Thursday, March 29, 2007

Still homeless...

...but hopefully not for much longer.

It took several days and many anguished calls with our property manager, but yesterday we finally got the water turned on at our house, which meant we could also get the house cleaned. Today we got a shipment of items that had been in storage here. Tomorrow our new bed is scheduled to be delivered. So by Saturday, or at the very latest Sunday, we should officially be living in our house again.

We've gotten over the initial shock of walking into a house that had been a rental property for three years and was still dirty, cold and lacking utilities, and are now looking forward to getting settled in. Having said that, in many ways it was the best possible thing for us to spend this week in comfortable houses (I've been spending all day with Gretchen and Baby, but crashing at another friend's place because there's not enough room for all of us there). It's helped us to be more rested and relaxed. Best of all, Baby has been a champion--in good spirits, no apparent jet lag, hardly complaining about being hauled around town in and out of the car, eating well, etc.

Now, if things can only go so well when I return to work tomorrow...

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The more things change

Everything is still a blur so far, so it's waaaaaaaaaay too soon to make any sort of meaningful judgments about quality of life. But here are some cursory observations of things that have made it very clear that we weren't in Basel any longer:

--Getting yelled at to move back on the people mover from the gate to the terminal at Dulles Airport...and having no problem yelling back that we had a stroller and people weren't getting out of our way so we couldn't move if we wanted to.

--The ever-so-friendly welcome given visitors trying to get through customs and immigration at Dulles...huge lines for non-US citizens, instructions and admonishments being given only in muddled-but-loud English, bags strewn everywhere and jet-lagged passengers wandering aimlessly, people yelling at staff about missing bags...God bless America!

--Slow driver in the left lane? No problem--just pass on the right! (This is almost a hanging offense in most of Europe.)

--A bottle of water at the airport cost $2.50...and I marveled at how cheap it was compared to Zurich.

--Sunday afternoon and stores and restaurants were open.

--Arrival at 2:45pm. Clear customs and immigration at 3:30pm. Get in cab at 3:45pm. First traffic jam (on a Sunday afternoon, no less) at 4:00pm.

--Hear more horns honking (and use my own horn) in 2 days than in the previous 3 years.

--Nearly get run over in a crosswalk.

--Stop my car to let people walk in the crosswalk and they give me a merciful wave of thanks while drivers behind me stare daggers.

--Ethnic food. Tasty. Plentiful. Inexpensive. Delivered. Quickly.

--Strangers in residential neighborhoods not only say hello when out walking, but actually engage you in conversation.

--Buildings' ground floors are 1, not 0.

--The sweet smell of mulch in the spring air (this may be a very DC thing, but in the spring basically every square inch of bare ground in any half-respectable garden is covered with mulch).

--Customer service that is either over-the-top friendly and helpful or maddeningly hostile and incompetent.

--Gretchen went into a couple of local stores and was so overwhelmed by the sheer variety that she almost shed tears of joy.

--More ethnic diversity (people, not food) in one block than in most (all?) Swiss towns and cities.

--In Basel, half of the roads were under construction but were otherwise in perfect condition...here, very few roads are under construction but are otherwise cracked and potholed like crazy.

We'll have more as we go along, I'm sure...

Going mobile (US style)

While I may have given up my ancient (no fancy graphics, no color, no camera, etc) mobile phone with its embedded memories, we're now the proud owners of new-fangled cell phones (they're not "mobiles", not "handys", certainly not "Natels"...nope, around these parts they're cell phones) with lots more features (and we actually got fairly simple, basic phones). I'm especially having fun trying to figure out the camera.

Self-portrait:


Welcoming party:


Happy Baby:

Going mobile

When we left Basel, it felt really strange to surrender my mobile phone (I had it for work) because in it were three years worth of text messages that in a way served as a chronicle of various events of our lives. Prior to turning it back in I cleared out my old messages, both sent and received, and came across such memories as:

--While skiing in Zermatt, a note sent from us on the Italian side back to friends on the Swiss side;

--An apologetic-but-insistent request to write a speech while on holiday pulling into Bergen, Norway on a ferry, resulting in the loss of a day in Oslo and a pissed-off wife;

--The play-by-play of an unruly passenger being offloaded from a plane on the runway in Frankfurt;

--A note sent from a massage chair at the Bangkok Airport while getting a foot massage on the way to Australia;

--Reassurance that I had survived a scary incident in Cairo;

