Home, Sweet Switzerland, Home

December 04, 2010

Home, Sweet Switzerland, Home

Our view the day we moved in

Okay, so it’s taken four months and one week but it has been worth the wait. We are now at least culturalised to a degree and at the very worst can say please and thank you in French and know how to fill out forms. There are new friends in our lives and we have been given enough stuff to half fill our apartment (unit, flat, whatever) and for that we are very grateful.

The amazing thing about our new home, all 80 square metres of it, is that after living in a bedroom with shared kitchen for the past three months, we feel totally blessed. Our apartment is 3.5 rooms in Swiss real estate speak. With the temperature outside bouncing between minus 6 and minus 3, Jo and I are warm and cosy inside wearing summer gear. From our two windows, sliding doors and deck (verandah, patio) over a foreground of snow covered rooftops, we have endless views of Lake Geneva, the Swiss and French Alps. See the photo above, taken today, to see what fifteen thousand foot high mountain ranges look like after a week of snow storms. One word. Breathtaking.

Our new place is situated in Pully (pronounced Poo-yee) which is one train stop from Lausanne (about three minutes at 130 k’s an hour). Harvey and I walked into Lausanne and back a couple of times this week just to taste the snow on our faces and to get used to skating without the need to wear skates. Pully has everything that Jo and I require for survival in 21st century Europe within five hundred metres of our front door. The road outside even takes Jo to the International School by car in fifteen to twenty minutes. And the Alfa loves to drift up the mountain, even in the snow.

Harvey and I shifted all our gear up from the basement on Monday afternoon. Getting the two seater lounge from the bottom floor of our apartment up into our mezzanine floor was a challenge. But after a couple of failed attempts good old fashioned Aussie determination got it there in the end. Jo and I put the last screw in our Ikea queen size bed at nine o’clock on Thursday night and we were officially moved in and sound asleep ten minutes later.

What’s the new place really like? Well, we think it is an amazing place to live and to share with our friends here as well as with those who will be coming over in a steady holding pattern in 2011. We have even managed a house swap in Oz for when we are home next July/August. How cool is that? There are eight residential units in our building. The neighbours are friendly and helpful and the concierge is now on our team. If we get snowed in, there are loads of new books on the shelves, a Nespresso coffee machine in the kitchen, 170 channel Swisscom TV including instant movie downloads and world wide radio stations, high speed internet that will make your head spin, Skype, a guitar and endless novels waiting to be written. Did I mention the pizza restaurant across the road?

But what we’re really hoping is that after we hit the snow tomorrow on our new snowboards (secondhand Salomons,), that we will be so blown away we’ll be using every opportunity during the next four months to cruise the slopes. Between us, Jo and I have been in the surf for eighty years and we’re ready for a new challenge. If you fancy a snowboarding holiday, the fields are around forty five minutes drive from Pully but you need to get here by the end of March. Book now.

What else is happening? Harvey left today for two months on the Sunny Coast so I’ll be hiking solo for a bit. Jo’s friend, Jenny from Bli Bli, is visiting us from London next weekend and we are doing the Montreaux Xmas Markets. On the 18th December we fly to Barcelona for Christmas coming back Boxing Day and Giles and Ruth are talking Berlin for New Years. Living here is really much like living at Witta except you can’t go to the beach for a surf or to the Plaza. Witta rains on you, Pully snows.

This time last year Jo and I were doing Santa’s workshop at the Yandina Ginger Factory. This year we are living in Santa’s playground. Until Barcelona, salut mes amis.