For 3 years in Bolzano, we lived without many modern-day appliances/conveniences that we had in North America. In Bolzano we had, in no particular order:

• no car
• no microwave
• no dishwasher
• no clothes dryer
• no TV set
• no DVD player (although we had them in our computers)
• no VCR
• no CD player (although, again we had that in our computers)
• no functioning stereo system (technically the was an old one that came with our apartment, but it didn’t work)
• no cable or satellite television channels
• no toaster
• no garbage disposal

But I didn’t miss any of those things. Nope, we had a washing machine and Internet access, which turn out to be the two things that are the basic necessities of life as far as I’m concerned. 😉 My hat goes off to all those women, past and present, who were or are forced by circumstances beyond their control to do without either of the things that I find I can’t live (well) without. I cannot overstate the importance of the invention of the washing machine, for example. What a wonderful appliance, one you really come to appreciate all the more when you’ve just spent 2 months doing all your laundry by hand. Drip drying clothes in a shower stall is not all it’s cracked up to be, even when you’re just washing clothes for two people.

No, I’d be hard pressed to give up permanent access to a washing machine, and having our own washing machine here in our building in Tübingen is quite a treat. We even have a clothes dryer, too, and that’s a huge plus in a building where they don’t have clotheslines (like we had available in Bolzano), and where the weather is a bit too humid (and/or rainy) to hang clothes up to dry. Well, you can do it, but it takes days before they are dry enough to wear. And just forget about drying towels in this climate – the towels never did quite dry each day after our showers in that vacation apartment.

BTW, we also now have a dishwasher in our current apartment, as one came with place. Now that’s definitely a luxury. I didn’t mind washing dishes in Bolzano, but since CC often did the dinner dishes there, he has been particularly happy to have the dishwasher available here in Tübingen. But I didn’t mind the lack of that appliance in Bolzano, and it isn’t on my list of essential things I can’t live without in this modern age.

No, the other thing on the list is Internet access at home. I’m totally addicted to the Internet, I guess. I can’t tell you how many times a day recently I’ve had the thought “Oh, I’ll just look that up on the Internet … ” only to realize, oops, nope, we don’t have Internet at home at the moment. Moreover, I haven’t been able to do email and blogging every day, since the Internet spots are neither convenient nor nice places in which to hang out. So, that’s been a downside of having no Internet in the apartment.

I know, I know, with the trials and tribulations that people really labor under, my little problem with having no Internet access doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. That last expression comes from a line in one of my favorite romantic movies, Casablanca. I wasn’t quite sure of the exact line, and true to form I thought, “Oh, I’ll just look that up before I post this.”

And I did – while sitting at home, surfing the Internet. Yup, we’re back online with Internet access from our apartment as of today – whoohoo!

I’d say that now we can now sit on the couch to surf the Internet, except we don’t have a couch yet. I know, details, details. That piece of furniture has been ordered, but it won’t arrive unil sometime in December. I guess it will wind up being an unintentional kind of Christmas present to ourselves, since we couldn’t find any store that would make and deliver one sooner.

But, some other furniture (4 bookcases, a dresser, a coat rack and 2 end tables for that as yet non-existent couch) did get delivered today. So it’s starting to feel like we’re settling into the apartment a bit more. I mean, while we don’t have a sofa, we do have fluffy towels thanks to the clothes dryer, automatically washed dishes, and Internet access available in the privacy of our own home. To paraphrase yet another quote from Casablanca, I think this could be the start of a beautiful relationship … with our apartment in Tübingen. 😉

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P.S.Here’s a clip of the ending of Casablanca that I found on YouTube, in case you want to check out the original two quotes I referenced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3odtrWWc2A. The clip contains the complete ending to the movie, though, so if you’ve never seen the movie and you watch this clip, this is your spoiler alert!

P.P.S. When I was trying to come up with a good title for this post, the Bare Necessities song suddenly came to mind. Which, as all you Disney fans out there will recognize as coming from the Disney cartoon version of The Jungle Book. Rather than re-write my entire post to incorporate that throughout the post, instead of Casablanca theme, I decided to just add the Disney song clip in this postscript. Consider it as a (sort of) bonus track to say thanks for your patience while you were waiting out my sporadic access to the Internet. After all, it’s yet another sign that I can now look up these clips, and everything else online, anytime I want, now that our Internet access has arrived. 🙂