A lazy Saturday morning

Bon jour! I hope this finds you all well. We are currently doing pretty much nothing and it is fabulous. I have some laundry downstairs in the washer, so eventually I will have to go get it and put it in the dryer. Laundry here takes about two hours to wash and one to two hours to dry, so it is quite a time consuming project. The laundry room in our building (and all buildings in Luxembourg) is in a common room in the basement, but we have our own dedicated washer and dryer (that we also own -- just another thing to try and sell in two years!). The dryers don't vent outside, they are condensers, so it pulls the water out of the clothes and deposits it in a reservoir that you occasionally empty down the drain or use as distilled water for ironing. I'll pause while those of you that know me well howl at the idea of me ironing something. I will have to suck it up and do a little ironing later this weekend, though, as our shipment from the US finally arrived on Wednesday after being en route since August 21st. I am a happy girl. Some of my suits are pretty wrinkly and will have to go to the cleaners, but a few I am hoping can be ironed out okay. Andy's suits were beyond hope and are now spending the weekend at the cleaners with all of the other Luxembourgish suits. I am sure they will play nice but will be glad to be back home.



We went to Cologne, Germany last Sunday. I can't say it was our best performance as the seasoned travelers that we are...we pretty much got in the car, programmed "Cologne Zentrum" in to the TomTom and were off. We were about an hour away from our destination and while in slow traffic, this little "ding" went off and some sort of warning light in the car was flashing. Andy was driving, so I was charged with the task of reading the owners manual (in French) to try and figure out what the symbol meant. I thought I was reading that it was an indicator of a flat tire, so we pulled off at an exit and found three very nice German motorcyclists, who spoke a tiny spot of English and could read a tiny bit of French. After some gesturing and pointing at the manual and some kicking of the tires, we finally figured out among the five of us that the light must mean that something electronic was bad in the car, but that the tires were fine. So off we were back on the Autobahn (max speed for the day was a little shy of 200 km, or about 120 mph, and we still got passed) and later in the week figured out how to reset the electronic system and the car has been fine ever since. Every day is an adventure! Cologne was nice, but we had no map, no idea of what to see (other than the Hard Rock), and pretty much wandered around for a few hours looking for the Hard Rock or an internet cafe, only to eventually find out that it was about 150 meters from where we were, we had just turned right instead of looking down the street to the left. Amateurs! We had a delectable dinner, even though sadly Andy's favorite dish (chicken spinach artichoke dip) was no longer on the menu. At least the nachos were there.

We are close to finalizing our car orders, so hopefully they will get ordered this week. They are made to order in Europe, very few dealerships have more than just showroom cars on the lot. They usually have some that you can test drive, but no true inventory. Andy's will be a manual transmission, and since I am going to have to drive it to the Frankfurt airport on our way to the US for Christmas (Andy managed to fenagle his flight to the US as his return trip from his flight here, so he is flying from Lux to Frankfurt -- I will drop him off at the airport and then drive to Frankfurt and he will join up with me there and then we are on the same flight to Cincinnati), I am going to have to finally learn to drive a stick for real. I have been taught a few times, I think I could get through it in an emergency, but it would definitely not be pretty. We are going to have our first lesson tomorrow in the vacant parking lot (because everything is closed here on Sundays, even gas stations and grocery stores) of the, wait for it, IKEA. I hate that place and never want to go back, but there are not many large parking lots here so we will have to make another trip there this weekend. At least we don't have to return anything or buy anything. Ugh. I am sure driving lessons will make for some entertaining stories!

That is about all that is new here, other than we had a bad experience with grilling pork steak a few nights ago and ended up throwing it over the balcony into the woods. I am sure some animal was happy for a treat. I think we will stick to chicken for awhile until we learn our cuts of meat a bit better. We would have failed miserably on Letterman. Hope you are all happy and healthy!

Love,
Lesley

PS It is foggier than San Francisco here most mornings until about noon. Crazy.