Category Archives: Life in our flat

Rain, rain go away…..

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Post by Lauren

When it rained in Charlotte, it wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it was a good water cooler topic, with people commenting, “ummm…i think its supposed to rain today” and “man, did you hear that crazy storm last night?” but it really wasn’t a show stopper. Mainly because we had cars there. And you’d hop in your car that was really close to the office entrance and drive that car to a grocery store and park really close and then home which was virtually by your door or even completely sans rain with a garage. And you could keep rain gear in your car if the occasion arose to need it.

And as we continue, this post is not meant to discourage public transportation. I am a huge fan and it would rank in one of the top 3 reasons I love Geneva. But, I am certainly developing a whole new appreciation for city-dwellers all over the world. They have this completely different life than what I am used to.

And……sometimes it is not glamourous.

I got my first taste of this when I walked / trammed / bussed home a large house plant from IKEA over the course of a 2 hour adventure. Quite different from my experience buying a plant in the US. Before, I’d roll up to the Home Depot about a mile from my house, pull my car really close, use a cart to load it, and I was set. It would take 10 minutes tops and I wouldn’t break a sweat. A little different carrying a fern a mile and then getting boxed into a tram and needing a rescue effort to get out and home.

And, now, I am learning from rain. Life goes on when it rains, but in a city, it is quite different. You have to be prepared, or else be drenched.

#1 – You have to remember your umbrella. And if you live on a lake, there is a chance of rain most days, so you really should bring it with you at all times. And since we don’t use cars, this means – carry on your person. Here are the contents I already have in my bag this week:
– normal purse stuff – wallet, phone, camera, passport, etc.
– gym clothes and shoes – since i go before French, and then have to carry my clothes and shoes for the next 12 hours. This would be better if Globo Gym didn’t require a clean set of shoes upon entrance, but it is what it is and i have to carry them around in my purse all day after my session
– toiletries from showering at the gym – makeup, hair, comb
– my school books, papers, pens, pencils, highlighters, French dictionary, reading glasses
– my breakfast and lunch for the day – the lunch line is too long with our 15 min break
– my umbrella and rain coat
It makes me tired listing this out. The umbrella and rain coat are the items that really push it though.

# 2 – You have to accommodate your umbrella at all times. On the tram, while you are walking if its not raining anymore but the thing is wet, in stores ( got yelled at for bringing mine in store the other day), and when you reach your destination – whether it be temporary or permanent.

# 3 – You have to navigate your umbrella. On a city street, this can get awkward. I had a showdown with a lady in my neighborhood on the teeny sidewalk. Who was going to jump of the sidewalk and risk death by bus? I ended up raising mine really high to the sky to avoid either of us going into the street…not easy when you are 5’ 2”. However, I am worried I might lose an eye over here to an umbrella showdown.

# 4 – You are permanently damp and icky. But at least everyone is. Just today, I had an appointment with the chiropractor at 6:30. It required an hours worth of connections to get there. It just so happened one of my transfers that I wasn’t familiar with was in the middle of a big downpour burst and doing the turmoil, my umbrella broke and I was soaked to the bone. Good thing I had my gym clothes with me, as guess what I did?

There’s always a bright side to being a bag lady I suppose.

Why our life looks like the NYSE

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Post by Lauren

 

I actually hope that by the time I post this, I am over my down-funk that I have been living in all week.

But I knew that it would likely come…….

In acclimation class, we learned about the various stages of culture shock. This is the true terminology, but I realize that when I use the phrase “culture shock”, it comes across as strong or extreme. I think maybe a better way to describe it is “culture disorientation,” so for the purpose of this blog post, I’ll use that vocabulary.

For those who aren’t familiar, the textbook stages of “cultural disorientation” go like this:

1. Initial excitement
2. Initial anxiety
3. Arrival fascination
4. Initial culture shock
5. Surface adjustment
6. Internal shock
7. Acceptance & adaptation
8. Return anxiety
9. Reintegration shock

However, it is not guaranteed how long you stay in each stage as well as both spouses can be in different stages or move along the continuum at different paces.

Here is a depiction of this with our 8 weeks here in Geneva. The pink is me and the blue is Gabe. I actually don’t even know where we are on the numbered list…..maybe somewhere between 3 and 5.

“How can you be blue in the land of cheese and chocolate?” one might say. “Don’t the Alp views you see daily give you a high all the time?”

We would probably be happy non-stop if it weren’t for culture disorientation – a reaction to the loss and to the ambiguity created by the unknown rules of the new culture. So, at our downturns, some may seem reasonable (we miss friends and family) but some others may seem a little silly (laundry, not being understood, not understanding).

However, sometimes the little things can have pretty big effects. The textbook explanation is that these little things get at the core of your self image – on how you view yourself as a person. You used to be capable, but in this new situation, you are not. While you were seen one way amongst your community in your home country, in this new country, people react to you and see you differently. While you expect to miss your friends and family, you don’t expect to feel like a different person some days because of your environment.

Here is an example…..after standing in a really long line at the grocery store, I happened to have a zucchini in my basket. When the cashier got to it, I hadn’t known to put a produce sticker on it from the machine in the produce department. So, it didn’t have a barcode for her and she growled some French disdain at me. I didn’t know enough French to explain that I didn’t know and I was sorry, that they could put it back, or I could put it back, whatever was easier to keep the line moving. I just kind of muttered “je suis désolé” which i thought was “I’m sorry” and just stood there pitifully while they got a manager to come take the zucchini, weigh it, bring it back and plop it on the register with even more disdain for me and my idiocy. The people in line behind me gave me exasperated looks like I ruined their day.

And this happens every day – I don’t necessarily get down on myself that I didn’t know how to do things – that is to be expected. But, some of the disorientation comes when people perceive you as something you never believed yourself to be. In the US, that situation would have gone differently for me because I knew the language and norms of my local grocery. I would handled myself fine. And it gives me empathy for those visiting the US and how they are treated if English isn’t their primary language and they are just starting to learn, like I am here.

And of course, the peaks of this experience are well worth these downturns. As I share on Gratitude Fridays, these highs are just incredible. The highs are just balanced by the valleys too; as is life – full of ups and downs.

Like the top photo, I am sure our experience in the end will turn out soaring like this mountain range. However, I just wanted to share a little more on this subject, and it gives me a reason to use PowerPoint, which i miss and used to be really good at 🙂

Our first Geneva dinner party

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Post by Lauren

When packing for our big move, it was hard to know what to take and what not to take. Some things got packed we don’t need, and there are other things that we totally wished we had thrown in to our shipment since they are either hard to find in Switzerland or 4x the price. Anyhow, it is not an exact science, so we figure its okay.

I remember specifically standing in our Charlotte dining room figuring out what serving dishes and table we should take (Gabe and i were combining households at the same time). In the end, we under-packed in this area as Gabe and I assumed that we wouldn’t know enough people to have more than 6 over for dinner!

We feel so blessed that in Geneva, this has actually not been the case. We have met lots of great people and had our first dinner party as a married couple. However, I’d like to point out what happens when you don’t bring the leaf pieces to your dining room table…..yup, we are “bringing back” the concept of kids table by using our entry table as an extension.

I think many of our new friends are in the same boat with improvisation though, so luckily I don’t think anyone minded!

Fun fact : Most of us are Swiss newbies. The combined time in Geneva at this table = 23 total months counting Gabe behind the camera. A & A are the experts, being here 4 months. They are throwing off the “curve” with their tenure 🙂

Gratitude Friday: Our New Home

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Post by Lauren

First of all, I can’t believe its July. That is incredible. Where did this year go? Wait…I remember, getting engaged, getting married, moving across the planet, learning a new language and acclimating to a new culture!!

And since most of the first part of the year was living out of boxes, today’s gratitude Friday post goes out to…..our new home and everything about it. We are so thankful for our place. We love the serenity of the flat and are enjoying feeling settled – finally! In fact, just in time, as we have our first guest coming to Geneva this weekend!

Here is a peak at the flat….still some artwork and photos to be hung, but starting to feel “like home”.

Bon weekend, everyone!

La chambre des invités (for guests), La studio / La bureau, La cuisine, La toilettes invités, La chambre

 

La salon, La salle á manger / La bar


Zip-Pity do-da (excuse the pun)

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This week is a really fabulous week. Not only did it start off with a Canadienne Buffet, continue with a washer and dryer delivery, but now the icing on the cake….I have actually found out where exactly we live.

