've seen it's one of the nicest out of all the flats. We have an electric four-burner stovetop and an oven below it, a full set of kitchen utilities, pots and pans, and lots of counter space. Our microwave was great until Sarah tried to set it above the lowest setting that it had been left on (we were wondering why it took 5 minutes to warm a slice of pizza) and it caught on fire. It was a few weeks before we got another, but we both had a good laugh when we realized the landlord had left the broken one in our empty room. I don't have a photo of our food nook, but our fridge is moderately sized. We have a freezer the size of a shoebox, but decent storage space in the body of it; we've have never had a problem with not having enough room for our food. This would be our living room. It's quite simple, but we thought we were quite innovative when we decided to throw the sheets on to add a bit of color. It's was very drab when we first moved in! When we have a group over this is where we all sit to eat because we can only fit four at the kitchen table. It's quite nice, although neither one of us spends any amount of time in there unless we're socializing with friends.



Have you noticed that you can't see the ceiling in any of the pictures? I tried to capture the sheer size of the room in this photo of my bedroom, but even still it doesn't really convey how much "space" there is. Both of our bedrooms could be described as spartan. They came with the basics: Bed, desk, bookshelf, closet and wastebasket. I didn't like it too much at first, but now when I come home from a weekend away I'm kind of looking forward to snuggling up in my own little Ikea bed.


I don't have a photo of our bathroom (not sure why I would want one anyways) but we're rather lucky in the sense that everything is in one room. I say lucky because that's how it always is at home, but apparently it's a bit abnormal here. We have a mini-sized washing machine that holds about two pairs of jeans, three shirts, and some underwear. We don't have a dryer so we use a fold-away clothes hanger, and the water here is incredibly hard so once our clothes are dry they're as stiff as boards; makes walking around in clean jeans a bit funny for the first few minutes. Our washing machine empties into our bathtub, so if you're not careful while showering you can get a cold sudsy surprise if the load is done. Although we can shower standing up because there is a showerhead holder, we're in a tub and there's no curtain. With 20 foot ceilings we never really get the "steamy shower" effect, which basically means that the side under the shower is quite warm, and the side in the air is quite cold.




This last shot is of the building itself. The entrance is just behind the poster column there, and it usually smells bad so I try and hold my breath and have my keys ready by the time I'm on the block. We're in a very centrally located area, right off the main drag. The metro is a block and a half away (there's only 3 lines in Budapest) and the central tram line is also a block and a half away. I just recently adjusted my route to school as I found a more direct way, but on any given day I will walk about 3 blocks to the trolley stop, hop on and ride for about 5-7 minutes, and then walk one block from the stop to school. Both the bigger grocery store and the smaller convenience market are within two blocks left of our flat, and there's a great big mall just around the corner.



Everything has been pretty good for the most part, although there was a week where our water heater broke and the repairmen came about 8 times because they would "fix" it and then it would break again later that afternoon. The flat next to us has been under renovation for the last two months so we usually wake up to a pleasant banging on the walls. They've also started on something outside which causes such a thumping that our apartment shakes-- you can actually hear the wine bottles clinking sometimes. It doesn't really faze me since I was within sneezing range of the renovation on the gym last year, but I am very much looking forward to the peace and quiet of home.

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