Appliances in Ireland

One of the most amusing things about living in another country is learning how to use everyday items that are designed differently in other countries. About the only appliance that was easy to figure out was the microwave, which seems to have universal functionality. Here, the vacuum's electricity cord retracts into the bottom corner, which took me about 30 minutes to find. The oven has six different settings, depending on what you are baking, and the other dial is in Celsius, so we have to use our cell phone to convert the degrees every time we cook. Pizza does not cook properly unless you use the bread/pizzas setting. I learned this the hard way after two failed attempts at homemade pizza. The showers are electric, and you have to have a switch turned on outside the bathroom door in order for your shower powered box to dispense any water. But the funniest of them all is the clothes dryer. There are no ventilation tubes to expel the moisture and heat out of the laundry room here, so there is a plastic bladder (looks like a ice pack found in an Igloo cooler) at the bottom of the dryer. This has to be emptied about once a week when it fills up with water. The heat shuts off as soon as it's full, so you know it's time to change it when your clothes are still wet after 90 minutes. (There is also a little orange button that lights up, but I didn't figure out what that meant for a month.) There are also two lent catchers that have to be cleaned - the typical lent catcher that should be emptied after every wash and a condenser unit that needs to be rinsed of lent every so often. Talk about high maintenance! I had to take a couple pictures to share.