New City, new job, new apartment & little things like that

some brazilian people making funny chemistry - M

Last week I finally took the long-promised plunge and made my way to Liverpool to live here. I arrived at 6pm, and moved into my apartment around 9 - with as much as you can put in a backpack plus one bicycle. Well, not quite. Some stuff had been stored at I's place.

Here is my apartment not too long after I got there. The living room:

The small "bedroom" (aka bike storage & sports equipment space)

The real bedroom:

I am once again incredibly indebted to I who decided to leave town (and the country!) just as I was arriving. In a classic turn of post doc life, I ended up taking most of the stuff that he can not take back to Finland with him. Coincidentally, the same type of stuff (drying rack, pillows, sheets, dishes, etc etc etc) is precisely what I left behind when leaving Germany. I am now pretty well set up, still missing a chest of drawers and maybe a dining room table. At the time of writing this, I have only one overused place to sit properly, which is a nice big arm chair in my living room. That one I owe to S&W who recently moved into a new house down in Milton Keynes and discovered that their beloved chair no longer fits into their new house. Thanks to them too!!! C came up for the weekend and brought the chair.

We did the obligatory IKEA trip (there is one IKEA half-way between Liverpool and Manchester), but ended up not buying very much. My new mattress was the biggest item on the bill and the only seriously large piece of furniture from there ...

I would love to put up pics of me doing fun things in Liverpool, but not only did the last week go by very fast, I also have had a pretty bad back for most of the time. Several times during the weekend, C literally forbade me to take a jumping photo or do some other reasonably photogenic things ... I think she had a point though.

So, instead, I invite you my dear reader to take a walk through Liverpool. Here are a bunch of links that show the variability of the city. In L you can literally go from the richest most swankiest areas to something that is quite run down and actually scary (to the outsider at least) over the space of a block or so.

This is one of the nicer streets to live on, with grand old houses & beautiful old trees. In fact the entire area is located between two rather nice and formerly private parks.

Here, on the other hand is an area that is no longer being lived in - not too far from the first picture.

Finally, I never had this on my way to work. And there I thought I had gotten around a little bit
...

PS: I guess I should report one little snag in the process. Landing in a new country involves, among other things, a new bank account. I conveniently got that set up last week in at a branch near the University. However, when I tried to copy my own address from a letter from the bank, I discovered that they had copied down my address very efficiently. Instead of
Flat flat#
house# street

they had compressed the entire thing to
flat# street

and then proceeded to send my bank card (and later my secret code) to the "address". Hrmpf. As far as I know, I canceled the brand new card in time, I am getting a new one sent presently and I am eagerly waiting for the second one to finally arrive...