These are all modes of transportation we took in a 3 hour period while going from Geneva to London. Granted, I’ll take fault on actually using both trains and trams in Geneva instead of a simple bus connection, but that is a really long story and we’ll just leave it at 3 simple tips for our Genevan friends:
1. When you plan a better route and the other bus option rolls up, stick with your pre-planned choice, especially when it involves an early airport connection
2. Never connect in Bel-Air with a 2 minute change unless you really know what you are doing, especially when it involves an early airport connection
3. Don’t rely on the train station always having an instant train to the airport, sometimes it can be up to 20 minutes. While this 20 minute wait allows for a delicious latte and roast beef sandwich train station breakfast for Gabe, its not a comfortable amount of time, especially when it involves an early airport connection.
Nonetheless, we both boarded our 7:30am flights to London, on separate airlines. Upon arrival, we realized we were in different terminals so actually just met in Hyde Park via the Tube. Which, by the way, is awesome! Mind the gap!
It is pretty amazing how we both ended up getting there and meeting without using a single automobile. Its so cool how this is so common all over Europe.
Happily, this week I only have one load of laundry. So aside from needing to dedicate my entire morning to monitoring it, all is good in laundry land. Also, I learned our new friends A & A do not have a dryer in their apartment basement so I have decided to be very grateful for shelling out my $15 CHF to do be able to wash and dry.
Since I am mastering the art of laundry in Switzerland, it was time to move on….to dry cleaning. I had done some research on Glocals and found that the chains are best as a lot of clothes can disappear or get ruined in some of the Mom & Pop cleaners and there isn’t really any repercussion. You see, in Switzerland, there is no such thing as “the customer is always right”. Its really more like “get it our way”. In fact, I recently read that the one Burger King had closed down in Geneva. It is probably because the Swiss business owners revolted when they put up the slogan, “Have it your way”. They didn’t want it to become a trend and disrupt the system.
I researched and found a chain that is near our temp apartment and also has a branch near our permanent one. So, I brought in four of Gabe’s work shirts.
“Parlez-vous Anglais?” I asked the cashier.
“Non,” she replied.
However, it’s okay….I whipped out my homemade note (thanks Google Translate), and showed her. She started punching in numbers on the register and $68.10CHF appeared.
I frowned. “Non?” and pointed to the special price….only 4.50 CHF ($6 USD) for a man’s shirt.
She agreed, “Non…” and then came up 22.80 CHF.
“Oui!” I said, “Quand prêt?”
She replied, “Lundi,” which means Monday. So, one week to get shirts back. Yikes, I hope we get access to our shipment soon as now four of Gabe’s shirts are locked down in Swiss dry cleaning jail!
While my note worked this time, I’ll refrain from doing this at the UBS (the bank). I think they might not like my tactic so much there.
Today, we are 10 days into our Swiss Living adventure. I wanted to dedicate my future Friday posts to gratitude. This Friday, I am grateful for finding some places to fit in and new friends, especially with Gabe traveling for work half of this past week:
( 1 ) I joined the American International Women’s Club this week and they embraced me with open arms. I took a yoga class Wednesday morning (awesome place to do a down-dog, right outside 17th century windows, above). I can’t wait to do more events. They have a meeting later today and a “drop-in” coffee event on Monday.
( 2 ) Charlotte friend, S (part of S&S) who are joining us to live here in Geneva in a few weeks, introduced me to super-nice Lady J (check out her blog here) who recently moved here from Japan (and prior to that, Singapore) and we spent a morning last week enjoying an Auer coffee and a walk comparing notes on settling into the city. Thanks for the introduction, S!
( 3 ) We joined a gym – yeah!!! It felt great to get back in my routine I had established going to the Dowd Y in the mornings before work over the last 4 years. Yesterday, I was happy to discover that they have a 7am Thursday Disco cycle and happily enjoyed my first Disco spinning experience with lights, music and enthusiastic French instruction. It almost felt like home; however, the main difference being women in full jewelry/make-up in couture working out. i definitely scream American here in the real gym clothes.
( 4 ) I started checking out the four English-speaking churches in the Canton of Geneva and noted their times and addresses. I plan to make a circuit to check them out over the next few weeks to see which feels right. Anyhow, this past Sunday, I went to a Lutheran one in Old Town that meets at 11am. It was more traditional than what I am used to in Charlotte, but what was pretty neat is they had a completely International congregation – I think out of their 80-100 members, there are at least 20 nationalities – pretty cool. The service was Lutheran and music was sung/performed in English, French, and Zimbabwe and Swahili. I was very welcomed by everyone, especially a really nice Singaporean man who helped me know what to do (communion etc) during their service. They had a coffee reception afterwards in the basement full of homemade baked goods. Three women approached me to welcome me and to talk about how I was settling in….most of them Americans who had been in Geneva now over 10 years. I’ll continue to check out others, but they really set the bar high and i know I could return happily here.
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!
The Swiss Watch Blog 