--A report on dinner (not turkey) in Turkey;

--Notification that I was playing hooky from work to watch the US-Ghana World Cup match;

--A note to my boss from the delivery room telling him I would probably have to miss that day's meetings;

--An update from a friend aboard a US naval ship whose family was in the process of being evacuated from Beirut;

--Plans to meet a friend for a day spent with our babies in suburban Madrid;

--Description of a taxi driver listening to what seemed to be a live comedy show on the radio while blowing his nose directly into his white gloves in Beijing; and

--A 5:30am message from Swiss telling us that our flight home from London had been cancelled.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The eagle has landed

Well, we made it. We're certainly not in a hurry to relive the last couple of days in Basel trying to finish all the countless last-minute tasks in an empty apartment with all of us fighting off various illnesses. But, thanks to a bunch of help from our friends (with special kudos to Liz & Douglas for helping with just about every imaginable task, and to The Big Finn for getting up at the crack of dawn--with a little help from a wake-up call from Gretchen--and driving us and our mountains of stuff to Zurich Airport), it all came together. When we boarded the plane we could see the looks of concern on everyone's faces in our general vicinity, but Baby did great on the plane. So did Gretchen, especially when I didn't tell her I was taking something to knock me out because I wasn't feeling well and so she was stuck with Baby while I suddenly and blissfully napped for an hour or two. I'll say this much--after flying most of the time in business class for three years, it's hard moving to the more cramped back of the plane! (Although at least the guy who checked us in for United was nice enough to seat us in Economy Plus with a few extra inches of legroom.) Even Grady seemed to come through it no worse for wear. After about 9 hours of flying, we emerged in a dazed state from customs at Dulles Airport and good friends Dave and Chris were waiting to whisk us and our stuff--it took both of their cars plus I had to take a taxi with the dog crate--back to their houses on a glorious, sunny and warm day, which was certainly an improvement over the snow on the ground when we left Zurich.

The reason they took us back to their houses rather than to our house was because on Saturday they went over to scope out our house and discovered that the water had been cut off to our house so the gas company couldn't finish having our appliances ready, plus the cleaners weren't able to clean. So rather than sleep on air mattresses (as we had our last few nights in Basel) in an empty-but-dirty house with no water, they had mercy on us and we instead have been sleeping in comfy beds and eating delicious and inexpensive take-out food with good friends while trying to get things fixed at the house. (Don't even get us started on the incompetence of a property management company that, despite having at least six weeks to get the house ready, doesn't find out until the last minute that it's in a shambles. ARGH!)

So that's all a long way of saying that while things haven't exactly gone according to plan, we're doing well and slowly adjusting to our new American lives, about which more later...

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

And on that note...

Tschüss (for now, at least...)

This morning, it snowed.

This afternoon, we had yet another earthquake.

This evening, Baby crawled for the first time. Well, she really just scootched backwards a little bit, but it was close enough to crawling for us.

Tomorrow morning, the movers come to pack our things.

So even though we don't actually fly home until Sunday, this is probably Expatter's de facto last day as a Swiss blog. We'll probably continue it for at least a little while when we get back and get our computer (hopefully in a week or two) since we've heard the culture shock of going home (the traffic! the bewildering range of choices in the supermarket! terror alerts! good, inexpensive ethnic food!) can be almost as challenging as the culture shock of moving to a foreign country. After that, who knows? As long as it's fun we'll probably keep it up, and if it becomes too much work we'll probably fade away. Time will tell.

It's funny how the blog took on a life of its own that we never would have expected. At first it was just going to be for friends and family. Then we realized that we were doing it for ourselves as much as anyone else, because it was a sort of scrapbook of what we were experiencing. Only later were we surprised that other people actually read it, too. It really never occurred to us that anyone we didn't know would be even vaguely interested, but we're glad because we got exposed to lots of other interesting blogs and in at least a few cases met and became friends with other expat bloggers. Go figure.

Beyond blogging, it's just generally been a great three years. Beyond the Baby we've had, the friends we've made, the places we've seen and the wines we've sipped, the whole experience of living overseas has been invaluable. My guess is that of the relatively few Americans who ever live overseas, most do so during college (including Gretchen, who spent a semester in Vienna). I found the whole concept too intimidating when I was in college and, frankly, had I done it then I don't think I would have appreciated it. Having done it now, however, I'm grateful for the opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and live differently for a while. And now, having done it, I'm ready to go back and see what waits at home.

