Apologies to all for the lack of posting; however, the Boltons have been without home internet for a month. What follows is a summary of month 2.
Week 5
This was “get the apartment key week”. As mentioned previously, we were pretty sure that we had successfully opened the security deposit account, but we were sure that if we hadn’t opened the security account the apartment company would let us know. Of course, they decided to let us know on the day of key handover that they hadn't received notification of the security deposit account being set up. So, M had the pleasure of spending another day running between the apartment, the office, the bank, and the apartment company office (in the center of town, completely removed from the apartment building itself) to get everything set-up. Apparently, when K dropped off the paperwork last week, instead of mailing the papers to the apartment company, the bank associate lost the papers. As everything in CH requires original, signed documents, this meant that instead of the bank just sending a note to the apartment company, we essentially had to start over, with paperwork in triplicate, all requiring signatures from both M and K. Aaaahhh, Swiss efficiency.
Eventually the key was obtained, so M spent a few hours with the apartment concierge (an older gentlemen who lives in the next building over) going through the apartment reviewing the “mess” the previous tenants had left, e.g. one small speck inside the oven, and the “typical wear and tear” of the flat, e.g. small dents in the plaster walls? She also received a one hour tutorial on the communal clothes washing area: when is our assigned time, which machine is our assigned machine, how to use the machines, how to clean the machines after use (including drying inside various gaskets with a Swiss Shamwow), how the apartment cuts power to the washing area at 10pm every day so residents aren’t disturbed by the noise, how the Canton cuts power to the washing area at lunch every day (for reasons currently unknown), when to open the window to “air-out” the room, and when to leave the window closed, etc.
In fact, after spending the entire day, M learned all kinds of things, but they never informed her of how to pay the rent that was immediately due. This prompted additional trips between our bank and the apartment office.
For some reason, the Swiss like their apartments almost completely bare (no lights, just dangling wires, and no clothes closets-in fact, when searching for an apartment you need to make sure the kitchen actually comes with appliances), so we drove to Bern to visit IKEA (there is an IKEA about the same distance away, in Lausanne, but everyone said that the IKEA in the German part of CH was much better organized than the IKEA in the French part of CH); there, we bought some basic items like light fixtures and extension cords.
This was also “buy a car week”. On Thursday afternoon, K went out to kill a car and bring it home to the cave. After test driving one car from the previous weekend, and visiting many more car dealers, he was starting to run out of business hours to find something. Having driven by a few Alfa-Romeo dealers without stopping, K pulled into a small (7 car inventory) Alfa-Romeo dealer on the side of a random road. K’s eye was immediately caught by a used VW golf, with automatic transmission. It was 10 years old and had longer profile then we were looking for, but it met everything else on the list, and it had very, very low miles/kilometers. Took it for a test drive, went back to the office to get M to bring her back for a test drive, and bought it
The purchase contract was one single copy of one sheet of paper, requiring one signature. Unlike the US where you drive the car home off the lot, CH is a little different, and it can take a week or two to actually drive the car one just purchased. Supposedly, in a week, the car will be insured, inspected and registered, have license plates, and be ready to roll. If this works out, then this is a real example of Swiss efficiency. Even when we’ve purchased cars in the US, there have always been lots of signatures and paperwork required, even when there’s been no financing.
Easter week-end, everything is closed (including on the Friday before and the Monday after). Saturday, we woke up early and drove to Strasbourg in the Alsace region of France. The border crossing was uneventful, but the open plains of France were visibly distinct from the narrow valleys of Switzerland.
We visited the Cathedral of Notre Dame which was absolutely incredible. Incredible amounts of stone “gingerbread” on every possible external surface. So much so that it seems when they ran out of surfaces, it seems they added a flying buttress here or an arch there just to have more surfaces to cover with finery. Incredible. The interior was also impressive, lots of stained glass, amazing pipe organ. The pulpit was another “gingerbread” wonderland. We saw the astronomique horologe, but did not spend the extra 90 minutes to see the presentation on the clock.
