Days 18-21: Stockholm

Date: 2012.06.08 | Category: Travel | Tags:

I’ll get back to my touristy stuff soon, but I must address something that is of great concern to all travelers: laundry.

I recently finished reading Lee Child’s The Affair, the “prequel” to his Jack Reacher series. If you’ve read any of the Reacher books, you know the hero owns a single possession: one of those clip-together travel toothbrushes. When his clothes get dirty or torn (Reacher gets in a lot of fights), he finds a cheap clothing store, buys new stuff to wear, puts it on immediately, and tosses the old stuff in the nearest trash bin.

To be a normal, non-Reacher-like traveler is to envy Child’s creation, who drifts from town to town, most frequently on Greyhound buses. I suppose it would be theoretically possible for me to emulate him, but alas, I cannot bring myself to re-wear underwear and socks without washing them, and what a hassle it would be to have to constantly find new ones. Other necessities include sunscreen, lip balm, my eye mask and earplugs, Kindle, laptop, adapters, cable, iPhone, a second pair of shoes (for travel, I’m partial to heavy European walking shoes, like those made by Ecco or Rieker), sunglasses, contact lens fluid, deodorant (presumably Reacher only exudes a heavenly man-scent, which enables him to score chicks), a selection of over the counter drugs (you’re out of luck if you need an antihistamine in Sweden and don’t have a prescription), a nail clipper, toothbrush, floss (despite the fact that Reacher does fine without them), and an umbrella. Joe brought a couple pairs of reading glasses. I think Joe and Reacher are about the same age, but somehow Reacher never seems to need assistance to read a diner menu or a Greyhound timetable.

We had been on the road for a week when we got to Bristol, figuring that surely, it would be a piece of cake to find a laundrette (as the Brits say) within walking distance of our hotel. It was not. I wound up borrowing a cup of laundry detergent from fellow Yanks Bill & Toby, and washing a few pairs of socks and some underwear in the bathroom sink.

By the time we arrived in Paris, we were desperate to do some serious clothes-washing. I knew the tiny flat we were renting had a washing machine, because I’d seen it in the photos on the apartment-rental site. The owner explained that the unit was a combination washer/dryer, and showed us how to operate it. It sounded so simple, but as with the French language, there is so much nuance. The first load I threw in took over three hours, and when it finally emerged from the machine, everything was incredibly wrinkled. I gamely tried to iron stuff like pajama bottoms simply because it looked so horrible. Joe found a manual in English online, and I wound up re-washing some of the stuff in an effort to get it to come out a bit neater. No such luck.

I then consulted my sister-in-law, whose own flat has a similar combo unit, for advice. She suggested that I program the machine to wash the clothes, take some out to air-dry, and then do a separate dry-only cycle for the rest of it. Unfortunately, the hellish appliance remained tightly locked after the wash cycle, refusing to allow me access to my clothing. By the time (again, over three hours later) it finally yielded, everything was — you guessed it — wrinkled. But at least some of it was still damp, so it was easier to iron.

If I have to deal with one of these cursed machines again, I think the thing to do is to wash tiny loads — my sis-in-law informed me that the drying capacity of the unit is (rather illogically, in my opinion) half of its washing capacity. I’m too accustomed to throwing a giant basketful of jeans, undies, socks, shirts and what have you in my big old American washer. These Euro-sized units can’t handle our gargantuan American loads.

The apartment in Stockholm has a small washer (pictured at right) in the kitchen, but no dryer. I was so relieved that it wasn’t another combo unit that I was fine with that. There is a drying rack, and everything dried swiftly and relatively wrinkle-free. It’s definitely the most hassle-free clothes-cleaning experience I’ve had so far on this trip. I’d almost rather wash clothes in the sink than use a combo washer/dryer (maybe the EU bureaucrats should ban them!). As much as I like it here, I have to admit that I am sort of looking forward to being able to use to my large capacity American machines once again.