Home Sweet... Well, Almost Home

Today was the day we finally got to move into our new flat. We set our alarm early, got up, got ready, finished packing up the last few things our of stuff and checked-out of the hostel. Fortunately, the rain that was scheduled for today held out for us while we lugged around our belongings. On the unfortunate side, the wheels on Brett's suitcase have seen better days. We were hoping that they would just make it through this move across town. I carefully weaved around any major bump or crack in the sidewalks and roads, hoping my breath every time there was no way to avoid a bump. Luckily, we made it to the main train/bus station in one piece.

We got onto the number 1 bus and headed to our new flat. It's so pretty on this side. Very quiet and peaceful, yet only a few bus stops away from markets and some shops. Leve wasn't home when we arrived, he told us the day before he would only be home until 10:00am because he had errands to do. We let ourselves into our new place and gladly took off our shoes. I don't know if it's just a Switzerland thing or just a flat thing, but there is a place to take off your shoes out side of the main door of your flat. Some people have a shoe mat, others have a few shelves outside their door, and Leve has a little shoe cabinet. Before you go into the place, it's usual to take your shoes off and place them in the cabinet so that the flat stays clean.

First things first, we needed to figure out what we would sleep on that night. Our room is unfurnished, so it's completely empty except for some windows shades left from the people before. We left our luggage in the room and got back on the bus. We noticed there was a bedding store not to far away, but decided to check out the little shopping center one more bus stop away. To our surprise, there was a Aldi Suisse inside. Apparently, Aldi is international. Hurray! So, we took a look around. Inside it looks just like a normal Aldi, except it had Swiss food instead and more toiletry products to choose from. It was quite big. As we were rummaging through the shelves and bins, we found a blow up mattress. Yay! We found our bed. So, we grabbed that, some Nutella and bread and headed back home.

We were going to wait for Leve to come back to ask him where we could find pillows and sheets. They don't have Walmarts or many other department store types in Switzerland, or at least not where we are, so you have to ask around to find what you are looking for. There is an IKEA in the area, but we don't have a car and neither does Leve, so we would have to get everything delivered, which is pretty expensive. For now, the blow up mattress would do.

We got home to find that the blow up mattress didn't come with a pump. So, for the next 15 minutes, Brett used his musician's lungs to blow up our bed.

It really tuckered him out!

One of our favorite things is that the windows don't have screens on them. This was also true at the hostel. You can completely open up a window and enjoy the sound of the outside and enjoy the great breeze as well. And be able to stick your head out too if you want! We haven't had too many problems with mosquitoes here. They aren't crazy like they are in Wisconsin. The thing we have seen a ton of is wasps. Wasps everywhere! They don't seem to bother many people. You start to get used to them, because if you react like people sometimes react in the States, by cursing or running away from the wasp, you'll definitely be looked at like you are some crazy tourist. As long as you keep the light off at night, the bugs don't seem to bother you.

We have a great view, all around. We are at the foot of some mountains, and the nearest main mountain is Mount Pilatus. I mentioned before that the brook right next door is mountain runoff from the mountain. There are so many trees and hills... it's beautiful. Out our window, we have a great view to a hill covered with trees and a farm with cows. Throughout the day you can hear the bells on the cows necks ring, along with your "moo" every once in a while. There's also a school near by, and right outside our window is a soccer field. There are horses near by as well. I don't know if they are at the same farm as the cows, but we see people riding them around the streets. It's great.

Here are a couple of pictures of our view...

When Leve got home, he was excited we made it and thought the blow up mattress was a good idea. He noticed we still had all our clothes in our luggage and insisted we take one of the dressers from the living room that wasn't being used. Now we had some drawers to put our clothes in instead of living out of our luggage. Yay! Also, by the time Leve got home, he said all the stores that would sell pillows and sheets would be closed. All the stores close around 5:00pm on the weekdays, and they are open until 6:30pm on Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday night, some may be open a little later, since everyone gets some shopping in because on Sunday, everything is closed.

Again, Leve kindly wanted to help us out. He gave us two pillows, two pillow cases, a flex sheet, and a blanket. He told us we didn't have to return them in any rush. It was really nice, and we were happy to have comfy pillows and a warm blanket for the night. Thanks Leve!

