Elena's First Entry in Switzerland

This is the first time I am sitting down to write since our adventure began six days ago. Wow, what a whirlwind. Getting ready to leave was a whirlwind of house painting, purging and packing and now getting settled here is a whirlwind once again. Establishing life here is like a series of mini mystery cases that we must solve (or so we have tried to tell Isaac and Elliot, in an attempt to make the frustrations fun rather exasperating).

On our second day here we went to open a bank account. However, this first requires being assigned a “B” or “C” status by the immigration office. Acquiring this status requires registering with the “Stadtbuero”, which for us is located in the next larger town (we are living in Zurich-Affoldern, which is a town itself and sortof like a suburb of Zurich, but is also located within the City of Zurich or so I think). We figured out the bus system well enough to take the bus there and upon registering discovered that it takes two months for immigration officials to decide if you are a B or C. So in the meantime, how do we pay our bills? Hmmm…a good mystery for Brian and Elena to solve.

You may not think of taking out the garbage as a likely mystery, but so it is. One is not allowed to throw out garbage in a plain bag. A “Zueri sack” is required. How does one get a Zueri sack? Apparently they are available all over. But we saw none on display at the grocery store. Omi investigated and found out that they can be purchased at the checkout counter: 25 Frank for a medium sized bag, 40 Frank for a larger bag (exchange rate: $1.2 Frank per dollar) (translation: start recycling!). I promptly forgot to buy the Zueri sack this morning, despite two treks down the hill to the grocery store, so we continue to have garbage piling up in the kitchen. I will remember tomorrow.

Life here is much simpler in many ways and certainly more striped down: no car, no dishwasher, no automatic ice cubes and no laundry facilities in our 800 sq foot apartment. Laundry facilities are in the basement and we can use this only once every ten days – it’s a rotation apparently; in emergencies, it is possible to negotiate with the person whose wash day it is and attempt to strike a deal.

It takes longer to do things. We went to a nearby lake today that is probably 2-3 miles from our house. To get there we first had to call the bus info line to figure out which bus to take, then walked down the hill to the bus stop (after asking where it was), took the bus and then walked about 20 more minutes. All this by car would probably take less than 15 minutes. But we love being without a car and we are able to get around so easily (relatively speaking) without one! Simple things like just getting to the lake are an adventure in and of themselves.

There is no coffee to go, except for Starbucks. On our third day we took the train downtown, walked along the famous Bahnhofstrasse (fancy shops and cafes, including Europe’s largest toy store – Elliot’s beagle senses took us right to it). Our destination was the lake, where we eventually arrived (some Franks poorer, a couple of small toys richer). We sat and watched the boats and the boys ate Bratwurst mit Brot. I of course had in mind a nice Euro café with some yummy coffee, but no such place was in sight. So upon our return I decided to settle for a Starbucks – we had seen several on our way down. Long story short – I ditched the boys to go find a Starbucks (Omi graciously accompanied me). We spent $5.50 on a plain old small decaf coffee and $7.80 on a fancier frappachino (from which I foolishly omitted to coffee to avoid the caffeine, so ended up with iced cream with whipped cream on top, ugh, and totally missed my café fix). It was thoroughly unfulfilling and I am swearing off Starbucks here for the year! Lesson learned: one should always take time to sit in a café and leisurely sip a coffee (ok, I am abstracting from the issue of two hyper boys right now).

So far it has been a great adventure and the boys have done really well. They too seem to think of it as a big adventure and are embracing the newness and excitement. Having Omi here with us has been wonderful for all of us and has made our transition so much easier than it otherwise would have been. She is the expert at asking questions, finding out bus and train routes and other pertinent information, and translating questions for the apartment manager and cable company regarding our frustrating lack of Internet service (we realize just how addicted we’ve become).

The boys have moments of being homesick and of missing their friends. They have been wild at night before bedtime and it’s been tough to manage them and get them to go to bed much before 10. And they are not always very nice to each other (they are not used to relying on the other as sole comrade and playmate). But despite this, they seem to be having some fun. Elliot has discovered escalators. He rode up and down the escalator at the Hauptbahnhof for at least 30 minutes the other day with Brian while Omi and I bought train passes. He sees an escalator, train or electric bus (he calls them electric school buses) and exclaims “awesome!” We have several small playgrounds and a soccer field very close by and Isaac even got to play soccer with a couple of Swiss boys the other day (he came back with his face totally red and exclaimed – those Swiss boys play hard).

The food has been an unexpected boost to the boys’ morale. All three of Isaac’s one line entries in his journal so far have been about how awesome the food is (and what is not to love -- incredible cheeses, bread, chocolate, and this very yummy stuff called Quark).

Isaac had his seventh birthday yesterday. We celebrated with a black forest chocolate cake and an excursion to a nearby castle – Kyberg Scloss, built in 1579. We learned about Swiss history and got to see the weapons and armor (and torture chamber) of the times. We then hiked back along footpaths and discovered yummy ice cream at a café in a small village where we caught the return bus. A remarkable thing about this place – one is never too far from a café or bratwurst stand.