Apartment

Guess what?? I am writing this from our new apartment! 

Do you know what that means? We're no longer living out of suitcases!!! (Living out of suitcases day count total: 30) I cannot even explain how good it felt to unpack. Knowing that all our suitcases are empty and I don't have to rifle through them to find Tylenol/church socks/stuffed animals is SUPERB. 

We also lucked out and got a great apartment for an excellent price in the perfect location. Big thanks to Mihai and Vlada for all of their hard work!!! We are also conveniently located on Nikolai street (spelled the Romanian way), which is delightful because when we lived in Germany, we lived on Catherine Street. Fun coincidence! 

We signed the contract Saturday, which was a fairly lengthy process, during which the kids and I sat outside in the courtyard (to avoid having them bouncing off the walls inside and freaking out the landlady). There were a couple of stray cats out there, all of which Miriam had a hard time not petting (she kept waving hi at them and trying to give them kisses).

It took quite awhile but at the end we were very excited to have our own apartment!!

We moved in the next day (we needed time to get some furnishings for the apartment) and are basically completely settled now. 

So here's the tour! (also, please excuse the poor lighting--the camera on my new phone isn't great, and I didn't feel like messing with the settings)

This is the entry hall with the front door there in the center. Fun fact: that mirrored cabinet is for shoes and coats, but also doubles as our dresser (because our bedroom has no storage!)

The toilet room (not to be confused with the bathroom, which you'll see later):

The kitchen (oddly enough, you can't see the fridge and oven in this picture but you CAN see the washing machine. It's a strange layout!):

While we're there, check out the crazy settings on this washer:

p.s. Since it's Europe, we don't have a dryer and are air drying all of our clothes. If anyone has tips about how to make them not come out all stiff and crunchy, let me know!

Our room (I forgot to take a picture of the incredible view out our window, but I will soon! We are on the 6th floor, so the view is awesome):

The kids room:

The bathroom:

Interesting shower hose gizmo, meaning no lengthy showers for us this year (because who wants to take a long shower when you aren't standing under your own personal waterfall?):

And the living room:

It's a good apartment, and while the building is old (probably 50 years or so, if we're any good at guessing), it's been well cared for. It's actually really interesting to be living in a building this old in this part of the world--it was likely built in the Khrushchev era during the time when Moldova was part of the Soviet Union. It's hard not to think about people living here then, when these buildings were new (possibly several families living in this one apartment, if it was a communal one) and people living here 25 years ago, when Moldova finally gained independence. There's a lot of history here, and the people in this apartment lived through it.

More about all that in the next post, but suffice it to say that we're so pleased to have somewhere to live!