Flashback - Moving Day

Yes, this blog isn't in chronological order I'm going to start with my most recent memories first and then fill in the background as to what my search in life is, so if you don't know, I'm afraid you'll have to wait!

I am now feeling at home in Markus's flat. The internet is working, the TV is working (still no idea if it is as it is supposed to be), so for those who don't know what it's like to move house when you are in Switzerland, well, you can hear my experience....

First of all, you need to know that the Swiss are fond of early starts. For me, anything before 9am is early and to be honest, I find even 9am a bit of a struggle sometimes.

I decided to ask the council to pick up my rubbish. I'll tell you about the fiasco with my electrical stuff in another post, but the end result is that I gave up doing it separately and thought I would just pay the council to collect all my rubbish at once (yes, you heard that correctly, you pay for your rubbish to be collected). You put everything outside and it costs around 89 CHF I think for the first 15 minutes that it takes them to throw the rubbish onto the lorry and then around 129 CHF for every subsequent 15 minutes. At first this seemed extortionate, but compared to all the other expenses, it ended up seeming very reasonable (this is what living in Switzerland does for you).

Anyway, they said I should have the rubbish out by 7am. Yes, 7am!! I kind of thought they probably meant they would come any time after 7am and just wanted to be sure that the stuff was there. However, since the cleaners were coming at 7.30 am (yes, 7.30am!!), I was in any case up early and had put everything outside the night before (many thanks to Zak and Shukri for helping me with this!).

I'd planned to take a photo of all that stuff waiting to be collected and put it on facebook to get people to guess whether or not it would take more than 15 minutes for the men to load as it was a shocking number of things that I was throwing out (I felt like a spoilt Westerner who doesn't know the value of money). However, as I went down to take the photo, I spotted a man running away with my coffee table (it had been in the rain all night), so I turned and sped upstairs, not wanting to put him off (I was pleased that someone could use it). I thought about taking a photo from my flat, but then the rubbish men arrived, punctually at 7am! Yes, 7am! Really!

And I couldn't take a photo any more because it was 5 men to remove the rubbish, so clearly they could do it in 15 minutes. I was pleased, but astonished!

At 7.30am, on the dot, the cleaners arrived. It's just me in a 2-bedroomed flat and I had 3 cleaners for  5 hours! If you live anywhere other than Switzerland, you will think this is completely mad. They take cleaning very seriously in Switzerland, particularly if you are about to leave a flat. It has to be spotless. The tiniest thing has to be dismantled and cleaned to its core. You don't have to get cleaners in to do it, but most people do, because otherwise you run the risk of losing your entire deposit, which in my case is around 5k CHF. The cleaning cost was 700 CHF which was actually a good price (did I really say that?). So, now you can see why the 89 CHF for rubbish disposal felt like a bargain.

At 9am, the removal people arrived, while the cleaners were in mid-flow. As usual, the removal people complained that my boxes of books were too heavy and decided to repack them. I looked on worriedly as they happily put what appeared to me to be very little in each box, when my allowance was only 3 cubic metres. I became more and more convinced that they were doing this deliberately to increase the volume and therefore the amount for the moving costs, but to my huge relief they assured me that it would not come to more than 3 cubic metres.

The next day I had my flat inspection. In the UK, an agent would probably glance round the rooms and say "yes, that's fine" and that would be it. I usually get praised for leaving things in good condition. In Switzerland, they took 1.5 hours to check every detail. You just sit there in your empty flat while they come to you every now and then to explain that x, y or z will incur you another 20 CHF fine. I would like to know whether these people work on commission! Anyway, it didn't go down very well at the end when I finally announced that I'd lost my spare key (in Switzerland, the keys are coded, so if you try to get a copy, you aren't allowed - trust me, I tried this). He happily said that my insurance would probably pay. Since I decided not to have house insurance I am now wondering exactly what this means - on the form it was just noted that I would pay100% of the cost. He told me I shouldn't leave the country. I hope he was joking.

It's all quite mental if you're not used to this system. Oh, and I tried getting a charity shop - the Brockenhaus - to collect some of my stuff, but they were fully booked until the end of September. And even then they are apparently quite fussy about what they will take and they charge you if you want them to remove anything else. The council collection also had to be booked at least a week in advance. So organisation is also key here in Switzerland. I think living and working in Switzerland should itself be seen as some kind of stellar qualification for any future employment!