Week 4

On Monday morning, M went back to the bank one more time to finish setting up the security deposit and came back almost done, but fed up. So, M and K tagged, she stepped out of the ring, and he stepped in. After two more trips to the bank, we’re pretty sure the account is set-up; not 100% positive, but pretty sure; and if the account is not set-up, we are 100% positive that the apartment will tell us.

Handover of the apartment occurs this upcoming Wednesday. We are excited to move in and have our own space. The guest house has been alright, but we've been living in the same room as our curious cats, and, every now and then, the guest house has another visitor that appears out of nowhere. We will have to make our way to IKEA to buy light fixtures and other items soon, as almost all apartments do not include fixtures; when you move in, usually bare wires are hanging down from the ceiling.

K ate something wrong mid-week. After one and a half days, M recommended yogurt, under the theory that the microbes in the yogurt would overwhelm the microbes that were punching K in the stomach. K recovered, but it was an ugly few days. Additionally, K starts to get queasy any time chopped spinach is mentioned.

In other news this week, M started her first French lessons in Switzerland, which she found to be quite exhausting since they are conducted almost exclusively in French. One of her assignments is to start reading Harry Potter à l'Ecole des Sorciers (or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the US). The goal was to read a chapter at a time, but reading 4 pages takes an hour, so she's reconsidering a more modest goal (like 5 pages). Ken will start the fun of learning a new language in week 5.

From a social perspective, we did wind back up at the Cafe du Cerf, although this time with coworkers to celebrate a successful regulatory audit. We’ve heard the conventional wisdom that the Swiss don’t spend personal time with coworkers. On the surface, Friday evening may seem to refute this CW. However, none of the folks we were out with were Swiss (French, British, Canadian, American), so this evening may not be applicable to judge the CW. Yet, some Swiss nationals were invited out and, as they did not come out, this may actually support the CW. Hmmm… More data are needed. Regardless, the evening was loads of fun with good food, good conversation and lots of laughs.

This week's lessons:
1) In Switzerland you are mandated to have both Winter tires and Summer tires for your car.
2) The Neuchatel public library has a decent English book collection, almost equal in size to the German book collection, and significantly larger than the Italian and Spanish collections.
3) Montezuma's revenge is not limited to Mexico.
4) Despite all the hills and mountains in Switzerland, almost no one drives an automatic transmission car.
5) Europeans have invented a cash card system which works like cash in that if you lose the card then you lose the cash. The "cash" exists on the card itself and not in an account. When you put your card into an ATM, you can transfer money from your bank account onto the card. Readers then read the card and deduct cash from the card to pay for things. What a convoluted system...
6) Quatre-vingt versus quatre, vingt. This isn't a new thing (at least not for M), but she did run into an issue this week when trying to purchase a pastry and she heard the cost was quatre, vingt (4 francs and 20 cents). It turns out, however, what was said was un, quatre-vingt (one franc and 80 cents (4 X 20=80). Why do the French have such a screwed up numbering system?
7) It takes 30+ notecards to cover the new French vocabulary words in two pages of the French-language kids book that M is reading.