Here's a pick of our room with the bed all made...

 

It wasn't much, but we were happy. And looking forward to sleeping on something besides a hard hostel mattress. Good night! 

Chocolate Thursday

We were pretty excited to call Leve letting him know we wanted to take the room in the flat. However, he did mention that there were a few other people that were interested, so if we were the first ones to answer back, we would get it. Well, that left us with a different dilemma... How early can you call someone in Switzerland and not be rude? We waited until around noon. We wanted to make sure we called early so that we got the apartment, but not too early. The only down side is that check-out at the hostel is at 10:00am. So, in order to not have had to pay for Thursday night, we would have had to check-out. However, we didn't know if we for sure had anywhere else to go, so we didn't want to do that. We wanted to make sure we called Leve and had everything squared away before we did that.

We called Leve and he said it was all set. We could move in that day if we wanted! Yay! We could leave the hostel and finally move into a flat where we could cook and have a little quiet too! This was great. Finally, we found some place to move-in. It was a nice weight off our shoulders as $100 a night was getting rather stressful. Leve told us to meet him around 6:30pm. We weren't going to bring our stuff right away because we still had to stay in the hostel one more night, since we already paid for it. On to our next issue... Are we going to be able to get our money back for our already paid Friday night stay at the hostel?

Fortunately, the people who work at the hostel were great. They happily gave us money back for the Friday night. The name of the hostel was BackPackers Lucerne. There are BackPackers all over Switzerland and also Europe. If you need some place to stay when visiting Europe, and you don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for a hotel, I would highly recommend BackPackers. They were very expensive in Switzerland, but that was because Switzerland is just very expensive. One night at an "okay" hotel was $200 a night, so we found a pretty good deal.

Well, again we have some time to kill until we need to meet with Leve at our new flat. We figured that some good Swiss chocolate should be involved to celebrate our flat find. We went back to the place that gave us those yummy free samples. This time, we actually bought a whole bar!

 

Eat your heart out! It was so good... Here are some pictures of me in chocolate heaven. For your enjoyment of course.

Clearly, while Brett was taking pictures of me, I was helping myself to more chocolate. Mmm...

Finger lickin' good! It was Milk Chocolate with Hazelnuts. Our favorite. And don't worry, I left some for Brett.

After our chocolate adventure, we decided to take the City Train around Luzern. It's a tourist thing, but we have seen it everywhere and wanted to give it a try. We had some time still before we had to meet Leve, so we went for it. It was a lot of fun!

 

Brett sporting the Brewers hat...

Okay, that was fun. Oh wait, I almost forgot. I love this picture....

This was taken from the City Train near the Lion of Luzern.

Okay, now on to our new flat. We got on the bus again. In about 20 minutes, we were there! Here is a view right near our bus stop...

And this is a brook that is mountain water run-off. It's so clean and pretty to look at. It runs right along our flat.

We get to our flat, call Leve and go upstairs. Oh yeah, we are on the 3rd floor, but really it's the 4th... remember ground level is 0 here. Don't worry, they have an elevator, or as called in Switzerland, a lift.

We explain to Leve that we have to stay at our hostel one more night. It's all good. He gives us a key anyways. Turns out, we don't have to sign a lease because the lease is in Leve's name. This is good because for whatever reason, in the case that we may have to leave, at least we are not in a binding contract. We explained this to Leve and he totally understands if we can't stay for a whole year. So, again, another huge weight off our shoulders.

Before we left, he offered us something to drink. He told us we had to drink the water. It's different than the Luzern city water. It was water from the mountain that is close by, Mount Palatus. It's so good that the Swiss call it Honey Water. I forgot how he said it in German. We each drank a glass. Best water ever. With water that tasted this good, there is no reason to really drink anything else!

Meet up with Leve, check. Drink mountain water, check. Set-up a time to move in, check. Chocolate heaven, check. Another good day of getting things done. We headed back to the hostel and packed up to be ready to check-out of the hostel by 10:00am the next day. Tomorrow we move into out new flat!

