The Mystery of European Appliances

European appliances are a bit of a mystery. During our 5 day stay in Malaga, I was never able to figure out how to use the induction stove. I have a gas stove, have always had a gas stove, and after this experience will always have a gas stove.  After pressing many buttons, a burner would start, but oddly, would turn itself off after 30 seconds. We tried using different pans and finally managed to work 1 burner, enough to make eggs in the morning. The apartment had a binder stuffed with manuals for the kettle, the microwave oven, the washer. Every appliance except, of course, the stove.

On the positive end of the appliance scale stands the electric kettle. Hands down it is awesome.  An electric kettle instantaneously transforms even cold water into a roiling mass. The microwave doesn’t compare as minutes after boiling, the water is barely lukewarm. This boils water so hot, it will sear the tastebuds from your tongue 5 minutes after it’s turned off.

 People have been telling us how fortunate we are that our apartment is equipped with a washer/dryer. Almost no one in Europe (or most of the rest of the world outside of the US) has a dryer. People hang their clothes to dry on a rack or line. Out of windows over high-traffic streets, up high where there the wind is full of dust, in courtyards with everyone else’s laundry, in humid weather where it takes forever. When removed from the line, the clothes are stiff as a board and feel like sandpaper. So having a dryer is huge.

We have a dryer, but we don’t use it. We hang our stuff out on the little rack on the porch like everyone else. But why, you ask, would I hang clothes out when I have a dryer. The dryer takes 3 hours to run. So does the wash cycle. Which means a load set on the wash/ dry cycle takes 6 hours. To put that into perspective the kids attend school 5 hours a day.  Even worse, the washer is the size of a pot you'd use to for a lobster boil, so basically it runs non-stop.

The other day, the washer stopped working. The magic reset: pressing “start” for 2 seconds only produced more beeping. Unplugging the machine didn’t work either. I pressed every button and held it for 2 seconds. Nothing. A baby icon flashed while all the buttons beeped. The flashing baby finally clued me into a child lock. After a little time on Google, we found directions for disabling the childproof lock. When we mentioned it to the kids, they looked sheepish and confessed to “leaning” on the machine when it suddenly started beeping. So our children ended up using the childproof lock to shut us out.

Our dishwasher has problems as well. It seems to lock but will turn itself off mid-cycle when it shakes itself open.  Several mornings, we’ve been confronted with hungry children and dishwasher full of dirty dishes. The apartment is stocked with the bare minimum of dishes, glasses and silverware, so it means we have to wash them before we can eat.  Clearly, there are worse problems, but why appliances are so different from Europe to the US remains a mystery.