Episode 5: September 2005
September was a surprisingly busy month, filled with visitors, weekend trips, and the move out of our temporary apartment and into something more permanent. Let’s start with the move….
As you may recall, we ended August with a trip to Malta to attend my cousin’s wedding. Neal left the day after the wedding to get back to work (since he has very little vacation), and I stayed a few more days to spend some time with my sister, Carol, and our relatives. Three days after I returned to Switzerland, we took a Friday off for moving day, and in true Shorg style, our move was not a straightforward one. Since the moving companies rarely work on weekends, we crammed everything into one day. That involved coordinating two shipping companies – one that brought Neal’s stuff from the US and the other with my things from Australia – and managing the handover of the apartment keys. In the US and Australia, the handover of an apartment is quite simple. You show up, get the keys, sign a rental contract, and move in. The whole thing, aside from the actual moving in, takes maybe 30 minutes. Not so in Switzerland. Because the Swiss are so particular about the condition of their living area, they go through a rigorous inspection when new tenants takeover an apartment. This includes thorough checks for cleanliness, working appliances, and determining the need for minor fixes, such as painting, and major fixes, such as the entire replacement of the kitchen tiles or appliances. Lucky for us, we had some professional help for the handover. The same agency that Dow supplied us for our apartment search also helped oversaw the handover meeting. (At least they came in useful for something!)
On moving day, we decided to take a divide-and-conquer approach. I stayed in the temporary apartment in Thalwil to wait for my movers, who were scheduled to pick up the boxes we had there. Neal went by train to the new apartment in Zurich to attend the handover meeting. We were a bit unsure about how our schedule would hold up. My movers were supposed to arrive in Thalwil at 8:30 am, with the hope that we would make it to the new apartment by 10 or 11 am. The handover meeting was supposed to last from 9-10 am. Neal’s movers were scheduled to show up at 1:00 pm. On paper, it all seemed a bit tight.
Sure enough, my movers showed up at 8:30 am on the dot. Before I knew it, they had swooped up all the boxes and other loose articles and by 9:30 am, everything was packed and they were off! I left Thalwil as well and came to the new apartment to catch Neal and the realtors doing the handover inspections. To my surprise, they were not even half-way done! The apartment inspection was, indeed, meticulous. Our agent noted everything from tiny chips in the kitchen tiles, to light scuff marks on the floorboards, to walls that could use a little touch-up paint. She even turned on each appliance to test it as well as show us how it works (which we appreciated since all instructions are in German).
As we entered the last few bits of the inspection, my movers showed up at the apartment. Perfect timing. They immediately began to unpack the truck and scatter the goods all over the apartment. At roughly the same time, the IKEA delivery truck arrived with the boxes for our wardrobes. As you can imagine, for a few minutes, the apartment was a bit crowded, but once we got the handover documents signed and the IKEA men left, things settled down a bit. By 12:30 pm, my movers had unpacked the entire truck, and our apartment looked like a bomb had hit it! We had boxes and furniture all over the place and had not started organizing anything. My movers started to pack up their truck, and literally, as they drove away from the apartment, Neal’s movers parked in front of our building. Perfect timing again! Neal’s movers were even quicker than mine. By 3 pm, they were done, and we had the apartment all to ourselves. All in all, we were absolutely stunned at how smoothly things went with the moving companies.
The weekend of our move was one of the nicest of the entire summer. Unfortunately, we did not get to see much of it because we spent the whole time amid the clutter of our apartment. We spent the next two days unpacking and putting away as much as we could. Neal occupied his time with “Project IKEA”, a frustrating and back-breaking quest to put together our wardrobes. You may think that IKEA furniture is easy to put together – and it usually is – but the job gets much tougher when you are dealing with wardrobes that are about 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall and weigh over 100 kilograms (200 pounds) each. Let’s just say that we very much deserved the beer we had to cap each night that weekend.
By the end of the weekend, we had put away several bits in the apartment, but we still had plenty to get done. So, each night after work, we would come home, grab a quick dinner, and then do a little more work around the apartment until bedtime. It was all getting quite tiring. Lucky for us, we got some much-needed help in the form of my sister, Carol, who arrived from her extended stay in Malta. Carol is very much an adventurous spirit, and we can give her a laundry list of things to do and she will take care of it. The weekend that she arrived in Zurich, my dad and stepmom came over as well, and the five of us worked on organizing a few things around the apartment, putting the finishing touches on the IKEA furniture, and assembling our new barbeque (quite possibly, the most important piece of equipment in the apartment). With my family in town, we took some time to get away from the apartment hassles and go into Zurich. We showed our visitors the now-famous Zurich bears as well as some tourist landmarks.
