day six/seven. adventures in bureaucracy.

moving has had its ups and downs. most of you have already heard about the 5 month visa process that ended with me overnight mailing my passport to chicago and receiving it with the visa stamp just 3 days before we left. luckily we took care of all that before we left because it allowed me to apply immediately for residency which is necessary for opening a bank account and having a phone. actually, the residency card (which cost us 220 CHF) takes ~4 weeks to come in the mail. in the meantime, we had to purchase a 12 CHF piece of paper that states that we applied for the residency card, which then allowed us to open a bank account and to get phones.

difficult? no. complicated? yes. time consuming? yes. expensive? yes. but... we did learn our way around town pretty quickly. this is also why we came so early- all of the govt offices are closed from 24 Dec-3 Jan!

luckily most of the b.s. is done and we can spend money, talk on the phone, and surf the net! doesn't make for exciting blogging, but gives you an idea of what we have to go through to be here. :)

on a lighter note, we also accomplished a major ikea trip! major because we had to bring all of our purchases back on the train and metro. still a bit more to do, but the apartment is feeling more like home.

a glimpse of the alps and some sweet industrial architecture from the train ride to ikea.

day five. getting out: a tour of ouchy.

fact: we live above a japanese restaurant that charges $9 for 2pc. nigiri sushi. (see apt door w/yellow mailboxes)

we also live down the street from a bakery. yum!

i love the trees on our street. i'm not a tree buff, although the bark resembles sycamore. anyone know?

Ouchy waterfront. Can't wait to watch the ecole bateaux in the summer!

sleepy ouchy with the shutters closed.

Ouchy (pronounced: oo-she)

morning ritual

Les Bateaux, patiently waiting.

howie.

ali. (& mountains! better pics to come- too sunny!)

days three/four. the couch.

days three and most of four were, literally, spent on the couch. my illness took a bad turn and i could barely move. thankfully howie was feeling better and made two trips to the pharmacy for me! he also managed to take these pics of our ouchy apartment view during the snow. believe it or not, there may be some alps behind those clouds- we have yet to see!

i think we have a pretty decent view- we look directly out to the white building with turrets from the top photo, and the grey building with shutters from the second photo. our apartment is a pink version of the dirty one to the right of the gray building, so its a good thing that we have something a little more charming to stare at! there is also a pedestrian/bike path you can see in the photos, so we have lots of green space to look out to. and somehow there are millions of little birds that live here- maybe there are just lots of birds in switzerland?

we did make some progress on unpacking our apartment today, but we'll wait to post some photos until after our ikea trip. hopefully we'll also be able to find the mysterious cellar to find the remaining furniture we "purchased" from the previous tenant... to be continued...

day two. apple store geneva.

at the geneva gare.

Howie and I went on an adventure to Geneva. Unfortunately (but somewhat fortunately) Howie's laptop died about 2 days before we left the US. The Apple store in Roseville would have fixed it for free, but we didn't have enough time before we left. The "Genius" in Roseville told us that we could take the computer to any Apple store worldwide to have it fixed, and should be free.

So, sick and all, we bought our ridiculously expensive train tickets and headed out with fingers crossed. I imagined all horrible things- it could take a month to fix or maybe couldn't be fixed and we would have to buy a new computer. Luckily, just as our Roseville Genius said, the new motherboard is totally free to replace and should be done in 1 week max. Whew! Lucky us- especially as we've been learning the crazy prices of everything in this country. We didn't last long on the chilly streets of Geneva, but it was a worthwhile trip for the peace of mind that Howie won't be using my computer for school :)

French moment of the day: (Buying train tickets) "Bonjour!" "Bonjour!" (me) "Je veux acheter... um... the half-fare card?" ...and the conversation immediately changes to English. I am motivated to be good enough so that I can have at least one or two exchanges with somebody without English. Going to be tough!

A demain.

p.s. what is the deal with Blogger and not letting me change fonts?!

day one. the move.

I'm not sure when December 21st ended and the 22nd began, but we definitely turned the shortest day of the year into a long one. After cramming one last bag of christmas cookies into my backpack, we set out for the MSP airport. We were worried about our luggage- we ended up with two overweight bags and one extra bag. Luckily there was an angel at check-in who gave us a break on the fees for all of our bags. (Since when did they change it from 2 to 1?!) Besides getting it all on the plane, we also weren't sure how we would actually make it on the train from Geneva to Lausanne and to our apartment on Ave. d'Ouchy.

Luckily there was a nice, empty train and plenty of time to load all of our giant bags. Poor Howie was already feeling pretty sick at the time, but he was a champ at hauling the 70+ lb suitcases off the train into a crowd of frenchies, who patiently waited for us to move our 9 bags onto the platform.

French moment of the day: I knew I would do this, but the first time I tried to speak french (to our taxi driver) I definitely said "dos taxis". Oops! I blame it on the lack of sleep.

Howie goes to school/We're moving!

its been a busy year, but lets skip right to the good stuff. Howie recently was accepted to IMD, a fantastic business school in Lausanne, Switzerland! which leads me to the second point, we're moving to Lausanne in January! i am super proud of my amazing husband, and we are so excited about the opportunity to begin our adventure together.

its so exciting that it makes it difficult to focus on my graduation, just a mere 34 days away. i keep thinking of all the craig's list posts this summer to sell cars, furniture, etc. it will be a lot of work, but the rewards will be greater than we can imagine.

so you might be wondering what i will be doing while Howie is busy at school 6 days/week. good question! i am starting to investigate different architectural research/work/travel opportunities and will update when i know more. one definite plan is to revive Hooks and Loops to document our great adventure and help us to stay connected with our friends and family.

more to come!