Christmas in Europe

The holidays are a truly unique and special time in many parts of Europe and we are excited to be headed to Prague and Dresden, Germany to celebrate Christmas. Yet, we've also taken in some smaller festivities here in Zurich including several Christmas markets. Here are a few photos from around the city including the market, the elaborately decorated Swarvoski tree, and the Bahnhofstrasse decorated for the holidays (one of the world's most famous, and expensive, shopping streets):

Perhaps one of the most celebrated traditions in Zurich every year is the singing Christmas tree. Various choirs from around the city take turns singing every day for a few hours - take a listen!

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year wherever you may be, may it be a safe and blessed holiday season! We know ours will truly be a special one to remember!

Our First Week

Aside from finding a place to live during our first week we've been busy exploring the city and figuring out how to complete routine tasks like going to the grocery store and how to order food when out to eat while only knowing about two words of German.

Let's start with our experiences at the grocery store. The first day we got here was Monday and by the time we could go pick up any essentials it was after 5 pm. Monday's here are kind of like Sunday's in the way that many stores are closed or only open part of the day. I find it slightly annoying, but I guess just something to adjust to. Anyways, we found a tiny corner market that was open and were able to pick up a few things. Unfortunately by a few things I mean two handheld baskets full. Our mistake. They are big into their recyclable bags here and most stores sell them, but not the corner market, and usually I carry them with me, but not my first thought after a sleepless night on an airplane. As a result we ended up with our arms overflowing with food as we walked the three blocks home - I couldn't catch a photo as we could hardly hold everything we had to begin with! We walked past many staring people, but at least I later came to find out that the Swiss people tend to stare at you as you walk by anyways (arms overflowing with food or not), its like they know you are Americans!

Lucky for us on our second trip to the store we went prepared with bags, which was good since the larger grocery store (and when I say larger think maybe 1/20 the size of your average American grocery store) is closer to 7 or 8 blocks away and would have made for a long walk home!

We've only been out to eat a couple of times so far, mostly because it is going to cost about double the price of going out back home, but I'm sure we are going to have many interesting experiences while trying to figure out what we are ordering. It may become a game of sorts... let's guess what we each think we are ordering and see who is right. So far, I'm winning. On our first night I played it pretty safe and correctly ordered spaghetti, Steve on the otherhand thought he was getting a hamburger and came back with a fried piece of meat the size of his plate. We still don't know what type of meat it was, but we're pretty sure they don't regularly eat anything too crazy around here like dog or cat, so he ate it. I think this is a sign that we need to start our German language classes as soon as possible! But for now the trick is if we know where we're going to eat ahead of time look online and see if they have a menu and then use google translate to figure out what you're ordering. It worked brilliantly when we went out to eat with some other people for brunch and made us look like we knew what we were doing!

So even though we've been here a week and are pretty settled into our temporary apartment it still hasn't really dawned on us that this is for real and is more than a vacation. I'm not quite sure when that will really hit. But now that its been snowing on and off the past four days (even though it has been with little accumulation in the city) it does feel more like Switzerland. For those of you interested, here are a few photos from our temporary apartment:

A few more things we've learned about living in Switzerland...

1. The Swiss have a lot of money (ok, we already knew that one), but its interesting to see how they spend it. We're still trying to figure out why they don't spend more on bedding. For some reason they don't like sheets on their beds and they don't believe in duvets that fit the entire bed. Somehow I doubt this is their way of being cheap, but why only have enough bedding so you constantly have to fight with the person you share your bed with every night? I can't wait until our bed and linens arrive...
2. If you have a car, or rent one, don't speed. Evidently there are speed traps throughout the city everywhere and for only going a few kph over the speed limit you will get a hefty fine. I think we will stick to the trams, buses and trains for now! Pretty much everyone we have talked to here has received a ticket within their first few times of driving - maybe one way of helping to keep down taxes?
3. They know how to encourage people to recycle here, but its not easy to do so. Instead of paying for a weekly trash pick-up in Zurich, you pay 2 or 3 CHF ($3 or $4) to purchase a specially marked trash bag. These are the only trash bags that will be picked up from the dumpster outside of your apartment building, and if you don't use them evidently they will track you down and fine you. As a result everyone wants to use as few of trash bags as possible and encourages recyclying. However, you don't just schedule a recycling company to do a pick-up either, instead you have to haul your recycling to various places. There are random bins for each color of glass set up in every neighborhood. Then you have to take your plastics and aluminum cans to the grocery store. Finally something like every other week they will do a paper and cardboard pick-up outside of your apartment building. This certainly makes it look easy to just throw all of our recyclables in one container and leave it at the end of our driveway once a week back home!

We made it!

