The Love Shack

This past week, Steph worked more than her usual "new" babysitting hours and so we would go out in the mornings to World Coffee and sit for a bit until she heads off to work. The employees at World Coffee defiantly recognize us now and so I think it is time to switch coffee shops. We also got The Sims 2 and so there have been many late nights spent on my laptop. In Düsseldorf, their spring is like our very hot Victoria summer and so we have been adapting to the heat. I quickly realized that I packed mostly for winter, which only lasted a month for us. Now we are in over twenty degree heat. I think we will get very brown. Turns out H&M is our Old Navy and has super cute, summery clothes for very cheap. This is good for Steph as she needs to wear something other than the track pants she packed. On Sunday, we decided to take advantage of the intense heat and head down to the "beach". The "beach" is really a bunch of sand patches by the Rhein. It turned out to be much better then expected. If you block your peripheral vision with your hands, you can pretend you are actually on a real beach. So we packed a picnic lunch, which turned out to be afternoon snacks, and headed down. Currently, The Düsseldorf Eurovision Song Contest (I think it is like American Idol but MUCH smaller) is causing us much grief. We needed to take the bus to the beach but the buses no longer go the same routes as before and go in a completely opposite direction. There are no signs or notices explaining this and so we have opted to only go to places we can reach on foot or by S-Bahn. As it turns out, these fake beaches are quite popular and they were almost completely full. One family was even having a barbecue on the beach. Steph and I tanned in the sun until two young German boys decided to start playing soccer near us. For fear of being hit in the face, we packed up and went home. It was the best Sunday we have had thus far in Deutschland.
The rain in Düsseldorf is the oddest thing ever. It will be very sunny and within five minutes, it will start lightly raining and within thirty seconds will be pouring buckets. In a fifteen minute walk home, we experience sun, heavy rain, and my second ever thunderstorm. It was pretty cool. There is supposed to be another thunderstorm this week.
Due to the Eurovision Fest, we have been temporarily kicked out of our apartment. There are people coming to see the finals and they have booked our place. We must be good tenants because our landlord has allowed us to stay in his Studio Apartment. We think he uses it for some storage and for when they have family over. One downside is that to get to our place, we have to go through part of his and so we can watch our landlord and his family play outside...only a little awkward. It is fully furnished but not quite something one could live in permanently. If I could combine the two apartments, we would truly have a perfect apartment. The bathroom is a big bathroom with a tub!!!! How I have missed taking bathes. Our beds our two comfy futons which is nicer than our two, hard-mattress single beds. We had to get up early this morning to move our stuff and what we saw in the apartment surprised us. The apartment decoration is stuck in the 60's and the colouring is red, white, and black. We have heart shaped lamps, pictures, crafts, magnets etc. The sheets are red and the kitchen accessories are red from kitchen chairs down to the utensils. We have a jukebox, an old arcade game, different 60's advertisments, a record player etc. Steph has named the apartment "The Love Shack" and has been singing the song all day...much to my annoyance. It is really nice as a temporary home but I miss our big kitchen with our oven. One of the downsides is that we are not sleeping alone. In two big, glass cupboards houses multiple antique dolls of all shapes and sizes and an assortment of stuffed animals. Kind of reminds me of one of those horror movies where the dolls come to life in the middle of the night and kill people...