Life in London, part 1

Here is the way we lived in London. For about five weeks Asmus and I lived in one room. If two people enter a room and two people come out a month later, that is a good sign of the health of that relationship. Of course, Asmus was sick for about two weeks and I was ill the week after, so we weren't that annoying the entire time.

Here are shots of our temporary home in the Dalton section of the Hackney region of London.

The Living Room. The room where we spent too much of our lives. The blue thing is a futon. I slept on that and sat on there and watched television. I slept on it [That's my arm peeking out the edge.]. Asmus' back started to hurt, so he slept on a mattress on the floor. Do you love the pink television? We wanted a cheap television. We got this cheap television/DVD player for 80 pounds. It was cheap but it was the ugliest thing in the world. The best slash worst was the remote control. The entire thing featured shades of hot pink. The buttons were a darker shade of hot pink than the background. The numbers were a lighter hue than the buttons. It was awful. But I love that television. I got to watch television on a regular basis for the first time since September. I can watch television in Germany but I don't know what anyone is saying, so it is MTV and CNN an hour a day and more on the weekend. I happily while away the sick days in front of my ugly television and smiled.

This was the best feature of the house. The kitchen was beautiful. The stove was 50% bigger than ours in Hamburg. The washing machine works each time you use it. Our machine in Hamburg is kinda like a slot machine. Maybe you get clean clothes out of it, maybe you don't. The refrigerator and freezer were normal sized. I only went to the supermarket ONCE a week. I filled the freezer and we had food for weeks. The only drawback was the lack of flatware. The owner of the apartment had three forks, four spoons, four knives, and one sharp knife [It was a steak knife.]. We were constantly washing forks. That was a pain in the ass.

This was the worst bathroom that I ever had to use on a daily basis. I have used worse at clubs and gas stations. But this was the worse that I had to use regularly. This was worse than the bathrooms that I used at camp. See that round thing in the top left corner. That is a decorative lamp. There is no light bulb inside. It was used to cover up a massive lichen-like feature on the wall. I wanted to get rid of it but then I worried that it might spray deadly spores around the apartment. I hated to use the toilet. The kitchen was made over but the bathroom was from the dark ages. The tub was OK. It was more narrow than a traditional tub. When I showered, the curtain stuck to me. The room was vile.