Quirky Things About Our Apartment #1: Dresser

I (David) wanted to start a fun little segment on our blog about our apartment here in Paris. Since things are somewhat different here in France, I thought it'd be fun to highlight some of the quirky things about our particular apartment. Not everything that is quirky about our apartment is necessarily due to the fact that we're in France though -- it could merely be a quirk about the professor from whom we're renting our apartment and the things she buys and collects. I thought I'd focus this first installment on one of the dressers in our apartment.

When we first moved in, we found this dresser in one of the rooms and it was completely empty, made available for our use by the Professor. There are seven drawers, but the peculiar thing is that there are no handles to open the drawers, nor is there anything to grip to open the drawers, which when closed, are completely flush with the rest of the dresser.

Instead, there are four keys that can be inserted into key-holes and then partially turned to open and close the drawers. The other peculiarity is that there are actually three different keys and they don't all fit in each key hole. There is a different key for the top drawer and a different key for the bottom drawer, while the five drawers in the middle are all opened by the same two keys. Strange. But I'm happy to say that we're pretty much used to it now, but every now and then I do still find it strange that I have to pull a key out of one drawer and insert it into another drawer just to open and close it.