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No matter where you move, whether it is across town or to another state, it takes time to figure out new ways of doing things.  Move to another continent with a different language, culture and customs, and you have a whole new layer of complexities.  Nothing in your new life can be taken for granted, not even a toaster. In Zurich, I met the leasing agent at my new apartment for the “walk-through.”  When I arrived she was standing next to the building superintendent, clipboard in hand, making check marks on a three-ply form.  Closely examining the bathroom sink, she spotted a microscopic chip in the porcelain.  I would never have seen it.  Nor would I have noticed the nearly invisible scratch on one of the doors. I thought she was being overly picky, so I whispered that I could live with the small stuff.  Oh contraire.  The agent explained that when I moved out, the apartment’s condition would have to be exactly as it was when I moved in.  My recollection of apartment living was that the walls should have no holes and the carpet no obvious burn marks. To better explain the word “exactly,” she said that when I moved out, the washers in the faucets would have to be replaced.  While I was wondering how on earth I was going to replace washers, she added that the filters in the oven hood and bathroom exhaust fans would also have to be replaced.  If that wasn’t daunting enough, the “same condition” clause also included the carpet on the floors and the paint on the walls. How do you keep a carpet in the same condition?  By not walking on it?  How does a wall never get marked?  By not living there? I pointed, “Over there, I think I see a hairline crack in the wood floor.” A few days later it was move-in day and my furnishings had just arrived in a truck from IKEA.  The delivery guys were busy assembling the wardrobes.  If you want a closet in Switzerland, you buy it yourself.  Getting used to such a small amount of closet and storage space was going to be interesting.

Zurich in Autumn.

Mercifully, the doors are considered part of the structure.  The interior doors are solid, as heavy as boulders and locked by keys that are four inches long.  To my utter delight, I have keyholes!  These keyholes are big enough that if I put my nose up to the door, I can spy into the room and feel like a character in a novel.
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Around mid-day the electronics salesman arrived with my TV, telephone, toaster, radio alarm clock, vacuum cleaner, iron, microwave, coffee maker and my really big splurge – a tiny washer/dryer. I said, “Wait a minute, don’t leave.  Where are the instructions?” “There,” he said, pointing to the manuals heaped in a pile.  “No,” I said, “I mean where are the English instructions?” Shrugging, he said the instructions only came in German, French and Italian.  Not in English.  Swell. Electronics have always been a challenge, but I can follow instructions and have thus gotten through life.  Without being able to read the instructions, though, my only guidance would be the pictures in the manuals, and we all know how helpful those can be. It took me over an hour to set the radio alarm clock to a wake-up channel.  The radio’s reception was a steady and annoying buzz until I wrapped the little antennae wire around a lamp.  Even with that “fix” I was able to find only two stations and those faded out when I moved my hand away.  One was an alpine yodeling station and the other was an Italian talk show.  Neither was suitable for a gentle wake up.  Given the choice of the two, I picked yodeling.  Thinking a restorative cup of coffee would be in order, the coffee maker was next out of the box.  As I was nearly finished assembling it, an essential part seemed to be missing from the box or perhaps it was hidden under the paper or cartons that were spread out all over the apartment.  It would surface one day, but in the meantime, no coffee - no problem.  I’ll have wine.

A little dust never killed anyone.  Since there is no adjustment knob on the toaster, I now refer to it as my George Jetson toaster.  When I make toast I sing, “Meet George Jetson…..his son Elroy….”   On my good days I catch the toast mid-air.  Over time I have ascertained that the weight of the bread determines the height of the toast.  My scientific conclusion is that bread made out of white flour propels several feet higher in the air than brown bread. 

