Valentine's Day in Denmark

We were kind of awesome to each other this year.  I "gave" Paul a professional massage appointment (that he actually needed to continue functioning--but that's neither here nor there), lasagna, and homemade chocolate cupcakes.  Paul gave me mint chocolates, flowers, and a "surprise!"

I love surprises.

And so we walked and walked and the whole time I was like, "Are we going to the library?  Are we going to the train station?  Are we going to an organ concert?  Are we going to a new grocery store?!"  And each time it was like, "No. Nope. Noooo. Nein. No."

And then after walking for a pretty long time in a strange suburban neighborhood  I saw and I knew exactly where we were going.  Because it was a place with one of the weirdest and therefore awesomest activities I'd ever seen in my life.

PEOPLE!  Paul took me to a place with the Doctorfish!

You know?  Where you sit on the edge of a big aquarium, stick your feet in, and aaaaaaaaall these fish come and eat all the dead skin off your feet!!

I mean!  It's a totally weird thing to do!

And therefore, it was the perfect Valentine's Day surprise.  Because now we have a memory together (which are always so much more important to me than gifts) of doing something spontaneous, wacky, and technically illegal in the United States.

The Ballad of Devito, the Strangely-Shaped Black Sofa

Two feet tall and eight feet wide, I swear

Waaaaaay back in...November--I think?--Paul was in Denmark for one day.  And on that one day, he had the chance to see exactly one possible apartment that would be free in February.  It was close to the main train station, which was good for our commutes.  It was only going to be around $700/mo without the usual Danish requirement of paying the first three months up front.  It was advertised as being the same size as Aquahaus.  And, it was on a charming street.

I mean, come on, that's pretty charming, right?

So, Paul went to see this apartment.  Then he had me come up to Denmark on that same day to see the apartment.  And, weighing the list of pros and cons, the pros eked out a victory and we decided to take it.

Now, there are some very good things about this apartment, a few of which I already mentioned.  But, others included things like carpet (?!), not being directly above a very cold cellar, and having access to a dryer.

But, there are some decidedly not as good things about this apartment, too.  For example?  Well, the bathroom is the smallest bathroom in the entire scope of my imagination in all possible universes of quantum theory.  

No seriously.  I'll take pictures (maybe, if I can fit in there with a handheld camera...it may be a squeeze).

Also, there is no dishwasher.  This is a horrible, horrible thing after having one here for the first time in our married lives.

Additionally, I'm not entirely sure if the oven/refrigerator/any-cabinet door can open without hitting the opposite wall.

Aaaaaand, if this apartment is the same size as Aquahaus, then I'm the same size as Sweden (fat. chance.).

Numero uno of the cons, however, had to be the fact that it is literally impossible to get anything longer than four feet into the front door.  In fact, if our mattress had not been the kind that originally was delivered in the attitude of a jellyroll, then we would be using sleeping bags for the next three years.

Let me break this down for you:  There are two staircases on either side of our tiny, skinny door.  The one on the right comes up from the ground floor and is approximately two feet wide.  The one on the left continues up to the third floor.  Our door, in this highly accurate illustration, is the red thing.  (The lilliputian bathroom is the blue postage-stamp).

The purple is the impossible u-turn trajectory one has to maneuver to get anything inside.

[Stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this.]

SO, as you can see, it is physically impossible to move something like...oh...say...a couch...into this apartment through the traditional "doorway" method.

Which left the windows.  Yep.  Getting a couch through the second story windows.

My overall point here is that this whole couch thing was REALLY STRESSING US ME OUT!  (And it made me start hating this apartment with the burning of a thousand suns).

It was also stressing out the previous tenants, who tried to get us to buy their used couch for $1,000+.

"HAH!" we said, in our semi-impoverished way.  And in that same e-mail, I wrote that, since we couldn't afford it, we'd actually just go buy an IKEA couch that we could hopefully move up in pieces and that our price was therefore around $500 instead.

Well, dangit but I should have said $50!

Because this morning, as said previous tenants were, with their professional movers, attempting to get their $1000+ weird-shaped Scandinavianly-designed (did I mention weird-shaped?) couch out the window...they discovered that a certain window replacement in 2008 made the opening juuuuuuuust about two inches smaller than before

And their psycho-priced couch was never going to leave that apartment alive!

All of this is just my concise way of saying that now we own a couch, and because Paul's personality (and mine, if we're being honest) absolutely cannot handle any sort of any kind of haggling...he paid $500 for it--

An absurdly short, fat couch that has been christened "Devito" and will live the rest of its unchainsawed days in our apartment.

Fin.