Da' Hood

It was an absolutely gorgeous day here. Sunny and temperature in the mid 60s. Quite an improvement from the last four weeks of temperatures below freezing. Andre and I got our act together today, went to the bike shop, bought a pump and some pedals and got our bikes ready to roll. Roll....heh heh heh.....get it?? Maybe I've had too much wine tonight. :)


So anyway, this picture is taken from the window in our walk in closet. We live right below a castle and a church. The church has already invited us to services. They sent us a lovely pamphlet completely in German. Due to our inability to understand the services offered, we haven't yet made an appearance. :)


At any rate, today we biked over to the lake. I'd guess it took us ten minutes max to bike to the lake. Here's a picture of the view looking back toward town from the lake (with arrows to point to the castle & church). It's really great living next to the two tallest structures in the city. We can wander and wander, get ourselves totally lost, look around, find the castle and make our way back.


This is me next to the big sign that says "entering the ice is forbidden". I'm wearing my wonderfully appropriate for the weather bright pink wind/athletic jacket. Apparently it's illegal or frowned upon to wear color in Switzerland as I had people staring at me all day long. It was really quite ridiculous. Even Andre noticed it.



This is the Greifensee. Due to the absolutely ridiculous winter that Europe has been having, the Greifensee froze over. It's starting melting along the edges but the middle is still frozen. It's very pretty. The rest of the pictures are below.





Bonus! We got to see some cute bunnies on the ride back home.











In case any potential visitors were wondering about the proximity of local entertainment. This picture was taken from our front window. :)













Here are the rest of the pretty pictures:

Biking to the Greifensee - March 3

Apartment Pictures

a few days (or weeks) later than promised :)

Comments are included in the picture captions.

Enjoy!

Apartment Photos February 2012

Apartment!!

Our application was accepted! Now we have to sign a contract and fork over 2-3 months rent as a deposit. Apparently the Swiss aren't very trustworthy when it comes to rentals. Yeesh. Below are some pictures put up by the rental agency. We'll add more photos once we take over on the 27th. Yay us!

Floorplan

Basically two bedrooms and two living rooms. We're thinking of converting the living room on the left into a guest "suite" to entice people to come visit! :)



Building Front

Built in 1895. Last renovated in 2004.
We're the level right above the Jewelry Store.



Kitchen

Notice the low ceilings. It's gonna be cozy!



Living Room Area

Anyone have decorating ideas for low ceilings?



Outside Area!

Might be a few months before we use that. Today's high 32F.


It also comes with its own washer/dryer! It's tiny but it's ours! We actually looked at one apartment that offered a communal washer that we would be allowed to use once every 14 days and no dryer. These people are crazy! :)

We're going to be in an area called Uster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uster). It's got its own lake and is about a 15/20 minute train ride from my office. We'll be within walking distance of the train station and the Australian bar! Sweet.

Apartment Hunting & Other Musings

Friday was a big day here in Zurich! We got ourselves registered with the canton of Zurich (pretty sure the only reason for this is so we can be taxed), we got ourselves a bank account AND we checked out our first apartment.

For those who haven't done extensive research on the Zurich rental market, let me sum it up in a few short words = landlord's market = everything is tiny and suuuuper expensive. Anywho, we went to check out this place that we found online. It was reasonably priced (in Zurich terms=1.5 times our mortgage) for the size (80m2 = 861 sq ft). Our relocation agent had already warned us that the market is really competitive and each apartment will likely receive close to 50 applications so we weren't surprised to see a line of people waiting on the sidewalk for the stated open house time. We decided to take a quick walk around the neighborhood while we waited on the door to open. Turns out the apartment is located next door to a strip club and across the street from another strip club! Andre's response: What's wrong with that?? Since we were already there, we went ahead and went inside to look around. The apartment was quite nice and was packed with other people looking and filling out applications. We decided to pass. :)

Saturday, it rained....again. Our big outing was to the supermarket. We had to stock up because all of the stores are closed here on Sunday. As in totally closed. Not open. At all. It's like being back in east TN in the 80's.

On Sunday, it rained....again. We said to hell with it, put on rain proof jackets and headed over to Uetliberg to see the sights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uetliberg The conventional wisdom is that one should take the train to Triemli and then hike up to the top of the mountain and take the train back down. We, being rather out of shape, elected to take the train to the top of the mountain and then hike down to Triemli. We took some lovely pictures of the view shrouded in rainy fog. I'll throw those up online tomorrow. I'm sure we'll take the exact same pictures sometime this summer when it's actually sunny outside!

Sunday was pretty action packed. After Uetliberg, we took the train to various parts of Zurich to get an idea of where we might like to live if we can't find an apartment in the city. We found two neighborhoods that we really liked. After all that, we came back to our apartment and our neighbors invited us over for tea at 7pm. We're in temporary housing so everyone here is in transition. Our neighbors came in about a week after us so we've actually been helpful to them! One week can make a huge difference in a brand new place. After tea, we did some skyping with the parental units (and Sophie too) and then I tried to go to bed.

I'm having a hard time sleeping here because of all of the caffeine I'm consuming! We had tea with the neighbors on Sunday night. I couldn't refuse the tea b/c I had already skirted around the bread they were serving (it's hard to be polite when you have gluten issues - good thing I have a husband who doesn't mind eating two servings!). At work, I've found that after lunch, it's expected that on the way back to work, everyone stops in the break rooms for a coffee break. I've been drinking tea but still...more caffeine. In addition to the regular post-lunch coffee break, on Monday, the Irish expats at PwC held a welcome back from holiday happy hour beginning at 4:30pm complete with Irish coffee and snacks. More caffeine! I "watered" down my Irish coffee with an extra helping of whipped cream but still that sucker was strong. Good thing I didn't have to drive anywhere!

Sidenote: Apparently the only people that work in Switzerland the first week of January are suckers like me that don't know any better. Everyone else takes off before Christmas and doesn't return until the second week of January (hence the welcome back party yesterday). Note taken.

Continuing on then, we went to check out our second apartment last night. We liked it a lot. Tomorrow, we go look at more apartments! Hopefully after tomorrow we'll have seen enough to be able to make a decision. Fingers crossed!

Oh...AND...it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow! I think this will be the first time we've seen the sun since leaving the states two weeks ago....

Temporary Apartment

Check out our digs for the first 30 days: