Yeah, that was kind of a kick - no screens! I remember bees stumbling into our place, and, once, a seagull (we were on the 4th floor) made it into my window over my kitchen countertop. But the flies were the worst. Thankfully, because we were up so high we didn't get them often, but they did make it in now and then. (My kitchen looked out over the bin-barn.)
I had wanted to buy a place out in the west of Scotland. If I had, there would have been screens on those windows ASAP or I'd have been eaten alive by the midgies. But generally there are an incredibly smaller number of "bugs" over there - or where we were in Glasgow - than there are here in the States. You'd have to be nuts to not have screens on your windows over here, whereas over there (except for midge territory) you can get away with it, I think.
And yes, the lack of a good dryer made for much cursing in our house. We had a "condensing" dryer that got our clothes ~almost~ dry if you only put one or two things in there at a time and then waited three hours.
As did the tiny fridge with the incredibly anemic freezer compartment. (Cursing, not drying.) You have to learn to shop very differently (and more often) for fresh food over there. You really can't take advantage of a good sale in the same way. And in our place they'd gone to great lengths to hide the appliances behind glossy white doors. So when you went into our kitchen you'd see the burners and the oven, with the vent hood, and then just glossy white cabinet panels that hid the DW, W&D, & Fridge. It was kind of odd.... We saw that in a lot of places there.
Toilets also took a bit of getting used to - a button that had to be pushed for flush or pushed and held down for turbo-flush.... And the "power showers". They were handy, but took some getting used to. (Wish we had one here!)
