Zurich - Unwell

So sorry, everyone, but no blog again this week - I've come down with a really bad cold (worst one I've had in years - tried to get up twice this morning and fell asleep both times as soon as I'd sat down). Back as usual next week, insha'llah

Zurich - Blog Holiday

"I live near the airport"

I was supposed to be getting less busy, but somehow I just don't have time this week to write my blog. More next week!

In the meantime, here's a photo that Idette took, in case you wonder what I mean when I say that I live near the airport and there's a bit of noise from the planes :-)

Amsterdam - A Family Get-Together

Left to right: (Behind) Pat, Paul; (Front); Fiona, Adrian

Zurich is very central and many places in Europe are just a short hop away. Consequently, when my brother Paul from New Zealand mentioned that he and his wife were stopping off in Amsterdam on their way back from holiday (visiting his wife’s home ground in Scotland), I said I’d fly over to meet up with them. My other brother, living in the UK, was also able to come over. Apparently, it’s four years since we were last all together. How time flies.

The plan was to meet up with Paul and Pat (Paul’s wife) on Saturday evening, and then discuss from there what to do on Sunday.

I’ve been to Amsterdam several times before, but to my surprise, when I got there, I suddenly realized that I’d only ever seen the canal district, so a large part of Amsterdam had been invisible to me. This time I stayed in a boutique hotel (I think “boutique’ is a dressed-up word for “small”) in the museum district, which opened up another side of Amsterdam for me. I got a little lost after getting off the bus from the airport, so it took me a while to find the hotel.

Amsterdam is famous for the sheer number of people going round on bicycles. What I wasn’t so prepared for was the number of people going round on mopeds and discovering that mopeds also use the cycle paths. It’s really quite alarming! The bicycles themselves seemed to come in a large variety too. Pedestrians are definitely secondary to the cyclists.

It then took me more time to find my brother’s hotel which was in the canal district (on Singel). Although I’d left plenty of time to locate it, I ended up arriving only just at the allotted time (5.30pm), since I got a bit lost yet again. However, it turned out that he’d left a message at reception to say that their flight was delayed by 3 hours. I was really hungry at this point, so I left a note for them to say that I’d arranged to meet Adrian (my other brother) in the foyer of their hotel at noon the next day and I’d see them then.

The next morning I decided to visit the van Gogh museum before meeting my brothers at noon. It was an excellent museum and not too crowded (I think I was lucky), although I was highly amused that they felt that they had to explain that in those days people used to have to write using pen and ink and blotting paper. I had to keep an eye on the time.

I got to their hotel punctually and Paul and Pat were already sitting there – they’d arrived only at 10pm the previous evening, so hadn't done anything in the morning. Adrian turned up shortly afterwards. Paul asked for a recommendation for somewhere to eat but was told that “everywhere is good”, which wasn’t much help, even if it is true (which we doubted, since some places were full and some places were empty). We sauntered down the road and I ended up with a nice satay chicken (I hadn’t really intended to eat lunch, but oh well…).

The only thing we had time to do as a group was a canal trip, which surprisingly I don’t think I’d ever done before. During the tour, the guide kept on saying how hard it was to imagine Amsterdam as a bustling place with lots of boats going up and down the canals. I couldn’t understand why this should be so hard to picture, since there were quite a lot of boats on the canals. However, when we went to our restaurant later, there were pictures hanging showing the canals when they used to be used primarily for trade and it was quite astonishing to see how much faster the water flowed in those times and the sheer number of ships; it was a far cry from the gentle pace of today.

After the canal tour, we stopped off for a quick drink and then Adrian already had to leave. Paul had booked the Five Flies for dinner in advance and it turned out by sheer fluke that it was literally just round the corner from his hotel.

The restaurant occupied a beautiful building that was previously five houses; it retained the original leather wallpaper from 500 years ago, the original beams, etc. Plus a few original Rembrandts. The food was also different – I ended up with a deliciously spiced pumpkin soup followed by candied haddock in aniseed sauce. It was a lovely end to a whistlestop stay (and thank you to Paul for treating me!).

Zurich - Curtains

Six Curtains and a Lampshade with 82 Flowers to Fix

I hope that this will be my last blog entertaining you with all my moving-in woes. I have actually been doing some traveling, but I’ll save telling you about that for a later blog/s when I have some photographs available (I keep on forgetting my camera so need to wait for others to send me their photos!).