On that note, all three of us bid adieu from Basel and will say hello again when the dust has settled back in the States...

Monday, March 19, 2007

What's goin' on

I suppose we should be blogging about the wide range of emotions we've been experiencing these past couple of weeks (stressed, excited, sad, uncertain, happy, numb, overwhelmed, etc), but frankly things have been too chaotic to be very reflective. In addition to doing a million little things to prepare for the move, we've managed to keep busy in other ways as well. Some friends had a nice little get-together for us last weekend...



...I squeezed in a work trip to Noordwijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, where between meetings I managed to buy 6 months worth of baby clothes at HEMA and even slipped down to the beach with some colleagues at one point...



...I had an official sending-off at work...



...during which Baby tried to upstage everyone by all of a sudden trying to get a mouthful of Gretchen's champagne glass...



...Gretchen and Baby got together with good friends on a gorgeous day at the zoo...





...The Big Finn and Mrs. TBF were kind enough to have us over for a delicious lunch of burgers, fries and Guinness, plus Baby finally got to wear the bib that TBF got for her at one of America's finest dining establishments...



...then, probably the most difficult thing of all was going to lunch yesterday with the ladies, babies and husbands from Gretchen's informal "moms group". I think having a baby is difficult under the best of circumstances, but it's even tougher when you're in another country, don't have family close by, etc. They have been an absolute godsend for Gretchen, and indirectly for me too because every time we have an issue with Baby, Gretchen asks me what I think we should do and I usually don't have an answer but instead just say "why don't you check with the moms?". It turns out not only are we leaving, but (welcome to life in the expat community) so is the family whose baby was born closest to Baby and who went through a lot of the same issues at the same time. The other moms made a beautiful picture book for us that we will absolutely treasure. Saying goodbye was really difficult for Gretchen, but just when she was feeling really down we got home and had a message on our machine from a close friend back home, which helped snap us back into excitement about seeing friends we've missed these past few years.



Saturday, March 17, 2007

March badness

[NOTE: For those who are neither American nor have ever lived in the States, this post may appear to be utter gibberish...kind of like how a post about cricket would be to me.]

This is how crazy things have been for us these past couple of weeks: for the first time that I can remember, I didn't enter my usual pools for NCAA March Madness. Needless to say, we've had other things on our minds lately, but I at least completed a bracket on my flight home Wednesday night. By the time I had enough time on Thursday to enter my picks, however, the deadline had passed. That's probably for the best since with the exception of one year where I think I was in the top 3, I have an abysmal record. Still, participating in a pool is right up there with voting in terms of civic obligations that I take very seriously and would only miss under extreme circumstances.

In my case, I at least kept my paper copy and went 25-7 in the first round. That's nothing spectacular, but for the first time ever, all of my Sweet Sixteen teams are still alive after the first round. That NEVER happens, but like they say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

For the record, my Final Four: Florida, UCLA, Georgetown and Texas A&M, with UCLA beating Georgetown in the final...

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Serious baby

As you can see, this whole move to the US is a lot to contemplate for our little one.



(For those of you who haven't been following along, "Grüezi" is the greeting used in Switzerland. Won't Baby's new American friends be jealous of her cool Swiss outfit?)

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Symmetry

Just over three years ago, in my first week here I was already boarding a plane for my first business trip (ah, the delights of Warsaw in February...). Now during my last week of work here, I'll be packing my bags for one final work trip, this time to Noordwijk aan Zee, Netherlands. It's on the beach in the midst of the tulip fields, but early March unfortunately isn't the best time for either. Since I should have a few free hours one afternoon I was hoping to have time for a quick trip into my most-visited city (not to mention one of my favorite cities anywhere), Amsterdam, but it's farther away than expected so I'm hoping instead to visit nearby Leiden. My most important mission won't be sightseeing, but rather to stock up on colorful Euro-style baby clothes at one of our favorite stores in the whole wide world, HEMA...

Saturday, March 10, 2007

For the last time

We're so focused on our move (two weeks from tomorrow!) that we're really not getting all melancholy that every time we do something will probably be the last time. Having said that, today was our last trip to the Alsace. It was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing, but the weather was nice so it was kind of fun to say "hey, wanna get lunch in France?" while we still can. So it was off to a good, basic Alsatian restaurant that we've enjoyed in Ribeauvillé for a hearty lunch and a walk around town. The sun was shining, our bellies were full, we bought a goofy giraffe for Baby's room, and the storks were out en masse...I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon (like packing, for instance).