In Switzerland, the sections of towns are broken up into four digit zip codes. It has been quite a saga to find out which one we actually live in. This adventure started when we found out we got our apartment, at the end of March. And we have hopefully found the answer, only 14 weeks later. I’d like to share a chronological timeline of our experience with this:

March 2011: The agency calls to say “Congratulations! You got the apartment after 4 weeks of waiting on pins-and-needles! It’s official!”

March 2011: Lauren instantly takes address from house-hunting documents and enters them into TinyPrint.com to make wedding thank you cards. Hits Order. Second guesses realizes that she forgot to put an actual apartment # as it wasn’t listed on house hunting documents. Emails agency and asks whether she should stop the order to include the apartment #. Agency writes back that the address IS in fact correct, people don’t list their apartment #s. There are none – just your building number. Note: don’t apply for mailmen positions in Switzerland, this would be not fun to figure out for 16-20 apartments in every building.

April 2011: Beautiful Tiny Print thank you cards come

May 2011: Move to Switzerland. Carry one of the little thank you cards everywhere – to get TPG pass, to register for things, as it has the proper address and it is easier than butchering our address or spelling our names aloud in French. Note, registration people also appreciate such effort.

May 2001: While in temporary living, learn how to use TPG (public transportation of geneva) site to map out daily transportation. Curious to what buses come to new permanent apartment and try that. Realize that our Zip Code Original doesn’t work. It suggests our address, but with Zip Code 2…..hmm. Houston, we may have a problem.

May 2011: Email Agency. WTF? Agency advises to in fact, start using Zip Code 2 moving forward. Give out Zip code 2 when doing the rest of home-set-up. Figure that eventually people with Zip Code 1 will catch on. Realize that most people in the US won’t send us mail, so not a terribly big deal all our wedding thank you cards have the wrong address, right?

June 2011: Go on “familiarization” tour of neighborhood with agency.
When we get to the post office part, agency advises that they called prior to our day together, and actually Zip Code 1 is correct. Revert to using it. Yeah, all those Tiny Print thank you cards aren’t a waste after all!

June 2011: Go to women’s club luncheon. Have new member kit handed back to me as it was rejected when sending to Zip Code 1. Has a very clear note from La Post saying to start using Zip Code 2. Start using Zip code 2 again since they said so….

June 2011: Use Zip code 2 when ordering train tickets. Days later, train office writes me a personalized email (in English!!) saying my tickets were sent back to them. Advise them to use my husband’s name (I am not legally converted yet – story too long for this blog post) and re-send to Zip Code 1. Thank them profusely for their amazing customer service.

June 2011: A brilliant idea occurs to me. Our neighbors must know where we live and actually have the right address on their mail. Since the neighbors don’t speak English and we don’t want to confuse them hoping they’ll give us lenience on noise and all the other things we know we’ll do wrong, brainstorm an ingenious idea. [ The rest of this part has been omitted to protect author ] . Confirm neighbors have Zip Code 1.

June 2011: Train tickets successfully arrive to Zip Code 1. But, I have to walk four blocks to go get envelope with a retrieval ticket, as it was held at the post office. Even though it was an envelope that would have fit in the mailbox. Bizarre.

Conclude that sending mail to Zip 1 with husbands name is the best approach. Mission accomplished…zippity do da dandy.

Her maiden voyage

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Today was a remarkable day in our Swiss journey.

We are not only proud new owners of a washer and dryer combo (which we have been for the last 2.5 weeks). We now have that said purchase actually in our house, installed, and properly working. She had her maiden voyage today. I have named her Zuri, of the French meaning “white and lovely”.

And here she is:

Gratitude Friday: New Life

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This “Gratitude Friday”, I am so excited to be thankful for new life, in many forms.

At the Tuesday Plainpalais market, I picked up 6 different types of potted herbs and was so excited to plant them on our nice window boxes outside the kitchen. It feels good to have living breathing things as a part of our environment. We also enjoy beautiful newly planted flowers of our neighbors as can be seen above.

Setting in is going great. Our things arrived safely from the US and we are busy making it home. We are meeting lots of wonderful people here as well. We are so grateful for everything falling into place for us as we start our new life in Geneva.

And, the most exciting thing to be grateful for this week is that two of my dear friends had their babies! Melissa had her baby, Barclay Mclean, on Monday and Carla had her baby, Amy Rae, yesterday!

