Pajama bottoms and lucuma fruit

Now and then, random odd events and funny anecdotes make me think „cool, I just might work this into one of my stories sometime”.

My hometown, Lublin, is a city with five universities. Since some courses are offered in English, more and more foreign students are coming here to study medicine, nursing, engineering, computer science, whatever, and they mostly live in rented apartments. A friend told me an amusing story today about two students, one from the U.S., the other one from Peru, who had shared a flat for two and a half years. After graduating, they both decided to return overseas. Before moving out, they’d asked the landlord whether it would be OK for them to leave some stuff behind, because they didn’t need it anymore, and the answer was “yes, sure”.

At this point, I was sure they’d left a pile of junk, dirty dishes, old underwear, broken electronics, you name it. But no. Apparently, they decided to abandon a somewhat perplexing (and funny) assortment of decent and useful stuff. The landlord is surprised, but doesn’t mind this unexpected “inheritance”. Specifically, it consists of:

- a set of weights (I’m not surprised the owner didn’t want to transport them by plane, but why not sell the stuff?)

- a pair of men’s pajama bottoms, quite new

- winter boots, also quite new

- an unidentified large fuzzy object on the highest shelf in one of the closets (a blanket?)

- a large bag of yerba mate

- tea, coffee, sugar, salt etc.

- unused packets of fairly expensive health food ingredients: coconut flour (the brand shown on the right), chestnut flour, various spices, stevia and lucuma fruit powder (courtesy of the Peruvian student, I guess). 

The pajama bottoms and winter boots will be donated to charity, and the yerba mate will be given to someone who actually drinks the stuff, but the edible goods will be consumed sooner or later (as soon as the “beneficiary” finds out what tasty treats can be baked using those types of flour!)

I could expect to find many things in a rented apartment after the tenants leave, but unopened packages of coconut flour, chestnut flour and lucuma fruit powder? I’m surprised there wasn’t a copy of Moste Potente Potions by Phineas Bourne lying around as well.