Anyway, a huge task, well for me at any rate, on moving into my flat was to get curtains sorted. I’m on the ground floor, so everyone can stare into my bedroom and spare bedroom (usually an ironing room!) as they walk past. My flat is on a small footpath off the road, and it’s right at the end, so there aren’t too many passers-by, but I’m always aware of my ironing board there for all to see, along with an increasing pile of clothes….

I’d forgotten that hanging curtains in Switzerland is a bit of a different task than in the UK. Many flats in Switzerland have inbuilt, indented gliding rails for curtains (one for net curtains and one for your thick curtains). This is a good thing because you don’t have to buy curtain rails, find one of the right length, work out what to do if you want both nets and thick curtains, struggle to attach the rail etc.

It does mean that you have to keep an eye out on the curtains you buy and make sure that they are compatible with these gliders. This is easy when you know this is how it works, but I reacall that when I first moved to Switzerland it took me a while to cotton on that I had these glidng rails already installed and to work out exactly which curtains to buy etc. This time, I decided to buy my curtains at IKEA– when I first bought curtains in Switzerland, I think I got them from Globus or Coop, which was no doubt more expensive. I seem to have a lot of windows in my current flat.

It felt like every time I decided on a curtain, it was either not in stock in the colour I wanted or it was in a small size. As it was, IKEA curtains aren’t really designed for Swiss windows. The curtains are quite long and narrow, so I had to buy three for each window (and of course, you can only buy them in packs of two, so it’s a good marketing ploy by IKEA). I surreptitiously listened in on a conversation that someone was having with the sales woman as she explained how to tell which curtains were suitable for gliders, so got the gist from that about what to look out for (there’s a diagram on the back of the curtain packet, which I wouldn’t have known how to interpret if she hadn’t been describing it).

You also have to buy the gliders to attach to the curtain so that the curtain can then hang via the gliding rail (I'm making up my own vocabulary here). Fortunately, the first time I bought the gliders, I didn’t see that there was a choice of sizes. The ones I bought were the correct size (and the packet didn’t mention anything about their size), so I was ignorant about the possibility of failure on that account. If I’d have seen the ones explaining which size glider they were, I would have freaked out at not having a clue what to do!

However, even then, I didn’t notice that some gliders were for you to sew on manually and others were for you to just hook into the specially-designed mesh across the top of the curtain (if you bought the right type of curtain), so actually my second lot had to be taken back.

Another thing I hadn’t realized was how heavy curtains are. I had to buy a rucksack-type bag from IKEA just so that I could carry them back (and even that was almost too heavy).

And it’s such a lot of work! I measured, cut, hemmed (with hemming tape), ironed, hung (it’s quite fiddly getting the gliders to catch onto the glider rail) a total of 16 curtains in the end (I decided to economise by having just 4 curtains in each of the bedrooms [2 x net and 2 x thick] rather than 3; I didn’t put any in the dining area).

It felt like I just didn’t have an evening or weekend free for ages, but finally I did get it done. Fortunately, it’s another one of those things that with any luck I should need to do only once. Phew.

Zurich - Internet

Zurich - Unobstructed Lakeside Promenade

I’m spending a lot of time organising things, which is a bit of an annoying way to spend your free time, but I’m comforting myself that most of these things are a one-off. Once I’m sorted, I’ll have all that time to do what I want to do instead!

I’d written in an earlier blog that I was using my i-modem that I use in Egypt to get the internet when in Switzerland since I didn’t want to sign up for a year’s subscription. At first, I thought this was great. They told me my use was unlimited and it cost only 2 CHF per day. This was definitely going to be my cheapest option.

However, it didn’t quite work out like that. Believe it or not, it was a bit like being in Egypt again, only Egypt is actually more transparent (who would have thought!). The person serving me at Swisscom failed to tell me that I got high speed until I’d used up an unspecified number of gigabytes (GB) (I never managed to find out what the basic, initial allowance is) and once I’d used up those GB, the speed would be reduced.

It took me a while to fathom out that this limitation existed, partly because at first I kept on renewing my subscription on a short-term basis (thinking I might end up opting for an annual standard connection instead) and so sometimes had used up my GB and sometimes hadn’t (although I didn’t know that this was what was happening). So, I’d have the occasional period where I just couldn’t get my TV streamer to work and I just thought that it was something to do with the streamer’s connection rather than my own internet.

