Entries tagged with “apartment” from kotaraindustries.com, the helsinki branch
Officially, I have been homeless since August 31st. I am very very happy to report that I am 100% completely moved in and settled into my new permanent apartment in Helsinki. I no longer live out of suitcases. I have a kitchen where I can cook meals for myself. I have a bed with my sheets and blankets on it.
For such a homebody, it has been a very trying two months to not have a place to call home.
Would you like to meet my new home? No? Too bad.
The name of my new street is Pohjoinen Hesperiankatu, which means North Hesperian Street. Hesperiankatu also has a south version on the opposite side of a park that is just outside my door. Middle picture is the front door of my building:
Here is the outside of the building, along with my cutesy little address cube:
You can either take the creepy curvy stairs up to the third floor, or the even more creepy tiny/terrifying elevator, then voila! My door! With my name on it!
When you first enter the unit, you're basically in the kitchen if you step in and take about a half step to the right. It's small, but does have lots of good counter space and decent storage. Storage includes those rad shelves that serve double-duty as a dish drying rack, just like at the other place. (This must be standard here?) I didn't bring much kitchen stuff with me, but luckily the place is pretty well stocked, including these dishes? With grapes on them? And peaches? I miss my green Crazy Daisy Corelle dishes, but these will do, I guess.
You can tell from the picture that the kitchen is kind of a hallway, and at the end of the hallway is the bathroom. Or maybe I should call it a "bath closet." It was really tough to take photos because it's so cramped in there. The bathroom is my least favorite part of this apartment. There is absolutely zero storage, not one shelf or cabinet other than than tiny one under the vanity mirror. The floor tiles aren't heated like in the other apartment. There is no towel warmer. And the whole room utterly reeks of cologne. (I kind of wish the landlords hadn't told me that an Italian guy lived here before me, because now I just obsess about that cologne smell and how there is probably chest hair embedded in all the furniture.)
I included a picture of the washing machine, so you can see how weird it is. I showed it to my sister Staci over video Skype, and she said, "What IS that? A cheese grater??" It's the washing machine chamber, and you have to un-hinge it and it's so weird and small and I'm going to have to do laundry every other day, dangit. And then have all my wet clothes strewn across the apartment.
When you walk in the front door, if you keep walking about 5 steps forward instead of turning right into the kitchen, you are in the living area. It has a sofa, a weird section of the wall framed around the sofa that has inexplicably been painted mustard yellow, two green sitting chairs, a table with a jambox and a candle on it, a TV and DVD player, and a small green bugle-bottomed dining table. I was shocked to learn this morning that the DVD player actually plays Region 1/US DVDs!? Yay!
And finally, the bedroom. When you're sitting on the sofa in the living room, you're staring directly across through some French doors to see the bed in the bedroom. There is also a big desk in there, and the little orange bugle-bottomed chair matches all the orange lights and buttons on my laptop and gets me all giddy. The bed is very weird, it is literally just two twin beds smushed together. And each mattress is only about 4 inches thick! However, it is very comfortable and I love having the little booklights right above my head.
And that is that! Even though it's a lot smaller than my Seattle apartment, it feels bigger since there is so much open space. With the bed that can easily be dissected into two, the couch, and the air mattresses I will buy soon...I am ready for visitors. Come see me!
For such a homebody, it has been a very trying two months to not have a place to call home.
Would you like to meet my new home? No? Too bad.
The name of my new street is Pohjoinen Hesperiankatu, which means North Hesperian Street. Hesperiankatu also has a south version on the opposite side of a park that is just outside my door. Middle picture is the front door of my building:
Here is the outside of the building, along with my cutesy little address cube:
You can either take the creepy curvy stairs up to the third floor, or the even more creepy tiny/terrifying elevator, then voila! My door! With my name on it!
When you first enter the unit, you're basically in the kitchen if you step in and take about a half step to the right. It's small, but does have lots of good counter space and decent storage. Storage includes those rad shelves that serve double-duty as a dish drying rack, just like at the other place. (This must be standard here?) I didn't bring much kitchen stuff with me, but luckily the place is pretty well stocked, including these dishes? With grapes on them? And peaches? I miss my green Crazy Daisy Corelle dishes, but these will do, I guess.
You can tell from the picture that the kitchen is kind of a hallway, and at the end of the hallway is the bathroom. Or maybe I should call it a "bath closet." It was really tough to take photos because it's so cramped in there. The bathroom is my least favorite part of this apartment. There is absolutely zero storage, not one shelf or cabinet other than than tiny one under the vanity mirror. The floor tiles aren't heated like in the other apartment. There is no towel warmer. And the whole room utterly reeks of cologne. (I kind of wish the landlords hadn't told me that an Italian guy lived here before me, because now I just obsess about that cologne smell and how there is probably chest hair embedded in all the furniture.)
