Waschen und Trocken

So today was my first experience with the laundering of clothes in Germany. I'll give you a little hint as to how this turned out:

I've been on the east side of the Atlantic for a little bit more than 10 days, which is about for how long I packed. The heap of clothing at the bottom of my closet had grown and perhaps began to to generate some heat, so I thought it time to venture to the laundry room. One must buy "tokens" from the Hausmeister, because the machines do not take Euros (this is mostly so they can jack up -erm, adjust- the prices of the laundry machine with great ease. When I first moved in, I was told by my tutor that the tokens were 1€ each, but the Hausmeister charged me 1,50€. I wasn't much in a mood to argue (much less in German, which I think he knew and took full advantage of, considering his glowing disposition). All was fine - I had bought laundry detergent previously to avoid the convenience-fee price of detergent in the dorm, stuck my clothes into the washer, and said "go." I was then overwhelmed by two things:

1. These washing machines are tiny. I have made a habit throughout my days of pay-per-load laundry of stuffing and stuffing until absolutely no more clothes can fit. This usually sorts my 2 1/2 weeks of dirty clothes in the US into 2 loads. Here, with my 1 1/2 weeks of clothing (and that's with wearing my jeans on average 2 days longer and sweaters twice as long as normal) barely fit into two loads. One looks into the front-loading washer and sighs - "is this really it?"

2. They take forever. In the US, I've become accustomed to the convenience of 20 or 30 minute wash cycles. Here, even with the smaller-than-anticipated size of the machine, it takes 50 minutes (for a light wash - read "rinse") or 70 minutes (for heavy-wash, which still didn't get the dirt out of my handtowels.) One could attribute this to the German desire for green-ness. By making smaller machines, they use less water, but does this counterbalance the 70 minute long wash cycle?

When my clothes were all washed (or at least finished with the washing machine - cleanliness will be assessed later,) I opened up the dryer. Note my use of singular. I should have assumed something was up when there was one dryer for the three washing machines (which service a 3-building apartment complex.) I loaded up my first load of clothes, all ready to go, but the machine didn't take my coins. I thought this was a bit peculiar, so I asked the resident-assistant, who told me that Trockentokens (dryer-coins) are different, because they cost differently (which means twice as much.) I had no cash and no desire to pay 3€ for one load of drying, equaling 9€ for the whole of my laundry (the dryer machines are even smaller than the washing machines.)

So I removed my clothes from the dryer, stuck them in my suitcase (which I used to haul my clothes down the street because I have no laundry-toting-things), and proceeded to hang my clothing around my room on every surface capable of holding laundry. All of my shelves now have clothes hanging off of them. I now see why drying racks are such a hot item here.

So apparently drying is not necessary here. People enjoy having wet clothes and hanging them out to dry. Yay.

Looks like I'm going to IKEA again...:/