Alles ist schön im Frühling!

I'm not 100% confident that this post's title is grammatically correct, but the sentiment is there. Basically, spring (der Frühling) is awesome. Every year, I forget exactly how much, since I do enjoy snowflakes and being bundled up with tea when it's white outside, plus I have an...unusual number of cute boots (In my defense, B totally encourages this habit). But then it starts to warm up, and you remember that the sun can actually warm and it's not just something that makes it painful to look directly at the bright snow and suddenly, all the flora decide that it's time to wake from their nap.

We haven't had daylight savings time yet on this side of the Atlantic, but it's still light until almost 7 pm, and that's another best thing about spring (if you're counting, that's about 3 "best" things. Don't think too hard about it).

Also - sunshine!!

We had a faux spring a few weeks ago, in which I thought I'd get to store away my winter coat for several months. Luckily, I didn't get around to sending it off to the dry cleaners (yes, I can totes do that on my own now!), since last week the weather got cold again and it snowed off and on for 3-4 days in a row. But I'm taking the plunge today and declaring that this time, spring is here to stay.

So cute!

In the US, the small green spaces peppered around cities are often just that - green. At Harvard Medical, the quad was made of sod squares that were replaced at least once throughout the summer (I believe it was just before reunion - gotta make sure that it looks pretty for the returning alums that are now rich and may want to donate). They are mowed, treated, and probably kept within standard regulations that are set by some higher power. Flowers are severely kept to preplanned and oft-replanted beds.

So I was wonderfully surprised to discover that here in Zurich, the green spaces aren't just green. Many of the pictures here are taken just outside our front (back?) door, and all others are yards of apartment houses on the way to the nearest tram stop. For a girl who grew up with an untamed lawn and a mother who never could have enough flower beds around the yard, it just warms my little heart. It appears that flowers may have been originally planted in beds, but then they are pretty much left alone to spread where they wish as the years pass. Regardless, I love it!

Happy spring everyone!! Special thoughts to Boston/New England friends, who are apparently digging out from the third (or fourth?) late winter snowstorm. May your green spaces soon be bright!

NB: I wrote this post yesterday, but it was raining and I couldn't get flower pictures. I didn't plan at all to actually correlate with the spring equinox - Happy Spring for realz!

Arrivals and (non) departures

When I last left the saga of my boxes, they were being held hostage by Die Post. After several phone calls, emails, and shipping off of scans of my visa/resident permit, all eight boxes were sent back to customs to be re-evaluated.

They arrived back at Die Post last week and had no customs charges this time. Yay! Unfortunately, I was in the shower when the doorbell rang, so we missed our chance to have all eight boxes delivered directly to our front door (they only attempt delivery once, this ain't no Fedex). So, on Saturday, B and I headed off to Die Post to pick some of them up. Luckily, they were being held at a Post that was actually closer than where they had previously been; only a five minute walk or so. We brought along 2 large empty suitcases, as previous experience had taught us that the boxes are often not in any shape for carrying.

Unfortunately, we were right. We first picked up 3 boxes, 2 of them entirely of books, in the morning. The boxes were in abhorrent condition (if you ever move internationally, the "moving" boxes from Home Depot ARE NOT SUFFICIENT), although the books inside amazingly weren't damaged. The third box had clothes and yarn surrounding my deeply buried Xbox and its accessories, which seemed to have had enough cushioning that they were not hurt (although we haven't yet confirmed this, as we don't have a TV to hook it up to). We packed up the suitcases and headed back to the apartment.

Five minutes is a long, long time, when you have an oversized suitcase that is stuffed to the brim with books (yes, many hardcovers). B commented in it as well ("Jesus, what do you have in here, rocks?!" "It's my fossil collection!" "So.....rocks."). We unloaded the suitcases in B's kellar (basement storage unit), which luckily has a nice metal bookshelf on it.

