Laundry, German style

Who knew that doing laundry could be a full time career?  That's how I am starting to feel about doing laundry in Germany.  It was a minor challenge last time, in part because I didn't know what most of the words on the washer and dryer meant, but I'm beyond that now, and its getting worse.  Here is my saga so far

Laundry, Attempt 1

Our apartment complex in Duisburg has a washer and dryer, which are a challenge to use in the way Americans use laundry facilities, but after a month of doing laundry last spring, I had mostly figured them out.  When I came to do laundry at the end of the first week, the washer was broken.  Obviously, a laundromat was required.  Luckily, they do have such things in university towns (though Google Maps, given the English word laundromat in Germany, didn't distinguish between laundromats and laundry services, so that took a bit to resolve. )

The nearest laundromat was about 1km away, and the only thing I could find to carry our laundry was a big cardboard box (it later occurred to me that a rolling suitcase would have been more pleasant).  I had bought and brought detergent, but it turned out to be included in the price (who knew to expect this?).  The washing machine was a reasonable size (twice as big as the one in our complex), and the controls were all understandable.  But how do I pay? No evidence of a coin slot anywhere.  

Luckily, this place had an attendant.  There was a big light board around the corner from the machines, where I was expected to put in money, apply it to a particular machine, get soap dispensed, and then press start on the washing machine itself.  All fairly straightforward, but not very clear to someone who couldn't even find the board.  (And while I was able to translate the word ¨electronic board¨ on the instructions, I had no idea what such a thing would look like).  The wash cycle only took 45 minutes, rather than the hour and a half of our apartment washer.  And the dryer worked reasonably close to the way American dryers do, even drying the clothes fully (which German dryers seldom do).  The attendant convinced me to use the cotton setting, even for my delicate stuff, and she was right -- as I should have remembered, Germans do not believe that clothes should be dried at a very warm heat, which is why they take forever to dry.

All's well that end's well; 3 hours plus an hour travelling time lost to the effort (but I enjoyed my reading), but we ended with clean, dry clothes (and I did not get rained on during the trip back, miraculously).

Laundry, Attempt 2

We are now in Bielefeld.  First, finding where the laundry facilities are was a challenge (it was in the basement, hiding behind a door that said ¨Networking Equipment¨).  The washer and dryer are small units such as we have in Duisburg.  I filled the washer, and this time, I understood all the settings, except that when I got done with the setup, it told me (there was an lcd display): ¨Zahlen¨ (Pay).  Huh?  No hint of a place to put coins. This control board again turned out to be on the wall, this time disguised as a fuse panel.  It took weird amounts (1.70 Euro to wash), but didn't give change.  Washing was not so bad (it told me how long the cycle would take), but it was impossible to know how long it would take to dry things.  It turns out that when I opened the dryer to check while it was drying, it ended the cycle and captured the money left.  This was particularly weird, because if it found the filter full (German filters hold very little lint before they clog), or it considered the laundry to be dry, I could restart the machine and use the remaining money.  So the only cost-effective solution was to put the money in 20 minutes at a time. For a grand total of almost six hours in or near the laundry room.

Each load took over two hours to dry and that is using the term ¨dry¨ very loosely.  German dryers have the concept of ¨Schranktrocken¨ (cupboard dry, which is wetter than any setting I have found on an American dryer.  If you put clothes into the cupboard out of the dryer that way, they would mold) and ¨Extratrocken¨ (extra dry, which I would call damp dry -- which is another setting altogether.)  So of course our apartment was full of drying clothes for the rest of the day.

Who would have thought that the most challenging cultural novelty would be laundry?  And what further laundry adventures lie ahead?