Successful Wednesday

Now that we had our new international Swiss phone, we were ready to roll on the apartment hunt. Brett and I searched online for something we could afford and that wasn't too far away from Brett's school. Of course, the farther away you went from the city, the less expensive the rent was. Even though the Swiss transportation system is golden, it's still a lot to transfer more than 3 buses every day just get to school. Also, hoping I find a job, I wanted to be close to the city so just in case I get a job working in the city of Luzern, or in Zurich, which in that case I would still need to be close to the main train station in Luzern.

The main issue that we had been having before when we were just emailing people about apartments is that they didn't think it would work having two people living in one room. They like to keep it to one person per room, so that there's enough shared living space for everyone. This obviously makes sense, but it's also a pain on our side. We don't have anything with us except our computers and clothes. Even if we get a room to ourselves, it's going to be empty. We received lots of rejections to apartments because we were two people wanting to live in one room. Because of this, we started to look for studios, so it would be just us. In this case, we would really have nothing, because at least in a flat, someone living there already would have kitchen-ware and at least a place to sit down. There aren't many furnished areas in Luzern, at least ones we could afford... except that one we hiked to on Monday. Now it is Wednesday, and guess what... we lost that number. Ugh. We weren't really in the mood to walk all the way back just to get the number, so we decided to just keep looking online.

After a couple hours we had called a few places. Some didn't speak English at all, so that didn't really work. Most were not happy with the idea of having two people live in one room, and the rest, were too far away.

We finally got in touch with someone who seemed excited to speak with us. We told him right away that we were two people looking to live in one room. He had one room available, with one other guy living in the second bedroom. He said he would double check with his roommate about two people living in one room to see how he felt about it. In the mean time, he invited us over to meet him and to see the place. We were pumped that we at least had a potential apartment, we had the opportunity to meet someone and to see what a flat looked like.The appointment wasn't until 6:00pm, so we had several hours to bum around.

We walked around Old City Luzern, got some gelato, sat on some steps and people watched for a bit. Then we continued to walk around exploring parts of Old City that we had not seen before.

After a few hours, we started to get hungry for a little lunch. We stopped at the local Migros and picked up some goodies; chocolate milk, bread, and some delicious Swiss cheese. We sat along some water and enjoyed the view as we ate.

  

The chocolate milk was sooo good! That's my... don't take a picture of me while I'm enjoying my chocolate milk... face.

Now we were ready for our adventure to this potential apartment. Again, since we don't have internet with us and WiFi is only found at main eating areas and is usually password protected, we had to figure the map stuff out beforehand. We looked it up on the iPad and then took screenshots of how we could get there. Luckily, there was a bus that took us most of the way. We walked to the main train/bus station and hopped on the 1 bus. It was about 15-20 minutes away by bus. It was nice to see another part of Luzern other than just the main city.

We arrived at our stop. We had to walk maybe the equivalent of 3 blocks and we were there. We called the guy we spoke to early letting him know we were there. He let us in and greeted us. He was very nice. His name was Levente. He is from Budapest, Hungary and has lived in Switzerland for 3 years. He's an engineer and spoke English well. He told us to call him Leve because it was easier to pronounce. He showed us around and told us about the area. There's a medium sized kitchen, a medium sized eating area, a large living room, two balconies; one small, the other medium, three bedrooms, and one and half bathrooms. They also have lots of closet area, and storage in the basement for other stuff. They have washers in the basement and lines to dry the clothes on. There is also a room to store bicycles, a room to store winter sport equipment and two parking spaces if needed. I'm not really sure if there's a difference between a flat and an apartment, but I'm guessing that in Switzerland they just refer to apartments as flats.

We talked about the fact that the two of us wanted to stay in one room. Leve seemed fine with it, but wanted to be fair and make sure with the other roommate. We talked about rent and the other utilities that would have to be paid for. It was in our range that we had talked about paying for rent, however it was closer to the higher side. Either way, it was cheaper than staying in the hostel. Leve said he will make sure to contact the other roommate as soon as he could and get back to us.

Brett and I left hoping that it would work out, but were not building our hopes up too much. We went back to the hostel and watched some TV shows. It was a bit chilly that night, so we wanted to stay in. We were hoping that Leve would contact us soon so that at least we had some kind of sense of accomplishment about the apartment situation.

