New Digs

This is great! We finally have a new place to live, and it's really nice, too.

We had been living in an older, small-ish one-bedroom apartment, with a 35-minute walk to work, and a minimum of a 15-minute walk to even the closest store.

Now, we're about a 10-minute walk to work, and about a 2-minute walk to all the downtown shops and restaurants. (There aren't loads of shops and restaurants, but there are enough to keep us entertained for a while.) We still have a nice set of south-facing windows, and have a view right out over the harbour. The shipyard has leased the apartment, and we will pay rent to the shipyard. The yard is simply growing so quickly that they know they need pretty much any housing in this town that they can get their hands on. They now have a full-time property manager who Kes and I refer to as a mafioso, because if you want to make money with your basement apartment, you get in with him, and he'll keep it occupied!

To give some idea of prices, we are paying 6,500 kroner per month, including cable TV (basic) and internet. We will have to pay our electrical bills, and we don't know how much that will be, but we are very happy with this. If we hadn't taken it when we saw it tonight, there was someone coming in behind us to see it, and we believe they would have taken it. That's $1,300 Canadian per month.

Mitigating that cost, though, is the fact that the place is really nicely furnished - down to a corkscrew and a garlic press (not that I'd know what to do with the second one - but Kes says it's nice to have).

An interesting item is the fact that both apartments we've lived in are heated through wires in the floor - no baseboard heaters. Also, clothes dryers don't seem to be common - pretty much everyone has a washer, but then dry on a rack, or outside on a clothesline. We have a shower, without a tub (same at the last place), and a toilet that has two types of flush - half tank and full tank. (no, they're not labelled #1 and #2, but they should be). Another household difference is that it seems to be standard for a double bed to have two separate duvets on it, one for each person. I suppose it stops any fighting over the blankets!

Okay, we're off to our newly-close pub to enjoy an 80-kroner ($16) beer.

Cheers,

Ashley