The last few months have been a blur, but we are finally settling in a bit and for this we are thankful. God provided us with an amazing home here in Slovenia. We actually live in a village named Lancovo. From our home we have a gorgeous view of Radovljica and the surrounding hills. Often in the evening we can hear the river Sava which is a five minute walk away.
One unexpected task for us was setting up our home. I had been focused on details involved with our shipping container, but I never really considered the actual unpacking and setting up part of this move. It turned in to quite a project and involved multiple trips to IKEA. In Europe you do not find closets or storage areas which means wardrobes and cabinets are a necessary purchase. The cheapest place for this is the IKEA in Klagenfurt, Austria (an hour drive from here).
We have a van, but still it took multiple trips to IKEA to get all the furniture we needed. Now this may sound like a fun shopping spree for some, but I can assure you it was anything but. I have never really shopped around IKEA, not to mention one in Austria where all language posted is GERMAN. So here I am trying to figure out how the IKEA process works in German. Of course trying to find all the needed parts was near impossible. This literally took me all day on multiple trips. Seriously, I spent the whole day at IKEA. Now as if finding it wasn't hard enough I had to figure out how to load it in a van, by myself. It was like a puzzle, only the pieces were somewhere between 50 to 200 pounds.
As happy as I was to drive away from IKEA, it was only then I realized I had the joy of putting this all together and let me just say I am amazed at the crazy engineering it took to design IKEA furniture. So much is going on in just a little box.
The last part of the IKEA madness was the massive amount of cardboard and packing material I was left with. This was added to the already crazy amount we had from the move. It took me three weeks of driving around disposing in public dumpsters. I'm sure the workers were totally confused at how their bins were immediately filled to capacity after they dumped it all.
Thankful the experience is over, thankful we have a place to put clothes, and thankful for the apple strudel in the IKEA cafe (the one reason to return!).