Friday, March 09, 2007

And on a happier note

Someone really likes the Cheerios her Grandma Caril sent her...

On a sad note

Amidst the craziness of our lives, we forgot to mention that a couple of weeks ago was Fasnacht. It's not for everyone--even locals seem to either really get into it or get out of town for the week--but I'm really glad we got to experience a few of them (even if we only made it once to the 4:00am Morgestraich). This year we made it to one or two of the Corteges (parades) and had a nice time despite some lousy weather (no pictures this time), but it evidently ended on a sad note when a little boy was run over and killed by one of the Waggis' wagons. Having seen the crush of people, especially children, when the Waggis come through it's actually surprising something like that hasn't happened sooner, but regardless it evidently came as a real blow not just to the festivities, but to the city as well.

You're in luck

Among the stressful things in life, surely moving ranks somewhere near the top even under the best of circumstances. So with the movers taking our stuff away two weeks from today, we consider ourselves to be incredibly lucky to have friends helping us out at both ends. Whether it's The Big Finn taking a trip to the dump to help us clear copious amounts of crap out of our cellar here, or whether it's our friends in DC generously offering to furnish our house (since our stuff will take at least a month to get there) before our arrival with baby stuff, dog stuff, furniture and even Passover supplies (we're not Jewish, but we're always up for a celebration), we're very fortunate and don't take any of it for granted. Now, if only someone was interested in stepping to the plate and adopting an obnoxious-but-lovable 10-year old labrador retriever...

(Just kidding about Grady. Sort of.)

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Bad hair day

As her hair slowly comes in, on most days lately Baby sports a nice little mohawk:



But for some reason, this weekend in Munich all of a sudden she went into full Yahoo Serious mode:

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Don't be such an ass

I really haven't the slightest idea what they do--something related to housing, near as I can tell--but when you see a road sign that says (in big letters) ASS, with the website http://www.ass-ass.ch/, well, it just kind of grabs (so to speak) your attention...

The ultimate sacrifice

It's no secret that I eat a lot of cheese. I love dairy in all forms. I am from the Dairy State, after all! Now I am about to make the ultimate sacrifice. I am giving up dairy. Why? Because our precious Baby likely has a dairy allergy. And I'm still nursing, which means that every bit of dairy that I eat gets passed along to her.

After her post-yogurt vomiting incident this past weekend, I took her to the doctor yesterday for allergy testing. Everything I've read about dairy allergies in babies in the past few days tells me that this is what she has. Even if the test results come back negative, I know that, at the very least, she must have some sort of sensitivity/intolerance. She has had terrible skin problems for several months. We're constantly struggling with it, trying to keep her comfortable and not itching by applying steroid cream and giving her antihistimines. I don't like medicating her so much. But we've also tried lots of different creams and nothing else seems to work. The poor baby just doesn't feel well much of the time. Now I learn that eczema can also be caused for a dairy allergy. And it finally all makes sense to me.

As much as I hate to think that she might have some food allergies, I would be so thrilled to have some answers. And as much as I love cheese, and milk, and ice cream, and yogurt, I would gladly give them up if it would make her feel better! I guess that's what being a mother is all about-- making sacrifices for your little one.

Rubbish

I feel like it was only yesterday when we were cleaning out our house in DC before moving to Basel. It seemed that every other day I was taking a carload of stuff to Goodwill or the local shelter to donate clothes, furniture, general household goods. Three years later, it's the same story. Don't ask me how we've managed to accumulate so much junk during our three years here in Basel! Naturally, nothing is quite as easy as it was when we were moving here, because now we're in a foreign country and new rules apply. You can't just put junk at the curb and expect the garbage men to pick it up. Only what fits in the small, official trash bags. Unlike in DC, furniture to be disposed of (or donated) doesn't just disappear when you set it out. By the way, who are these people in the US who cruise through neighborhoods in the dark of night to scavenge for other's leftover furniture?

So anyway, yesterday we had a guy stop by from a local Brocki (like a Goodwill) to assess what we have to donate. He took one look at our couch and said: "Rubbish". He is Swiss, but said it in English. I have hated this couch for a long time. It isn't even ours. The Americans who lived here before us sold it to us (along with lots of other household items) at a very low price. It was old and worn when they left it (they had 2 dogs and 2 cats) and it's even older and more worn at this point. I guess it's sort of funny that I blogged about getting a new couch back in August 2005... and we're still surviving with this ugly beast of a couch! I guess I figured I'd rather stick it out and buy a new couch back in the US where they would be cheaper and more my style.

