Most readers know I am OCD in terms of organization. So, I always had to have to a billfold that had separators – a divider in the larger cash section – one for bills, one for receipts and lots of little side pockets for keeping various things separate. I never fully took advantage of the dividers in the change section of the billfold though….until now.
Since Switzerland doesn’t use Euros (they aren’t a part of the EU), we use Swiss Francs day to day. I also keep a small amount of Euro change since we are on a border town of France, and in case I need a bus ticket there, etc. When we arrived in London this weekend, the pounds and pence added a third dimension. I surely have to keep them separate as you can’t tell the coins apart at a glance (or at least I have not become that skilled yet). So, I have my little change purse divided up with all the different currencies.
I can’t imagine what is was like before the EU & one monetary system for most of Europe!
It’s true, i can now say I have cried over laundry. It is ironic…..when we were considering making the move to Switzerland, I started looking at other ex-pat blogs, and everyone had two cliche posts: one about how awful the laundry process is in Switzerland and the second on receiving at least one to two noise complaints typed in French from neighbors.
Ok, on to the laundry & basement part….
When we moved into the temporary place, we were given 3 keys. The guy who helped us in had shown us the basement upon our request. We assumed one of the keys got us down there.
After about 3 days of cooking all meals in the apartment, we realized we should probably take out the trash. We went down to the basement and tried to figure out where it should go. There were no other trash receptacles that looked fit for an apartment, no chutes, nada. There was a bit of recycling in one corner but I dragged it all out and it was definitely all paper, bottles, etc. In my “Living and Working in Switzerland” book, the cautionary phrase below is listed and we didn’t want to break the rules and were thus perplexed what we should do.
Gabe emailed our contact (in Connecticut by the way) and asked what we should do. We were told they’d look into it. 24 hours later, they said the management company reported the trash receptacle was just beyond the laundry room. What they were describing was the recycling room. We couldn’t take the smell anymore so I left our bag with the recycling, on the other side of the room. I hope that it qualified as correct and prayed i wouldn’t be taken to be shackled for trash neglect in the gallows of Old Town.
About a day later, I realized I should probably do the laundry since Gabe was going on a business trip and likely didn’t have enough clothes at this point. I knew it was forbidden on Sundays (no working of any kind in Switzerland on Sunday, even washing cars, yard work, or drying laundry) so I waited until Monday morning and blocked the morning off for it. I tromped downstairs and found…a locked basement. None of my 3 keys worked. I was unsure if it was still in the Sunday zone or not and they had put a special lock on it, so i waited, and checked every hour. At noon, the cleaning lady came with a guy from the building. He could speak a small bit of English, so I tried to explain that we couldn’t get downstairs. We walked and he tried all my keys. He informed me we didn’t have a key to the downstairs and if it was unlocked prior, then it was because negligent tenants had not fully closed the door behind them.
The cleaning lady was really nice and went and got a brand new key for me. Yippee, laundry time!! I tromped downstairs again. I got in the basement but this time the laundry door was locked!!! I tried all of my keys and this time, one worked if i pushed and slide my body into the door. Success!!!
I already knew European machines were much smaller, so I had subdivided the laundry into 3 loads. I guessed how much liquid detergent to put in (it was in mL) and I pulled the key card out (it had 50 CHF of credits on it) and stuck it in as instructed. The washing machine said it needed a certain # of credits to do the load but it didn’t match to what was available on the card/payment box. I just went over what I needed so I could do the full load and it deducted 6 credits. $6CHF (roughly 8 USD) to do one wash?
Nevertheless, my husband just needed shirts washed, so continued on. When it got to drying it was the same thing. It needed 31 credits but you could only buy then in 15’s. So, to get it to work, i had to buy 45 credits. However, the dryer wouldn’t do any more than 31 minutes at a time and you couldn’t use the leftover 14 minutes. After one go, the laundry was only halfway dry, so I had to buy another round of 3 for a total of $6CHF – $12 CHF in all which is about $16 USD for one load, and i still had another 2 loads to go….this was going to cost about $45USD to do 3 loads.
I felt like Steve Martin in “Father of the Bride” when he was ripping hot dog buns open in the grocery story because he only needed a certain amount of buns:
I ended up air drying half our stuff on the bed in response. I couldn’t open up the wine I decided I needed either, and so when Gabe got home, I greeted him with tears and a bottle of wine stabbed with a corkscrew motioning for him to help.
Today it is a bit funny, looking back, how upset I was. However, i think it is my first true experience with culture shock. In one of my books it defines interpersonal culture shock as, “The ‘loss’ of or changes to the (capable, humorous, supportive, etc) person you know yourself to be.” Never in my life have i had so much trouble with trash or housework or for sure, opening a bottle of wine. It has always come naturally. I guess I’ll just have to see what the next one will be!! Stay tuned for more crazy stories about mundane Swiss life!
Our first two days have been very good. I wanted to share a little bit:
Highlights :
-Our temporary housing is just one block of off the Jet d’Eau which is very conveniently located in a very scenic area. The flat is teeny tiny but it works for us while we wait on our lease to start. Especially since it has a little kitchenette so we can have meals at home as it is so expensive to eat out in Geneva.
Location of our temp apartment
Our first Geneva meal in our tiny temp kitchen
-I have already fallen in love with the farmers markets that are available daily all over the city. It is interesting ordering things in French, however. I am alright at the initial part of the order, “Je voudrais…..whatever” for what I want to buy. It helps that they have signs as can be seen above. What is tough is when they ask me how much of what I want. I am not really good at completely understanding when people speak back to me in French or even knowing the metric equivalents yet so I have gotten around this by using hand gestures. I am also weak at large numbers so when they speak the total to me without writing, I end up just giving them a larger bill that they need to get change. The grocery store is really easy comparatively as you can see your total!!! Hopefully I get better at this.
Plainpalais market
-We have gotten annual TPG (public transportation) passes and have already started to use them. Gabe took the train to work this morning and I did all my errands by hopping on and off the trams and buses. Gabe gets a car today but we don’t know if he’ll bring it home as we don’t have a parking pass and there are no spots this central in the city. Hmm.
Low-Points:
-I can’t get a phone until we get a Swiss bank account and proof of residency. We are working on the bank account but aren’t sure if temporary residency counts as actual residency. In the meantime, I’ll just be available via email. Having no phone actually isn’t that bad, maybe I can slowly reverse the ADD that developed from checking my Blackberry for a third of my life.
-We don’t have a coffeemaker yet. Which requires us to go to Starbucks and get coffees to-go and to pay what is like $8 US dollars for a latte. This is going to be high on my list for activities this week as otherwise we will go broke on caffeine!
-We have tried a few programs we love like ABC app for ipad and Pandora and I am sad to report they don’t work outside the U.S. Gabe and I are still mourning but maybe we can find some replacements out there….
The Swiss Watch Blog 