Anyway, one evening I ended up contacting customer support to say that my speed was very slow and they explained that I had used up my allowance (news to me!). I could renew packages, and I could do this online, but the choice was limited and the GB allowance very small. I thought it was bad in Egypt (it’s much improved – you can now get up to 42GB a month), but it’s unworkable here; I think the maximum package in Switzerland was something like 1.2 GB over 30 days. In Egypt, I usually take a bundle of around 10-12 GB a month (I also use the internet to stream UK live TV).

When I first arrived back in Zurich, I went to ask about an internet and TV package (internet only deals don't seem to exist). My rent, unusually, includes basic TV channels from UPC (and includes my TV license), so I thought it would be easier and maybe cheaper to go with UPC for my internet. When I initially asked, UPC said they only do bundles with internet and TV; I asked if I got a discount since I already had the TV channels paid via my rent and the impression I got was that this was not possible and I’d have to pay for the whole internet and TV package. Moreover, I’d be committed for an entire year. On that basis, I decided it was cheaper to stick with my i-modem.

However, having finally given up on my i-modem, I went to ask again and was delighted to learn that my bills would have 35 CHF taken off them each month since the television was already paid for in my rent. This meant that my internet will cost me – truly unlimited this time! – only 25 CHF a month. This is about a third of the price I was paying via the i-modem (if not an even bigger saving, since I never really fathomed out how much it would cost me if I constantly bought more packages), so it's well worth me having a year’s subscription even if I’m not here for the entire year.

I had to pay a one-off cost for the connection and the modem, but it was easy to set up and came online almost immediately (I remember when I first came to Switzerland and set up the internet - I think it took about 30 days to wait for someone to install everything). So far, it's working perfectly.

Anyway, for now, I’m once more a happy internet bunny with unlimited access!

Zurich - Pool Swimming Baseline

Oerlikon Swimming Pool

I’ve been busy since returning to Zurich so, despite working only 60%, I still feel I haven’t had enough time to go swimming as often as I would like.

One thing I hadn’t realized would be complicated when moving out of Zurich City and into an outlying area was that my year’s swimming pass would no longer be valid. I hadn’t realized that it covered only the city pools and not beyond that.

I’m lucky enough to have a local pool about 10 minutes’ walk from where I live and clearly this is really where I will want to go a lot of the time. Nevertheless, I will definitely use the city swimming pass for the summer season of swimming in the lake. Although my local pool also has an open-air pool (50m) for the summer (which I will no doubt also use), swimming in the lake is still the best.

Anyway, in the end I decided that I was getting myself wound up over nothing and I could easily afford to have a 6-month pass for where I live in addition to my year’s city pass. I was fortunate that the local pool has a flexible system where you can choose how many months’ subscription you want – in the city, you have either a summer pass from mid-May to mid-September, or you have the whole year. The swimming pass for the local swimming pool is actually very good value – I only need to go twice a month for it to pay for itself.

I generally find that if I go swimming in the morning before work, it’s easier to go to my local pool. It’s only 25m, but the big advantage it has is that it’s usually fairly empty and I get a lane to myself. The changing rooms are also more private than in the Oerlikon (city) pool.

At weekends, I go to the Oerlikon pool. This is better because it is 50m; however it attracts the more serious swimmers and I feel pressurized to swim faster than I’m really able. I end up stopping and resting to let people pass and it’s always busy. I’ve finally decided that my local pool is for practicing my distance swimming and the larger pool for practicing swimming faster.

I’m delighted to say that when I’m pool swimming, I’ve risen to the top 70% (ie, bottom 30%) according to my Suunto Ambit watch vs the top 100% (ie, bottom 10%) that I was when I was open-water swimming. My normal speed is currently a pretty consistent 2.3km/h in the local pool or even in the Oerlikon pool if I hit it on a quiet day and can swim at my own speed without having to wait for others to pass (vs 2.0 km/h in the sea). When I'm pushing myself at the Oerlikon pool, I get up to an average of around 2.6km/h or 2.7 km/h over short distances. It's normal for people to be faster in a swimming pool than in open water.

My improved percentile ranking when pool swimming vs open water swimming (I don't believe for a moment that my swimming has suddenly miraculously sped up!) supports my contention that the average open water swimming speeds collected by the watch are inflated due to people using the watch to measure windsurfing speeds, etc. under the rubric of open-water swimming. There will be less scope for large inaccuracies such as these when collecting pool swimming data - at most any unrealistic higher speeds recorded may be caused by people using aids such as flippers, but that's not so extreme as comparing open water swimming with wind surfing, for example. I feel much better now about my swimming speed (although it's still slow)!

