Ikea vs. the Gurten

During the past week, I've driven a HUGE moving van, a Mercedes Vaneo and an Audi Q5. The Audi was by far the best thing I've ever driven. I had reserved a Passat wagon, but due to fancyness with my campany's relationship with EuropCar, and mostly the fact that I've come to know the lady at EuropCar, she upgraded me for free. It's amazing what we were able to fit into the Audi. I didn't want to give it up at the end of the day.

Everything thus far has been a diesel.

Driving in Switzerland ... is insane. The density of signage is incredible. My only obvious indiscretion (that I'm aware of at least) was following a tram right through the middle of a round-about. Oops! Thank goodness it wasn't a tram stop or I would have been screwed.

I also crammed in some shopping yesterday and managed to pick up a Bodum coffee press. Because A. doesn't drink coffee anymore, it doesn't make much sense to get a fancy espresso maker right now. But believe me, eventually, I will.




And this, is part of the fruits of our labor from yesterday. Ikea trip #2 done. N's room, now has storage for toys and a nice little rug to play on. It is starting to look like a home.





The other thing we did this weekend was head up the Gurten. They have a restaurant up there and a huge play park for the kids with a train, climbing thing, and electric cars. We did the train twice. Woo hoo!

From the top you can see all of Bern, and you can kind of see our neighborhood on the far side. The place was amazing. At least N. thought it was. A. was kind of bored, but she doesn't have to chase him around the whole time. But it's the first place we've found that is big enough to entertain him for a few hours. All the other parks have been too small to really exhaust him.

Apartment

This weekend marks the beginning of our Swiss Living Experience (tm). On Friday evening I received the keys to the apartment. It was an interesting experience but it was kind of a non-event because I couldn't actually STAY in it until later. You see, no furniture. We have nothing. Enter, IKEA.

Waking up early Saturday morning Asish and I took the number 10 bus to work much as we do 5 days of the week. But this time, we didn't actually go IN to work, we just went NEAR work. Where there is a car rental company. And by car I actually mean huge ass diesel moving van. Yes, my first Swiss driving experience was renting a van for our trip to IKEA. Armed with two iPhones (aka GPS + Google Maps) we headed off to IKEA.

I had made a list of everything I was going to get, and once we found a lady to help us out she just went to the computer, entered everything in and handed us the list with aisle and bin numbers of all the things we needed. Armed with the list all we had to do really was load it onto carts. Yes, carts. Four carts of IKEA beds and bedding. We loaded it all into the van, drove back and brought it all up into the apartment. Two days of assembly later we now have 2 beds and a futon-like couch sofa thinger. Below are 2 shots of things in various states of assembly.

Living room

Our room

And the view from the balcony. Nice, eh? I shall post
more pictures tomorrow.