Those are the instructions for mine.

Use your expensive/show-off devices everywhere, even if it’s extremely unpractical: drive the car/take the horse to go to a place next door. Have the most expensive, top-notch devices to do the easiest and most mundane tasks.

That reminds me of a former job I had. I had a male coworker who refused to make coffee. It was a small company with only 10 employees and we had this really cheap machine where you just put coffee in the upper part and then let the water run through. Don’t know what it’s called. Anyway, that coffee machine had ONE (1!) button: on/off. He’d always try to make me or the only other woman in the office make the coffee because “You women know better how to do those things. I never make coffee”. The best part: he was one of the engineers in charge of repairing the power tools that the company sells!

So, what happened if we refused or weren’t there? There just wasn’t any coffee! Those guys would rather not have their coffee than make it themselves!

A lot of brands have special barista oat milk, usually with pea protein I think or rapeseed oil to make the froth stable. Here in Germany they are often labeled “Barista oat milk”.

I have one always in my pocket, too, but I’d argue it’s not “unexpectedly useful”.

I’m learning a bit Dutch. We’re quite close to the dutch border and have been going there for vacation and shopping for a while now and would like to be able to at least order food/ask for the toilet etc.

I feel you. I worked in logistics in an office position for a long time. I’m very organized, so I liked it and was good at it. But wages have always been low and with the current cost of living you can hardly make ends meet with those logistics job. Managed to switch to IT, mostly project management, and thought I finally found something that I’m good at and that’s promising a decent wage. My contract for the last project is about to expire and jobs in IT are few and hard to get.

It’s really disheartening, you think you do everything right and fight your way into an in-demand field just to have the rug pulled from under you.

My husband and I went to Noord Holland in the Netherlands last year. We had a room in a private house. The owner was this nice old couple. They helped us rent bikes at a local bike shop and we just went everywhere on bike. Every day an hour or two just following the coastline, nothing but the sea, the shore and the sails of the boats in the distance.

We also went to a hat museum. It was a private museum - basically an old woman who’se been collecting and making hats her entire life. A whole room full of hats from all over the world and she could tell you all about them, how they are made, the cultural signifance etc. Her husband made us tea while we sat there and listened.