Later that day we went back for round 2 (we need to have them all picked up by March 10th or they get sent back to the US). This time we only picked up two boxes, as they were larger. Heartbreakingly, one of them had my blue willow china collection in it, and even as I carefully transferred the bubble-wrapped pieces into the suitcase, I could tell there had been some casualties. Considering the condition of the box, I was lucky that as many pieces survived as, in fact, did (a testament to my father's packing ability). I lost about half a dozen cups/mugs and about an equal number of small plates/saucers. The biggest loss was definitely a large serving platter with the pattern in black. B has promised to look around for a replacement as a future anniversary/birthday/Christmas present. (Just a note: My collection is a somewhat random assortment of pieces of varying quality, age, and type. The loss is more sentimental than monetary, as it is a group that I have gathered from several relatives, shops, and random places.)

The other box's contents was fine (more books), and on a third trip B picked up another box that had my rolling pin (woot!) and several custom-framed pictures, including a totally awesome one of Maleficent at the top of her tower (best Disney villainess ever - moral: get competent minions), that all survived. I can't wait to get them up in a new space. If we ever get one.

Which leads me to the (non) departures - B and I sent off three apartment applications last week, and another one this morning. They each had cover letters, so we're hoping to hear some potential (good!) news this week. Since starting to include cover letters, we have at least started to receive replies from companies, albeit apologetic, bad ones. Eh, it's something.

Giant, grilled, fake bratwurst outside a meat shop. Sometimes Switzerland is weird.

Quiet week

The past week has been a rather quiet one. Not many apartment viewings were scheduled, and although we got an email thanking us for one of our applications and informing us that they would choose three finalists for interviews, we've heard nothing further. This may be due to the fact that we have not been sending in a cover letter with our application, a fact that we realized (Ok, I "discovered" and B "remembered"; his response - "Oh yeah, I did do that for this apartment. Hmm. Interesting.") after sending out all but one of our applications. Oops.

Hopefully we'll have better luck with the next round of applications - we have six viewings scheduled for next week. I think that a cover letter will definitely help to explain why B has a mysteriously appearing wife with no apparent background (on paper, it does look like I just materialized in his apartment 6 weeks ago). We can also work in a not-so-subtle references to his job (yay for paycheck security) and my Harvard PhD (Don't we sound RESPONSIBLE? Even if I am unemployed? Plz let us have an apartment!).

German class continues apace. We started on some heavy vocab this week, and I did know heading in that German likes to spread the object gender love, as it has masculine and feminine as well as neuter definite articles (in contrast to English, which has only neuter, and French, which has only masc. and fem.). So I had braced myself for that (and, it turns out, it's not too terrible, since for the indefinite, the masc. and neuter have the same artikel. What I mean to say is that it's not too terrible yet).

What I had not anticipated was the unbelievable variety of ways to pluralize nouns. It's A LOT. And it's not similar to English, in which you typically throw on an 's' or 'es' at the end and learn the exceptions (mice, geese, etc). No, no. There are around TEN WAYS a noun can be pluralized. And to make it better, there are very, very few rules. Yep. Similar to parlay code, it's more what'd you call "guidelines" than actual rules. Much of this week has been spent frantically searching for index cards in stores so that I can make flashcards before the vocabulary gets out of hand (which it may already be, but I'm going to give it my best effort this weekend).

The good news is that although I feel that I may be slowly slipping further underwater in class, I am starting to understand more of my surroundings. I've been able to pick apart some advertisements on the tram (or at least understand what they are advertising), and on Wednesday I was absurdly excited when a girl behind me answered her phone and bluntly asked "Wo bist du [Where are you]?" Simple enough, but still - small victories.

On the other  hand, I've had two instances this week where I was "spoken" at in German, but never quite reached the conversation stage (not counting my second run in with the sweet lady neighbor, again revolving around laundry). On Monday, I ran for a bus that had already closed its doors, and when I got on, the driver decided to yell back at me about...something. Instructions? Berating me for holding up the bus (they do like their timetables here)? I had no idea, so I just sat down. In an attempt that I marked down as "well-meaning," another passenger in front of me turned around and tried to ...comfort? explain?..., but since it was also in German (and I'm 80% sure it was Swiss German), I just sunk further into my seat and gave more apologetic smiles. The bus driver's admonitions certainly worked on some level - for the rest of the week, I have made sure that I am at least 2 minutes earlier than the posted bus time.

