home - part 1

when we first moved in, our apartment looked like this:

then, for about two weeks it looked like this:

and now finally the boxes have [mostly] been put away and we have a home! its not all in order yet, but i thought i'd show you a sneak peak of the kitchen. it was very important for us to get the kitchen in order quickly- eating out here is rough on the budget. and let's be honest, not the best food! we were so excited to start cooking again and to use all of our nice kitchen things that we haven't seen for a year and a half. 

welcome to our new kitchen! don't you love how we expanded into the dining area to get more space for storage and our big work table? typically the dutch do not have big kitchens and this one has lots of amenities but almost no counter space. so we found this lovely work table which also stores a lot of our big appliances, pots and pans, knives, etc. one of the best things we did was to buy several transformers so that we could use our US appliances. 

now we just need some wine...

the mixer is "on display" because its too heavy!

one of my favorite spots- lovebirds from grandma millie
(the teapot is from her house as well!)

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 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.