Die Waschmaschine

Victory! We have a washing machine and it works! The “Installateur” (plumber) came this morning and hooked us up. While Michael was hard at work in Wieselburg, I held down the fort in Pӧchlarn and had quite the German-speaking day.

Our landlord and plumber arrived promptly 40 minutes late and asked me something to the effect of, “How are you?” I froze. Literally, did not move. My mouth hung open as if it wanted to say something but couldn’t. “Ich kann kein Deutsch.” That was my practiced phrase from the night before. Michael assured me this would work. I don’t think it did. They went on speaking to me with their heavy accents waiting for me to respond. Regardless, a bunch of hand motions, pointing and turning of knobs later, I’m in business. Or so I thought.

As you can see from the image at left, the machine has a series of wash cycles. Hot, cold, normal, delicates – too many choices! Whatever, I thought, I’ll add some soap, push some buttons and give it a go. I tested the first load with some towels to make sure the starting, stopping and spinning were all functional. Who knew watching a machine go round and round could be so much fun? Everything seemed to be in working order so I went back to work.

Then, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHAAM, RUMBLE, RUMBLE, ROAR! I heard a bunch of crazy, somewhat disturbing noises and thought for sure the machine was going to take off for space. Rest assured, it was just the final spin cycle, but holy crap I was a little scared!