dwelling

with less than one week to go in berlin, i realized that i hadn't posted pictures of my apartment. so here they are...
from this entryway you can head to the bathroom (left of where this picture is taken), straight ahead is the bedroom, the door to the left of the bedroom is the kitchen and to the right (on the other side of the jacket) is the entryway into the living room.
above is a picture from the bathroom showing you what i have to do to turn the shower on. notice the two pipes going into the faucet for hot and cold water. right below the hot and dials is a white cord going out to the right. on the left side of the white cord is a metal circle thingie. for me to take a shower, i have to pull the metal circle thingie out so that the water doesnt go out of the sink faucet, but instead travels up into the shower. and yes, that is the shower with my shampoo bottles directly to the right. the shower curtain doesn't go all the way around the shower so i could brush my teeth while in the shower if i wanted to.
this is my kitchen - more than adequate for me. i have not really cooked since i've been in berlin - just warmed things up. notice the pantry door is open? keeping it open has reduced the number of spiders considerably.
here is the bedroom. in germany, they don't use the fitted sheet and a flat sheet, just a fitted sheet and comforter. and the comforter doesn't go all the way around the bed, it is just big enough for one person and the idea is that you tuck under you all around. see under the lamp between the window and the bookshelf? spiders like to live there. rephrase: likED to live there. then i came along and killed them all.
and voila! the living room, where i spend most of my time. there are only six plants in this picture. i have to take care of at least twelve. but, as of the writing of this post, they are all still alive!
this is the plant i call the monster. it scares me. notice that it even has to be held up by a string.
here is the piano that jp plays. sometimes i pretend to play it, but i can only play like 15 notes of für elise. it doesnt last long. playing those 15 notes four times takes about 2 mintues. then i have nothing else to do.
this is actually where i sit most of the time: rambling, watching tv on my computer, reading the news, chatting to people, etc. notice the plant behind the door? it was trying to attack me, so i had to turn it.
and finally, the dreaded oven. if i had wanted heat, i would need to make this big ceramic thing work. i think you put the fire in the black box on the left at the bottom.

so this is where i have lived the past two months. jp and i were talking about how we could never let someone live in our apartment like this - we're not trusting enough. something about being from north america.