The After

Please come visit

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, it was a very busy day. I had my German lesson and went to Swisscom to get a phone (I waited so long that I got to watch a good part of the All Blacks-Tonga Rugby World Cup match). In the afternoon, I frantically tried to get ready because we had a housewarming party for last night. Pretty much, we invited everyone we know in Geneva outside of his work and everyone in our building. I hadn’t done enough preparation for a houseful of people so I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

Here are some pre-party pics of our place (otherwise known as “the after”):

We’e not vampires, but if we could make it any darker in here we would.

Want to visit us?  You will sleep here.

Another pic of your new room

Alcove in the entry – I swear I stored most of my books back in the states.

Note the fruit bowl from an earlier post (to prevent exploding bananas)

Living Room

We can pull off the back cushions and sleep more people (it becomes a twin)

Dining room –

Like our Swiss flag napkins?

Prepared for rain with an umbrella stand by the door

We call this our locker room (additional shoes not shown)

Bathroom

#2 gets its own room

Kitchen

My nemisis, the stove, tried to foil my baking chocolate chip cookies, but did not succeed.

Our map board so we can find our way around

 

Mad Channels

We have Swiss Cable through Swisscom.  It was part of our wireless package and wasn’t much more expensive than basic wireless. I wanted to be able to watch the French channels to practice my French, so we got it.  I am astounded by the number and variety of channels we have. We get over 160 TV Channels, over 130 national and international radio stations and thousands of internet radio stations.

When he leaves for work in the morning, I turn on French TV and watch the news in French. To practice, I try to have French TV on whenever he’s not here. I hope it helps because one afternoon, I watched a bad French soap opera.

If you have favorite French (or British) shows, please let me know. While I am asking, if you know of great international radio or internet radio stations please let me know those as well.

Here are some of our favorite viewings thus far:

• Coming to America
• A British show where they check in on people restoring an old property and do detective work to learn about the house’s history
• Autrefois (a show that shows Geneva through the history with interviews, photos and old film clips)
• The French history channel’s 2 hour show about historical figures
• Carson from the Queer Eye‘s new show dubbed in French, please don’t judge. It’s definitely cheerier than the constant news of the dollar dropping.
• The French like to combine their love of food with their love of love. This yields some bizarre dating shows.
• Horrible Histories. Yes, I know it’s a kids show, but it’s just so funny.

 

 

Swiss National Day

August 1st was Swiss National Day. The date refers to a historic alliance concluded in 1291 by the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden. This alliance became the basis of the regional alliances that forms today’s Switzerland.  Yeah Switzerland!

Switzerland has been good to us so far. We have been very lucky and feel very lucky to be here.  Here are some of the ways we’ve been lucky:

• Apartments are hard to come by in Geneva.  It is on a lake and surrounded on three sides by the mountains.  This makes land scarce. None of the buildings are taller than six or seven stories tall (preserving the mountain views).  It has made the perfect storm.  I have heard that there is .5% vancancy (it may even be less). When we only put one offer and got our dream flat we were extremely lucky.
• We were even luckier that we could get the keys within hours of landing!
• We were able to have a washer and dryer delivered before we had to do laundry at a laundrymat.
• We how have wireless (Swisscom)
• Our belongings arrived in Switzerland before we did.
• Our dogs have good new homes
• It is extremely beautiful here.
• The weather has been nice. Summer in Geneva seems a bit like summer in Chicago, there is tons going on and everyone is trying to make the most of the good weather.

While it hasn’t been without headaches and it is still early, our move has been about as smooth as possible. We have been lucky to have had advice from people who have done this before.  It is really nice not to reinvent the wheel. They have helped us navigate things.  A lot of it is also due to our wonderful friends and family.*  Thank you.

*Especially thank you if you took a dog.