The Apartment

We arrived here at Spittelauerplatz. The apartment is up only one flight of steps and has an elevator which is very, very luxurious for us. It is a block from the U-bahn, and we have various restaurants, two grocery stores, a drug store and a pharmacy all very close. We even have a taxi stand half a block down. It looks out on this plaza with a small playground. There are lots of homeless guys around whom I will not talk about because my mom reads this blog.
It has been a revelation to us staying in an actual Study Abroad apartment -- always in the past we have had to rent a holiday apartment sight unseen over the internet, and we spend a lot of time the first few weeks reinventing various wheels. This apartment comes stocked with dishes and utensils to feed thirty students (rather than wine glasses for a few couples' drinking weekend away), folding chairs for all of them, a printer, and even little things like staplers, tape, and pencils that just don't come in vacation rentals. At our suggestion, the program also now has a cache of cell phones that they rent out to the students while they're here; this revolutionizes their stay because they live all around town. Now when they want to get together, they don't have to sit at home trying to reach other people and talking to hausfraus with their broken German. It is also so lovely to have the instructions to various things in English, like the microwave, which you have to push "stop" on to make it go -- was I going to know that on my own? Finally, it's great to see that other people have carted over peanut butter, brown sugar, US measuring spoons, and even a Costco-sized bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's syrup; made me feel comparatively sane.
The apartment style is what I would call Undiluted IKEA by People Who Hate IKEA. It has been done by some staid, middle-class couple with good taste and no patience for whimsy. There is nary a "KNIK" or a "KNAK" or a "PEDDYWAK" of the more colorful Swedish varieties. One of Rob's colleagues got tired of this and busted out with two sets of curtains in an IKEA primitive print, which is an interesting topic in and of itself. I never understand the themes that connect their stuff together. For example, from the curtain in our room:

What is this? I call it Extracted Wisdom Tooth, With Majesty. Or how about this one?

Bird with Birthday Candles and Pedicure

In any event, the place works for us. Here are the kids enjoying the high speed internet and working on their keyboarding skills.