Laundry

Ah. The laundry: two flights of stairs to the basement; must have booking; key (kept hanging on the wall on the floor above ours) must be available.

Once there, turn on electricity (may require money for meter on the wall).

Forget to take the money, so race back up to apartment, race back down again... the clock is ticking...

So the washing machine instructions (like most things here) are in German, French and Italian, and sometimes the machine won't let you have clothes back after the cycle has finished. In these cases I can't understand how to get the door open.

One time it created a certain sense of panic, mainly because I only had 17 minutes left in my time-slot in which to save the clothes and return safely to apartment.

After pacing a bit, I returned to the apartment hoping to find DH - even for a bit of good Aussie moral support - but sadly he was absent.

So back I went, to discover that I was now able to take my clothes out of the machine after all.

I still don't know why.