Facing the sun

When you're Swedish you're obsessed with the sun. As soon as it isn't freezing cold outside, we will head outdoors to eat our breakfast on small, windy balconies or have dinner, wrapped in fleece blankets in a back yard still with patches of snow here and there.

As long as the sun is out.

So when we moved to our second apartment here, signing up for a apartment in a complex not yet finished, us being the first tenants, thus giving us the opportunity to choose which one out of approximately 30 apartments to choose from, the choice was easy.

We wanted the corner apartment facing south. We had also chosen this apartment complex because the balconies were a bit bigger than in other complexes around, looking forward to spend a lot of time on our new, nice balcony.

Facing south.

In California.

The staff in the rental office looked at us strangely, but happily signed us up. We moved in a rainy week in November. Each day we saw how the rest of the complex got filled with new tenants. Filling up all the apartments facing.... north... "How weird", we said. "Why would the choose apartments with balconies facing north when all the apartments facing south are available?".

Then came spring.

And we realized we didn't have a balcony. We had a sauna. Without the cold lake to cool off in. The balcony got so hot you couldn't even step on the floor. We enjoyed it briefly in the early mornings before the sun hit, then we had to flee into the cool AC air, closing the curtains to try to keep the sun out.

Wishing we had signed up for an apartment facing north.

Some habits are hard to break.