Our New Home!

My apologies for the lack of updates over the week. We have been so occupied building up our lovenest all over again (It has been less than a year since we built our lovenest in Singapore). We collected keys to this lovely 80 sq metre apartment on Thursday. It is considered to have 3.5 rooms. I do not know how that figures out but we basically have a large master bedroom, another room, a nice hall with a fireplace (with chimney and all!), a well-equipped kitchen and a toilet for the whole apartment.

Without a car, moving in our luggage bags, furniture and home accessories has not been easy. It took Lionel and I three trips to bring everything over from our serviced apartment -- that means [down 5 floors, drag bags to tram stop, change tram, climb out of underground tram stop, climb up one level to apartment] x3. We have also made, I believe, some four trips to IKEA and another three trips to this other furniture mall called Conforama. We paid 400 francs to a private company for the delivery of our furniture which came up to about 3000 francs. (You really have to pay to get the Swiss to carry anything for you.) Even then, the ATAX van came with just one nice Turkish man and Lionel had to help him carry some 700kg of furniture up the stairs to our apartment on the second level. The heaviest package was at least 40kg.

During the big move on that fateful hot Friday, all I could do was give the poor men cold drinks and biscuits in between a few trips up.

And from Friday through the weekend, I have been occupied cleaning, organising the apartment and unpacking our stuff, while Lionel has been busy putting furniture together. Fortunately on Saturday morning, Lionel had some help from a Singaporean colleague-cum-friend, Gim Hee, while I have had the lovely company of his wife, Grace.

Before we knew it, the weekend was over, and work started all over again for Lionel. Monday also brought with it the start of my intensive German course. My first two-hour lesson yesterday was the most mentally tiring two-hours I have had in Zurich so far. I am excited that I have a scheduled daily activity that leads to mental stimulation and growth. I am also excited at the prospect that I can soon understand a lot more of what is going on around me -- the sign boards, what meat I am buying, brief exchanges with the cashier, junk mail and all.

Random nugget of information: Burger King does not have the Mushroom Swiss in here, even though it's Switzerland!

OK, enough talk. I know most of you are just waiting for the pictures, if you have not already scrolled down ahead of my rambling.

The home is not fully completed yet, but we are almost there thanks to Lionel's dogged insistent persistence (that I notice is a common attribute among those in the field of Computer Science).

Here is how it starts: You enter from the main door straight ahead to face our short corridor. The entire apartment is effectively a square with this short corridor separating all the rooms.

The first door on the picture's right is the toilet. Opposite the toilet is the master bedroom. Walk a few steps forward. On the picture's right comes the kitchen with the black tiles. Opposite the kitchen is the entrance to the hall. Where this picture was taken from is the other bedroom.

And opposite the toilet is the master bedroom...

Back to the corridor and on your left would be the kitchen. Oh, I love this kitchen. Lionel vows to have our kitchen in Singapore done up like this when we return some four years later.

Lionel plans to have a high table here with two high chairs, so that we can have breakfast by the garden with the morning sun rays streaming in.

Yes, that's me, the fitting the image of the proverbial roleplaying wife -- pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.

Oh hail the washing machine, dryer and dishwasher! This dryer is so cute. It blows clean dry air out of that holey grill at the bottom. The lint is collected on the inside filter (no surprises here), while the moisture from the clothes -- ah, the water collects in a container on the top left hand corner. We didn't realise it until we found our clothes not drying and an error sign in German and French. Using a mix of Lionel's little German and my little French, we figured we had to empty that container of water.

The kitchen's fittings are all a year old and made of very good stuff. The wood is real solid and well sandpapered with no rough or sharp edges.

Let's get out of the kitchen now and go straight into the hall.

Ah.. That's before all the furniture came in. The rental culture here is such -- the ex-tenant has to remove all his furniture and even light fittings. We told this guy he could leave his lightings behind -- we didn't mind having them and he could save removal costs.

See how close we are to the road! Because of the full length window and our proximity to the ground, I can no longer prance about habitually without being fully clothed. Since I can no longer wear any of my shorts now, I have taken to wearing Lionel's boxers.

Here is what our hall looks like now.

Before we get our curtains, I am using the cardboards from all the furniture to keep out the sun and the stares.

Like our crooked bookshelf? I wanted to have a splash of colours here and there everywhere. So we've got this green backing on the bookshelf, and a bright red clock opposite.

Below the red clock is the fireplace!

Let me tell you about the bargains we got here. That black leather sofa bed cost us only 200 francs. It makes a nice extra guest bed and it is milk and drool proof because it is not made of fabric. The neat glass dining table cost us only 100 francs.

Did I mention the owner of this apartment cum several other units in these few blocks is a contractor? He surprised us by appearing in tattered shorts with paint splotches all over on the day of the keys handover. A very down-to-earth man, I am sure his personality must have played a part in the layout of this flat. The 80 square metres is so well planned that there is a feeling of space and yet plenty of well concealed storage space.

And now, after touring the hall and returning to the corridor, we finally arrive at the other room -- Gaby's room, or our guest room.
  

This room is far for from ready, but there you have it -- a glimpse of it. Baby cot frame and single bed frame.

This post took me the whole day to get up. The photos take a really long time to upload, but I hope you've enjoyed the tour of our humble abode that we hopefully will call home for the next four years.