Our Rental Apartment

Lionel and I, in spite of the open, and more latent, forms of biasness against our Asian race and lack of German speaking abilities, have been offered a lovely apartment after just 4 apartment viewings in a week. From what we have heard, it would have taken most people 1-2 months waiting to get an offer in space crunch Zurich. The government is not building more residential areas to, I suspect, maintain the spaciousness and living quality of the city. (Overcrowding is something that many Singaporeans are complaining of.)

Perhaps it was my pregnant belly that screamed we didn't have much time to source for an apartment, and brought on the sympathies. Perhaps it was Lionel's benign Golden Retriever disposition that made us an attractive tenant. Perhaps the existing tenant showing us the flat put in a good word for us. Perhaps we were the only goons who were interested in that apartment. Whatever it is, there is something really "heng" ("lucky beyond a reasonable doubt" in the dialect Hokkien) about being with Lionel Heng.

Of all four apartments we viewed, we had decided that this one sitting on the first level (which means one floor of stairs to climb) was the best suited to our needs.

In Zurich, most apartments share laundering facilities. Dishwashers (another marvellous invention I shall rave about in a separate entry) are more a basic component of a home than a washing machine. That means for a small block of apartments, there usually is, at the basement, one or two sets of washing machines and dryers. And from what we have observed from the apartments we viewed, there usually is a schedule. It is quite common that each household is allocated two laundry days in an entire month -- any additional load and you may need to make reservations in advanced (if there are still empty slots).

So imagine our horror at discovering this laundry culture here. In Singapore, just Lionel and I have enough changes to do our laundry about three times a week. What more with baby coming along with her reusable diapers that we would have to change at least 6 times a day, and cutesy clothes soiled hourly with milk and drool.

This apartment in Schwamendingenstrasse (very cute sounding name if you actually read it out loud -- almost sounds like word from a child with a lisp) was the only apartment that made me feel completely at ease as a full-time housewife. It has a washing machine and dryer included in the kitchen. The kitchen was freshly renovated just a year ago too. Lovely! -- considering that my full-time homemaker status requires me to prepare all our meals everyday and I foresee myself spending half my waking hours in the kitchen.

Here is the street we will be living on.

Our bedroom faces the bus stop -- that was my only reservation about taking this place (not that we had much choice anyway; we were told to just grab anything that we got offered). However, I suppose the sound of gentle braking and the pssst.. of the bus letting its suspension go when it stops will only be a bother in summer when we like our windows opened. Once winter comes, the double glazed windows will be pretty shut most of the time.

Oh, and this apartment is the only one with a real fireplace -- like the kind where you burn real wood and the smoke goes up a chimney. Grin... We cannot wait to try that out in the bitter cold of winter, after we get a day's worth of fire insurance first, says Lionel.

More pictures to come when we have our apartment filled with budget furniture from IKEA and this even cheaper place called Conforama.