I included a picture of the washing machine, so you can see how weird it is. I showed it to my sister Staci over video Skype, and she said, "What IS that? A cheese grater??" It's the washing machine chamber, and you have to un-hinge it and it's so weird and small and I'm going to have to do laundry every other day, dangit. And then have all my wet clothes strewn across the apartment.
When you walk in the front door, if you keep walking about 5 steps forward instead of turning right into the kitchen, you are in the living area. It has a sofa, a weird section of the wall framed around the sofa that has inexplicably been painted mustard yellow, two green sitting chairs, a table with a jambox and a candle on it, a TV and DVD player, and a small green bugle-bottomed dining table. I was shocked to learn this morning that the DVD player actually plays Region 1/US DVDs!? Yay!
And finally, the bedroom. When you're sitting on the sofa in the living room, you're staring directly across through some French doors to see the bed in the bedroom. There is also a big desk in there, and the little orange bugle-bottomed chair matches all the orange lights and buttons on my laptop and gets me all giddy. The bed is very weird, it is literally just two twin beds smushed together. And each mattress is only about 4 inches thick! However, it is very comfortable and I love having the little booklights right above my head.
And that is that! Even though it's a lot smaller than my Seattle apartment, it feels bigger since there is so much open space. With the bed that can easily be dissected into two, the couch, and the air mattresses I will buy soon...I am ready for visitors. Come see me!
When I first arrived, I stayed at a little temporary apartment. I wanted to post pictures of it before now, but it was so small (300 square feet, aka 28 square meters) that it was impossible to tidy up because there was no storage space for all my crap. But I got all of my stuff out of there this morning and moved into my permanent apartment, so I took some photos of the old place to share with you...
Street sign - This is the name of the street I was living on, pronounced "Tur-lurn-KAA-tu." All the street signs (even in the busy parts of downtown) are posted on the sides of the buildings nearest the corner. I can't imagine driving here, because these signs are very small and pretty hard to see...definitely no intense green hanging over the street all in your face with reflective lettering in size 13,389 font. Every sign (street or otherwise) is listed in both Finnish (Töölönkatu) and Swedish (Tölögatan):
Apartment Building - This the entire apartment building, and then a closeup of the doorway. I love the little cubes with the address numbers on them, they're like that everywhere. Like dice! Something interesting that I learned the hard way is that just because it's 26 on this side of the street, don't expect 25 and 27 to be directly across the street. They don't skip numbers for extra wide buildings, they always go in sequence so it could happen that you could be in 26 on the west side of the street and be directly across from 33 on the east side of the street.
Stairs to unit - I was on the second floor (if you'll remember from the UPS fiasco), so these are the stairs leading up to the higher floors:
Door to unit - This is the door to my little unit. And me unlocking the door to my little unit. And a close up of the strange European keys. So medieval-looking:
Living room - this is basically what you see right when you walk in the front door. No, that's a lie. The thing directly across from the door is the toilet in the bathroom, which is an odd way to welcome someone. But if you sidestep that and look left, you see the living area:
Living room/bedroom - This is just another angle of the living room, taken from the doorway of the kitchenette. This gives you an idea of how very, very small the place is. That red thing on the left side of the living room is not another sofa, it's the bed:
Living room/kitchenette - Another angle of the living room taking from standing on the bed, and now you can see where the kitchenette fits into the layout.
Kitchenette - Small, but functional. That's a refrigerator/freezer closest to you on the right, then a small stove range and oven behind that. On the left is a microwave. And check out the cabinets above the sink, I am so impressed with how clever this is...the shelves above the sink are wire racks! So you can dry your dishes, yet still have them out of sight!
Bathroom - Okay, so this is really what you see when you first walk in. Man, this bathroom spoiled me. It was spotlessly clean. It had lots of nice cabinet space and good mirrors. The floor was made of heated tiles. It had a huge towel warmer. I miss that bathroom already... Anyway, it is very common for the washing machine to be in the bathroom, and they are little teeny tiny washing machines as you'll see below to the right of the shower. (No dryers.) And the outtake hose of the washing machine just dumps straight into the shower drain!
And that's it. It's going to take me a while to get the new place photo ready, but I'll do a similar entry when I have this place in a little better shape. Spoiler...two pieces of bugle-bottomed furniture!!
Street sign - This is the name of the street I was living on, pronounced "Tur-lurn-KAA-tu." All the street signs (even in the busy parts of downtown) are posted on the sides of the buildings nearest the corner. I can't imagine driving here, because these signs are very small and pretty hard to see...definitely no intense green hanging over the street all in your face with reflective lettering in size 13,389 font. Every sign (street or otherwise) is listed in both Finnish (Töölönkatu) and Swedish (Tölögatan):
Apartment Building - This the entire apartment building, and then a closeup of the doorway. I love the little cubes with the address numbers on them, they're like that everywhere. Like dice! Something interesting that I learned the hard way is that just because it's 26 on this side of the street, don't expect 25 and 27 to be directly across the street. They don't skip numbers for extra wide buildings, they always go in sequence so it could happen that you could be in 26 on the west side of the street and be directly across from 33 on the east side of the street.
