Cooking with gas

It’s been 12 years since we moved into our apartment. The apartment itself is now 16 years old. It’s hard to believe how swiftly time has passed. However, there are more and more reminders every year that everything is ageing. For example, our strata committee is debating a refurbishment of the building’s external façade and its ageing hot water system.

In our apartment, we’ve been replacing appliances. Our coffee machine recently gave up the ghost, as did the vacuum cleaner we bought back from London. Last year, we replaced our oven after it suddenly died. The new Bosch model we’ve installed works a treat. Garry says it maintains a more even temperature during cooking. His pavlovas have never been better. 

Last month, we decided that the time had come to also replace the gas cooktop that sits above the oven. We’ve never loved the original Smeg appliance in the apartment when we bought it. The other week, we spotted a black glass cooktop in Bunnings. On a whim, we decided to buy it.

I must admit that the new cooktop looks a million times better than the industrial stainless steel Smeg appliance it’s replacing. My only concern is that there are some reviews online reporting incidents of the glass plate cracking. However, we’ve decided that, given how cheap it was, replacing it prematurely is still cheaper than installing a Smeg alternative.

Nuremberg after dark

Garry and I spent seven fast and furious days working in Nuremberg at the start February.  We’d travelled to Germany to walk the halls of Spielwarenmesse, the world’s largest toy fair.  The event is huge.  Literally thousands of exhibitors from around the world crowd into 16 enormous exhibition halls located just south of the city’s infamous Nazi-era parade ground.

The volume and variety of toys on show is simply mind-boggling. Entire halls are given over to a single toy genre.  There’s literally one hall for dolls, one for model trains, one for wooden toys and so on.  We spent hours each day literally walking miles up and down most of these halls.  Our time was spent meeting with current suppliers and scouting for new products to add to our catalogue.

We’d originally thought we might get some time off to visit a few of the city’s landmark sights.  However, the days simply flew by and we never ventured far from our hotel or the fair itself.  In fact the only tourist moment we enjoyed was a walk one evening through the cobbled streets of the old town down to the Pegnitz river.  Maybe next year we’ll find time to see a few sights?