Life as a Physicist

There are no dryers here in Europe. I’m not entirely sure why.

Many apartments, like the one we live in, are plenty big enough to fit one. And they even make combined washer and dryer units - where combined really means combined — you don’t have to transfer the clothes between cycles! They aren’t too expensive. They do cost extra in electricity, but when the rains come I can’t imagine that being a stopping factor. And, frankly, clothes that come out of a dryer feel much better on the skin than do line-hung. It isn’t they are trying to be green: this has been going on for years and years. And I feel a little shaky every time I hang out our clothes: we are 5 stories up and we have to bend way out to hang our clothes up. If my foot were to shoot out the only thing preventing me from going over would be grabbing the lines. They look strong enough… And as far as I can tell this is not a generational thing: I see younger people as well as wise folks hanging their stuff. The only thing I can come up with is tradition…

But everyone hangs their stuff out to dry. You can see it all over the city. This is a shot of the courtyard out the back of our apartment - but you can see the same thing from the main streets as well. It is pretty entertaining, actually…