Stairs to unit - I was on the second floor (if you'll remember from the UPS fiasco), so these are the stairs leading up to the higher floors:
Door to unit - This is the door to my little unit. And me unlocking the door to my little unit. And a close up of the strange European keys. So medieval-looking:
Living room - this is basically what you see right when you walk in the front door. No, that's a lie. The thing directly across from the door is the toilet in the bathroom, which is an odd way to welcome someone. But if you sidestep that and look left, you see the living area:
Living room/bedroom - This is just another angle of the living room, taken from the doorway of the kitchenette. This gives you an idea of how very, very small the place is. That red thing on the left side of the living room is not another sofa, it's the bed:
Living room/kitchenette - Another angle of the living room taking from standing on the bed, and now you can see where the kitchenette fits into the layout.
Kitchenette - Small, but functional. That's a refrigerator/freezer closest to you on the right, then a small stove range and oven behind that. On the left is a microwave. And check out the cabinets above the sink, I am so impressed with how clever this is...the shelves above the sink are wire racks! So you can dry your dishes, yet still have them out of sight!
Bathroom - Okay, so this is really what you see when you first walk in. Man, this bathroom spoiled me. It was spotlessly clean. It had lots of nice cabinet space and good mirrors. The floor was made of heated tiles. It had a huge towel warmer. I miss that bathroom already... Anyway, it is very common for the washing machine to be in the bathroom, and they are little teeny tiny washing machines as you'll see below to the right of the shower. (No dryers.) And the outtake hose of the washing machine just dumps straight into the shower drain!
And that's it. It's going to take me a while to get the new place photo ready, but I'll do a similar entry when I have this place in a little better shape. Spoiler...two pieces of bugle-bottomed furniture!!
So I mentioned that the apartment wasn't really ready for me, and last night the landlords met me there to give me a little orientation to the building and talk about my complaints. I hoped this meant they would talk about when it would be convenient for a professional cleaner to come in...but that didn't happen. I'm going to have to clean the place myself, but I'm not irate about it because they were the sweetest.
They are a cute little Finnish couple named Eero and Anja, probably in their 50s. He spoke passable English, she could only throw out a few words here and there...but her English was certainly light years ahead of my Finnish! When they rang the doorbell, they came bearing gifts:
Then they gave me a little tour of the building. Goodness, it's a pretty cool building. They took me up to the roof, where there is a HUGE communal balcony that stretches across the whole length of the building and faces downtown. That should be totally amazing in spring and summer. Then they took me to the top floor, which was a maze of weird/creepy storage spaces and where I can park all that crap I don't want inside the apartment. (Note: no sauna.) There is also a little garbage building out back that has regular garbage, paper recycling, all other recycling...and compost! So efficiently and charmingly European! And there are lots of big grassy areas behind the building. Helsinki is awesome like that. They manage to keep lots of nature spots, even in the middle of a big urban area.
So once I get the apartment all wiped down and aired out (it smells pretty musty because I think it's been vacant for some time), I will get all my stuff in there and take pictures for a future post.
They are a cute little Finnish couple named Eero and Anja, probably in their 50s. He spoke passable English, she could only throw out a few words here and there...but her English was certainly light years ahead of my Finnish! When they rang the doorbell, they came bearing gifts:
- A new big rug for the main room, which is awesome because the other rugs are skinny little runners. And they are dirty. And the vacuum cleaner is a piece of crap and I can't get them clean. So this new rug means I can lay on the floor in front of the TV like I like, and get back into my Diamond Dallas Page Yoga for Regular Guys (BANG!) regimen.
- A big storage bin for me to put all the extraneous crap in that is in my way.
- Future gift: the bedroom has one of those pull-down shades, but it doesn't go down all the way. Not a big deal now, but in the summer it will be essential, so they're replacing that for me.
- A shiny new nameplate for the door with my name on it. The previous tenant was some Italian guy named "Occhipin", which is violently close to being an anagram for "Pinocchio."
- The offer to come over for dinner. So cute!
Then they gave me a little tour of the building. Goodness, it's a pretty cool building. They took me up to the roof, where there is a HUGE communal balcony that stretches across the whole length of the building and faces downtown. That should be totally amazing in spring and summer. Then they took me to the top floor, which was a maze of weird/creepy storage spaces and where I can park all that crap I don't want inside the apartment. (Note: no sauna.) There is also a little garbage building out back that has regular garbage, paper recycling, all other recycling...and compost! So efficiently and charmingly European! And there are lots of big grassy areas behind the building. Helsinki is awesome like that. They manage to keep lots of nature spots, even in the middle of a big urban area.
So once I get the apartment all wiped down and aired out (it smells pretty musty because I think it's been vacant for some time), I will get all my stuff in there and take pictures for a future post.
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