Laowai

• The bells – oh my, the bells! They ring every quarter hour (even through the night) and on Sunday they go on for many minutes at a time. I can’t decide if I like them or hate them. Here’s a two minute sample if you’re interested: 

• Our kitchen has mostly drawers. Without high cabinets the girls have no excuse not to put the dishes away – yay!

• Speaking of our kitchen. The contents of our fridge are about 50% cheese and 50% everything else. Brian is living it up cheese wise. Don’t tell him, but I love the cheese too.

• I need to get comfortable driving. I drove a few times when we lived here before and we did a car share thing. It makes me nervous because I don’t always understand all the signs. Brian is going to take me out tomorrow for some practice. We have a nice little Volkswagon Golf that I think I will be comfortable in.

• Speaking of driving – we went to IKEA today and we went through a bunch of tunnels. They love their tunnels here. If you don’t drive you almost don’t notice them very much – you just see beautiful rolling green hills. Who knew there were cars zooming through those hills.

• Speaking of IKEA – oh my – it’s another love/hate situation. We stocked up on all the little things that we needed. Things like shower curtains and lamps and doormats and extension cords. My list was huge. I generally like putting IKEA furniture together, but after building two bunk bed desk combos for the girls and a bunch of other small things I’ve had enough.

• Speaking of enough.. I’ve also had enough of tying up neat bundles of cardboard. The recycling is great here in Switzerland because you feel like things are actually getting recycled and used again. But it’s a lot more work. It’s not like chucking everything in the bin and putting it out by the road in the US. For paper and cardboard you have to look up your town’s scheduled pick up days (help me Google Translate!). One day for cardboard and another day for paper – usually once a month. Glass goes in bins – you’ll find them around town – don’t forget to separate clear, brown and green. Aluminum cans also go in bins near the glass bins – remove both ends and then flatten. Plastic bottles and other things like batteries go to bins at the grocery store. Food scraps go in the composting bin – thankfully that bin is just outside our apartment building. And then there is actual trash – you have to buy special trash bags and then they go in a big bin by our apartment building. It’s tempting to just throw everything in trash – recyclables and all, but since you pay for bags and it’s a serious no no to throw out recyclables you don’t want to do that. Are you zoned out and bored yet? Yes, it’s very trite to go on and complain about Swiss recycling. It’s just that when you move and you have tons of paper and cardboard from your stuff being shipped and from IKEA packaging you end up with a mountain of things to dispose of. If you don’t hit the ground running and figure out where all the stuff is supposed to go you can get overwhelmed. Here’s my handy work – just a portion of my cardboard. Golly, I hope I did it to the standards of my neighbors.

• We saw two (yes two) dogs riding in carts at IKEA. They each had a little blanket to sit on and they seemed perfectly content.

• Here are the girls eating fake food at IKEA – later when we were all completely exhausted we sat down and ate some real food. Swedish meatballs of course.

• I’d forgotten just how large the snails are here.

• Small things like making dinner still feel cumbersome because I haven’t memorized where everything is. The apartment is slightly chaotic because we are still getting the last boxes of things unpacked and organized. Routines need to be ironed out –  like doing the laundry – soon I won’t have to translate the words on my washing machine every time. I’m excited to do the fun decorating parts around our home (and show you some photos) but first I have to fit all our clothes in the wardrobes (no closets – another Swiss-ism). Things have seemed a blur and school is just around the corner. But we’re getting there and Switzerland is charming us with all its quirks and its beauty. If you want to visit just ring our bell anytime.