Lost and Found

Last Friday A and I moved into our new Zürich apartment, and out of the temporary one. It’s a great feeling going from a one room bedsitter to a three bedroom rooftop apartment. So many positives about the change, but above all else the space and the view.

We are in the process now of replacing the furniture we sold or left behind in Sydney. On Saturday we bought a new lounge which will be delivered next week, far better than the eight plus weeks some companies quoted us. I mentioned previously that I bought my first comfortable chair, I must be betting old. And yes, it is damn comfortable (and lime green I might add).

A few more bits and pieces to get before we can really say this is home. One really bizarre things about apartments in Switzerland is that you need to provide your own light fittings. At the moment there are just cables hanging from the roof, and we are heavily reliant on lamps. In Germany you often even have to provide your own kitchen appliances such as oven and dishwasher.

I won’t put up any photos just yet as the place looks a bit empty. But I can assure you we will be very happy living here. Less than two kilometres from the heart of Zürich, and on the same block as a Sushi Restaurant. What else could we ask for?

I have a strong belief that Australia is a fairly tolerant nation. Other than a few bad seeds like the One Nation Party and the Anti Islamic School group out west, people tend to get along quite well. With such a widely multicultural land it is essential. What racism there is generally kept under the surface is never really given the opportunity to see the light of day.

In a few weeks time Switzerland will take a vote on whether or not to continue to allow building of Minarets, like those seen on Mosques. The Swiss People’s Party say they are trying to stop what they call ‘the ongoing Islamification of Switzerland’. When I heard this I was astonished. Firstly that they would try to stop people from doing what is a basic right and secondly the fact that they can do it so openly. They have even been allowed to put up posters with Minarets shaped like missiles covering the Swiss Flag.

This is not the first time such matters have come to a head. A few years ago certain Swiss people got together to try and end the policy of allowing persecuted refugees from Muslim countries across their borders. At least they don’t make them spend years in detention centres.

One of the things that is strikingly obvious about Switzerland is that Swiss people are very private. In social settings it takes a while to get to know people and become included in their inner-circle. This is very different from life in Australia where you can easily get invited out for a beer on the same day you meet someone. This would never happen in Zürich unless you were introduced by a mutual friend.

Another example is their lack of trust in everything with ‘e’ in-front of it. We have a friend here who works for the company who owns the licence to use B-Pay functionality. She was telling me recently that Switzerland has one of the lowest take up rates of EFT processing for a developed nation, at just 3%. More often than not, a company will send you a payment slip and you go down to the Post Office to pay it, just like Australia use to 10 years ago. In a lot of circumstances there isn’t even an option to pay any other way, such as our recent home contents insurance with Allianz.

A weird afterthought on this is that most bank branches had a ‘Multimat’ machine located with the ATMs. You use these to pay your bills that have a payment slip. So, you go along, put your card into the machine and then scan the payment slip, paying the bill from you account. Of course this means that it is all done electronically so what’s the different? The difference is you are standing at a bank branch, and you put your card in for ‘added security’, or at least this seems to be the mentality.

At the moment I have the luxury of being able to complete such choirs during the day, but once we are both working I can see this becoming a real hassle. Kurt Cobain once sang ‘just because your paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you’. Maybe he was right.