Hi everyone! Welcome to our Irish crib! Or chez nous, like my French-speaking counterpart would say. We recently moved to a lovely new flat not too far from the city centre of Dublin, so why not take you to a little tour around this Irish-Finnish-Canadian fusion living of ours?
This is the first time I have a hall in my apartment since I left Finland. Our flat in the UK, both flats in Canada and my previous one in Ireland all opened straight to an open space or to a long corridor, but this is some serious hall-ness happening right here. The door on the left opens to a bathroom, the one on the front leads to the apartment.
LIVINGROOM
Welcome to our living room! And bedroom. And kitchen... Needless to say, we live in a studio. Dublin is a nightmare when it comes to the rental market, so as poor-ass students there's not much more we can afford. Luckily this beauty is more than spacious for us two, with a mezzanine to sleep on. Let's take a tour around!
In case you're wondering about the white panels on the walls, those are our heaters. Now, we've all heard horror stories about badly built apartments on the British Isles, and I've got my fair share of that in the past, but this apartment has none of that crap. The temperature goes down to 16 or 17 degrees Celcius during the night if we don't keep the heaters on, but we can set the heaters to a fixed temperature (usually 23) after which they turn themselves off automatically. It's a dream, really. And like I stated in one of my Christmas vlogs, upon returning to Finland for the holidays I realised I'm not comfortable in the typical dry, 24-degree indoor air of my parents' apartment. Ireland has made me thick-skinned.
There used to be a fireplace, but the structure was removed during renovation. What's left is only the beautiful exterior as a sign of the apartment's past. Most flats in here seem to have a fireplace of some sort, functional or not.
MEZZANINE
When living tight, every square meter has to be used. Our bed is up the stairs on a mezzanine. Storing clothes is also well planned...
This is the coziest space ever. I confess sitting right here at this very moment, typing this post! The bedsheets are the absolute best.
KITCHEN
Welcome to our kitchen. This kitchen is a source of many disagreements for a multicultural couple - kitchens often tend to be. During the last few years I've learned to live without the greatest Finnish invention since the dawn of mankind - that being the dish drying cupboard. The substitute is this metal horror on my counter.
Another issue is the brush/sponge debate. To be honest, I had kind of forgotten the Finnish fascination of brushes and submitted to using sponges, up until I re-encountered a brush when the previous tenant left us his unused dish brush. Nothing prepared me for the pleasure of washing my dishes with a good ol' brush once more. Alex, however, can't stand this anomaly, so we had both options until I decided to do some self-rehab therapy and sacrificed the dish brush to wash our stove plates with it. Good bye brush: gone, but never forgotten.
One of the hardest things to adjust to in a country of teadrinkers is the poor quality of coffee. Now, before anyone attacks me by screeching "THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE COFFEE IN IRELAND", let me remind you that my lovely northern nation is statistically speaking the most passionate coffee drinker in the world, with an average of 5 cups of coffee being consumed each day per person. Let that sink in. Also I'd like to know why there aren't more heart attacks per day.
Anyway, coffee. My lovely sister bought us a French press accompanied with some real Finnish coffee for Christmas, and I absolutely love it! Two years of drinking instant coffee has left its mark on my dark Finnish soul, but those days are no more. I have a French press now.
BATHROOM
There's not much to photograph in our bathroom apart from a few Anglo specialties. Now, the first one is of course familiar to anyone who's ever been to London for a holiday. The taps. Right. The physical representation of all illogic of the Empire. This shit drives me nuts, no lie. Every morning I'm put on a trial to choose whether I want to start my day by burning or freezing my hands/face: great times, each morning. It keeps you on your tip toes in a way.
Don't look at the toothbrushes, I know there are three. One of them is, according to Alex, his next toothbrush.
Here we have many more funny things to wonder and ponder. Air conditioning up right, this random source of heat on bottom left. My primary way of using this heat anomaly is to dry my hair with it, because for some absolutely unknown reason the only power socket in this whole house that does NOT follow the British/Irish standard happens to be in the bathroom. It fits the European standard. It fits the Canadian/American standard. It even fits the AUSTRALIAN standard, but no, my hairdryer with its British/Irish plug doesn't fit. The irony.
This was new for both me and Alex. The fuse. We have a water tank in the cupboard behind our bed, which heats us water on command. The command is this red button. It creates a weird kind of sense of control to my life, as now I have to plan my showers at least 15 minutes in advance. What a terrible idea for a postgraduate used to spending each day in her pyjamas, living dangerously and spontaneously by using cookies and snack bars as her primary source of nutrition.
I hope you liked what we did with the apartment! Alex and I are well-suited in many ways, one of them being a similar taste in decoration. The only element which caused trouble was the above scented candle I insisted on buying because it was fancy and colourful and it has this little furry thing hanging from it. No regrets! Alex learned to live with it within a few days after realising it doesn't smell like balsam and amber after all...
Have you found it hard to adjust to a new apartment in a foreign country? Who decorates in your couple? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