I’m not noticing any improvement in my swimming so far, but I’m also not going frequently enough to expect it. Hopefully I will be able to settle down in my flat and focus back on the fun stuff soon.

Zurich - Ricardo

Red Sofa and Rose Tree from Ricardo!

I’ve spent what feels like forever on moving into my flat in Zurich. Although I was very lucky to have the majority of items from Steph, there were still some items I needed to purchase. One was a sofa, since I found the sofa that Steph had given me very uncomfortable – the seat was too deep and I couldn’t lean on the back rest.

I decided to buy two second-hand ones from Ricardo so that I’d have plenty of space for friends to sit. Ricardo is the Swiss equivalent of e-bay. Many items are good value since the Swiss mostly like to buy things new and so it’s a buyers’ market. The biggest problem is transportation – for large items, most people don't deliver, so if you don’t have a car and/or a couple of strong men to help you, these bargains pass you by; it’s also why many never get sold (as I discovered when I originally moved away from Zurich and couldn’t get buyers for my old furniture).

However, I didn’t want to buy new since I don’t know how long I will be able to continue with my work contract; also I like the idea of buying second-hand because it’s less for the land fill and prevents unnecessary waste. Consequently, I looked round for a man with a van in Zurich to help me pick up the furniture; I eventually found one guy but it cost me 170 CHF which was more than the cost of both my leather sofas together (120 CHF). Nevertheless, the total price was still less than I’d have to pay for one sofa new, so I decided it was worth doing. Also, the owner of the van was running a small business as an ex-pat, so I felt I was helping someone make a go of their life. It was a feel-good venture!

It turned out that the guy I was buying the sofas from was a dentist; the photos on Ricardo had been taken when the sofas were new, so when I collected them, they were in storage and covered with dust, which I hadn’t quite expected. He rattled away in Swiss German, which I just about understood, but not with great confidence; I gathered that he was pointing out some of the failings of the sofas. I wondered if he was expecting me to ask for a reduction, but I was too perplexed by the Swiss German to feel like bartering and in any case a price had been agreed and I didn’t want any bad feeling to be reflected in any evaluation he would make of me as a purchaser on Ricardo.

When we arrived back at my flat, I got the two men who came with the van to move the old sofa into my spare room. It was only when I got it ready to make up as a bed for Idette that I realized that the sofa had only been uncomfortable because the seat was already pulled out for use as a bed; when I pulled it back in, the sofa was perfectly OK to sit on! That’s the problem of inheriting things that you don’t really own – you don’t quite understand how they work or what their “natural” state should be!

Another second-hand item I bought from Ricardo was an artificial rose tree. I’d spotted a lovely artificial plant in the Coop that I wanted to buy just to make my home feel a little less bare, but even after all these years in Switzerland, I totally freaked out at the price tag of 250 CHF (internally I was yelling to myself “they’re charging 200 quid for a fake plant?!!!”). And a bunch of artificial flowers in a vase was 150 CHF. The prices in Switzerland are sometimes mind-boggling. It was then that I remembered Ricardo again.

This time, the person was selling the item on behalf of their mother who was moving house. Whereas the sofas were in Zurich city centre and not far from my flat, the artificial rose tree was in Rafz – somewhere I’d never been before. There was a direct train from where I live, and it wasn’t far, so it was easy enough, but it still felt like a bit of an adventure.

I needed to get on a bus for a little while after arriving at the train station and it immediately felt more rural. The bus driver said “Gruezi miteinand” (“Hello everyone”) and the entire bus, apart from me, chorused “Gruezi” back. I suddenly felt that I’d been really rude in not also chiming in. In Zurich city centre, the bus drivers often announce a “Gruezi” to the passengers but it’s usually just followed by silence. I now had the impression that I must be in a really rural area. Rafz was actually a very pretty town / village and I was glad to have had an excuse to go for this pleasant journey. I think Ricardo was a new experience for the couple who were selling the tree and they seemed very interested in the fact that a foreigner was buying their item; they were a delightful couple and very friendly.

In retrospect, I was lucky on both days that the weather was good. I drew quite a few stares as I walked down the high street with this fake tree held out in front of me, but if it had been raining, it might not have made it back in such good condition. But buying off Ricardo is always an interesting experience.