Auf Wiedersehen, Schweiz!
*Tap tap* is this thing on? It’s been a minute since I posted here. Das tut mir leid, Leute. Organizing hundreds of photos and making blog posts is time consuming, and I kind of soft quit on that job. There was also a time period in there where we didn’t have much break between visitors, so something had to give. But I’m back, now that it is the last week we will be living in Zürich.
We’ve been gradually moving out of our apartment on Mutschellenstrasse for the last few weeks. The plan was to give away everything that wasn’t going to be moved back to the US, and I think we got pretty close. We made a spreadsheet of each piece of furniture or household item complete with description, dimensions, and photo. Cass made it available to people at work to peruse and sign up to take - first his work group, then a wider group of people, and so forth. Nearly everything got claimed, and they started coming by last week to load things up and take them away. We were left with only the sofa, kitchen table, a TV hutch, and miscellaneous household junk. The discard and donate service offered by our relocation package came by and got most of the leftovers. We are currently in the process of disposing of the rest of it. Switzerland has a lot of rules about what you can throw out in the trash, so it has been tricky. I spent most of Friday emptying the glass spice bottles, rinsing them, and making a big pile of glass recycling. Repeat that for metal containers and plastic containers, and even though it sounds like a lot of work - it really put a dent into the stuff that’s going in the regular trash.
Anyway, I thought that for the last post (from here) I would make a list of things that we will miss/not really miss about living in Switzerland and traveling through Europe for the last 2 years 3 months and 24 days (when we leave on September 30). Want to hear it? Here it goes!
Things we won’t really miss
Sharing laundry facilities - This one was pretty low on the list for a long time because no one else was using the basement washer and dryer with us. But we got some new neighbors late last year, and suddenly we had to share with other people. The horror! Most Swiss apartment buildings have strict laundry schedule rules, but ours had not yet adopted them. They probably need to in the near future.
Everything closed on Sundays - This is refuted by an item listed below in the things we will really miss (slow pace of life). Technically restaurants can be open (but a good many choose not to) and stores in the train station can be open. So in a pinch, you can run to the nearest train station grocery to pick something up. But once you get the mindset of doing your shopping before Sunday, it isn’t really a problem.
Prevalence of smoking - Europe wins on healthy lifestyle as far as exercise and food choices, but they definitely could work on that whole smoking thing. I think that the fact that smoking is on a serious decline in the US made it that much more noticeable to me here.
2pm - 5pm restaurant hiatus - A lot of restaurants are closed from 2pm to 5pm, so if you’re a late-luncher like we are it can be a bit of a pain. But McDonald’s in Sihlcity (and Enge) is always open during that time!
Daily need to grocery shop - Another one that was a pain in the beginning, but after a while it became second nature. I would usually make a daily exercise route that included a grocery store stop at the end, then I could shop and take the bus/train home with my groceries. Cass usually rode his bike to the store so he could put the grocery bags on the handlebars. We’ll have quite an adjustment back to car grocery trips when we get back to the US.
Time zone offset from the US - This was a pretty big one. Lucky that I keep my phone on silent mode, because there were plenty of texts received during the middle of the night. And I was guilty of doing it myself the other direction too. It will also be nice to watch sporting events again, if I so choose. A lot of them had a midnight or 1am start time for me here.
Lack of variety in Swiss cuisine - Do you like potatoes and cheese? And sausage? I’m a pretty picky eater, so I know this is probably a me thing more than Switzerland thing - but I had more than one visitor mention that the food here did not dazzle them.
Rules, rules, rules - The Swiss are rules followers, which can be both good and bad. The bad side is when you get told off in public for breaking some Swiss rule that you didn’t even know existed. Es tut mir sehr leid. Bitte verzeihen Sie mir. The good side is that it makes for an orderly and safe place (see things we liked below).
Complicated streaming - VPN has been our friend, but it’s a little more complicated than that because the streaming services are getting better at detecting its use. I won’t divulge Cass’s secrets here, but leave it to him to find a solution to be able to use US Netflix without detection.
