HOME SWEET HOME

When we came to Espoo we moved into an apartment leased fully furnished by the Church. Supposedly the furniture had been borrowed or rented. The owner had gone home to Tel Aviv for a period of time. During that time he failed to pay his mortgage and lost ownership of the apartment to an apartment holding company. The furniture remained. One day last December while we were in the office the original owner called and said he was at our door and had come to get his furniture. He was told that when he returned the rather substantial deposit that had been made he could come get the furniture. Then a social worker called in his behalf. The social worker was told that when he returned the deposit we would release the furniture. Then the police called. When told the situation the police agreed with us. Three months later we get a call that the deposit would be returned. And about the same time we got a notice that the apartment was being auctioned. Last Thursday morning the original owner and some friends came to get the apartment furnishings. Thursday afternoon two elders put in a full day’s work to help us pickup replacement furnishings from Kerätyskeskus, a local used furniture store and IKEA the Walmart of home furnishing stores. The quality of the used furniture was amazingly good and prices were really low. And shopping at IKEA reminded me of home. The apartment looks great. And now we wait to see after it is auctioned whether the new owner will honor the lease agreement we have. Maybe we’ll be moving again.

In the meantime here are some pictures from our newly refurnished home. In Finland there are several names for types of homes that I can think of: kerrostalo, rivitalo, and omakotitalo. Kerrostalo is an multi-story apartment building, a rivitalo is a strip of connected 1 or 2 story homes, and omakotitalo is literally own-home-house. We live in a 7-story kerrostalo. When you enter on the first floor there are storage rooms and bike storage. In our old apartment there were also a drying room and a room with cold storage lockers. From our apartment entrance there are 21 apartments, 3 on each floor. People’s names are displayed on the postal slot of every door. From the names on our floor, it’s easy to tell who the foreigners are: Tippets, Riikonen, and Syrjäkoski. The winding staircases were used extensively during the 60’s and 70’s. We also have a 4 henkilöä or 375 kg hissi.

I’ve included pictures of our jääkaappi and uuni so you can see why the largest milk containers sold are 1.5 litres and why you have to do a lot of stove top cooking to prepare a dinner. The three chairs with wooden arms, the desk, kitchen table and 7 straight back chairs came from came from the used furniture store. What a great place! The three used IKEA style chairs cost 43 euros total. The desk was 28 euros. And 7 chairs: 4 white kitchen chairs and three birchwood for 70 euros. The sofa, cabinet, and rug are from IKEA. And the quilt on the wall was a Christmas present from home.