Arrival and First Day

Yesterday I moved to Zurich. On Tuesday I had packed all my belongings back home in Hildesheim into boxes, ready to be moved out once I found a flat in Switzerland. It was more a drag than I expected: With all preparations, cleaning, a trip to the supermarket, getting oil for the car, and a last dinner with a friend I was done at 0:00am, and I finally was on the road to Mannheim, my next stop, at 1:00am, and since I drove slowly I arrived around 3:30am, dead tired.

On Wednesday I did some shopping and, since a meeting with a friend was canceled, I visited my parents and did my taxes for last year. On Thursday I did some more shopping -- once you prepare for Swiss prices everything seems suddenly inexpensive in Germany -- and met a friend in the city and later another couple of friends for wine, cheese, and a TV show.

On Friday, finally, I packed my stuff into the car and drove from Mannheim down to Zurich. The journey was pleasantly uneventful except that the 80km from Basel to Zurich took much longer than expected: You cannot drive faster than 120km/h on a Swiss autobahn and the Basel-Zurich one had often a speed limit of even 80km/h. Also, the hunt for the street where I temporarily would live took longer than hoped: Many one-way streets make it challenging to navigate.


But then I finally stood in front of my apartment building. My heart sank when I realized there was no reception and my key had not been deposited in the mailbox. There was a phone number and I was just beginning to practice my Switzerdytsch when the building manager walked by and asked if I lived there. I said: "I hope so", and we introduced each other. He was a very friendly man. When he showed me the apartment, the first thing he explained was the password for the WLAN, then the kitchen, then the bathroom, finally my parking spot. Everything was fine.


I bought some food at a local Migros, checked email and the latest housing ads (I got one visitation, one guy said the flat was already taken as he heard me speak standard German, and two other landlords did not answer the phone). Then walked around the city. It is an astonishingly beautiful place. Tourists and Zurchers relaxed, enjoying or preparing for the weekend.