Adventures of Wes and Laura

How Life in Germany Isn't the Same: Part I, Laundry

I've decided that to help everyone understand just how different it can be living in Germany, I can share a sample of our funnier experiences with the German ways of life. I'll begin with laundry...

We've now attempted to wash our clothes a few different times, and we're about to get the hang of it. The first attempts were at the apartment we stayed our first week. This eco-washing machine, the Okolavamat, caused us a lot of consternation. 102 minutes seems like a long time to wash clothes, doesn’t it? But the Okolavamat takes many breaks. It put a little water in, spun for 30 seconds and stops for a couple minutes, then repeats the cycle. I suppose it uses sensors to detect how much water has been added so that it adds just enough water to wet the clothes and just enough energy to wash them. I like the Okolavamat now, but when we first turned it on we kept thinking that it was malfunctioning because it kept stopping during the cycle. Below see Laura using her German-Spanish dictinionary trying to figure it out. And then after seeing it work we thought that it was ‘too’ ecological’ and wasn’t going to clean any of our clothes. Well it works good enough. But it seems no one has dryers in there homes here in Berlin(well not folks of our economic status), so after the schleudern, (spinning) we have to hang up our clothes. That’s tricky in a small Berlin apartment without any outdoor space.

Since we moved into our own place, we've made two trips to the laundromat. It's probably a half-mile away and we've stuffed our clothes in backpacks and a big laundry bag and once biked and once walked there. All the machines are tied to a central computer, where you put the money in, but of course the first time we went we did't know that nor how much money it cost to wash a load, and what was really was bad was that we didn't know it closed at 10 pm. So the first visit we managed to wash the clothes, run them a min in the centrifuge, and dry them for about 5 minutes before an older woman, waiting on just us, closed up the shop. So we went back with the soaked clothes and set them out all over our living room for a few days before they all dried. This Sunday we returned and this time did better, but we realized that to wash, centrifuge (to save dryer time), and dry three loads that it costs us 14 Euro or about $18. So from now on we're going to be very liberal with our definition of 'dirty' clothes!

posted by Wes and Laura @ 9/19/2006 06:15:00 AM