The second instance was a tad less embarrassing, if only because it was not a direct result of my actions. I was waiting on a tram when an older women decided, out of all the people at the stop, that I was to be the lucky recipient of her rant. I'm not sure what it involved, but there were a LOT of numbers in it (some of the few words I can reliably catch), so my guess is that she had been waiting for a while for her tram, while other buses and tram lines have come and gone. I tried nodding but she seemed to want more than that, so I gave a few muttered "Yah, yah"s. The first time, she took it and ran. "YAH!" she agreed, and let a few more sentences fly. The next time she stopped and looked at me, I tried it again, but there was an awkward pause after, as if this was not the expected response. At that point, she may have started to clue in that, in fact, I possessed no understanding of what she was saying. She muttered a few more things and we moved away from each other in a slow, penguin-like shuffle, blissfully stepping through separate doors on the arriving tram.
At least in that case, I felt that the embarrassment was likely shared. 

My first German class

Yesterday afternoon I started German classes here in Zurich. I arrived (much too) early, as I was a little nervous. Upon entering the classroom, another early student leaned over and introduced himself (possibly in German? I understood nothing). I said my name, repeated it once, didn't know how to ask him to repeat his, and sat down to fiddle nervously with my notebook.

The other student, whom I later learned was Hungarian, started talking to the teacher who was packing up to leave the room. I caught only that this was an A1 class (aka, super beginner class), but the fact that the conversation happened in German confirmed my nerves. I am so going to be the only person who doesn't already know some German. Screwed.

As the students filed in, there was a strange energy in the air. Nobody, myself included, seemed eager to talk, but we all obviously wondered what languages others spoke. When there were four of us in the room, one man ventured forth "Espanol?"I shook my head, but someone else apparently gestured that they knew a little. "No mas papas," the student tried. I frowned in concentration. Isn't papa what B calls his father? No more fathers? I shook my head. He repeated it, more urgently and gestured at his phone. "No mas papas!" I reviewed all of my limited Spanish vocabulary - patatas are potatoes. No more potatoes? Was papas something to do with the phone? Maybe no wifi signal in the classroom? I sighed and gave up - without the noun, the conversation, or the attempt at such, was going nowhere.

(Yesterday evening, I asked B about possible translations of this, and I suspect that the man had just read on his phone about the pope retiring. Although I clearly remember it in the plural, B pointed out this is unlikely. The pope (singular) is retiring, but I haven't read that the Catholic church plans to abandon Popes as a concept).

One girl sat down next to me and muttered "Hi" under her breath. I took the leap that she spoke English and inquired. She turned out to be Australian. Overall, there are about a dozen fellow students in the class - the Australian and another American were the only other native English speakers, although I would guess that around eight of the dozen of us can speak English to widely varying degrees. I was surprised (although perhaps I shouldn't have been) that the largest group in the class was South American (Brazilian or various other countries), so there was a lot of muttered Spanish going around as we all tried to figure out what the teacher was saying. There were also three Hungarians (one who was fluent in English, in talking to her after class, while I think the other two spoke Russian). At least two women in the class rattled off four to five languages when asked (in German) what they spoke. Show offs.

A language class where there is no common language is quite a different experience from any other language class I've been to in the US, where concepts and phrases can be explained at length in English. In this class, there can be no explanations, and often the question is only understood when the answer is given. But the teacher is obviously well-versed in this approach and I was impressed at his ability to explain without words (ok, it also helps that a lot of words sound like English with a German accent; mit Respekt, etc). I believe that he does speak excellent English, although I am less confident that he understood the Spanish speakers. He did resort to English at the very end of class so that we all knew what homework to do.

Overall, the class went well and I was pleased that I already knew my numbers and some of the basic questions (How old are you? Where are you from?), which put me ahead of some others, although there are definitely several in the class who can already have basic conversations in German. Our accents are all over the place, so I'm sure future classes will have some interesting misunderstandings.

Sometimes it's the little things

So for the past two weeks, B and I have been in a bit of a bind about what to do with my belongings. The ones that threaten to overflow the studio space, yes, but also the twelve boxes of items (aka, crap) that my parents and I shipped over via USPS before I got on the plane. 

First evening in Zurich - snow from the apartment window. It felt very cozy and welcoming. Then my camera battery died and I had to wait 2 weeks until we picked up the box with it.

