Let me explain….it’s more that I hate my actual shower here in Germany. Yes, I am seriously writing about this. Why? Because I just took a shower and I am so annoyed for about the 500th time that I just have to vent about it and what better place than here….right???
Let’s start off with a fab picture of the place where the most annoying task of my day happens.
What do you think of that blue? Awesome isn’t it? I even got a loofah to match. {Yes that’s sarcasm and someone really needs to invent a font style for that.}
Anyway, I digress as while blue is not my first choice for stylish bathroom colors, it is far from the reason for my daily dread. You see, in Germany, while some apartments are similar to apartment living in the U.S., others are not. Many “apartments” are actually built inside one large multi-family home. In our case, we live with two other families; our landlords on the second level and another family on the first. We share a basement where our laundry facilities are located and we each have a separate, locked, storage room. Now that you can somewhat picture my living arrangements in your head, let’s get on with the complaining.
Water Pressure
Dear God of all that’s holy all I want is a little water pressure! This is by far my number one reason behind times I have actually screamed in the shower. No matter what time of day I attempt to take a shower, the pressure almost always sucks. One day, and of course the day I was washing my hair, I was literally standing under the shower head praying for water….ANY WATER! Why? Because it had completely stopped and was just dripping. I will admit that it is not always quite that bad, but usually the pressure drops significantly enough that I find myself standing there waiting for it to come back to a level that will actually get the shampoo out of my hair.
Temperature
In the summer, you would never hear me complaining about this one bit. We live in the roof so it gets hotter than Hades up here so I usually took a cold shower by choice. But it’s winter! Aside from some hot tea, a hot shower is about the only way I can defrost my bones. I tend to get very cold living here and a hot shower is just what I need to resolve that problem. Well, not in this apartment and not in this shower. I have two options: scalding or lukewarm/cold. On a really good day, I get the perfect hot temperature and just as I’m enjoying it, I lose pressure and then it goes to lukewarm and it’s over. And I cry.
Size
This really isn’t a huge deal, but while I’m complaining about a shower for crying out loud, I might as well get it all out. I’m all for utilizing space well and it’s one of the things I love about German homes. They utilize small spaces very efficiently! But this shower just drives me nuts! The little shelf they actually built into the wall is only big enough for a single person’s items if you don’t want to play Tetris and Jenga every time you want your soap. It’s pretty difficult to turn around and definitely not big enough for two people {not that we do that in our house!} The only plus side to this small space is that now that it’s winter, we have been completely wiping down the shower after each use to prevent mold. German bathrooms don’t have ventilation aside from the windows. We were opening them, but that wasn’t helping, so we just completely dry it off and being small helps this happen quickly. Although, I also have times like the other day where I was drying it off, hit the faucet with my arm turning the shower back on and spraying myself and the wall of which both were dry already. It was great.
Well, that’s pretty much my venting session for today. I will say that this has been far from my experience with other showers in Germany. I’m just lucky enough to have this one as my own.
Anything about where you live now that drives you nuts?