The Mangel Draaien

This huge contraption is at the wassalon and so far I've personally witnessed 3 different people ironing their sheets. Yes, the sole purpose of this huge machine is to iron sheets.

The sign above it says

Translated says

No jeans or garments with buttons or zippers in the mangle turning

Believe it or not, the mangle press has been around for a long time and was popular for ironing sheets in the 40's and 50's. You can even buy vintage mangle irons on ebay! I had never heard the term mangle iron before. Although I've been tempted after seeing the results of ironed sheets, I haven't seriously considered using this thing.

the L.E.A.S.E.

Yep, that's it. And even though I did inadvertently increase the text to "senior citizen", it is still a HUGE document. Although I haven't read the entire thing yet, here are some fun facts about our new proposed 9-year commitment.

Article 17: Maintenance at the tenant's expense.

Texts of Law:

Article 1728 C.C.

Blah, blah, blah - basic stuff like "keep the premises well maintained..."

Article 1755 C.C.

"No repairs to be at the tenant's expense, will actually be born by the tenant if they resulted from age or Acts of God solely"

Now HERE's the good part:

"Apart from the tenant's liabilities resulting from these general legal regulations and as an extension of them, he will be liable, among other things, for the following, possibly inconsistent with Article 1755 C.C.:

* Floor coverings, painting, and wallpapering:

"The tenant shall in due course maintain and, as the case may be, replace the floor covering and paint the inner walls even if this replacement was the result of usual wear, age, coincidence or Acts of God"

*Windows:

"The tenant will have to maintain all interior and exterior windows and have them replaced by others of the same quality when they are broken or even only burst and this even when caused by accident or by an Act of God."

This goes on and on about what we as tenants will maintain, replace, etc at our own expense regardless of the cause. I can see us replacing who knows what. And there isn't even a provision for an inspection so we don't even know if those previously mentioned "floor coverings" and "windows" need replacing now! Not to mention the heating unit, and the . . . .

Soooo, this is only about half a page of that document pictured above. I'm no advocaat, but I think this agreement just might leave us solely at the mercy of the lessor. What do you think?!

Bring me a shrubbery

I know I've already posted about shrubbery, but when we were riding around this past weekend, we saw this amazing lawn. This is all at one house and yes, those are little animals! I just couldn't resist another shrubbery post.

The color purple

I've never really been a fan of wearing purple (unless it involved GreƩK letters, of course), but in pretty much every window of every store that sells men's or women's fashions there is at least something and sometimes a lot of PURPLE. So I don't know if this is a sign of Fall, but I hope you look good in lilac.

I think it might be Fall

We had no idea how far north we are in the world until we looked it up on the internet. And we really never thought about where we used to live in relation to the rest of the world. The northernmost point in the U.S. lower 48 is in Lake of the Woods, Minnesota. That's farther north than any place in Maine or Washington.

By comparison, Hasselt, Belgium, where we live, is even farther north than Minnesota. It would be the equivalent of driving about 70 miles north of Lake of the Woods, Minnesota into Canada. Also by comparison, Ruston is close to the same latitude as Tel Aviv, Israel which is way south of all of Europe.

The weather here has been nearly perfect since I got here as were the 2 weeks we spent in late May. Every day has been around a low of 13 and a high of 21. That's a range of about 55 to 70F. However, the upcoming weather report indicates Summer may be over. This time next week the low is 7 and the high is 9. Again, for me and all you other non-metricists, that's 45 and 48!

I understand it doesn't get nearly as cold here as it does in Minnesota or Canada because of the North Sea, but I guess we'll find out soon enough (how cold it gets).