The Great Swiss Adventure Begins

I arrived for my grand Swiss adventure on Monday night, and I am still so jet lagged that I am really only writing this so that I am not too tempted to go straight to bed. I'm in my temporary apartment, with boxes that arrived this morning from my air freight shipment. I am thinking now that I should have put a LOT more in my air shipment as I feel a bit like I'm camping. But, I DID go apartment hunting last night and have already put in an application for a flat overlooking the lake. So much for my thinking I would not need a lake view! It is pretty hard to resist when you walk into the living room and that is the first thing you see. I'll keep you posted on whether I'm accepted for the flat. In the meantime, I'll keep looking just in case.

So far, the good:

The job. It's pretty awesome. Overwhelming and a huge learning curve, but I think I do know what I'm doing, so I hope I don't feel too lost for too long.

The scenery. All I can say is OMG. My office view is of Lake Geneva and the French Alps. It sure beats the view I had from my office in Modesto of the Frito-Lay plant across the street.

The cheese. YUM. Had fondue already (the first night I arrived). A lovely blue at lunch and Gruyere tonight at dinner.

The rental car. My last 30 days in California were spent driving a Ford Fusion. Actually, quite a nice car. But, it's not an Audi. Which is what my Swiss rental car is. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I've only had to drive it once. I'm not so nervous about the driving as I am about the parking. There are lots and lots of different ways to violate the parking rules and I am sure to get a ticket the first time out.

The people. So far, the Swiss are much friendlier than their reputation indicated. For the most part, not many people outside of work speak English, but they've been very patient with my attempts to do business. The guys at the photo shop where I had to get passport pictures taken for my work permit didn't speak a word of English and I was a bit afraid that my French was so bad that I had ended up ordering something completely wrong, but, voila, it was all correct! The power of persistence and a good attitude, on both sides.

The bad:
You cannot access playlist.com in Switzerland because of potential copyright issues!!! This is crushing for me. If any of my children would like to give me an amazing Christmas present, they can go to my playlist on playlist.com and make me an iPod playlist using those songs. I've been searching for a similar site that works in Europe, but haven't found one yet. If anybody can help me, please do.

Grocery shopping. The stores close at 6, so if you tend to work late (like I tend to do), you are out of luck. Fortunately, Nestle gave me a welcoming basket of food when I got here. So, I've been eating spaghetti and tomato sauce (not to be confused with spaghetti sauce, which this is not) for every dinner. Lucky for me I brought my spices with me, so I could create a slightly different dinner each night. I left work early today (5:30) and practically ran to the supermarket. I think I might have bought fabric softener instead of detergent, so I'll have to look that up on the internet and stop by the store again tomorrow for the detergent because...

The laundry. This temp apartment has a shared laundry room with a schedule. That is actually extremely common here. It's very rare to have a washing machine in your flat, and ALL the shared facilities have a schedule. Which means, if you can't wash at your designated time, you're not washing until next week! My time is Friday evening, so I guess I have no Friday happy hour until I get a new flat! So, if anyone want's to Skype on Fridays, I'll be hanging out at the laundry room looking for something else to do. In fact, tomorrow I have a meeting at 5:00, so I'm going to have to go home at 4:00 to get my laundry started, go back for my meeting, and then return home to start the next load. Crazy!

Television. There is one and only one English channel. CNN The World. I am newsed out right now. It's not even particularly interesting. An odd collection of pseudo news and features. I've thought perhaps I could work on my French by watching some French stations, but now, my head just hurts from trying to keep up and I'd love to see an original Law and Order.

Now, off to make a late night snack...that Gruyere is calling my name.