After the semi-success of the toaster, I would have thrown in the towel and gone to bed had I any clean towels to throw or sheets on the bed.  They were still in their plastic bags.  Before calling it a day, at the very least I had to wash the duvet cover, a sheet and a towel.  Armed with my German/English dictionary, I started translating one word at a time from the Kenwood Combi washer/dryer instruction manual.  That took way too long, so I started skipping what I hoped were unimportant words.
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The contraption was of the portable variety and had to be located next to a water source and a drain.  The only space fitting these requirements was in the small, crowded bathroom.  Okay, I was ready.  In went the duvet cover and pillow cases.  Oomph, that filled it up.  Squatting down, I stuck my head in the drum.  The space was no bigger than the inside of a normal sized microwave, that is, if you can picture a rectangular space being round.  This is what happens when you pick out a house full of appliances on your lunch hour.  You don’t really know what you bought until it is too late. It is too late because you sure as hell can’t return anything.  At the electronics store I had picked out a small barbecue grill from a grainy picture in a catalogue.  When the salesman delivered it, the “barbecue grill” turned out to be a coil burner attached by a rubber hose to a can of butane gas the size of a hair spray.  Just perfect for making a pot of freeze dried soup on safari, but useless for grilling a steak on my balcony.  When I said that I didn’t want it, that it was nothing at all like what the salesman had described, he refused to take it back.  What was he supposed to do with it, he asked?  I don’t know, do with it what everyone else does with things that are returned.  After shoving a towel into the washing machine, I gingerly pressed the door shut and followed all fourteen steps required to start the machine.  Was I forgetting anything?  No, I think that’s about it.  Holding my breath, I twisted the dial and unbelievably, it started washing.  Well, at least I could hear water filling the drum.  Finally!  Something was working!  I’ll have clean sheets and a duvet cover to sleep on tonight.  In the morning I will have a clean towel to dry off with in my new apartment!  Life was good.  Where did I put that glass of wine? Not having any idea how long it would take to wash a load, I went back to my unpacking and organizing in the living room.  I decided to try an experimental strategy with the phone’s instruction manual.  Instead of translating the German instructions, I was going to translate the French instructions.  After all, I did have one year of high school French.  Or, was it two years?  It was so long ago that I really couldn’t remember.  If for no reason other than their words are shorter, French was faster to translate.  By the time I had the telephone all sorted out, it was time to check on the washer to see if it was ready to be converted to a dryer.

Zermatt, Switzerland

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Water on the floor in the hall?  Good God - the entire hallway was flooded!  Do something!  Quick!  Fast as I could, I started ripping open packages of spare sheets, towels, anything absorbent I could find to throw on the floor. 

Way too long later I slumped on the couch in an exhausted stupor.  My quivering arms felt like they had been wrung out.  My hands positively ached from squeezing heavy water-soaked towels and sheets into the bathtub.  The cause of this fine mess was that I had forgotten to put the drain hose into the bathtub.  While I was translating the phone instructions I had not noticed wash water lapping in the hall, so the rinse water poured out onto the floor as well.  The ultimate irony was that I now had a big pile of sopping wet towels and sheets that would have to be washed before they mildewed. 

At some point in time all expats question their decision to live in a country not their own and I had reached that point.  What was I doing in a country where I could not read instructions?  What was I doing in a country where I would have to pay extra for walking on the carpet, catch my toast mid-air and wake up to yodeling with no prospect of a cup of coffee? 

It was just as well there was no more time for self-pity.  I had to go check on the dryer to see if I had screwed that up, too. 

When I opened the dryer door and stuck my hand in for a feel, the clothes felt dry.  That’s always a good sign.  Pulling them out in a tight ball, I shook out the duvet cover.  It was one big wrinkle that wouldn’t shake out.  The duvet cover was so wrinkled that it seemed to have shrunk by a third.  Oh.  I’ll bet this is the type of material we used to have in the USA when women ironed every week.  That was before synthetic fabric was invented and women got a life. 

At that point there was absolutely no way I was going to translate the instruction manual for the iron, much less iron a piece of cloth the size of a queen size bed.  It could just stay wrinkled for all I cared.  All that remained before putting this long day behind me was getting the fluffy duvet into the wrinkled duvet cover so I could go to bed. 

After wrestling with the duvet, I wondered how Swiss people manage to coax their duvets into duvet covers.  Surely they don’t climb completely inside the open end of the cover, grip the duvet and pull it along while crawling to the other side to spread it out flat.  That done, I collapsed.

Moving days are rough, no matter where you move.  Thankfully they are short lived and you can get on with the enjoyable business of exploring your new home.  I am happy to report that my coffee machine brews superb coffee and I have straightened out the wrinkled laundry situation.  Currently, I am working on improving my duvet cover stuffing skills.  Expatriate life is a work in progress.

To contact Bonnie Click Here
 

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