Carol stayed with us in Zurich for the next week and helped us tremendously. She did all kinds of odd jobs, both around the apartment and in the city. In Zurich, she bought us a few small household appliances items and stocked our toolbox with the essentials. Inside the apartment, she put together some small pieces of furniture and even hung up all our pictures around the apartment!
Don’t get us wrong – we gave Carol plenty of time to relax! I took a business trip to Poland, and Carol took advantage of the opportunity to come along with me. She went exploring at some of the tragically infamous parts of the country (e.g., WWII concentration camps), we treated ourselves to massages and pedicures, did some shopping, and explored the beautiful old town of Warsaw.
For the third weekend in September, we took Carol to see one of her must-see destinations: Paris. The three of us flew there Friday night and met up with my dad and stepmom. For the next day and a half, we did a whole lot of walking! We saw everything, including Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower (making Neal face his fear of heights by going up to the top), the Louvre and the Mona Lisa, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Champs Elysee. It was a terrific weekend, and I think that Carol really enjoyed the experience. We certainly did!
That Sunday, Neal and I flew back to Zurich, while Carol headed to the western side of Switzerland with my dad and stepmom. She stayed there for a few days and took in the French-influenced side of the country. The three of them drove to Zurich later in the week to drop Carol off for her flight back to Australia. They took the southern route across the country so that Carol could see the most famous mountain in Switzerland, the Matterhorn.
On Thursday, we said our sad goodbyes to Carol as she boarded her flight back to Melbourne. After seeing her off, I stayed around at the airport, not because I enjoy it there, but rather because Neal and I had another trip to make! This time we were off to Helsinki, Finland for the weekend. A friend and co-worker of mine is Finnish, as is her fiancé, and the two of them were getting married that weekend in Helsinki. We saw this as the perfect opportunity to see the country over a three-day weekend. Luckily, some of our friends from Dow were also going to the wedding, so we had some familiar faces there as well.
Admittedly, Finland is not the first country we would think about visiting in Europe, but having been there now, we would highly recommend it. Helsinki is a nice city – not too large or too small. On Friday, we wandered around the city and even took a stroll around a local market where we had a lunch of fresh salmon cakes and fried whole fish. Delicious! The Finnish have a huge fishing industry, and it was great to watch the fishmongers at their stalls, with incredibly fresh fish laid out in front of them. Atlantic salmon seemed to be the most popular offering, and they were huge! While we were in Helsinki, we naturally consulted our book of 1,000 places to see. The book listed a hotel, Hotel Kamp, as a must-see. We visited the hotel and, frankly, were not all that impressed. Sure, the hotel seemed to be quite lavish, but it lacked that intangible “something” that the other sites in the book have. Nonetheless, we were happy to check another spot off the list!
The wedding was on Saturday, and it was an all-day affair. The wedding ceremony started around noon and only lasted an hour. From there, the entire wedding party walked from the church to a dock along the bay. The bride and groom led the procession and were followed by two saxophonists playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”. (Why they were playing that song we cannot figure out.) At the dock, there was a boat waiting to take us across the bay onto a small island where the reception was held. The reception hall overlooked the ocean, making for a beautiful setting. Even though we arrived at the hall around 2 pm, the reception lasted until 10 pm that night, as we were treated to dinner, cake, and entertainment. The best (or most interesting) performance of the night came from the priest! He is apparently very well-known in Finland for his saw-playing ability, and he treated us to a few tunes in honor of the married couple. He finished off his show by playing – no kidding – a bicycle tire pump. What a character!
The next day, we wandered around the city a bit more and met up with our friends near the bay for some lunch and a coffee. By mid-afternoon, we headed back to the airport for our flight back to Switzerland. As we flew over the Atlantic Ocean back to Zurich, we concluded that, despite being a busy month, September was rewarding on many levels. That said, we were relieved to know that the weeks ahead seemed to be relatively quiet and travel-free!
