Oma's Pages #15, October 12, 2011

Oma’s Pages #15

And then there was the shower.... Oh my!

The shower room was attached to the back of this small apartment and had been added on at some later point so it had walls on three sides with no insulation to keep the room warm. The only source of heat for the room was a towel rack that heated up.

The washing machine was also in this room. And there was a drying rack. There was no dryer and sometimes it was so cold in the apartment that it took two days for the clothes to fully dry.

The shower was so cold that when you stood in it you could feel the cold travel from the bottoms of your feet up through your entire body.

When your shower was over you and you dried yourself off, you could see the steam rise from your body and you could see your breath.

Part of the problem was that we arrived in the coldest part of the winter. In Utah we have a very dry atmosphere so the cold is a dry cold or the heat is a dry heat. Here in Holland there is a lot of moisture in the air so the cold and hot have a lot of moisture in them. The moisture makes it colder or hotter depending on the temperature. So since it was very cold when we arrived, the air made it even colder. 

Opa and I were not used to this kind of cold so sometimes we had to climb into our beds and wrap up in our duvets (like comforters) in order to get warm.

Also our thermostat for the whole apartment only worked part of the time. It had some kind of timer that was not working right so at random times it would shut off the heat.

It was very nice when we had to cook things because the added heat from the stove helped to warm up the apartment.

One picture shows me sitting next to the radiator (the way the apartment is heated is with a metal coiled radiator against the walls) reading my scriptures early in the morning. It was the only place I could find any warmth.