5 Things I Miss

1. A garbage disposal. Germans do not use garbage disposals. They have a separate trash can for organic waste. It's picked up monthly and sent to a central composting facility. In the meantime, we have a garbage can of rotting food sitting outside our door in the heat of summer. Yum.

2. Central air. It was in the 90s yesterday. We bought a portable air conditioner for $600 to cool the upstairs. The kitchen (downstairs) was pretty hot, especially after cooking.

3. American TV. Yeah, yeah, how gauche to be a TV addict. But I am. German TV is...well, in German, which I don't know yet. We have a few of the free BBC channels, but British TV is just not the same (except when it is: BBC Three is running the American re-make of the originally British sit-com "The Office"). Thank goodness our friends sent us a DVD of the "Lost" finale. We're supposed to get an AFN (Armed Forces Network) decoder soon, so all is not lost on the TV front.

4. Talk radio. When you're playing with a toddler all day, talk radio gives some semblance of adult conversation (depending on what show you're listening to, of course) and a way to keep up on what's going on in the world--without a little one pulling away the newspaper or closing the laptop ("don't read. Play with me!").

5. Window screens. There just aren't any. And so we have mosquitoes, flies, and assorted moths flying in at will.

Tune in next time for things I don't miss...