Washing machines

I have a big old wonderful American washing machine, one which powers through huge loads of laundry in no time flat. Icelanders tend to comment on it, how nice it must be. Having never known anything else, my washing machine does not seem particularly remarkable to me. But my friend Guðmundur explained to me on Sunday, when he called to thank me for Saturday night's dinner, that Icelandic washing machines are as small as they are, and take as long as they do, because they are only hooked up to the cold water, not the hot water. If one wished to do a load of whites in hot water, the machine has to heat up the water itself. He was told that the reason for this was that Icelandic water has too many minerals in it, and thus it would ruin the mechanics of washing machines. We however decided this did not really make any sense, since my machine using the naturally heated Icelandic water, and it is still running fine. But it does at least help me understand why Icelandic machines take sooo long to do a tiny load of wash.

(Clearly my life has become a wee bit too simple, since this was in fact the most interesting thing I learned this weekend).