It's official, we have a new home in Warsaw. Tom and I spent the weekend moving into our new apartment. It is so so so nice to be reunited with our furniture, clothes, and personal belongings....specifically our king size bed. After 6+ weeks of sleeping on an air mattress and in a hotel we could not be happier to have our own bed.
The move went really smoothly. Not having been through one of these international moves we weren't sure what to expect. Fortunately, one of the movers in the crew spoke English which was very helpful. Not only did the movers bring our items from the truck into the apartment, but they also helped us unpack everything. It was super helpful! We were also able to get our cable and internet installed on Friday as well. I did have to sit on hold for 45 minutes to get someone from the cable company who could speak English, but that was a small price to pay for having cable/internet the same day we moved in.
Since a lot of folks have asked here's the scoop on our place. It is in a great location right in the city center. Tom has a 15 minute walk to work from our apartment and the metro and bus lines are all a 5 minute walk away. Behind our building we have a great park, called Saski Park, where we can take Charlie for long walks. We also have a very large farmer's market, called Hala Mirowksa, in our backyard which is open 6 days a week with fresh produce, dairy, meat and eggs. It's great to be able to go and get produce multiple times a week. Our apartment itself is quite large for European standards....it's 170 square meters (about 1650 square feet). It has 3 bedrooms....i.e. plenty of room for visitors, 2 bathrooms and a great sun porch. It is on the 5th floor of the building, which is technically the 6th floor since the Europeans count the ground floor as 0. A few interesting things that folks have asked about.....yes, our fridge/freezer is smaller than in the states...in fact much smaller. We have a dishwasher in our kitchen which really surprised me. Our washer/dryer is one machine that handles both functions and it resides in the master bathroom, which is typical of most European houses. I know that people are eager to see pictures. It is still a bit messy around here, but we will take some soon and post them to the blog.
We spent most of the weekend unpacking and getting settled. It took me 4 tries to figure out the washer/dryer. It is an Italian brand so I used google translate to figure out what the settings were but was still having trouble. Fortunately, I was able to find the user's manual on the internet. It also took us some time to figure out how to work the cook top stove and oven. The only thing we have made on the stove is tea, so we will see if we have it right later this week when we make dinner. ; )
Of course, getting settled for Tom meant making sure we had a fully functioning television. We could not bring our TV from the states because it doesn't work here. So, we went to the Polish equivalent of Best Buy and got ourselves a European TV. We even got the sales guy to come over after his shift and set everything up for us! And, our Polish basic cable include about 25 stations in
English.
Moving into our apartment has also shifted our perspective slightly on Warsaw. While we were staying in the Westin it still felt like vacation or something temporary. Now, there is a sense of permanence and a feeling of home.
Since we have a home...we welcome you all to come visit! : )
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