So we quickly realized the key piece of furniture we needed to buy before we can move into the new apartment is a bed.  There are a couple of big furniture stores in a neighboring town, and last Saturday, one of Chris’ new colleagues kindly gave us a ride out there. After spending a whole lot of time figuring out how to buy a bed, we did successfully purchase one — it was delivered yesterday.

I know that buying a bed may not seem like an outing that would led to an hours-long adventure in vocabulary, cultural norms, and furniture stores.  But in fact, the way the beds work in Germany is vastly different from North America. I’m talking about both the “hardware” of the bed, as well as the sheets, etc. you use on top. Today’s post is all about  the “hardware”, the physical pieces of the bed (as opposed to the bedding, i.e. sheets, pillows, etc.).

Truly, one of the interesting things about travelling the world and living abroad is getting to know the local norms and customs when it comes to all kinds of things. However, one of the complicated things about travelling the world and living abroad is figuring out how to ask the right questions to find the right pieces you need when trying to settle in and buy something like a bed.

The last time Chris and I purchased a bed frame, many years ago, we were sleeping on futons. The only complicated part then was that we wanted a flat futon frame for the bed, not  a frame that would morph into a couch on demand. We couldn’t find one of those non-transforming ones at the time, so we had to have one specially made. But, to the best of my recollection, ordering a “frame” got you all the following parts, which were included as standard with the frame:  the frame “body”, the slats to put the futon on, a headboard and a footboard.  So, aside from having to special order the frame, we just ordered a “frame” back then.

Fast forward to last Saturday in Germany. Beds frames here are priced and sold in pieces; there’s nothing included with the frame. This makes things complicated to select a “frame”, since you have to separately select all the parts. The beds are displayed as all put together, though, so you have to realize that you need to choose each part individually, not something that was obvious to two people not familiar with this system of bedding.

All the parts of the bed assembled

While at the store, we needed to able to read the prices to see what how much each part of the frame cost, since things were very rarely priced as a complete unit.  So, we needed to have a good idea of the vocabulary for all the essential parts:

1. You need the edge frame, called the Rahmen. 

2. You need the Kopfbretter, the headboard.

3. You need the Matratzen, the mattresses.  That’s not a typo, and I’m not talking about a box spring and mattress – for a bed the size of a queen-size bed in North America,  you get 2 single-sized mattresses. That’s what you see in that photo.

4.  You need the Latterosten, the part with the slats that you put the mattress on; in the following photo, one mattress has been flipped up to reveal the Latterosten underneath:

Showing off the Latterosten

Just as there are two mattresses, there are two separate Latterosten pieces. In the set of photos you can see that we got slightly fancy Latterosten, which allow the head and the feet on each side to be raised separately, if you want.

Showing the tilt feature of the Latterosten

Showing the titl with a mattress on top

Now, in terms of mastering the vocabulary for this particular shopping expedition, note that the word for mattresses in German sounds very similar to the corresponding word in English, so I didn’t have trouble remembering that one. And the word for headboard contains Kopf, “head”, a word I may have picked up from watching too many reruns of Hogan’s Heroes in my youth, so I that word was also easy to remember.

That left trying to remembering the words for the slats, Latterosten,  and the word for outer frame itself, the Rahmen. Now I ask you, do those two terms not sound like a “roasted Italian coffee drink” and “Chinese noodles”, respectively? That’s how we remembered the terms when we were in the store. So, I just needed to look at the tags and find the prices for the roasted coffee and for the noodles. Simple, no?

You can tell I’m going to be fluent in German in no time at all. 😉