Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Home Sweet Home!

I'm taking a break from writing about travel to focus on home.  And what do you think of when you think of home?  Family of course!  Happy Birthday, Mom!  And Happy Birthday to my good friend Amber!

We moved into our new sweet apartment when we got back from Germany.  We found it through the internet.  There is a service here where they link people leaving on vacations or for work with people looking for apartments.  And we loved the first place we saw.  So, Ywonne (pronounced Yvonne) is in India at an Ashram for two months and we are here enjoying her apartment, her friendly neighbors, and watering her plants.  Such a deal!

"Our" apartment is on the ground floor.
Some of you have listened to my laments about how tiny our old apartment was.  Well, we now have enough space for guests!  (Hint, hint!)  The picture above is the front of the apartment.  There are four floors but we only have to climb a few steps - lucky us!  The larger window to the left of the door in the picture above gives morning light to the kitchen.  The picture below is our spacious new kitchen - where Darrell is presently cooking me a lovely salmon dinner.

Bright colored bowl is for compost.  Life is good!
The next picture is of our dining/living room.  It has lots of books (mostly in German), two couches and a table with four chairs as well as a stereo system.  There is another set of windows to the right of the white couch.  This apartment gets lots of light!

Dining/Living Room
Darrell is working in the office below.  Oh, well, he's not working now - he's cooking.  But this is where he spends a ridiculous amount of his waking hours.

Office with great internet connection
The bedroom is the best - not because we get to sleep there, though that is nice too, but because it has a patio off of it that leads into the yard/garden.  I've been putting my feet up on iron railing and reading trash novels when I'm done with the days work.  It gets great afternoon light and is extraordinarily pleasant...

We get a bed, a shrine, and a fantastic patio!
The yard is larger than this shows.  The picture is looking back towards the patio after the bedroom.

Patio from the yard
The last picture is a silly one from the day we saw the apartment.  I had just bought a used scooter (this was before I had a bicycle) and was cruising along with it.  Scooters are popular transportation here with both young and old - so it isn't as silly as it looks.  Or maybe it is.

Scootin' in Switzerland!