Thankfully, the Swissy from the Brocki said he would take the couch for us, at a cost, so that they can "smash it away", meaning take it to the dump. Fine. I'm willing to pay anything just to get it out of this house! Fortunately he had no problem with any of the other furniture we're donating. That will all be sold at one of the second-hand shops. Phew.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Visitors

By and large, we've been really lucky when it's come to having visitors here. If anything, we've perhaps been a bit surprised we didn't have more people come to visit, although the rapidly growing number of friends with small children probably has something to do with that, along with Basel not exactly being a top-tier destination like Rome, Paris or London. But among those that did come to visit, with the possible exception of the child who brought the stomach flu with him, I don't think we've had any of the nightmare stories that some of our friends have had. We were really lucky in that regard. Still, having heard enough stories from friends and colleagues about visitors overstaying their welcomes, not respecting limits, etc, we got a kick out of reading this article...

Ridin' that train

If there's one thing we're all sure to miss when we go back, it's the reliable, über-punctual, smoke-free and generally quite comfortable Swiss trains.



Girly man

For our first meal (and, later, our last) in Munich, we went to the Ratskeller, which we had read was touristy but very good quality nonetheless (which was true, and there also appeared to be at least as many elderly Bavarians as there were tourists in the massive Keller). Since it wasn't even noon yet, we each ordered a small beer. Gretchen said that when I ordered my beer, the waitress arched her eyebrows...having not seen the sign on the table, little did I know that a small beer was considered "lady size". Needless to say, didn't make the same mistake twice and was sure to order a half-liter the next time around.

Seeing the sights

While the weekend was largely a wash, we were at least able to see a little of Munich between bouts of rain, heavy meals (helped in part by a Munich expat-oriented website sent to us by a Munich resident that helped us find a couple of smoke-free restaurants), baby vomit and naps. Among the highlights were the constant glimpses of the onion-domed towers of the Frauenkirche...



...the famous Glockenspiel at the Neues Rathaus...



...carnivore heaven at the Viktualienmarkt...



...and of course the thing everyone comes to Munich to see--surfing!

München

We seem to be in a pattern where every other trip we take is a bit of a fiasco (or looking at it with the glass half full, every other trip is excellent). So, while Venice was great, Arosa was a real challenge. Since we had a really nice weekend in Berlin recently...well, you can probably guess how we did in Munich this weekend.

Munich itself was fine. Like most big German cities, it was heavily bombed during WWII, but at least it was rebuilt in a more attractive manner than, say, Frankfurt, so while it's not the most beautiful city, it's not without charm. It feels prosperous and lively, and if you want to eat heavy German food and drink copious amounts of good beer, it's a good place to go. Unfortunately, these are fairly cursory observations because we didn't actually get to see a whole lot of Munich due to circumstances largely beyond our control.

After a good Friday afternoon, Saturday got off to a rougher start. The people in the room next to us decided to have a gathering on Friday night, which wasn't so fun at 1:00am...needless to say, it was frustrating that such a highly-rated (and expensive) hotel had such paper-thin walls. So after a rough night, Baby then woke up from her first nap Saturday morning and promptly vomited all over her crib and herself. So now we had a foul-smelling room (and Baby), a worried mother, and a panic-stricken father (what with my fear of vomit). After cleaning her up and praying it was just a food allergy (we suspect it's a dairy allergy since we fed her yogurt for the first time two hours earlier), we decided to brave a walk around the old city...only to get caught in a thunderstorm.

Luckily she didn't get sick again (heightening our suspicion that she's allergic to dairy) and the rain cleared up in the afternoon, so we were able to take a nice long walk through the Englischer Garten. But by the time Sunday morning rolled around, we (especially Gretchen) were exhausted and had to make a choice: take a train to Salzburg for the day, walk around Munich (where everything would be closed), or accept defeat and go home a day early. Guess which we chose? Since we couldn't change our return flight, we went to the train station and got on a 5 1/2 hour train home instead.

The bottom line is that I continually underestimate how difficult it is to travel with Baby (despite Gretchen's reminders), so it's probably a good thing that we're going back to the States and will presumably be doing a lot less traveling. At this point, I think if I were to propose another trip, I would be the only one packing a bag...