Our furnished apartment
Unsere möblierte Wohnung….
We’ve been in our apartment for 2 weeks as of yesterday, and I think we’ve finally gotten somewhat settled. We’ve probably had more people ring our doorbell for deliveries in the last 2 weeks than we will have for any reason in the next 2 years that we live here! And let me tell you, I don’t even know why the Swiss give you a delivery “window” because if they say 8am to 10am, they’re going to be there at 8am sharp. Maybe even 7:45am.
The only item in this apartment that came completely assembled was the couch and chair in the living room (Wohnungzimmer). Everything else was assembled by me, myself, and I. We have been drowning in cardboard boxes, styrofoam, and plastic for too long now. I had them all bundled up, tied with twine for disposal as instructed by Stadt Zürich, and waiting in the hallway. But I got sick of looking at them last night and took all the bundles down to our storage in the basement last night. So now is the perfect time for updated photos!
First we have the hallway/front door. The only notable thing is the absolute need for a place to drop stuff, aka the hall tree. We’ve got our raincoats and bike helmets hanging there, and there is a drip pan underneath the bench for when everything is wet. Which has been a lot lately. There’s also an umbrella stand (Schirmständer) hidden in the corner behind the hall tree. (in case you’re wondering, all German nouns are capitalized) The door on the right in the hallway leads to the living room. Pretty small, but just enough space for the two of us. There is a door that leads out to the balcony (Balkon). We are on the ground level, so we’re right up in everybody’s business on the street. Also in case you’re wondering, when an electric smoker is used on the balcony to smoke brisket, it does in fact smell like the apartment is on fire.
On the left hand side of the hallway, we have Cass’s office/guest room. We haven’t gotten a bed to go in there yet, because we are waiting until everything gets settled to see what size bed makes the most sense. Then there is the WC/toilet room. 2 notable things: Cass installed that light fixture (it was a black hole in there before that), and our kitchen pantry is in that weird space with a window behind that half wall. Don’t worry, it’s walled off so our food isn’t sharing airspace with the WC. Last is the kitchen. You can see through the window that there’s some fencing up because of construction on the building next door. I can hear the construction guys talking most of the day. That floor lamp is there just for now while I’m working on my latest paint-by-numbers masterpiece - Sunflowers by Van Gogh.
Finishing out the grand tour is the primary bedroom. It is interesting because in addition to the door to the hallway, there is also a door between the primary bedroom and the living room. I thought we would likely keep. that door closed all the time or even block it off, but I actually like it way more than I thought I would. We have 2 wardrobes in here, because there are no closets (a general theme in Europe). Cass has all of his stuff in one of these wardrobes, while mine is in one of these wardrobes AND in the wardrobe in the office/guest room. Also pictured is the bathroom, which is just the tub/shower (Bad/Dusche) and a sink. That roller shade acts as the shower curtain. I got the idea for that from an Italian guy who gave us a viewing of his apartment - he had one installed, and I thought it was cool.
A lot of this stuff is from IKEA as you might recognize, so I’ll mention the stuff that is not from there. The bed is Beliani via Galaxus the Swiss version of Amazon, night stands, dresser, coffee table, lowboard at the foot of the bed, TV stand are all from a company called Made, which is like a British elevated version of IKEA, the bench, lamps, rugs, sherpa chair are from a French department store called La Redoute, and the sofa is from The Sofa Company here in Zürich.
What’s left: we have to dispose of one million metric tons of cardboard, I bought a pretty vintage Persian runner for the hallway on Etsy (it’s coming from Turkey and got hung up in customs), we’ve got some more light fixtures on the way for installation now that we’ve figured it out, and I think that’s about it. We went to the Kriesbüro earlier this week and registered in this district. Now all we’ve got left to do is to sort out our Swiss health insurance, and we’ll be full-fledged Swiss residents.