Adapting 1

New country, new flat, new things.  We came prepared to make pizza, complete with a stone.

We  have purchased decent wine glasses

Before we would make dinner, however, we had to navigate this:

The controls of our oven

Even more interesting is the name of our oven: SMEG.  We were able to find a SMEG manual on line. "Honey I found the SMEG manual." How often does one get to say that? Good thing we found one because the P setting is a cleaning cycle with temps over 500C  YIKES! and the pointer end of the dial is counter intuitive meaning that one could easily clean whilst meaning to convect.

The dishwasher is no easier.

Our Electrolux dishwasher controls are on the inside.  

This is a very thorough dishwasher.  On the ECO cycle, which I believe is the shortest, it runs for over an hour.   The lower right red light is illuminating the need for dishwasher salt. The water here is so hard that appliances have built-in ion-exchange columns to remove the minerals.  The salt recharges the column resin.

We have pigeons, but not as many as we expected.  English pigeons are quite robust.

Pigeon droppings on roof terrace wall. Wine glass is for scale. 

We need cloth napkins Mom. 

We are developing a house rhythm with our cooking, shopping, appliances, the garbage, recycling, the BBC 1 through 4, Eric bicycling to work, Alice walking to school, Dozens Bakery, getting the USA newspapers at noon.  We have a library card and neighbors from Greensboro, as in North Carolina. This weekend we are going to a lab pot-luck, Alice has a sleep-over and E&G are going to the movies and dinner.

Onwards!