Happy Easter!!

Well in march during my latest Berlin weekend I did not resist to the temptation of acquiring another (yes! another) samovar. The girls at the Akazienstrasse cafe’ told me they had to give away a dozen of samovars, as their cafe’ was formerly known as a chai house…had I known this 10 months ago when they refurbished the place, I would have had exquisite and very welcome presents for my triestine friends!

This one is less shiny and missing the top kettle, poor thing, so it seemed quite obvious to me to buy an egg to keep him company. Yes, one of those perfect gyps eggs that you find in the marvellous bricolage stores in Berlin, it fits very well on top of the samovar, as if a cheeky goose would have passed by our window…

Samovar, wannabe Fabergé eggs, Berlin, there is a russian fil rouge…Frohe Ostern from A flat in Berlin! (even if we’re in Rome now- cooking and enjoying long chats with our friend Ch. from Geneva!)

Samovar, Lack and the 20s

Ikea arbitrage and metissage!

We needed to give some bones to the furnishing of the flat, so at last I did my Ikea expeditions. We  don’t like to live in a catalogue, but the store provides unbeatable solutions for basics, to be picked and mixed with less standardized and definitely second-hand pieces …or vintage, you name it! ;D

I did not care to do some planning online before taking the plane to Berlin, since I did not have exact measurement of the new niche for the kitchen. So imagine my suprise when I saw that in Berlin kitchen prices are not just “not aligned” with Italy (as a friend told us) but definitely lower.

Just compare the same kitchen, say for instance pages 42 and 43 from the  italian catalogue and german catalogue … For example, the most basic kitchen costs Eur 830 in Rome but only Eur 399 in Berlin. But for stylish kitchens the difference in prices is also huge! In the Wardrobe category sometimes prices are lower in Germany, sometimes in Italy…difficult to understand why…different production areas?

Well arbitraging Ikea Berlin-Rome does not make much sense because of the carry cost, but our friends in Tessin tell us that Milanese do visit the Swiss Ikea rather than the Italian one…so the balance must definitely be in favour of North-of-the-Alps pricing.

If you want to go beyond and not only arbitrage Ikea but also play around with it and “take the Ikea out” as they say, have a look to this crazy blog…Ikeahacker.

The metissage between old and new  is someting we love: last summer, before the refurbishing even started, the first items I bought were some cantilevered steel-leather second-hand chairs…

and…this fantastic  samovar, from the russian flea market at Rathaus Schoeneberg, with its porcelain plug and bakelite handles (need to check its stamp though!).