Pimp My Flat - Volume V

So, we rented a car on Saturday before Easter to do some errands outside of the city.

First, we bought some big grocery items at the Wal Mart near our house. We don't usually buy that much at once since there are small grocery stores all around in our street. Had a large cart filled with 40 liters of cat litter and boxes of tomato sauce and stuff like that. A stop at the big discount beer store on the way back was also in the plan.

After that we went to the big home improvement store (like Home Depot) south of Hamburg to pick out tile for the backsplash in the kitchen. Tiles are butt expensive, man! 50 EUR per square meter or more. Luckily we'll only need a few square meters.

Then we headed up to IKEA to pick up several things we'll be needing for the new apartment. We were both real hungry when we got there, so we scarfed down some Swedish meatballs before shopping. Nothing like wandering through the cavernous IKEA halls with a belly full of Kött Büllar. (This sounds like "Kotzbälle" in German, meaning "puke balls." That's an old joke though.)

On the shopping list were: lamps, a hood for the stove, two comfy chairs, a coat rack, and a new kitchen table (pictured below).



Nat made a table cloth and some place mats already for the table. Looks good and makes our current kitchen look 1000 times better. Should be great in the new flat. We finally have some grown-up funiture.

Get this: IKEA in Germany doesn't take credit cards. There we are standing with hundreds of Euros of wares in our two huge carts and we couldn't use a Visa card. OK, Germans have this thing called an EC, which is like an ATM card, and we were able to use that. But still, this is the 21st century, isn't it?

Pictured on the table above is a bowl of Grüne Soße, a Hessian dish traditional served around Eastertime. It has eggs in, so it's a good way to use up all the hard boiled eggs we had from Easter. Also has lots of fresh herbs and things: dill, parsley, cress, and chives. Add a little mustard and sour cream and you got yourself some German Green Sauce.