03 June 2016

1. The only reasonable solution I've found for the lack of window screens is velcro-on or double sided tape-on screening that you put on the inside, in front of the window (ours open in.) You can get custom screens, but I'm not putting custom screens on our rental house.

2. We have four trash cans: garbage, textiles, paper and compostables. There are very different pickup periods. The only weekly pickup is the compostable can. The garbage can (which is tiny) only gets picked up every other week, paper once a month and we've never used the textiles one. Not even sure why we have it.

For the first time ever, we now have a little compost pail in the kitchen. And three trash cans.

To recycle bottles, we had to find community recycle containers, and there was one for green one for clear and one for brown glass.

Plastic bottles go back to the store, and there's an automatic machine that takes them, reads the bar code, and refunds you for it. You can also put a whole crate of bottles on a conveyor below and it takes them all.

You get a piece of paper at the end that works like credit to buy more stuff.


There's also a battery recycling station near the house. Pretty cool.



3. We locked ourselves out of our house the other day. The front door locks (that I've used), require a key on both sides of the door to lock/unlock it. Turn it a full revolution, and it sets the deadbolt. Turn it TWO revolutions, and it sets these other bolts up and down our door. Feels very secure. Is this common?

Turns out when you leave a key on the inside of the door, and close it, you can't use a key on the outside to unlock it. And since the door latches every time you close it...

The locksmith used a thick piece of plastic and opened the door in minutes. Cost me 100 Euros.

4. We have a car now. Putting gas in it is very much like in the US, but you pump first, then go inside to pay. In the US, you typically need to pay first.


Oh and Gas is 3x as much as in the US.