Today is laundry day.

Why is today laundry day? Because I was so happy that I was going to make it to the gym after work, that I took the train the wrong way. So I decided to get my workout in at home, taking my laundry up and down 6 floors…”functional fitness”.

I have been avoiding laundry day for as long as possible. No one wants to go down to the basement.

Luckily there were two men chain smoking in the laundry room, adding to its fresh appeal. With broken phrases and more hand gestures, I was able to determine which machine was the washer and which was the dryer (and rejoiced that there was a dryer), that one of the settings was for “synthetics”–note: the German word for synthetic is synthetic, and where to pour the detergent. I dumped in (what I deemed was) an appropriate amount of detergent.

Although the washing went ok, next week’s task is learning all the words on the dryer. I must have used some sort of steam setting because after 40 minutes of “drying”, my clothes were wet, steaming and scalding.

I think this is the cleanest my clothes have ever been.