About 11:00pm that night, Leve texted us and told us Dani, the other roommate was fine with it. He said he loved Americans and the more would be better... Dani had just come back from Las Vegas, so he was still on an American high I think. Good for us! Leve had told us that once we heard back from him, we could tell him whether we wanted to accept the room or not. Since there were a few other people who had seen the apartment, we had to be the first ones to call him back. It was a good day. Tomorrow, we will call Leve and let him know we are in.

Stupid iPhones and Yummy Pizza

Tuesday, we woke up well rested and even more determined to get this apartment thing figured out. The first thing we knew that we had to do was to get phones. We quickly learned that when looking for an apartment, not only do they want to meet you in person and have a conversation with you, but they don't want it to be purely done with email. They want you to call them and speak with them. This is very difficult when you don't have a phone, or at least one that works internationally. We did some minor research about phones before we came to Switzerland and found that the carrier Orange was the way to go. They seemed to be the most affordable and they even had a discount for being under the age 27. Great, on to Orange we go.

Our initial plan was go get a SIM card from Orange and just shove that into our phones, once we jailbroke and unlocked them. No problem. So, we get everything set up at Orange, buy a SIM card, ask them about the iPhone and they give us a few tips on our to jailbreak our phones, but can't actually do it in store. Alright, back to the hostel we go to get cracking on our phones.

To make this short and less verbally offensive... 3-4 hours and another visit back to Orange have now passed and we were still trying to figure out our phones. Not only did we try on my phone, but we tried on Brett's as well. Just as Brett thought he was getting his to work, I was pretty sure I had completely broken my phone and was now in a mad dash to try and un-jailbreak it. It was horrible. We realized that we were both very angry and in a very tiny hostel room where we felt the air getting tighter and tighter. We to called it quits and just to go buy the cheapest phone that Orange had on their shelves.

Back to Orange again we go! This time, no iPhones. We went in and told them we couldn't figure out how to unlock our phones and that we wanted to buy the cheapest prepaid phone that the had to offer. They had 3 options for phones that were 19chf each. Choice #1... they were out of stock. Okay, choice #2 please... oh, those are out of stock too. Maybe, choice #3... yay! We have a winner, finally...

We have our cheap phone and spend about another hour trying to get the SIM card in and get it set up. Then the best part is that the phone is in German. Good thing Brett knows enough German to change the language to English on the phone. However, now it's too late to call anyone about apartments. We decide to take our new phone and roam around Old City Luzern since we were pretty sick of our hostel room by the end of the day.

After a day of phone struggle, we thought we deserved a little treat. We were in the mood for some pizza! So, we found ourselves a small little pizza place run by a little Italian woman from the Lugano area. It was a little expensive for pizza, but it was still so good!

Doesn't it look yummy?! It was delicious. After our bellies were full and happy, we walked back to our hostel, slowly. It was nice to have some warm food to eat. Now, it was time for bed because Wednesday was going to be a busy day with calling around for apartments. Phone, check. Pizza, check. Now, time for sleep.

Our Legs Have Never Been So Sore

Now that it's a new week, we are determined to find an apartment. We have to get out of the hostel, not because we don't like it here, but because it's so expensive. For the both of us to stay here, it costs us about 76chf a night, which is close to $100 a night. It's awful. We got up, got ready and got typing away on our computers.

It's been difficult looking for apartments because in Switzerland, they rent them out 1-2 months in advance of when the lease would start. Which means, we would have had to start looking in the beginning of July. However, in Switzerland, no one will rent to you, unless they can meet you first. Everything is very personal here. They want to sit down with you and talk to you; kind of hard to do when you are separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

We had to find a place that has been looking for awhile, so that there would be an opening. The only thing is, in Switzerland, most apartments and flats are already filled. Also, the closer you live to the city of Luzern, the more expensive it is. We drilled at our computers for hours. Found a couple hits and at this point all we could do was walk to them to check them out. We initially found some furnished apartments that were reasonably priced. So, off we went to try and find them.

Since we don't really know where we are going, and we also don't have internet on our phones or iPad, we have to take screen shots of maps on the iPad. That way we can look at the photos as our map and figure out how to get where we want to go.