We made it to Zurich... 7 suitcases, 2 backpacks, 2 cats, and 2.5 people - all of us safely arrived on Monday, December 11th on time and in one piece. Well on time is not the complete truth, we got in an hour early. Never before have I arrived so early after leaving a place on time, but evidently those atlantic tailwinds at 100 mph really help a plane. I'm not going to complain...

But let's start from the beginning of this adventure for those of you that might be getting the full story for the first time. Steve came to Switzerland twice this summer to work and we found out at that time that they wanted him to come over here to work for a two year rotation. We were immediately ecstatic at the idea, but daunted by the task of all the work ahead to get ourselves over here. We put the house on the market around Labor Day and by the end of September we received an offer on it! We were extremely fortunate in this entire process and moved out of our house at the end of October. With a lot of help from our parents, a moving company and our good friend Katie Allen, who was willing to let us move in with her until we left the country, we were able to get all the arrangements put together while we waited patiently (or not so patiently) for our visas to be approved. Word finally came at the end of November and we were quickly booking flights to get us here as soon as possible.

The morning of Sunday, December 10th we had some great friends, the Ommens, that helped get us to the airport (since we sold both cars and didn't have a vehicle large enough to transport us and all of our luggage at once)! It was a great help to have four people to get all of our luggage into the airport - I only wish I had a photo of all of us as we were checking in. Lucky for us our day started off right with a very nice airline representative that got us and our cats checked in. It was evidently only the beginning of a much easier travel day than I had anticipated.

I had expected to have issues with the cats from the point of checking in, to taking them through security, to an unpleasant person sitting next to us in the plane, and then making it to Zurich and not having the appropriate paperwork. However, it was quite the opposite in fact - there were no bumps at all - the cats were great travelers and everyone around us loved the cats and kept wanting to look at them, ask questions, and try to pet them through their carriers. It even got to the point that was a bit ridiculous when I woke up to a Swiss couple practically standing on top of me in the middle of the night trying to look under our seats and see the cats. What can I say, but I guess the Swiss love cats? My only lingering concern is that I think we may have actually smuggled the cats into the country. I have spent the last 1.5 months researching and making several trips to the vet to ensure we had all of the paperwork (rabies vaccinations, an international microchip, health certification, and EU passport form), only to not be asked to show one piece of documentation the entire time. I'm pretty sure we accidentally missed something we were supposed to do when we left the Zurich airport, so I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed in the meantime that neither us nor the cats get deported from the country, which would be quite disappointing considering that they have found their favorite new hiding spot in our temporary apartment - under our duvet cover!

Since arriving on Monday we've been busy getting acclimated to our settings and trying to get as much done as possible until Steve had to start work on Friday. This included our city registrations, opening a bank account (I know, a coveted Swiss bank account - if only it came with money in it), and we started looking for permanent apartments. We got extremely lucky and after only a few days of looking we not only found a couple of apartments we liked, but we applied for one and were accepted! In Swiss terms... we were "picked!" And its not easy to be picked for an apartment here, landlords can be downright discriminatory, especially in a housing market such as Zurich's which has an unoccupany rate of less than 1%. Prices as a result are outrageous as is the cost of everything else here. Luckily Ernst & Young provides us a cost of living adjustment, otherwise we would surely be living in a cardboard box. The closest cost of living equivalent to Zurich in the U.S. is probably Manhattan.

However, for the next few weeks we will continue to live in our temporary apartment while we wait for the lease to start on the apartment and our shipment of furniture and other household items to arrive. Lucky for us we have several travel plans already booked for the upcoming weeks, which is sure to keep us busy until it will be time to move in and unpack.

To avoid making this post longer than any of you want or have time to read I will instead have another one coming soon to fill you in on the other things we have been doing around the city, like our first trips to the grocery stores, visiting the Zurich Christmas Market, and trying a few new foods. Until then I will leave you with three things we've learned since our arrival:

1. The Swiss enjoy using images more than words to explain how to operate household appliances such as dishwashers, washers & dryers. One would think that images could be self-explanatory, but not here. At least when I try to cook I can simply use google translate to figure out what the packaging is telling me to do. But not when I want to try to wash my dishes or my clothes. My first dishwashing experience was mostly successful and leaves me hope for the much more complicated washing machine, which I will attack this weekend.
2. Evidently it doesn't bother people to use two different bathrooms - one which has a shower/bath in it and the other with a toilet in it. Now I know this is not all that uncommon and it does not consistently happen in all houses, but why do it at all? Does no one else find it slightly annoying to have to go to two separate ends of the hall when you're getting ready in the morning?
3. Drivers actually stop for you in crosswalks here. It really is a novel idea. The Swiss so much as don't even look when they start walking across the street and there are cars coming full speed at them. It might take a little getting used to that... I think I'm going to at least looking both directions like my mom taught me.