Had lunch in a local vegetarian restaurant (La Poele de Carrotte) which M had googled. K ordered for himself, in French, as this was part of his French homework, and it went fairly well; the ordering was light on subjects and verbs, but he said lots of direct objects, with adjectives, instead of just grunting and pointing at the menu, and we received everything correctly. The goal was to sample local Alsacian wines, which we did, and to eat some vegetables as our diet the past few days has been heavy on carbs and light on greens, but M’s potato and carrot gratin (while creamy, cheesy, and wonderful) was a questionable execution of the 2nd goal.
Also in Strasbourg, we wandered through the Musee of Alsacian history: everyday life items from the 18th and 19th century, and then it was time for a nap. Afterwards, we continued strolling through the town with the mission to find local wines. After a couple wine stores, and a beer store offering Brother Thelonious from California (K’s favorite beer), we found one shop offering tastings. But, when we were offered the opportunity to taste local vintages, instead of wine, M was given plum schnapps (very sweet) and K had pear brandy (very strong). So, we didn’t really taste, but we did acquire local wines.
A little more strolling, and it was time to try the local bieres, as M claims that the Alsatians claim to take beer seriously (unlike the Swiss). We stopped into a bar and had a perfectly acceptable local beer, but after a brief discussion in French with the bartender, K had a fabulous strong, dark Belgian ale--Kasteel. Yum.
The final Alsacian specialty to find was sauerkraut/choucroute, but without meat. While window shopping, and stopping into a few restaurants to ask, we happened by a chocolate store. As we had just had a discussion of the scale of chocolate quality as relates to beer quality, and seeing as K had just had a pretty top-notch beer, M needed to see how Alsacian chocolatiers did. After 20 minutes, and with some chocolatey goodness warming our bellies, we returned to the search of vegetarian choucroute. This final box on our Strasbourg visit remained unchecked.
Week 6
Busy, busy week, but not from work. It was only a 4 day workweek, and we weren’t at work after 18h00 even once. Tuesday, our container shipment of household goods arrived. We’re still not entirely sure what route our belongings took to go from Woodland to Neuchatel, but we’re fairly sure that our dining room table is now a more experienced world traveler than we are. M & K tag-teamed the goods shipment, and by mid-afternoon all of our worldly goods were strewn about our apartment: the proverbial aftermath of a tornado hitting a trailer park, but definitely progress on getting settled in NE.
Wednesday evening, we continued to sort, organize, and identify what we needed to be able to sort and organize. For example, this apartment does have a linen closet and a coat closet, which is unusually generous by swiss standards, as referenced previously. However, item 1: we need a place to hang up all of our clothes, and item 2: even though our home in CA was smaller than the US average, and was certainly older than average, and seemed to us to have minimal storage space, after moving into a smaller apartment that largely came with blank walls, the CA space was utilized very well: built-in bookcases, kitchen utensil hanging racks in the kitchen, a magnetic knife bar on a wall, a pot rack hanging from the ceiling, a built-in pantry. So, we needed some general storage space (kitchen goods, food, books, DVDs, CDs, games, etc). We took some measurements, and discussed how we wanted to lay-out the apartment, and then took more measurements.
Thursday, we got our car we picked up our "new" 1999 Swiss VW Golf.
Friday morning, on our way to work, we saw the Cheese Wagon again. In the US, Cheese Wagon is a term for a school bus (as it’s yellow like US cheddar cheese, and it’s a wagon, of sorts). But in CH, the cheese is all white, and there aren’t school buses, so explaining the US reference takes quite a bit of time. But the Swiss Cheese Wagon isn’t a school bus. The closest US analogy is the Taco Truck or the Burrito Bus, i.e. a mobile food emporium, but instead of tacos or burritos, this truck sells cheese (really good cheese, too).