Twelve boxes! Sometimes I don't know what I was thinking.

As a person moving to Switzerland, I shouldn't have to pay customs on any household items that are at least six months old (aka, everything, coz I didn't exactly go on a shopping spree prior to moving) and that I plan to continue to use (also everything). Now, I had vaguely read about that prior to moving, but what B and I failed to realize is that we were supposed to fill out a customs form prior to my shipping the boxes, so that at customs, they would be able to say "Oh, this is from that person moving into the country, let it pass." Or however you would say that in Schweize Deutsch.

In retrospect, this seems really, really obvious, but when I have given myself 6 days to pack for an international move, things slip between the cracks.

Anyway - we didn't fill out that form, and the boxes have come through in a rather pell-mell assortment (and in varying condition, see below). To be fair, they also all came through very quickly - the shipping was supposed to take 6-10 business days, and they started to arrive on business day #4.

The side of one of the four boxes we've received. The bottom corner and top  gashes were added by us, in order to access the box. But the side one was already there. Die Post worker couldn't carry it because it would've fallen apart, so she just slid it along the floor to us. Nothing fragile in it - small favors.

After much wrangling and tape removal, it's ready for recycling pick up! Which is a whole other post - one that I'll do once I understand the system myself.

So far we've received four of the boxes - one we paid for before we realized what was going on, and the other three had no charges associated. We're not sure why - I thought perhaps the three without charges would be the three with the lowest estimated goods value on them, but that hasn't been the case (the charges, btw, range from 40 to 125 CHF/box; 1 CHF = 1.1 USD). Most likely they were processed by different people at customs, and some of them were obviously used household goods, while others (eg, the one with the Xbox in it) may not be so obvious. The remaining eight boxes are being held hostage by Die Post, and B has been calling all over to figure out if there is a way to get the charges re-examined. No resolution yet.

Meanwhile, I've opened two of the boxes (the other two are boxes and DVDs only, items that can wait until we've moved out of the studio, and also boxes that will survive another - handheld - move). 

There is nothing like opening boxes that you've paid to move to make you rethink your priorities in life. As B pointed out - I had survived for 1-2 weeks without any of these items, so how many did I really need? (I pointed out that my many pairs of boots were largely at his urging)

He had a point, though. Going through the boxes has been a strange oscillation between "why did I ever think I would need this?" and squeals of glee when I find items that I have been desperate without. And the items that are causing those reactions are far from what I would have laid money on when I was back in Boston.

Here's a sampling of some of the items I was most thrilled to run across:

Perhaps self-explanatory - I was lucky that one of the boxes without charges had all my camera accessories, including the extra battery, battery charger, and the cords to download my pictures. Never pack these separately from your camera, people! Lesson learned.

Also self-explanatory, probably. B has one of these adaptors, but I probably need 3-4, so I was thrilled to find one. Now we can stop trading the Mac power cord back and forth between laptops.

The other thrilling surprises were a bit more random:

Loose leaf tea accessories! B and I are both big tea drinkers, but we'd been resigned to tea bags the past 2 weeks . The horror!

And then this one made me absurdly happy:

Anybody know what it is? Bueller? 

It's a scraper that I picked up at Marshall's for about $3 - I forget its official name, if it even has one. It was useful in Boston to clean off my table after kneading and other baking activities, although I could do the same with some hard scrubbing and a wet rag. However, the wood table here that I use for kneading has no finish on it, and thus little dried pieces of bread/cookie/any other dough have proved quite challenging to remove. But no longer! Yay!

Zester!

This one was well-timed - I just found it this morning, and yesterday I made lime cookies (I'll post the recipe later). I wanted the zest of two limes for them, and I had one of those little graters that are supposedly up for the task. Mine was not (see below). Lesson learned - Ikea is useful for many things, but perhaps not kitchen utensils.

Lime on the left was done first. Looks totally fine! Lime on the right was second - it was like the grater just putzed out in the middle. 

I can think of few specific things that are in the remaining eight boxes, which makes me a bit uneasy about the ratio of crap:useful items that I sent, but I'm sure that each one will contain a few much appreciated surprises. I just won't try to guess what they will be.

Have you ever regretted packing (or NOT packing) something when you moved?