A Munchkin's New House

Hej hej everyone,

The epic ordeal of moving house has now been completed, hooray! The mental trauma was kept to a minimum and no nuclear weapons were used when deciding on where the couch should go. The ridiculousness of trying to find a place to live in July is like trying to find half a needle in a haystack the size of Canada. It is very similar to Canberra in January. Uni students arrive, they have a hard day at O-week (although it seemed to be O-3 weeks) and then have to look respectable to claim any and all the housing available. They run around town in bright yellow overalls and funny hats and there are an extreme amount of males in tight pink tights, some in dresses, some trying to look like superman. You know it's bad when websites advertise for apartments, villas, rooms and .................couches. We even investigated the possibility of hiring a cardboard box or two. Then there is the saga of 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand renting which is confusing and dodgy (but I won't bore you with the details).

So the new apartment is in a new suburb, down a new street, in a new town, with a yellow door! It's kinda like an estate type area with lots of apartment/duplex buildings and cool playgrounds. It reminds Jochen and I of a cross between holiday park by the coast and a retirement village.
So you would think that when you move into a new house you might get a light or two, perhaps a curtain. Well you don't! For some reason white goods like a dishwasher, dryer, washingmachine, and fridge are included but light fittings, bulbs, curtains and curtain rails are not. I am amazed! Mostly about the lightbulbs. So when we next move we will be well supplied, as we have now spent all our monies on this stuff and we can move our custom fit curtains and rods to a new house where they will be the wrong size.

In other non-house news, more like "Adventure News", I have been to the beach. And what a beach it is! It's about 15-20 minutes drive from town and it is beautiful in a grey kinda way. There is not much sand but it's made up for by the large amounts of seaweed lining the shores. The water is shallow for a very long way out (I am told, as it's way to freezing to go swimming) and it's also suprisingly un-salty. Near Bjärred there is a long pier, 574metres long with a restuarant and sauna at the end of it. We didn't go in for the sauna this time around but we almost became Mary Poppins being swept away by the wind. Even with all the wind it was still a great place to view the edge of the world from. You can see Malmö and Copenhagen joined by the Oresund (imagine that O has a strike through it) Bridge and you can watch the incoming storm where there is no distinction between rain clouds and water anymore and the cities disappear. That was therefore our cue to leave, sorry there is no picture, the Munchkin forgot her camera.

Now for a new section of my blog called "You know you're not in Yackandandah anymore when..." (thanks goes to Tommo for the title inspiration)

a) Eggs come in cartons of 10 instead of a dozen. Although funnily enough they do have half dozen cartons, hence why it's taken me 3 months to discover this :-).
b) You know how great the health system is when the Sjukhus (hospital, or word4word translation - sick house) is sporting a lovely view of the the cemetry across the road.
c) Speaking of cemetries, they are really pretty and green, almost as pretty as the botanical gardens. No brown dead grass and pattersons curse here.
d) Speaking of pattersons curse, I keep getting in trouble for calling native european wild flowers "weeds"!
e)They sell diaries that go from July 2010 to June 2011, who would have thunk it!
Last but not least....
f)The word for 'exit' contains the word 'fart' in it "utfart", rather appropriate I think.

That's it for now, it's actually sunny today so I am off to soak it up before another week of rain.
I hope you are all well and I hope to post some more Spain pictures soon.

Keep in touch.

Hej do.