Friday, we formally moved our address. In CH, one must register with the local commune within 2 weeks of moving to a new town. So, as dutiful residents of the Helvetian Confederation, we went into downtown Neuchatel to register. And were promptly informed that we couldn’t register in Neuchatel until we had “de-registered” from Les Hauts Geneveys. To quote the lady at the office, “Have you told them you’re leaving?”. We hadn’t realized that we were breaking up with our temporary housing town, but no matter. So, hop into the car to drive 10 minutes up the road to Les Hauts Geneveys, to the commune office, to work through the break-up process. Which took approximately one minute and involved the commune official writing our departure date on a piece of paper in her file. Then, back into the car, back to Neuchatel, back to the residence registration office, to tell them that the break-up was complete and we were now free to live in Neuchatel. In the end, we spent approximately one hour to accomplish work that took 4 minutes to execute. Swiss efficiency strikes again.
Next up, a parking permit for our new car. Switzerland has reserved parking spaces, yellow parking spaces (semi-reserved), blue parking spaces (available to anyone, but with a time limit), and white parking spaces (in our books, these are described as free, but so far, we have only seen/found pay parking white spaces). The parking permit allows one to park near their home in blue spaces without the time limit. We wandered around NE until we found the police station, and then handed them the form that M had prepared (with some help from French fluent coworkers). But, our car is registered in Les Hauts Geneveys, because even though we gave the garage our Neuchatel address, the Canton “knew” that we “really” lived in Les Hauts Geneveys. So, we explained that we had (just that day) changed our address to Neuchatel. The official we worked with was extremely helpful, and it seemed like they would work through the issue. However, that evening we received an email from the city, and to the best of our French abilities, it seems that once we have updated the car registry to Neuchatel, then we can re-apply for the Neuchatel parking permit. Until then, no permit for us.
Friday after work, we drove back to Ikea to obtain furniture to store all of the items currently strewn about our apartment, or still in boxes. After several hours, we had identified all of the items which we wanted to purchase. As we had only shopped at Ikea twice previously, and on both occasions, had made fairly small purchases, we weren’t familiar with how self-service the establishment is. We were willing to pay for home delivery, as we wanted to acquire quite a number of items, but to have the items delivered, one must first find all of the items in (essentially) a warehouse space, load all of the items onto carts, move the carts (with goods) to checkout, buy all of the items, move the carts around the corner to customer service, request delivery, and then (supposedly) leave the goods with the customer service agents. After another hour of finding and loading items onto the cart (note that large boxes of particle board are (a) ungainly and (b) heavy), wrestling the carts to checkout, it was now after 21h30, and Ikea was closing down. K was a little frustrated by now, so he threw some ratcheting tie-downs (come-alongs) into the cart muttering “I’ll just strap everything to the top of the rental car. Screw it.” But after 30 minutes of wrestling boxes into the car, and then out of the car, and back into the car, we finally had everything loaded, and nothing was tied on top. Of course, M had to sit in the back, and K could hardly see out the right side windows of the car while driving, but everything was loaded. After an hour drive back to NE, we decided that we would unload what we could that night. So, after 23h on Friday night, we double-parked the car, turned on the hazard blinkers, and began hauling those big boxes of particle board out of the car, down the sidewalk, into the apartment building, either up the stairs or up the elevator, and finally into our flat. We whacked a lot of walls, and K definitely woke up a neighbor by accidentally ramming their front door with a box trying to unload it from the elevator at midnight, but eventually everything that was even reasonably movable by either of us was into the apartment. As it was now after midnight, we went to Les Hauts Geneveys, fed the cats, and collapsed into sleep.
Saturday, we awoke to return to the apartment to unload the remaining items from the car. As these were the heaviest & bulkiest items, we were unable to move the entire box for each item; instead, we had to unpack the box on the sidewalk and carry the contents up individually. We then spent the bulk of the day organizing goods, building furniture, re-organizing goods to take advantage of the new storage space, and repeating. We did take a break to go on a shopping trip to acquire some basic electronics (alarm clock, toaster, microwave oven) and while we still had the rental car (which has more space than our car; we never could have transported all of the Ikea stuff in our VW) we obtained a 2nd fridge, for when K gets back into the homebrewing business. After another long day, we had all the furniture built, except for the last wardrobe, and everything was coming together.
Sunday, we returned the rental car to the Geneva airport. We also took the opportunity to walk around the city and sight-see (for example, the famous flower clock). The Cathedral was very impressive. We also had a bite of lunch at a Genevese institution (Les Armures), and then took the train back to Neuchatel. M watched the countryside and napped while K caught up on work.
