A charming little quirk of Leiden is that most of the windows are too old to stay up when you open them, and so every warren of students has their Designated Unimportant Heavy Object to hold up the panes. Old dictionaries, laundry detergent, especially thick and sturdy dildos, a random chunk of wood pried off ikea furniture broken during a drinking contest …
@0xabad1dea huh, you have American-style up-sliding windows? Interesting!
@lambda my current apartment and previous one both have door-type windows, but most of the buildings in historical Leiden have slide-up windows from the 1800s
@0xabad1dea @lambda Random chunk of wood indeed!
@meyltje @0xabad1dea @lambda [the British (? Not sure if it got taken over to America/got lost in language reform) term for these is a "Sash" window]
Jul 7, 2026, 8:04 PM@fisherthewol @meyltje @0xabad1dea @lambda yep - the "sash" is a rope that goes over a pulley to a counterweight
After a hundred years or so the sash wears out and the window is unbalanced
They can be repaired - with a bit of deconstruction and repainting.
As a kid I helped my Dad fix a bunch of these in the old house we moved into.
Some also needed a century of soot vacuuming out so that the counterweight had enough room to drop.
Jul 7, 2026, 8:08 PM@fisherthewol @meyltje @0xabad1dea @lambda also if the glass gets replaced with modern (heavier) glass the counterweights need to be bigger
Oh, how funny!
Not a window, but the sad accordion blinds in my kid's room need such a prop, as they won't stay up on their own.
For his window blinds, it's a section of a plastic telescoping vuvuzela!
@0xabad1dea whew, it's two dildos hot today!
