A photo an hour: 15 June 2019

Over a week ago, I took part in the photo an hour link up, but somehow I’m only getting round to writing a post about it now. Also, technically I only half took part because I had forgotten it was that day and only realised when I saw a post on Twitter at 11:30 a.m., so I started at noon. As always, photo an hour was hosted by Jane and Louisa.

12 noon. Already busy unpacking all our kitchen stuff

1 p.m. I feel like I’m maybe getting somewhere?

2 p.m. While I was busy sorting stuff out, Jan found The Wizard of Oz on TV. Apparently he had never seen it?1

3 p.m. We have way too much tea!

4 p.m. Waiting for a train into town.

Forgot 5 p.m. – we were shopping for new pans.

6 p.m. On the bus home. Look at all that rain!

7 p.m. Manor had pies! Obviously we had to try them.

8 p.m. Pie, peas and mash demolished.

9 p.m. Having a beer – I earned it after all that unpacking.

10 p.m. Off to bed with a book.

The next photo an hour date is 20th July. Hopefully I will remember it this time!

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Friday letters

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, what with packing and everything. Today seems like good day for some letters, though!

Dear Grandpa. Wednesday would have been your 81st birthday. If there is a heaven, I hope you were partying in it!

Dear sunshine. It’s been lovely seeing you in the evenings after work this week. Now, could you please stick around for another day so we don’t get rained on while out and about tomorrow?

Dear new shoes. I love you so much, and I don’t even care that you’re from Primark and therefore promoting evilness!

Dear boyfriend. Thank you for doing so much furniture arranging and unpacking before I even made it to Switzerland. It was nice that it already looked somewhat homely when I arrived last weekend.

Dear German banks and administrative offices. Why are your opening hours so crap? Don’t you realise that most of us have to work full time and can’t deal with all our bureaucratic stuff before 4 p.m. on a week day?!

That’s all for now. Just 15 days til I move, then hopefully I’ll be back to regular blogging again!

All those hours spent putting things in boxes only to remove them again

This weekend I’ve mainly been in Basel, unpacking and sorting out the new flat. Then, today – as those of you who follow my blog on Facebook may have already seen – I came back to Karlsruhe and, instead of sitting outside in the gorgeous sunshine, spent the afternoon cleaning windows. I hadn’t actually done them since we moved in here (5 years ago for the nosey curious – I’m such a terrible housewife!), so I’m sure you can imagine the state they were in…

Anyway, while I was in Switzerland, I managed to grab a few shots of the unpacking process, so I thought I’d share them here. I’m sure you’re all thrilled 😉 All photos were taken using a tablet with a terrible camera, so apologies for quality…

It seems the Swiss like to take their lights with them too, so Jan’s set up a few temporary lighting solutions:

A lonely lantern on the balcony – we don’t have any other furniture to go out there yet.

Almost all the books are unpacked, and we’re probably going to need another book case (three are pictured here and there’s a fourth just around the corner).

The desk is in position, just waiting for the computer to be set up.

Empty boxes (YAY!)

Full boxes (BOO!)

That’s all I took. Maybe I’ll share some proper pictures of the new flat once I’m moved in. Right now it’s time for food and a well-deserved glass of wine!

Even slow progress is progress…

Slowly, slowly we’re getting there with the flat. The boxes are almost all unpacked now and we’ve got all the furniture put together… apart from Jan’s desk which we still can’t find the screws for! I just know they’re going to turn up somewhere obvious… Other than that it’s looking good, if you can ignore the fact that there are no curtains anywhere (we have some for the spare bedroom but need a drill to put the rail up) and most of the rooms have no lights. We’re still relying on lamps for most of our light! Why are nice ceiling lights so hard to find?! Everywhere we go they’re either ridiculously expensive or we just can’t find a nice one that we can agree on. *sigh*. We need to go back to IKEA for another bookcase though (the two we have are actually overflowing!) and some curtains – maybe this time there’ll be some decent lights too. Fingers crossed! Photos of the flat will follow as soon as I have access to them – Jan has uploaded them under his name, which makes things a little difficult, and for some reason I’m unable to upload them via the USB cable. I promise they will be here soon though, no more waiting for weeks and weeks between blog posts! Right now I have to go and catch up with all my favourite bloggers. This moving lark has caused me to miss out on so much. Boo and hiss! It will all be worth it in the end though, I hope…