Week 7
After a lighter load at the office the previous week, work this week retaliated. Except for Friday, K was in the office until 8 every night.
Monday, we built the last wardrobe.
The rest of the week, M spent the evenings shuttling goods from Les Hauts Geneveys to our apartment in Neuchatel.
Saturday, we brought the last loads of stuff and the cats to our new home.
Sitting down Saturday evening, in our chairs, at our table, to eat a meal on our plates with our flatware, that M had prepared with our kitchen utensils, in our pots, was very comfortable. It had been nearly two months since we’ve been able to do this, and it’s a great milestone. Afterwards, we hooked up M’s Imac and watched one of our DVDs. Again, very comforting. It felt like home.
Sunday, K took his bike out for a ride. After having only ridden on flat roads in Woodland, CA for the past 5 years, and after minimal exercise for 8 weeks, the hills of Neuchatel, were a huge challenge. The ride was short and painful. However, coming back downhill was fun.
Also, on Sunday, we went for a walk in town (nous faison la promenade) to check out the new environs.
Week 8
From an acclimatization perspective, this week was fairly uneventful. Our new commute is only 3km, but it takes nearly as long as our commute from Les Hauts Geneveys, as there are two spots of road construction between the apartment and the office.
Walking, or bike riding, to work can be even shorter, but it is a significant elevation change, so we haven’t gone green yet. One evening, K had to work late, so M took the car to run errands, and K walked home; it was all downhill and quite pleasant.
Friday morning, we saw a hedgehog (herisson) outside the apartment. It was small and cute. M mentioned the sighting to her coworkers and learned that Swiss hedgehogs have special Swiss hedgehog fleas; these fleas, supposedly, will transfer to pets, e.g. cats, but not to people. Separately, she was informed that les herissons have a penchant for strawberries. So, if we see another, we may try to entice it closer with a strawberry, but we'll keep the cats away so that they don't acquire fleas.
M planned a big weekend in Gruyere: cheese, castle, more cheese, some museums (apparently the character designer from the movie Aliens [with Sigourney Weaver] is from Gruyere, and there’s a museum of his work), more cheese, and then some intestinal blockage. However, it turns out that one weekend per year (this weekend, in fact), they shut down all of the roads around Gruyere, apparently to make a city-wide block party. As Gruyere is quite a distance away, and as the train connections from Neuchatel to Gruyere are fairly complicated (especially for public transit newbies), we’ll delay our Cheesefest until next weekend.
However, we did decide to go out Friday night and enjoy some Neuchatel nightlife. We started in the town’s Irish Pub (Cafe du Cerf), enjoying the live music (the musician played a Chapman stick, which we’d never heard of, but was interesting), and some beverages. We moved on to the local brewpub and things got interesting… M had a banana beer and K had the seasonal special brew (both were highly recommended by the waitress). The banana beer was, essentially, an alcopop: very sweet, very banana-y, very not what we were expecting, quite unpalateable. The special, was bright pink, somewhat sweet, but quite spicy, so essentially, was like drinking watery hot sauce; very not what we were expecting, and quite unpalateable. (Ken's pretty certain that the special was the worst beer he's every tasted, which, considering his fraternity days in college, and his initial attempts at homebrewing--think ham-flavored beer, is saying quite a bit.) Much laughter ensued, particularly over discussing how to imbibe these beverages without grimacing. After much laughter, we made our way home.
The beer "incident" has, however, renewed Ken's fervor in getting homebrewing restarted. We've located some online Swiss homebrew suppliers. Now, we just have to figure out how in the world we're going to boil 5 gallons of water on the itty-bitty electric stove in our kitchen...
Lessons Learned:
1) Swiss beer, in general, is not very good.
2) The vignette de velo (bike registration sticker) required to take a bike on any public road covers up to 2 million francs worth of damage that you might cause to someone else's property with your bicycle. How exactly one can cause even 1 million francs of damage with your bicycle is still up for debate.
3) It seems almost no windows in Switzerland have window screens.
4) The Swiss love speed traps.
