By the numbers

A miscellaneous collection of numbers, about our trip home, the past year, and life in Eindhoven in general...

Going home for Christmas

• Days spent in Canada: 23. 
• Amount of time spent in transit on the way to Canada: 14 hours.
• Amount of time spent in transit on the way from Canada: 24 hours.
• Loads of laundry done in the first ten days after returning from Canada: 10, plus an equally-sized load of hand washables.
• Books brought to Canada (for airplane reading and such): 7.
• Books brought back from Canada (oops): 37, which meant they required their own suitcase.
• Sticks of normal, non-European antiperspirant Stefan brought back from Canada: 6.
• Christmas ornaments cross-stitched this year, but never actually turned into ornaments: 3.
• Size of water container in which Stefan successfully left Chompy during our absence: 1 litre.

2011 in review

• Countries visited in 2011: 9 for Stefan, 8 for Lindsay (Canada, Netherlands, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, UK, Greece, and Stefan went to the US too).
• Provinces of the Netherlands visited at the half-way point of our stay: 7, of a total of 12 (Noord-Brabant, Limburg, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland).
• Number of airplane flights taken: 11 by Lindsay, 13 by Stefan.
• Amount by which the energy company over-estimated our monthly gas and electric bill for 2012: €128.

Life in Eindhoven

• Population of Eindhoven: about 216,000 (metropolitan area: about 700,000).
• Size of our apartment: about 750 square feet.
• Number of closets: 0.
• Number of slanted attic walls converted into short closets: 6 (and we have no idea what we're going to do with some of our crap when we can no longer "just shove it in the wall").
• Length of kitchen table: 2.5 metres, or 98 inches (and no, no one knows how it got up the stairs in the first place, because it came with the apartment).
• Number of free cable channels: about 40.
• Monthly cost of an additional 80-ish digital channels: €17.50, or $22.79.
• Length of Stefan's commute to work: No more than 10 minutes.
• Number of market visits per week: 2 (once on Tuesday and once on Saturday).
• Average cost of a large bouquet of flowers in Eindhoven: €5, or $6.49 (and sometimes 3 for €10).
• Price difference of German-made sewing thread: $2.79, in Canada's favour ($1.50 versus €3.30).
• Price difference of French-made embroidery floss: $1.43, in Canada's favour ($0.45 versus €1.45).
• Bottles of whisky Stefan claims one needs in order to have an acceptable whisky collection: 7.
• Bottles of whisky Stefan actually has: 9.
• Shipping costs from amazon.de, which has a remarkably large assortment of English books: €0.
• Number of different languages included in the instructions for our extra, European-purchased Xbox controller: 18 (and I would list them, but I don't think I can actually identify all of them, because they're not conveniently labelled).