We walked all the way up to Brett's school, which is seriously no easy walk. We thought the school was closer to the top of the hill than towards the bottom. Well, we were wrong, but didn't know it until we ended up climbing all the way to the top, then slowly walked our way all the way to the bottom, just on the opposite side. My legs are still sore from that walk. Below is the map of where we walked.

A: is where our hostel is... B: is where Brett's school is.... and C: is where this apartment was.

Once we finally got there, we had no way of contacting the manager to tell him that we were there, because we don't have a phone. We found someone that was working in one of the businesses below the apartments. She told us that he wasn't home right now, but if we called him, he would be able to meet us some other day. She gave us his name and number. Great... that was a waste.

We started the walk home and knew our number one objective for Tuesday was to get SIM cards for our phones.

When we got back to the hostel, we pretty much just sat down, watched some TV shows on our computers and passed out. That was one crazy Monday for us. Our legs hate us.

Quiet Sunday

Three days in, and we are still not used to the time change yet. We woke up at 10:30am... However, we deserved a break; we did hike all over town the day before. I'm sure our bodies were exhausted.

We woke up to the sound of church bells ringing. Switzerland doesn't have one designated religion, but does have a large Luthern population. There are a few churches around our hostel, so plenty of music from the bells. It seemed like we were going to have a nice relaxing day.

In Switzerland, Sunday is quiet day. No one is supposed to mow their lawn, or take out trash; pretty much don't do anything that's going to make a lot of noise.

  We took a walk into town and explored some new areas. Since it was practically noon, we were getting pretty hungry because we hadn't eaten breakfast. So, we started to walk towards the nearest Migros. The largest one we know of is in Old City Luzern.

As we started to walk through Old City, we realized most of the shops were closed, there were less people in the streets, and most looked like lost tourists... just like us. Oh great... Please let the Migros be open, we are starving! As we got closer to the Migros we knew we were in trouble. No lights on, door closed... No food. At this point, we are getting pretty crabby. Both Brett and I turn into little monsters when we are hungry, so it's never a good thing when we are hungry together. On to the next plan...

We decide our best option is to go find a local bakery. Yes, it's going to be a little bit more expensive than Migros, but we needed to do something. We get to the first bakery and luckily, the continue to bake bread throughout the day. Fresh loaf of yummy bread waiting for us... 1.20chf... Sounds good to us. We grabbed our bread, then headed off to find something to put on our bread.

About 4-5 years ago, I was in southern Switzerland with my family. There seemed to be a meat shop and a cheese shop every block, but in Luzern, it wasn't as popular. It would have been really helpful on that quiet Sunday.

We walked into another little food shop looking for cheese. Not what we were really looking for... they had some already made sandwiches and pastries. Even though we were still super hungry, we still had to try not to buy food out because it is very expensive in Switzerland. We asked the woman inside the little shop where we could possible find some cheese. She said everything closes on Sunday, except there is an open Coop in the underground level of the train station. Perfect!

We grab our bread and head out down the street to the main train station. It didn't occur to us yet that we may not be the only hungry people in Luzern. We get there and the place was packed. We grabbed a package of sliced Swiss cheese and a half liter of fruit juice. We were so hungry from walking around at this point we couldn't wait to... Stand in line for a half hour. Wait, what?! Yes, we stood there with out food in line for a half hour because in was so busy.

Finally, we made it out alive. We didn't even want to walk all the way back to the hostel to eat. We found the first open bench next to Lake Luzern and enjoyed ourselves a little picnic. The bread was soft and baked fresh that day, the cheese was a yummy Swiss cheese and the fruit juice was delicious. The fruit juice in Switzerland is always 100% juice. It's slightly pulpy, very fruity, but not overly sweet and so refreshing. Since our tummies were finally happy, we could stop glaring at each other like they were a sandwich.

So, we learned the hard way... Everything in Switzerland, even I'm the tourist city of Luzern, closes on Sundays. We won't be making that mistake again. Oh well, we still had a great day of exploring and hanging out by the lake. We later spent time at the hostel looking for apartments. Time to get some rest for the week ahead...