Breaking Bad in Switzerland

Luke and I recently got hooked on the "Breaking Bad" series on AMC. For those who are unfamiliar with this TV show it is basically about a straight laced high school chemistry teacher who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer and then, through a series of events starts to make crystal meth in order to leave money behind for his family. It is a really addicting and entertaining show and it does a great job of showing how your ordinary nice, law-abiding guy can "break bad" and go to the dark side.

Now how does this show play into my life here in Switzerland?  Well I am an ordinary, nice, law-abiding type of girl...or at least I thought I was.  That was until I moved to Switzerland where there are rules for everything! I'm not even kidding, there are rules for when you can do your gardening, when you can run your dishwasher, when you can flush your toilet, pretty much anything you can think of, there is a rule for how and when it should be done.

One of the main rules in Switzerland is that no one can do anything on Sunday. Nothing. No shopping (all stores are closed), no vacuuming, no yard work, and (my biggest gripe) NO LAUNDRY. Living in an apartment with a shared laundry room means I get to do laundry once every 8 days. Once every 8 days is not enough for a family of four. Usually by day five we are running low on any clean clothes. I've tried to be a law abiding foreigner and respect this ridiculous rule. I've tried to ignore the fact that the washer and dryer are sitting unused all day Sunday while no one in my family has any clean undies, I've tried to be patient and wait for my designated laundry day. But last week I did it, I "broke bad" and did my laundry on Sunday. It was that or let Luke wear dirty clothes to work for the next three days while I wait for "my day." So I did it, I tried to be sneaky and run my clothes downstairs when I knew no one was around. I closed the laundry room door to make sure no one could hear the laundry running, and I thought it was a success. No one saw me and we were all happy to have clean clothes again.

Fast forward to the next morning as I am trying to get Jack and Lily out the door. The old lady who lives next to us must have been waiting for us to come out of our apartment for the minute we stepped out our door she comes out of her apartment and says "was it you who did your laundry on A SUNDAY?" I tried to tell her that yes, it was me and that we had no clean clothes, etc, etc. But she wasn't having it. This nice old lady was so mad that she was talking unbelievably fast (in french) and I could barely understand her. All I could get from what she was saying was "it's against the rules" "the rules this" "the rules that" "THE RULES!" She didn't care if Luke had nothing to wear to work, or if Jack had to run around naked for three more days, I broke the sacred rule in Switzerland to not do laundry on Sunday. The whole time she was going on and on about what a wicked thing I had done, I was thinking to myself that ordinary, nice, law-abiding Jenny would say "I'm sorry, it won't happen again" but, instead I felt something inside of me crack, I felt myself slip to the dark side. I felt myself say "screw all these stupid rules, if I need to do laundry on Sunday then I'm darn well gonna do it!"

And thus begins season one of Breaking Bad in Switzerland.