Lack of Amazon - Again, both good and bad here. Sometimes it can be hard to find and get things that you need. But less prevalent services means I broke my daily Amazon habit, at least for a period of time.
Getting robbed (in Taco Bell) in Barcelona - I totally hold this against Taco Bell, not Barcelona.
Things we will really miss
Public transportation - Sigh, I really wish the US would invest some tax money into public transportation infrastructure. It is SOOOOOO nice to live somewhere that doesn’t require you to own a car. Trains, buses, and trams are the best. Especially when they are in Switzerland and always nearly on-time.
Safety - Switzerland has got to be the safest country in the world. It would be so nice if every country could adopt the method of raising honest people that Switzerland employs, but I don’t have a good grasp of exactly what their method is. All I know is, my sister left her iPhone (with no passcode lock on it) sitting on a bench in a busy public park by the Zürichsee, and somebody turned it in the next day at the police station. I had been telling everybody how safe it is here, and when the chips were down the Swiss came through for me!
Hiking - You can take all the photos in the world and not one will fully capture the absolute beauty of the Swiss Alps or the beautiful skies with the fresh clean air (don’t mind the smell of the cows), the noise of all the cowbells ringing. It’s just an experience that must be seen, heard, and smelled in-person to get the full effect. Neither of us had ever hiked before we moved here, so no experience required!
Skiing - I can’t write much here, because I retired from skiing in the middle of the 2021-2022 ski season. I didn’t even break out the ski gear for 2022-2023, except to loan it all to my sister-in-law for her visit. But Cass really enjoyed being able to take ski days here and there, and I think he went to a lot of different slopes areas to try them out. We will be coming back to the US with our very own ski boots and 4 pairs of skis and poles, so I’m sure we’ll find some use for them in the future.
Looking at the mountains - I think if I lived in the Swiss Alps every day for the rest of my life, I’d never get tired of looking at those mountains.
Last minute travel - There were several trips that we took with only a day or twos’ notice. Once we even decided that morning that we were going somewhere (can’t remember where right off hand though). Most of the flight costs were totally reasonable, and in 2-3 hours you can go almost anywhere in Europe. We visited Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Czechia, The Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Sweden, Austria, and Liechtenstein (not really a visit, but rode the train through, so we got to see it).
Hearing other languages all the time - I don’t know how much German I actually picked up here. I used to be able to recite the terminus message that always played on the S4 train when it arrived in the HB, but the S4 line has been closed for repairs since July, so I think I’ve forgotten most of it. But I am coming back with my Fide test results that put me at A1 level for speaking and A2 for writing, so I guess that’s something!
Slow pace of daily life - Less traffic, fewer crowds, work ends at 5pm, people hang out in the green spaces and by the lake all the time especially at lunch, fewer people with their faces glued to their cell phone screens. If I knew what their magic method was, I’d definitely bring it back to the US with me.
Floating on the Limmat - I can’t believe we didn’t do this until summer 2023, but we managed to squeeze in 2 floating trips. And we ended up with 3 inflatable 4-person boats to give away at the end.
Church chimes - As I type this, it’s 7:05pm here and the chimes are ringing. The US has a distinct lack of church chimes, and it is a tragedy.
We are both SO GLAD that we took the leap and moved abroad for these 2 years. I really think that if we had bothered to also move our dog Bernie over here with us, we might not be ready yet to come home. Our kids have been able to visit, and we FaceTime and text with them all the time, so they weren’t quite as absent from daily life as Bernie was. Although I did FaceTime with him occasionally, but he didn’t have much to say. But there is something to be said for that safety net of long-time familiar friends and family that you have around you that you don’t even think about until you have to count on it, and I don’t think we would have been able to establish that here for a long time. Things like that are what contribute to making home feel comfortable. That, and Taco Bell (for Cass) and Dr. Pepper (for me). However, if we ever get the chance to do it again - we will probably jump at the chance!