Photo of the babies “attending” our wedding, 5-7-11



Everyone is doing well and Gabe and I are so very happy for that news. Although, I’ll admit – it is hard to be so far away during exciting times like this! I love visiting people in the hospital to visit the new little ones. But, since I am a zillion miles away, I’ve posted photos of them in my office so they are close-by so I can think of them often!

What a week filled with gratitude and thanks for these wonderful new things in life.

The day I almost cried over toothpicks

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Those who follow our blog know that usually one in seven days ends up in tears for me. Don’t feel too bad……in comparing notes with new ex-patriate haus-frau peers, this is about par for the course, so I feel like I am doing quite well!

I’ll preface this story with the comment that we really really love our new apartment. Settling in is going great! We promise to post pictures soon. And, one of the best things about our apartment is that it is a 8 minute walk to beautiful Old Town, the high-walled city. Hmm….one might have realized that its quite a hike to get up to to our apartment based on its elevation with a spot where medieval warriors built their town to defend it from attacks. But this had not quite occurred to me until this week, when five-grocery-trips-in-two-days later, I feel like I have quads and hamstrings of steel from carrying all our groceries up these hills from the Co-ops and Migros down on lake level. Plus, I am coming down with a cold so the energy isn’t as strong as it usually is.

Things I learned from this:
-Four bottles of wine is too many. Maybe every trip, grab one. Not four. Hiking uphill with a third of a case of wine is not a good idea.
-Remember your list. In passing the store, I always get the idea that I should just duck in and pick up the groceries. But, with my memory, I always forget to bring the list which results in more trips!
-Just expect to get some things wrong. I happily discovered goat cheese the other day and learned that the goat on the front must mean goat cheese. “Score!”, I thought…. I love goat cheese in salads which I happen to eat most days for lunch. The second time, I bought some more cheese with a goat on the front for my spring salads and realized I got some kind of gooey cheese, similar to brie. Whoops! This also happened today when I trammed 30 minutes out to the one hardware store and meant to get matches to start enjoying our candles and I got some kind of camping sticks??

The wrong cheese and wrong matches purchased earlier in the week….



Back to the story. I am quite excited that the women’s club had their spring luncheon planned for tomorrow. I volunteered to bring my friend Noelle’s caprese bites (a cherry tomato, mozzarella ball, and basil on a toothpick, doused in olive oil & balsamic vinegar with fresh ground pepper) since it was delicious, but easy. Time is limited with the settling-in.

At the second grocery trip yesterday, I remembered to grab the tomatoes. Luckily, we have basil now growing on the porch, so I had that. But I forgot the mozzarella. And forgot it the third and fourth time. However, today, I was out for a meeting, I grabbed it (fifth trip).

Since tomorrow morning was full of back-to-back errands & activities already, I settled in to make dinner and prep my delicious app.

So, I pulled out everything to assemble and realized……no toothpicks. Toothpicks are something I always had on hand so never thought of this.

I started to feel familiar culture shock frustration set in….the sinking feeling….“Why can’t this just be easy?”…..“Curses, why didn’t I pack my $%^^ toothpicks in the shipment??”…… “What is the French word for toothpick anyway?”

But this time, I turned it around. I had a glass of wine (thanks to one of the four bottles I had bought yesterday) and made myself dinner (Gabe is gone all week in Brussels, so solo).

Afterwards, I walked down to the Migros and started to look all over the store. They don’t really have a cocktail / mixer aisle, which is where they would be at home. So, I started walking down every aisle. Then, all of a sudden, the lights started flashing and went off. Darkness. A French voice came on saying something that I imagine was “We are closing….get out now!”. I scrambled around the store rushing to find the coveted toothpicks. People were rushing to the cashiers.

However, much to my delight, I found skewers and considered just putting them on the ends of those. But finally, much did my happy eyes find, but below were the toothpicks! If you are wondering, their name in French is – cure dent en bois!

So, I headed home and successfully made my appetizer, as seen below displayed in lovely new Rubbermaid Glass container.

Whew….disaster averted. Let this be known as the day I almost cried over toothpicks but turned it around. Maybe wine can cure all culture shock?

Big Bad Laundry Day

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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!

Settling In

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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….