Home sweet Home I

Three weeks ago, we moved into our new home. The week before we had cut down trees and bushes, painted walls and drove around the city to buy paint, brushes, tools, gardening equipment and lots of stuff we needed to make the house livable. Moving was a pain in the ass, as it always is, and I couldn't sleep the first night because my body ached so much from all the lifting and shifting, but it turned out to be totally worth it - the views alone compensated us for all pain suffered.

The first thing we noticed when unpacking was how much stuff we had had back in our city flat. We now had six rooms to live in instead of 3, but still our stuff didn't seem to fit. Only yesterday, when the guest room got its new floor and was ready to be furnished, we managed to fit most of our stuff into the rooms. Still, a lot is still improvised, and it will take us half a year at least until everything is as it is supposed to be. But well, I couldn't let you wait half a year for the pictures, which is why I made some of what the inside of the house looks like now:

This is one of the nicest pieces of furniture we have: a very old, turquoise cupboard that contains all our cooking books and board games.

This is my office - huge, as it should be. It's the first time I have office and bed in a separate room, which is very cool and motivates you so much more to work.

This us Sandra's office, right next to mine. Her's is slightly bigger, but as you can see from her bookshelves, she needs a lot more room than me.

This is the still unfinished living room, with the TV taking away part of the view of the nice fireplace away. Still, the living room is huge and great to live in.

The really cool thing about having your own house is that you can paint everything exactly the way you want. I made a start by painting one wall of my bedroom green (Sandra's is blue, by the way) and I love it!

This room, finally, is the Erasmus guest room! We repainted the whole room, made a new floor and put a bed and a bedsofa in there, so that three people can sleep in this room alone. And because we've got many other rooms to sleep in, the house will soon be ready to host the next Erasmus meeting. So keep in mind - next autumn, this is where you'll wake up :-)

Our new Home

Let's take a short tour around the house. This is the southern side of the house with the balcony and the entrance. The living room, the office and the bedrooms all have windows to this side.



This is the entrance on the ground floor. To the right, you can access the washing room, the shoe room (!) and the workshop. To the left are the bedrooms and the ground floor toilet and bath.



This is one of the bedrooms on the ground floor.



This is the downstairs bathroom, the toilet and the second entrance on the ground floor.



If you go upstairs and turn left, this is what you see: one door to the kitchen on the left, one to the living room on the right.



This is the kitchen. It's quite big, but taking pictures of the whole room was hard.



This is the living room with the fireplace.



Behind the fireplace, there is a door leading out to one of the two balconies.



This is the balcony right next to the kitchen...



... and this the main one that we saw on the first picture.



There are some more rooms on the first floor, but they all look similar (and I forgot to take pictures). If you go outside again, there is this path leading up the hill through the garden.



To the right of this path, there is a place to sit and barbecue.



The last picture shows the view from the garden to the house. As there are lots of trees and bushes at the moment, the house is hard to see. We'll have some major gardening to do.



There is a lot more to see, but I guess it's easier if you just visit ;-)

A new Home

After a long, long time, I've decided to finally put together some pictures and make another post on this blog again. The main purpose is, of course, to make you jealous of my flat, as there is nothing else in my life at the moment you could be jealous of. We'll start with a view of the main part, that holds the big sofa:

The next picture also includes our dinner table (on which we have had dinner like three times in the whole year we are living here - eating in front of the TV still rules ...)
This here is the view from my school lesson preparing desk, one of the best views of the city.
Those two pics show the view on the other side of the house, from our balcony.

This, again, is the sofa. Sadly, it has convince no couchsurfer so far to stay at our place.
This is my bed, under the roof as almost everything in the flat.
You're right, what you can see here, is the kitchen:


and this is the lesson preparing desk I mentioned before.
And last but not least, the balcony, filled with nice spices for our dinners (on the sofa).
It actually looks better in real life that in the picture, so you better come and see it some time. Especially the sofa would be soooo happy to host a sleepy guest :-)

A Taste of Finland (stupid)

Graduation

Hey! I'm back among the bloggers, but don't expect too much of me for the following months. I'm going through a hard time (not in private, only at Uni ;-) and will have little time to make huge posts. But if there is a picture worth uploading, I'll do so!



This is Sandra and her friends at the graduation ceremony. I didn't know I had such a terribly clever girlfriend; she passed all exams with the highest mark you can get. Seems like I'm in for a lifetime of intelectual inferiority!