Happy New Year!!

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DOING LAUNDRY IS ALWAYS THE SAME - OR IS IT

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Thankfully, we have a washing machine in our apartment. I was thrilled to hear that. I must say that it's quite tiny, though. It sits below the cabinet in our bathroom as you can see in the picture.

Because of it's size, I need to do laundry almost every day. One load consisted of our two bath towels. It seems ridiculous, but the washer was full with just the two towels.
The first time I tried to wash a load, I couldn't figure out how it worked. I mean how hard can it be to use a wash machine. I've been using them for more than 40 years.

On the day we moved in, the landlord tried to explain it to me in his clipped English, but I just waived him off and said I'd figure it out. When it came right down to doing it, however, it was a different matter.

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WHAT WAS THAT NAME AGAIN?

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This week brings a big change for us. We are moving from our temporary apartment to our permanent flat across the city. That means packing everything we brought plus the extra food, etc we've accumulated since we arrived. At least, we don't have to get it into the six suitcases this time. But however many boxes and bags, we need to move this all ourselves by Friday morning.

We are moving from a street called U Libenskeho pivovaru. When we first saw that name our first reaction was WHAT? How do you begin a name with the letter U all by itself. And why is the name so long?

After we were here for a couple weeks, we found out that the letter U by itself is a preposition meaning "on, at, near". The area of Prague that we live in now is called Liben. Finally, we learned that the all important word beer is "pivo". So the name of our current street means "Near a brewery in Liben".

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New Place, New Space

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Now that we're pretty well settled in our flat in Riga, I thought I'd share a bit about our new living arrangements.

We're in a much smaller (and cozier) building this time - a house with only four flats in it. The stone house was built in 1800s so has very thick walls. Hopefully, that will keep out the heat in the summer.

As you can see by the picture on the left, our flat actually has two floors. The upper floor has our bedroom, bathroom and family room, so we have lots more space than any of our other apartments in Europe. We have lots of room for guests (hint).


The lower level has the living room, office, kitchen and another bathroom. It's actually the closest to a US apartment that we've had to date. We have a dishwasher and garbage disposal in the kitchen. The laundry area in the basement has a washer and a DRYER!! First time in years that I have some of these luxuries.



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