The Thatched roof project.

Back in July we happened to take a little detour into one of the side streets here not far from the house. Just thought you'd like a little update on the finished product.


This pile of straw.....Ended up on this house....

....which then ended up looking like this....
Can't really come up with a price just by looking at the house, but the story goes that a thatched roof is more expensive than tile, but there's no additional cost of eavestroughing or roof ventilation. I started out trying to sort out the difference between the cost of a square meter, versus a "square", which is 100 square feet, and decided I wasn't going to go there.
Too many variables.
Suffice to say putting any kind of roof on a house that size is going to set you back a pretty penny. We don't really need to know.

Nice job though, innit?

Little ironies.

Not too much happening today. Managed to spruce up the interior of the car a tad, after our recent bout of visitors. Guess I just didn't have a chance or the motivation to get out there with the vacuum cleaner up to this point.
Also took a little trip to my favourite store ever since I figured I'd take off the little sticker do dad that we had to buy to drive on the roads in Slovenia. There was no way it was coming off without the help of a razor scraper, and I probably have two or three of these things, but didn't think to ship one over here.


Meanwhile, Gabe keeps sending me more places to look at compliments of the relocation people in Vienna. Talk about a contrast from when we came here! I think we're up somewhere in the range of a dozen to 15 places to look at. That is of course, if we do manage to get around to them all. There were a couple that looked like it was a bit of a hike for Gabe to get to work, so we might eliminate them from the list.
I think we saw a total of four places when we came to the Hengelo area.

Anyway.....right after I got a note from her earlier today, the phone rang. So I was a little confused when there was someone on the other end speaking Dutch, since I just figured Gabe was making a follow up call to the note. The chances of Gabe speaking fluent Dutch was pretty slim, so I told this person she must have the wrong number, but she wasn't about to give up....

See, here's the thing.

Back, oh I dunno, about six months ago, for something to do, and with the encouragement of my significant other, I put an ad in the local rag offering English lessons. Don't laugh, it is something I can certainly do, and figured it would maybe bring in a couple shekels to boot.
So I ran the ad for a couple weeks, and heard nary a peep. So I just figured fine, nobody around here thinks their English is all that bad (little do they know) and simply never gave it another thought.

Until today.

Wow. Here I thought I was a shoo-in for the Procrastinator of the Year Award, but obviously I'm only in double "A", and this lady on the phone is Major League.

So she had managed to keep my number for some six months or more, and then finally today decided to muster up her courage and give me a call.
Like I said. Wow.

Either that or one of her kids finally said, "Mom, your English sucks, why don't you just phone that guy?"

So I actually felt kind of bad when I had to explain to her that we're moving to another country.

I mean, what could I say?

Getting together once a week would be a bit of a non-started I'm afraid, since I'm pretty sure the airfare alone would make the lessons a tad pricey. Plus of course, do I rent a car? Take the train? And then of course there's the per Diem....and well, I'd have to stay over...

All kidding aside, it's too bad I suppose, since I could have been taking this person's money for the last six months.

Jammer!*


By the way, I have it on pretty good authority that the Austrians suck when it comes to English. Hmmm....




In other news, the neighbourhood has been somewhat quieter now that the house down the street has been completely leveled.
Of course, since these places don't have basements, there's not even a hole to fill in.




*for those of you who don't speak the lingo, that's pronounced "yammer", and it sort of means, "too bad", or as the Germans would say "shade".....oh...and with that one you pronounce the 'e'.
like...Porsche
And it's not like shade, as in a window shade, but pronounced with a long 'a'....
sort of like "shahdeh".


Oh forget it..

No more beds at the Inn.

Which isn't to say there's no place to sleep, since we still have the two beds that the owners left here for us, but the last of the "big" beds is now taken apart and ready to go.
It seems like I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I have a nagging suspicion that, once we come back from our house hunting in Vienna, and then on to Canada and back, there's not going to be a whole heap of time to mess about with these types of things.
I mean, it will all depend on what type of living arrangements we come up with, but I'm sure once the movers get the word to come in, they won't need any more than a couple days to show up.
It's probably better if I'm ready.The rest of the time seems to be spent wandering around trying to arrange our "stuff" so that it gets packed in a sensible fashion. Plus I really and truly don't want any of the "stuff" that was left behind by the owners.
Got enough of my own junk, thanks.


Oh, did I say "junk"?


I'll probably take a little trip to Ikea tomorrow to pick up a couple more of their nifty little clear plastic storage containers, and then head on into Enschede with the sewing machine. We bought the thing last November some time, and aparently it can be switched to 120 volts, but for that you need the proper cord. Had to order it of course, and I was originally only going to go pick up the cord. Meanwhile there was some rumblings about the tension giving the operator some grief, so I'll drop off the machine for the sewing machine guy to look at. Pretty sure it's no longer under warranty, but we'll see.

You may be wondering if I'm going to be doing all that on the bike? Well, no.
Not Enschede, and not a sewing machine. Gabe is once again going down to Bonn tomorrow and this time I don't have to drive, since there are two of them going from the Hengelo office and there was an offer from the Plant Manager to drive.


I'm just so sad.


Pretty sure I'll get over it.